I have had several recording studios over the last 45 years and renovations and tearing down a set-up are usual to help optimize a setup, update equipment, and streamline workflow. I am no stranger to the process and I encourage studio owners to keep an open mind that there are small and large updates to consider. Also, the types of projects you work on, the types of clients you work for, and the flexibility to manage large or small projects are things to consider. Over 5 years a studio will be renovated and updated perhaps 3 to 7 times to keep up with technology and provide clients "State of the Art" standards. Good Luck!
Totally recommend Synology for NAS, since you asked. I got one for archive purposes and within a year, it's wormed its way into my workflows so much I couldn't continue without it. It's been utterly rock-solid, sits down in the basement so zero noise. It is The Thing.
To be fair, the design of the amp rack is pretty simple. All anybody would need to know is; - The overall height, width and depth - The thickness of the timber used - The width timber shelf. - The height of a timber side section. - The width and thickness of a metal brace. Love the videos buddy. Keep them coming!
For long term storage and daily use, external magnetic drives are actually a better way to go. SSDs have a finite lifespan of reads and writes and the "fuller" you keep a drive and add/remove large files (read as large video files) the faster you will wear out an SSD. This is especially true on a computer that does not have a replaceable internal SSD. Bottom line is, anything important on an internal SSD needs to be backed up externally and the cost of backing up archives with external magnetic drives is infinitely cheaper these days.
Hey man! Could you explain the process in how you went from your intel Mac to an M1 Mac? Going to do the same soon and am thinking about bringing over the plugins and everything over migration assistant, all the ilok stuff and what not. Thanks in advance!
Because you asked for suggestions: I would recommend building a cloud over your mix position, and some additional diffusion or absorption on that big ceiling! Glad that the studio is coming together!
Love the studio. Just ordered the same desk setup. By the way, I would recommend turning off phantom power in the preamps whenever you plug a mic into it or unplug it. The dc voltage could damage the gear. Also if you accidentally patch a ribbon mic into a preamp with phantom power turned on it could fry the ribbon. The chance of damaging gear with tt or trs cables is even greater than with xlrs.
Rhett, I'm a commercial photographer. 40 years of experience, 50 as a guitar player. You are right on the money with the photo and video gear. I have the a1. Incredible for stills and video. Te gear you have is perfect for what you do. Your knowledge of white balance really enhances your videos. I was being interview last year and the podcaster did not know how to get the yellow tint out of the videos during test shots. 10 year old Canon, I scrolled through the menu and adjusted the white balance. Viola! Everything matters. Especially if you are very discerning. Never play out of tune. Always get the white balance right.
For your storage use a Synology NAS..I'll suggest use a minimum 4 bay NAS.. and use enterprise level disk....you can connect your external SSDs to the NAS for additional back up... thank me later. This is my set up. and I never worry about storage.... I use a 2020 Intel iMac, 128Gb of Ram, 4TB of storage for plugins, and sound libraries...... all storage goes to my Synology 1817+ (8bay) 72 Terabytes of Seagate Ironwolf enterprise level 12 Terabytes, in 6 bays.... 2 bays contain (2) 2T SSD drives for cache..... This is not cheap.... I spent over $3K for disk, My synology cost me $2K, and the 2T SSD was around $200 each. so a little over $5K just for storage.... My studio room is no where as nice as yours but if you have expensive gear it is important to retain the art. Hope that helps.
I’ve been a video editor/motion gfx artist for 20 years. I’ve been using Dropbox for the last 8-10 of those and it’s been amazing. I never worry about losing anything and it makes mobility a whole different thing. I can work literally anywhere. I don’t just use it for backup. I work from my Dropbox folder that is synched to my 4tb internal. I can choose what is available offline with a mouse click. I’ve never ever had a problem.
@@kurdtjohn Yes, that would work, but he needs to get it off site for backup. Cloud storage is cheap, efficient and highly reliable. A stand-alone raid NAS for daily backup, then send it up once a day. To stand up a proper server w/raid is $$$$! Then it also has to be managed. If Rhett doesn't want to, or can't do that he would have to hire someone. Getting into even more $$$$. --gary
Love the set up Bro 👍🏾 I'm a bit old school coming from the analogue days 😊 24 track real to real, 48 track real to real days.. In my days there were called valve pre amps/amps today we say tube.. for me personally its all about warmness of the sound... so when you mentioned your tube pre amps I just said yep this guy is on the same page as me.. I personally wouldn't mix with the subs on but play back after the mix is a must.. Gods Will, I will be building from scratch as I want my studio to be at home.. thanks for the tips as I'm still learning every day.. Stay Bless Bro ✝️
I’m having pretty positive vibes regarding your live room and dream studio, I know you’ve done a lot work, experienced manny problems and stuff but finally I can see it being complete
13:10 IT guy here, having HDDs are best for long-term storage! You can get terabytes of storage for good prices. HDD can still fail and you can loose everything on it. Look into get a NAS server and set up a RAID. They have multiple drive bays and having a raid setup will have redundancy to make sure you don't loose data. Get a 6 bay if you can afford it up front
Wow, great studio, Rhett. I love how well organized and thought through everything is laid out. When it comes to backing up or archiving your work, please consider using cloud storage. Renting storage isn't that expensive, and having your data decentralized can be worth its weight in gold. A flood, a tornado, a house fire and all your work is gone. You can insure the house and all the hardware you have, even the hard drives you back up or archive your work on, but once the locally kept back up medias are damaged, the work itself is irretrievably lost. When using cloud services to back up your work, the provider is responsible for all the emergency recovery of storage and computer hardware and in the most cases your data are stored on storage on different locations. It's a pretty good and safe solution.
It amazing to see all the money spent on audio gear that only adds small percentage of quality, but not spend a $1000 for a decent 4 bay Nas (or cloud storage) to backup all their valuable work. Thanks for the studio walkthrough. Appreciate the videos!
I love your studio set up. But Im glad you mentioned multiple times that people dont need all this gear to make music. Personally I have a daw, audio interface, midi board, sm57, monitor headphones, pedal board, a jazzmaster, and a tube amp. I record a lot of electronic and rock music. My gear is essential to what I do. Everyone should work towards getting gear that's essential to what they do. I have a lot of synth vsts and effects plugins, but my next goal is an analog synth and a real mic preamp. Start with what is essential to what you want to do and then expand towards things that will supplement that. Dont go crazy spending money and financing on things that are outside of your budget because your favorite youtubers have it or an an ad tells you that you need to have it. Some of my favorite records were recorded with the most minimal gear. Gear goes as far as you can take it! Thanks Rhett!
Rhett, get yourself a nice, four rack Synology NAS (a DS420+ for example), load it up with two NAS-appropriate HDDs (Seagate IronWolf or WD Red) and make it your backup station to archive all your stuff. You can start with a pair of 8TB HDDs and add a second pair once you run out of space. Two HDDs provide redundancy (so if one craps out, the other is there to save you). You can even set it up so that it works as a Mac TimeMachine. It's not super fast, but you don't need fast for archiving.
One of the things I've liked since the move to the new house is that your studio is lit by ambient light. I like Rick's videos, but I've always felt like he's coming in from his studio cave. Having natural ambient light in your video makes them look a lot warmer. When your studio is done you might consider continuing to do you videos in the upstairs room.
Hey Rhett, regarding your bass problem: You probably know that the obvious solutions is getting (or better and cheaper yet, building) bass traps. The problem is of course, it takes up space. So sometimes you have to get a little creative with it. In your case, I see at least 2 things you can do that wouldn't change your usable footprint: - Change your closet doors for custom-made or homemade rockwool panel doors. It would turn your closet into a giant bass trap (to some extent); - Turn your couch into a bass trap or stick a huge cushion full of rockwool under the couch. These are minimal investment, big return solutions. There is also an expensive way to go about it. For the super low end, PSI makes an active bass trap called AVAA C20. I don't know how it works but it seems to have the thumbs up from a bunch of mastering engineers, including Bob Katz. Hope that helps.
I can't believe this is free content. Thank you for putting this together Rhett, you're a unique voice in this world of guitar. Excited for what will come out of this space for you (and us!)
@13:00 - For a NAS as backup/network storage, I'd recommend a Synology model with 4+ drive bays. It's the most user friendly of the consumer NAS options (although more than suitable for business too) - I've set up a few different brands, and they may be a slight premium, but the reliability and ease of use is excellent. I say to buy one at least 4 bays to allow some redundancy (where even if a drive fails you don't lose data), but it also makes sense to keep to a manageable setup too when setting out rather than a giant server. For example, 4x 8tb drives, set up with a single disk of redundancy (called RAID 5) which would give 24tb or so of storage. Also, I'd stress that redundancy isn't a complete backup - just maximises availability locally - so keep additional copies of really important data elsewhere, such as using cloud storage. A service like Backblaze can be good value if you need to keep a lot of data, but if its a more reasonable amount then consumer cloud storage is more than fine!
21 minutes in...a cloud over the mix or monitoring position would help you so much, Rhett. That would be my #1 priority in there. All the best the basement studio is looking good. Keep the faith. I'm in a 4x3 metre shed/hut room inside a room in the back garden. Get an expert in for room measurement. If the measurements are correct you'll only need to do the treatment once.
For the bass issues, use Owens Corning 703, 6" thick (three 2" thick pieces) wrapped in acoustic fabric covering the corners. That's what I use and it completely brought my room into line.
Great video! I have been around music and music gear all my life, hardly seems like 62 years, it went by pretty quickly! I'm glad to see that all the old gear is still being used today, like patch bays, mic pre's, tube powered compressors, tube amps, etc... Good luck with the new studio build, I'm looking forward to seeing it completed, up and running.
It's quite the fascination to get the BTS on how the magic works. That transparency is always appreciated. Hope the studio production is, indeed, going well.
Backup? I spent 30 years in the IT biz at the worlds largest film maker. It's great to see you thinking about backup, a lot of people don't. Some are very sorry they didn't. The old 'spinning disk' in that desktop adapter is better than you might think for temporary storage. They are reasonably reliable. The next step would be a server with a RAID storage. Better yet, and more cost effective would be on-line cloud storage. Google, Yahoo are a couple examples. You can work with your ISP to get better up speed. It will go to one of the huge server farms and be further backed up and managed there. The on-site server route could cost thousands of dollars, and you would still have to manage the server, or hire someone. Your ISP also may have a storage solution. Maybe ask them first. Off site is what I would recommend though. God forbid anything happens with the house/studio all your data/work would be safe off site. JMHO's. Hope that helps a little... 8) --gary
Yeah cloud over mix position and i would fill that entire up stairs shelf bit with rockwool batts make it a giant bass trap. You could re purpose all of that into the control room downstairs when it's time to move the control room set up
Ang angas boss! Bilang newbie, lahat naintindihan ko kahit dapat basic setup lang pinapanood ko. Pero eto kahit komplikado naging madali sa pagunawa ko. Maraming salamat sa lahat ng effort, really appreciated
NAS Storage suggestion Synology 720+ its a super reliable system and easy to set up for someone like myself that works in photography and isn't an IT pro. it is expandable too so you can get just about as lazy as you want with file retention if you need to. It has pretty quick transfer and you can upgrade if you need to to keep things fast enough to keep up with your workflow. I use the same SSD T7 drives for projects and the combo is great. It pretty much solved the same problem you're having for me with just a sunday afternoon of setup.
Thank you for making this video, Rhett. Seeing other setups really help rationalize what gear is truly important and helps me limit myself to create even better music.
I've just acquired a couple of PSI AVAA's for bass control in my room. I'm currently working out of my home apartment, so I can't really do much to treat the room acoustically, which means that the bass response in particular SUCKS. And it's not only the response, but also the reverberation time. My solution for this is a pretty expensive one, but if it works out then it'll be worth it. I'm demoing a Neumann KH 750 DSP sub, which is paired with my Amphion One18's at the moment. Neumann's correction is working absolute wonders on the bass response and the phase, but it can't do much for reverberation time. This is where the AVAA's come in, and boy, with just turning them on in the first position I stuck them in, I got almost a 200ms reduction of my first room mode at 42Hz. It's actually pretty incredible to see the difference when measuring. I'll be experimenting with other placement to find the optimal spots for them. So yeah, pretty hefty on the wallet (2.5k€ a piece), but definitely doing good things.
Very nice setup. Have you ever heard of the singer/artist Jewel? While she lived in Texas she bought a home on 4.4 acres and had half the home converted into a recording studio and guest house. Three rooms and a closset are covered with sound proof cloth and have pannels built into the walls of each room for connecting amps, mics, monitors, and headphones. There are no 90 degree walls in these rooms. Even the ceilings are at wierd angles Im guessing to break up and absorb the sound. The wiring from each room is run under the floor and pops out in the living room for the mixer/sound board. I've played guitar for over 30 years and that was a huge selling point for me. When me moved into the house I took over one of the smaller sound proofed rooms and set up my amps and routed all the wires. I was in the room abour 5 months when my wife said she wanted to turn that room into an exercise/guest room. UGH! Im not set up to the level you are, but the 2-car garage converted into a living room is working out nicely for me. Its not sound proof, but at my age I'm not turning things up to 11 anymore.
Rhett, congratulations on your continued success! watching you grow has been really inspiring and the consistent hard work you've been putting in deserves all the success you have gotten! I'm not a professional musician, but as a hobbyist I love watching you because unlike some other creators, you always have a strong budget in mind, so your judgement of gear value is something I have come to really appreciate! Here's to another decade of success! Good luck!
SWEET....water. nice way to combine what you love, helping your assistant, give Sweetwater advert., and keep subscribers happy. I think that's a win-win win-win technically
The sonnet Mac Mini rack having 2 Mac mini slots is super useful for live applications, where you need dedicated computers for different applications. (ProPresenter, lighting computer, stuff like that.) Love the video btw!
Most people have no idea how much equipment a studio can contain, nor how to use any of it. They would do themselves great favours by learning. This is an excellent primer.
As you well know, hard surfaces reflect. The less hard surfaces the less reflection. The next issue is directional reflection. Using treatments of various depths and densities will help with that. Your room shape is really a horn. The glass on the end is the direct reflection to that horn. Heavy draperies, closed when recording, with enough pleats to damp directional reflections would be inexpensive (relatively) Hard surfaces directly in front of the drivers causes immediate horizontal reflections. Carpeting or pads nearfield will help with that.. The ceiling is the big issue. To keep some liveliness and not anechoic sterility, alterations to structural depth (building random boxes, either empty or covered, think sandbox open, step box closed, and fill with damping as needed) will help with absorption and reflections. Think of an auditorium with square ceiling sections, but at random with a variety of depths and sizes. You can make panels that just screw into ceiling framing, rather than a built in. Next, and fairly obvious, so mentioned last, is corner treatment, mainly absorption material. Hope this offers some worth.
PSY Acoustic panels are really good for treatment. Their ceiling panels should be able to help with the bass buildup. Though since the ceiling is slanted you may need to consult them about some custom wires that the panels would hang from. I imagine that since bass buildup is usually from lower ceilings (anything less than 11 feet or so from what I understand) you would only need cloud panels for maybe the first half of the slanted ceiling. Their wall panels are also very good at absorbing low end. Need to opt for their 4" options to get the most out of reducing the low-end buildup.
For local storage TrueNAS is a good open source solution. It will do RAID configs so you have redundancy for data in the event of a dead drive. You install it on an old PC, put a RAID controller card in it (adaptec is a good controller maker) load up the drives and you are away. And then backup your backup to the cloud. Always ask yourself, what will it mean if I lose my data. And protect it accordingly.
Rhett...if you having issues with bass build up I'd look at having thicker panels. Also with the slope of the roof thats freaking GOLD. So I'd look at hanging panels from the roof. Do at least 4 inch thick panels if you can swing bigger panels go 6 inch deep. If you hang them so they have some gap off the ceiling like 4 inches or more it will pick up more low end by making the waves pass back and forth. if you want a design for an easy panel with 4x2 foot by 4 inches I can send the dimensions of the panels I made. I can also send photos.
This is such a killer video. Thank you Sir! As a person who's had a rather larger home studio setup, I really appreciate your commitment to expanding. Over the last decade you've grown your setup to make room for more. Meanwhile, I've simplified my setup from 48 channels down to 8. You seem to have a killer ability to manage more gear and channels. I need to reconsider my decisions. I've tried to reduce studio gear to make creating simple. And while it is helping a lot with workflow, maybe it's stagnating growth. All the details here were super necessary. I really appreciate you addressing everything. You're a legend 🙌 Cannot wait for new tracks!!
If you want a good off the shelf NAS, you should look at the Synology stuff. If you want a DIY build, the easiest thing is probably a PC running TrueNAS or Unraid, either in a rack mount server case, or a desktop case with A LOT of hard drive bays.
Honestly the hdds are fine for what you are using them for if you want faster read and write speeds just go ssd if not if you just need storage hdds are a cheaper way of storage bc of the hype of ssds if you want things to boot or load fast ssd is the way to go
13:16 I _strongly_ recommend moving that somewhere else. Vibrations and magnetic fields are bad for hard drives… about the only place worse would be on top of a subwoofer or guitar/bass cab.
Man I just gotta say I’ve been a subscriber for a while and watched your stuff but never really watched a whole lot all the time until I started watching the dipped in tone podcast recently. I have been listening to tone talk with Dave Friedman for a long time now anytime I work on anything at home or need something in the background and I put dipped in tone right up there with it. Awesome podcast for gear and tone geeks.
Rhett…. My (almost perfect) workstation desk is the “Fredde” desk from IKEA. Lots of reasons why, most importantly the room for a 4U rack server turned sideways and room for an LG 38” curved monitor. Super efficient and neat!
Thank you for this! I’ve been a guitar player for years but I’m just starting to get into the home studio world and I’m in so far over my head I don’t know whether scratch my watch or wind my ass sometimes…this was so informative! Much appreciated!!!
Hi Rhett, thanks for all this. I am really curious to know how you are using the Behringer monitor interface with the UA Apollo's. If you want to use some of the processing from the Apollo's you can't use the software monitoring from your DAW right? Too much latency. So how do you go about "punching" and that sort of stuff? How do you send "playback" to your band? In those same Behringer channels as the direct monitoring since the UAD Console doesnt let you mix into multiple outputs... I'm replacing my Apollo's because of that so wanted to know if you had a workaround. Cheers!
Hey, just a heads up if you’re planning to run backups using Apple Time Machine: my experience has been that time machine does NOT like network accessible storage. Backups would absolutely crawl, they sometimes took an hour, sometimes they never got out of the “preparing backup” part of the process. When I finally gave up and switched to regular external drives hooked directly to the computer all the problems went away. Backups run quickly with no problems. Yes you need a drive for each computer but it’s worth it.
The Masco Amp is cool. There's a lot you can do with them. I had mine gone through my Skip Simmons fifteen years ago. Set it up for one bright and dark channel, and you can just mix them put turning the volumes up and down. Octal preamp tubes. Mine came with the original Masco branded RCA tubes and they all still work. Octal's are their own thing. Think a cross between Gibson EH 150 and a Tweed Bassman.
I've never bothered with a subwoofer. I actually find I mix better with very little low end information. If you get the midrange right, your mixes generally sound good anyway. This is the reason NS-10s are so popular.
13:15 WD MyClouds are always a solid choice, at least for having a lot of storage space for local backups for your data. For me, Networking on a Mac has been tricky, you have to know a few tricks but it is doable. If you are looking to have a storage solution, I would definitely go for a machine that you spec out that just acts as a storage server. For your external drives, you could use internal NVMe drive which can go up to 2TB for like $150. You can then buy a external case for the NVMe that makes it able to plug in via USB. That will cost us about $20 to 30 right there
You could do a signal chain video, more specifically. Like when you did when showing the patch bay. But, essentially, the full course of a guitar/vocal signal from instrument to being recorded, and WHY you pass through each, including order.
Hey Rhett. Thanks for the video, great content ! For your network storage, I would say go with the best (fastest and biggest) Synology NAS you can afford. There are a lot of alternatives to Synology, many are cheaper, but the software that runs on the Synology is second to none. You can use it to record and view security cameras, manage, view and share your photos and videos, as well as automatically back up pretty much anything. Give them a shot, you'll never go back.
Great studio! love your setup and amp shelf. It looks strong and when you add up the weight of some of these amps, ya it needs to be strong, which is something I need to look into myself. We have a crqck and Barrel up here in Vancouver, so I'll check them out. As far as suggestions for sound acoustics in your studio, I have not much to add as I am still learning myself, which is why I come to your setup to learn, However, I always thought that a wedge sounding room with ceiling fans would maybe cause a doppler affect when mixing with fans spinning, but I could be wrong. Anyway great studio, and love your channel.
All of that amp gear and object clutter is creating surface reflections and mathematical chaos in diffusion. The Yamaha studio monitors are way too close. They need to be off the desk and on monitor stands. Foam is poor acoustic treatment. I recommend using GIK Acoustics and their Knauf Ecose with a min of 4" panels on the front and side walls and 6" on the back wall. Universal Audio drivers work for Mac users, but not so well for Windows users. The best interfaces and drivers for Windows users are from MOTU and Focusrite. DaVinci Resolve is the new industry standard for video editing and color grading. For those Adam A77Hs I recommend using the heavy-duty and height adjustable K&M Konig & Meyer 26722. At the moment, only Sweetwater has those stands. I have the Adam A77Xs and the older 26720 stand. The newer 26722 stand has a larger top plate. The downstairs studio looks like it's going to be an awesome setup.
Try moving the acoustic panels on the balcony higher on the wall. Maybe angling them so the top of the panel is mounted to the ceiling and the bottom of the panel to the wall would help. You could also try to put the ones currently on the side wall on the ceiling of the balcony above the railing. Glass also reflects sound, so curtains on the window up there would reduce reflection. Even if the curtains are light they will still help reduce sound. When I try to tune a room I just sit there and imagine where sound waves go, make adjustments and listen to the difference. You’re going to have to do a lot of thinking with your basement because you don’t have anything there yet. Respectfully.
Very informative! Really appreciated the info on the patch bay and the shotgun mic. I don't have a patch bay but see now how it could be helpful. I always wondered how they get the voices to sound so natural in tv and movies, now a part of that is revealed. Thanks for sharing the technical without putting me to sleep! PEACE!!
I was intrigued by the patchbay. Why the mini-telco stuff and not TRS 1/4"? I was also struck by the "top row is outputs, bottom row is inputs" notion. After digesting that I had to crawl under the desk with a flashlight and rearrange some cables :D
Suggestion for the upstairs room: You may have explored this, but adding some staggered baffling in front of the railing facing back down may work to break up reflected waves. You could stagger them at something like 40 and 60 degrees. It may soak up vibrations on the front and block reverberation from behind. Also, maybe some more soundproofing in the top corner of the loft.
Thank you, Rhett and Sweetwater for doing another giveaway. It looks as if your studio is coming along nicely. Btw, I have owned several pairs of Sennheiser headphones of various quality over the years; over the ear with open as well as closed sides and earbuds as well. They have changed the way I listen to recorded music. Just thought I would mention it. Keep it up, Rhett.
HELP! TONE KINGS AND GEAR HEADS! This seemed like the perfect video to engage this topic and I would love some feedback. I’m a backing track bedroom player and have been advised for years that 20W is plenty of power and optimal in order to push the amp (not to mention I have neighbors and that thing rarely gets above 3). BUT I see so many videos of pros with 50W-100W amps running in their bedroom or studio rig. I mean 100W even in a studio? What am I missing here? Is it just the presence if a master volume that allows the amp to be pushed without blasting everyone?
Building my NAS server was a game changer for my workflow. I'm a computer nerd so I had a bunch of spare parts to piece one together with about 5tb worth of drives. I use FreeNAS as the operating system. If you have some technical ability this is the way to go. You don't need crazy performance to have a stable machine. I can't speak for any of the prepackaged options unfortunately.
For storage, I have found that Dropbox is the best for my organization and work flow. If you get a business account, you can have unlimited storage. I put every video project on my local Dropbox folder and then I make it available online only when I am done working on it.
Hey Rhett, as usual, killer content! Concerning your storage needs, a NAS is great for making files available from several computers, and storing more files than could fit in your computer, but not very good for very long-term archival. The reason is that any hard drive will fail after a bit, and ssd too, especially if you don't use them regularly. For the stuff that you have finished working with and just want to "store and forget", I would suggest setting up a Amazon Web Services S3 storage and then you can download and upload simply from their website, and the pricing can go from 2$/month/TB (if you can wait a few hours to retrieve your files -- 5$/month/TB if you want instant retrieval). Sure, costs more than an SSD over the long run, but for long-term storage it's safer. If it seems like it could be interesting for you and you have any questions, or need help setting up, let me know -- I'd be happy to repay for everything that I learned with you
Have a look into AWS Glacier for archiving, especially if you want to be able to access the data from the internet - solves the headache with setting up the NAS system. Happy to help with getting that all sorted!
Great video, I have a couple of suggestions. For the digital storage a NAS is definitely the way to go, I've heard Synology is a pretty user friendly and reliable brand in that regard, and for the bass issues in the room acoustic, maybe a Helmholtz resonator would be a good option to target specific frequencies, it could get rid of the bass without completely killing the room liveliness. Hope it helps.
I recently saw a video about a Synology NAS that also has a Thunderbolt connection. Seems like a great solution for a studio. Probably need to keep it in another room though because those mechanic drives (and the fan) can get loud.
Computers...Might suggest some Mac Pro desktops, the cheesegraters and fill them with two 3TB SATA and two 3TB SSDs with MDisc drives...Now you have three formats and the MDisc drives are like $20-30 each.they last 25+ years...Set up your own LAN ..find yourself a decent router and switch and since it's going to be in house, you do not need expensive gear...Use Cat 6 Ethernet and you should be fine....You can also go the Linux route and then you can use any MAc or pC you feel like as long as it covers the basics..If you can find the computers from the same place,even better..I dont know if Apple has server software yet I am sure they have some because they used to make XServers. I would suggest them yet from what I heard on some videos, they sound like Boeing 747s on the runway..
I love that what Rhett is using as a "monitor controller" is capable of rather faithfully recreating everything he is doing with his outboard gear all by itself.
Great studio overview. Just picked up a UA Volt 476 and an SM 57 to capture guitar, Piano and drums. Still trying to get the hang of the DAW. Can’t recommend the QNAP NAS enough. Simple WebUI, built in media and backup options. You can get them with or with out disks, helpful if you have existing drives you want to reuse.
To be honest, I have no idea what most of this stuff does. However, I watched the whole thing and i found it all fascinating, if occasionally puzzling. Thanks!
Hey! Looks great! Hit us up via the website, maybe we can figure out how to work on it! Thanks so much for the shout out and for watching!!! -Bob
Can’t wait to see the Rhett Shellf
@@GuitarBeard Shullf
lets go!! 😃
weww
@@GuitarBeard that GOT ME. I would buy that in a heartbeat.
I have had several recording studios over the last 45 years and renovations and tearing down a set-up are usual to help optimize a setup, update equipment, and streamline workflow. I am no stranger to the process and I encourage studio owners to keep an open mind that there are small and large updates to consider. Also, the types of projects you work on, the types of clients you work for, and the flexibility to manage large or small projects are things to consider. Over 5 years a studio will be renovated and updated perhaps 3 to 7 times to keep up with technology and provide clients "State of the Art" standards. Good Luck!
Totally recommend Synology for NAS, since you asked. I got one for archive purposes and within a year, it's wormed its way into my workflows so much I couldn't continue without it. It's been utterly rock-solid, sits down in the basement so zero noise. It is The Thing.
To be fair, the design of the amp rack is pretty simple. All anybody would need to know is;
- The overall height, width and depth
- The thickness of the timber used
- The width timber shelf.
- The height of a timber side section.
- The width and thickness of a metal brace.
Love the videos buddy. Keep them coming!
For long term storage and daily use, external magnetic drives are actually a better way to go. SSDs have a finite lifespan of reads and writes and the "fuller" you keep a drive and add/remove large files (read as large video files) the faster you will wear out an SSD. This is especially true on a computer that does not have a replaceable internal SSD. Bottom line is, anything important on an internal SSD needs to be backed up externally and the cost of backing up archives with external magnetic drives is infinitely cheaper these days.
Hey man!
Could you explain the process in how you went from your intel Mac to an M1 Mac?
Going to do the same soon and am thinking about bringing over the plugins and everything over migration assistant, all the ilok stuff and what not.
Thanks in advance!
Because you asked for suggestions: I would recommend building a cloud over your mix position, and some additional diffusion or absorption on that big ceiling! Glad that the studio is coming together!
I've been waiting for this video like you wouldn't believe. Great video Rhett.
Are you going to do a tour video when Rhett gets the basement finished? That would be an epic 🤝
Love the studio. Just ordered the same desk setup. By the way, I would recommend turning off phantom power in the preamps whenever you plug a mic into it or unplug it. The dc voltage could damage the gear. Also if you accidentally patch a ribbon mic into a preamp with phantom power turned on it could fry the ribbon. The chance of damaging gear with tt or trs cables is even greater than with xlrs.
Great Studio tour, especially all the nerdy YT stuff! Love my Sennheiser MKH50. Best piece of gear I bought in the last few years!
Rhett, I'm a commercial photographer. 40 years of experience, 50 as a guitar player. You are right on the money with the photo and video gear. I have the a1. Incredible for stills and video. Te gear you have is perfect for what you do. Your knowledge of white balance really enhances your videos.
I was being interview last year and the podcaster did not know how to get the yellow tint out of the videos during test shots. 10 year old Canon, I scrolled through the menu and adjusted the white balance. Viola!
Everything matters. Especially if you are very discerning. Never play out of tune. Always get the white balance right.
For your storage use a Synology NAS..I'll suggest use a minimum 4 bay NAS.. and use enterprise level disk....you can connect your external SSDs to the NAS for additional back up... thank me later. This is my set up. and I never worry about storage.... I use a 2020 Intel iMac, 128Gb of Ram, 4TB of storage for plugins, and sound libraries...... all storage goes to my Synology 1817+ (8bay) 72 Terabytes of Seagate Ironwolf enterprise level 12 Terabytes, in 6 bays.... 2 bays contain (2) 2T SSD drives for cache..... This is not cheap.... I spent over $3K for disk, My synology cost me $2K, and the 2T SSD was around $200 each. so a little over $5K just for storage.... My studio room is no where as nice as yours but if you have expensive gear it is important to retain the art. Hope that helps.
I’ve been a video editor/motion gfx artist for 20 years. I’ve been using Dropbox for the last 8-10 of those and it’s been amazing. I never worry about losing anything and it makes mobility a whole different thing. I can work literally anywhere. I don’t just use it for backup. I work from my Dropbox folder that is synched to my 4tb internal. I can choose what is available offline with a mouse click. I’ve never ever had a problem.
Linus from LTT used to colab all the time with lots of people to help set up NAS stuff. Could be a cool colab that people wouldnt expect
YT channel Gamers nexus is based in North Carolina and is another resource. Steve just did a video on there NAS system.
Creators like Rhett most definitely need a NAS server for storing everything. That’s gonna be a collab I’d be hyped about.
Yeah but Linus will drop a guitar
+1 for gamer’s nexus
@@kurdtjohn Yes, that would work, but he needs to get it off site for backup. Cloud storage is cheap, efficient and highly reliable. A stand-alone raid NAS for daily backup, then send it up once a day. To stand up a proper server w/raid is $$$$! Then it also has to be managed. If Rhett doesn't want to, or can't do that he would have to hire someone. Getting into even more $$$$. --gary
Love the set up Bro 👍🏾
I'm a bit old school coming from the analogue days 😊
24 track real to real, 48 track real to real days..
In my days there were called valve pre amps/amps
today we say tube.. for me personally its all about
warmness of the sound... so when you mentioned
your tube pre amps I just said yep this guy is on
the same page as me.. I personally wouldn't mix
with the subs on but play back after the mix is
a must.. Gods Will, I will be building from scratch
as I want my studio to be at home.. thanks for
the tips as I'm still learning every day..
Stay Bless Bro ✝️
How fortunate are we today, to get interesting stuff like this to watch, that is also informative and educational atst. Thank you Rhett.
Indeed and better than TV.
I’m having pretty positive vibes regarding your live room and dream studio, I know you’ve done a lot work, experienced manny problems and stuff but finally I can see it being complete
13:10 IT guy here, having HDDs are best for long-term storage! You can get terabytes of storage for good prices. HDD can still fail and you can loose everything on it. Look into get a NAS server and set up a RAID. They have multiple drive bays and having a raid setup will have redundancy to make sure you don't loose data. Get a 6 bay if you can afford it up front
Wow, great studio, Rhett. I love how well organized and thought through everything is laid out.
When it comes to backing up or archiving your work, please consider using cloud storage. Renting storage isn't that expensive, and having your data decentralized can be worth its weight in gold. A flood, a tornado, a house fire and all your work is gone. You can insure the house and all the hardware you have, even the hard drives you back up or archive your work on, but once the locally kept back up medias are damaged, the work itself is irretrievably lost. When using cloud services to back up your work, the provider is responsible for all the emergency recovery of storage and computer hardware and in the most cases your data are stored on storage on different locations. It's a pretty good and safe solution.
It amazing to see all the money spent on audio gear that only adds small percentage of quality, but not spend a $1000 for a decent 4 bay Nas (or cloud storage) to backup all their valuable work. Thanks for the studio walkthrough. Appreciate the videos!
32:29:00 it's about impedance that changes the freq response curve, not level.
The new M2 Mac minis are great, too. I just got an M2 Pro mini and it's ridiculously powerful. And definitely yes about the T7 drives.
I love your studio set up. But Im glad you mentioned multiple times that people dont need all this gear to make music. Personally I have a daw, audio interface, midi board, sm57, monitor headphones, pedal board, a jazzmaster, and a tube amp. I record a lot of electronic and rock music. My gear is essential to what I do. Everyone should work towards getting gear that's essential to what they do. I have a lot of synth vsts and effects plugins, but my next goal is an analog synth and a real mic preamp. Start with what is essential to what you want to do and then expand towards things that will supplement that. Dont go crazy spending money and financing on things that are outside of your budget because your favorite youtubers have it or an an ad tells you that you need to have it. Some of my favorite records were recorded with the most minimal gear. Gear goes as far as you can take it! Thanks Rhett!
Rhett, get yourself a nice, four rack Synology NAS (a DS420+ for example), load it up with two NAS-appropriate HDDs (Seagate IronWolf or WD Red) and make it your backup station to archive all your stuff. You can start with a pair of 8TB HDDs and add a second pair once you run out of space. Two HDDs provide redundancy (so if one craps out, the other is there to save you). You can even set it up so that it works as a Mac TimeMachine. It's not super fast, but you don't need fast for archiving.
One of the things I've liked since the move to the new house is that your studio is lit by ambient light. I like Rick's videos, but I've always felt like he's coming in from his studio cave. Having natural ambient light in your video makes them look a lot warmer. When your studio is done you might consider continuing to do you videos in the upstairs room.
Hey Rhett, regarding your bass problem:
You probably know that the obvious solutions is getting (or better and cheaper yet, building) bass traps. The problem is of course, it takes up space. So sometimes you have to get a little creative with it. In your case, I see at least 2 things you can do that wouldn't change your usable footprint:
- Change your closet doors for custom-made or homemade rockwool panel doors. It would turn your closet into a giant bass trap (to some extent);
- Turn your couch into a bass trap or stick a huge cushion full of rockwool under the couch.
These are minimal investment, big return solutions.
There is also an expensive way to go about it. For the super low end, PSI makes an active bass trap called AVAA C20. I don't know how it works but it seems to have the thumbs up from a bunch of mastering engineers, including Bob Katz.
Hope that helps.
I can't believe this is free content. Thank you for putting this together Rhett, you're a unique voice in this world of guitar. Excited for what will come out of this space for you (and us!)
The fact that you think this is free … shows how low your iq is… god society has failed….
@13:00 - For a NAS as backup/network storage, I'd recommend a Synology model with 4+ drive bays. It's the most user friendly of the consumer NAS options (although more than suitable for business too) - I've set up a few different brands, and they may be a slight premium, but the reliability and ease of use is excellent.
I say to buy one at least 4 bays to allow some redundancy (where even if a drive fails you don't lose data), but it also makes sense to keep to a manageable setup too when setting out rather than a giant server. For example, 4x 8tb drives, set up with a single disk of redundancy (called RAID 5) which would give 24tb or so of storage.
Also, I'd stress that redundancy isn't a complete backup - just maximises availability locally - so keep additional copies of really important data elsewhere, such as using cloud storage. A service like Backblaze can be good value if you need to keep a lot of data, but if its a more reasonable amount then consumer cloud storage is more than fine!
21 minutes in...a cloud over the mix or monitoring position would help you so much, Rhett. That would be my #1 priority in there. All the best the basement studio is looking good. Keep the faith. I'm in a 4x3 metre shed/hut room inside a room in the back garden. Get an expert in for room measurement. If the measurements are correct you'll only need to do the treatment once.
For the bass issues, use Owens Corning 703, 6" thick (three 2" thick pieces) wrapped in acoustic fabric covering the corners. That's what I use and it completely brought my room into line.
Great video! I have been around music and music gear all my life, hardly seems like 62 years, it went by pretty quickly! I'm glad to see that all the old gear is still being used today, like patch bays, mic pre's, tube powered compressors, tube amps, etc... Good luck with the new studio build, I'm looking forward to seeing it completed, up and running.
Thank you for showing your patch box and how you make connections. I've never seen how things like this works
It's quite the fascination to get the BTS on how the magic works. That transparency is always appreciated. Hope the studio production is, indeed, going well.
Backup? I spent 30 years in the IT biz at the worlds largest film maker. It's great to see you thinking about backup, a lot of people don't. Some are very sorry they didn't. The old 'spinning disk' in that desktop adapter is better than you might think for temporary storage. They are reasonably reliable. The next step would be a server with a RAID storage. Better yet, and more cost effective would be on-line cloud storage. Google, Yahoo are a couple examples. You can work with your ISP to get better up speed. It will go to one of the huge server farms and be further backed up and managed there. The on-site server route could cost thousands of dollars, and you would still have to manage the server, or hire someone. Your ISP also may have a storage solution. Maybe ask them first. Off site is what I would recommend though. God forbid anything happens with the house/studio all your data/work would be safe off site. JMHO's. Hope that helps a little... 8) --gary
Yeah cloud over mix position and i would fill that entire up stairs shelf bit with rockwool batts make it a giant bass trap. You could re purpose all of that into the control room downstairs when it's time to move the control room set up
Ang angas boss! Bilang newbie, lahat naintindihan ko kahit dapat basic setup lang pinapanood ko. Pero eto kahit komplikado naging madali sa pagunawa ko. Maraming salamat sa lahat ng effort, really appreciated
NAS Storage suggestion
Synology 720+
its a super reliable system and easy to set up for someone like myself that works in photography and isn't an IT pro.
it is expandable too so you can get just about as lazy as you want with file retention if you need to. It has pretty quick transfer and you can upgrade if you need to to keep things fast enough to keep up with your workflow. I use the same SSD T7 drives for projects and the combo is great. It pretty much solved the same problem you're having for me with just a sunday afternoon of setup.
Thank you for making this video, Rhett. Seeing other setups really help rationalize what gear is truly important and helps me limit myself to create even better music.
I've just acquired a couple of PSI AVAA's for bass control in my room. I'm currently working out of my home apartment, so I can't really do much to treat the room acoustically, which means that the bass response in particular SUCKS. And it's not only the response, but also the reverberation time.
My solution for this is a pretty expensive one, but if it works out then it'll be worth it. I'm demoing a Neumann KH 750 DSP sub, which is paired with my Amphion One18's at the moment. Neumann's correction is working absolute wonders on the bass response and the phase, but it can't do much for reverberation time. This is where the AVAA's come in, and boy, with just turning them on in the first position I stuck them in, I got almost a 200ms reduction of my first room mode at 42Hz. It's actually pretty incredible to see the difference when measuring. I'll be experimenting with other placement to find the optimal spots for them.
So yeah, pretty hefty on the wallet (2.5k€ a piece), but definitely doing good things.
Very nice setup. Have you ever heard of the singer/artist Jewel? While she lived in Texas she bought a home on 4.4 acres and had half the home converted into a recording studio and guest house. Three rooms and a closset are covered with sound proof cloth and have pannels built into the walls of each room for connecting amps, mics, monitors, and headphones. There are no 90 degree walls in these rooms. Even the ceilings are at wierd angles Im guessing to break up and absorb the sound. The wiring from each room is run under the floor and pops out in the living room for the mixer/sound board. I've played guitar for over 30 years and that was a huge selling point for me. When me moved into the house I took over one of the smaller sound proofed rooms and set up my amps and routed all the wires. I was in the room abour 5 months when my wife said she wanted to turn that room into an exercise/guest room. UGH! Im not set up to the level you are, but the 2-car garage converted into a living room is working out nicely for me. Its not sound proof, but at my age I'm not turning things up to 11 anymore.
Rhett, congratulations on your continued success! watching you grow has been really inspiring and the consistent hard work you've been putting in deserves all the success you have gotten! I'm not a professional musician, but as a hobbyist I love watching you because unlike some other creators, you always have a strong budget in mind, so your judgement of gear value is something I have come to really appreciate! Here's to another decade of success! Good luck!
SWEET....water. nice way to combine what you love, helping your assistant, give Sweetwater advert., and keep subscribers happy. I think that's a win-win win-win technically
The sonnet Mac Mini rack having 2 Mac mini slots is super useful for live applications, where you need dedicated computers for different applications. (ProPresenter, lighting computer, stuff like that.) Love the video btw!
Most people have no idea how much equipment a studio can contain, nor how to use any of it.
They would do themselves great favours by learning.
This is an excellent primer.
As you well know, hard surfaces reflect. The less hard surfaces the less reflection. The next issue is directional reflection. Using treatments of various depths and densities will help with that. Your room shape is really a horn. The glass on the end is the direct reflection to that horn. Heavy draperies, closed when recording, with enough pleats to damp directional reflections would be inexpensive (relatively) Hard surfaces directly in front of the drivers causes immediate horizontal reflections. Carpeting or pads nearfield will help with that.. The ceiling is the big issue. To keep some liveliness and not anechoic sterility, alterations to structural depth (building random boxes, either empty or covered, think sandbox open, step box closed, and fill with damping as needed) will help with absorption and reflections. Think of an auditorium with square ceiling sections, but at random with a variety of depths and sizes. You can make panels that just screw into ceiling framing, rather than a built in. Next, and fairly obvious, so mentioned last, is corner treatment, mainly absorption material. Hope this offers some worth.
Watching Bob & Rhett work together would be the next step in expanding the YT cinematic universe.
PSY Acoustic panels are really good for treatment. Their ceiling panels should be able to help with the bass buildup. Though since the ceiling is slanted you may need to consult them about some custom wires that the panels would hang from. I imagine that since bass buildup is usually from lower ceilings (anything less than 11 feet or so from what I understand) you would only need cloud panels for maybe the first half of the slanted ceiling. Their wall panels are also very good at absorbing low end. Need to opt for their 4" options to get the most out of reducing the low-end buildup.
If you’re looking for a NAS the synology stuff is really easy to use if you’re not familiar with setting up a NAS
For local storage TrueNAS is a good open source solution. It will do RAID configs so you have redundancy for data in the event of a dead drive. You install it on an old PC, put a RAID controller card in it (adaptec is a good controller maker) load up the drives and you are away. And then backup your backup to the cloud. Always ask yourself, what will it mean if I lose my data. And protect it accordingly.
Rhett...if you having issues with bass build up I'd look at having thicker panels. Also with the slope of the roof thats freaking GOLD. So I'd look at hanging panels from the roof. Do at least 4 inch thick panels if you can swing bigger panels go 6 inch deep. If you hang them so they have some gap off the ceiling like 4 inches or more it will pick up more low end by making the waves pass back and forth. if you want a design for an easy panel with 4x2 foot by 4 inches I can send the dimensions of the panels I made. I can also send photos.
So great to see the Great River pre's! Dan Kennedy, the guy behind Great River is a friend of ours. Most brilliant electronic guy I know.
This is a fantastic video Rhett. Thank you for showing us your studio and going in depth about what’s in your quiver. Cheers!
This is such a killer video. Thank you Sir! As a person who's had a rather larger home studio setup, I really appreciate your commitment to expanding. Over the last decade you've grown your setup to make room for more. Meanwhile, I've simplified my setup from 48 channels down to 8. You seem to have a killer ability to manage more gear and channels. I need to reconsider my decisions. I've tried to reduce studio gear to make creating simple. And while it is helping a lot with workflow, maybe it's stagnating growth. All the details here were super necessary. I really appreciate you addressing everything. You're a legend 🙌 Cannot wait for new tracks!!
If you want a good off the shelf NAS, you should look at the Synology stuff. If you want a DIY build, the easiest thing is probably a PC running TrueNAS or Unraid, either in a rack mount server case, or a desktop case with A LOT of hard drive bays.
Honestly the hdds are fine for what you are using them for if you want faster read and write speeds just go ssd if not if you just need storage hdds are a cheaper way of storage bc of the hype of ssds if you want things to boot or load fast ssd is the way to go
13:16 I _strongly_ recommend moving that somewhere else. Vibrations and magnetic fields are bad for hard drives… about the only place worse would be on top of a subwoofer or guitar/bass cab.
Man I just gotta say I’ve been a subscriber for a while and watched your stuff but never really watched a whole lot all the time until I started watching the dipped in tone podcast recently. I have been listening to tone talk with Dave Friedman for a long time now anytime I work on anything at home or need something in the background and I put dipped in tone right up there with it. Awesome podcast for gear and tone geeks.
Rhett…. My (almost perfect) workstation desk is the “Fredde” desk from IKEA. Lots of reasons why, most importantly the room for a 4U rack server turned sideways and room for an LG 38” curved monitor. Super efficient and neat!
Thank you for this! I’ve been a guitar player for years but I’m just starting to get into the home studio world and I’m in so far over my head I don’t know whether scratch my watch or wind my ass sometimes…this was so informative! Much appreciated!!!
Hi Rhett, thanks for all this. I am really curious to know how you are using the Behringer monitor interface with the UA Apollo's. If you want to use some of the processing from the Apollo's you can't use the software monitoring from your DAW right? Too much latency. So how do you go about "punching" and that sort of stuff? How do you send "playback" to your band? In those same Behringer channels as the direct monitoring since the UAD Console doesnt let you mix into multiple outputs... I'm replacing my Apollo's because of that so wanted to know if you had a workaround. Cheers!
You really know how to give me a GAS flare up. My sales engineer thanks you. I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since you’ve been in that room.
Hey, just a heads up if you’re planning to run backups using Apple Time Machine: my experience has been that time machine does NOT like network accessible storage. Backups would absolutely crawl, they sometimes took an hour, sometimes they never got out of the “preparing backup” part of the process. When I finally gave up and switched to regular external drives hooked directly to the computer all the problems went away. Backups run quickly with no problems. Yes you need a drive for each computer but it’s worth it.
The Masco Amp is cool. There's a lot you can do with them. I had mine gone through my Skip Simmons fifteen years ago. Set it up for one bright and dark channel, and you can just mix them put turning the volumes up and down. Octal preamp tubes. Mine came with the original Masco branded RCA tubes and they all still work. Octal's are their own thing. Think a cross between Gibson EH 150 and a Tweed Bassman.
I've never bothered with a subwoofer. I actually find I mix better with very little low end information. If you get the midrange right, your mixes generally sound good anyway. This is the reason NS-10s are so popular.
13:15 WD MyClouds are always a solid choice, at least for having a lot of storage space for local backups for your data. For me, Networking on a Mac has been tricky, you have to know a few tricks but it is doable. If you are looking to have a storage solution, I would definitely go for a machine that you spec out that just acts as a storage server. For your external drives, you could use internal NVMe drive which can go up to 2TB for like $150. You can then buy a external case for the NVMe that makes it able to plug in via USB. That will cost us about $20 to 30 right there
Good on ya Rhett. I find re-wiring so cathartic.
You could do a signal chain video, more specifically.
Like when you did when showing the patch bay.
But, essentially, the full course of a guitar/vocal signal from instrument to being recorded, and WHY you pass through each, including order.
Hey Rhett. Thanks for the video, great content ! For your network storage, I would say go with the best (fastest and biggest) Synology NAS you can afford. There are a lot of alternatives to Synology, many are cheaper, but the software that runs on the Synology is second to none. You can use it to record and view security cameras, manage, view and share your photos and videos, as well as automatically back up pretty much anything. Give them a shot, you'll never go back.
Synology stuff is great for NAS storage IMO. Great video. I love all the gear you've collected over the years.
Hey Rhett, I have Luna and an M1 Mac Studio. I had lots of issues as well, then I configured Luna to launch with Rosetta, and the issues resolved.
Thanks Rhett, super interesting and thorough! Looking forward to the studio update with the same stuff!
Masco ftw!!! Nice! It's a PA head. Not a projector amp, but basically the same thing. Yes, early tweed style circuit. 🎉
A good replacement for that Nanlite Forza is the newer Smallrig RC120. They are very bright, quiet, small, light and affordable, at 200 or under.
Great studio! love your setup and amp shelf. It looks strong and when you add up the weight of some of these amps, ya it needs to be strong, which is something I need to look into myself. We have a crqck and Barrel up here in Vancouver, so I'll check them out. As far as suggestions for sound acoustics in your studio, I have not much to add as I am still learning myself, which is why I come to your setup to learn, However, I always thought that a wedge sounding room with ceiling fans would maybe cause a doppler affect when mixing with fans spinning, but I could be wrong. Anyway great studio, and love your channel.
All of that amp gear and object clutter is creating surface reflections and mathematical chaos in diffusion. The Yamaha studio monitors are way too close. They need to be off the desk and on monitor stands. Foam is poor acoustic treatment. I recommend using GIK Acoustics and their Knauf Ecose with a min of 4" panels on the front and side walls and 6" on the back wall. Universal Audio drivers work for Mac users, but not so well for Windows users. The best interfaces and drivers for Windows users are from MOTU and Focusrite. DaVinci Resolve is the new industry standard for video editing and color grading. For those Adam A77Hs I recommend using the heavy-duty and height adjustable K&M Konig & Meyer 26722. At the moment, only Sweetwater has those stands. I have the Adam A77Xs and the older 26720 stand. The newer 26722 stand has a larger top plate. The downstairs studio looks like it's going to be an awesome setup.
Try moving the acoustic panels on the balcony higher on the wall. Maybe angling them so the top of the panel is mounted to the ceiling and the bottom of the panel to the wall would help. You could also try to put the ones currently on the side wall on the ceiling of the balcony above the railing. Glass also reflects sound, so curtains on the window up there would reduce reflection. Even if the curtains are light they will still help reduce sound. When I try to tune a room I just sit there and imagine where sound waves go, make adjustments and listen to the difference. You’re going to have to do a lot of thinking with your basement because you don’t have anything there yet. Respectfully.
Very informative! Really appreciated the info on the patch bay and the shotgun mic. I don't have a patch bay but see now how it could be helpful. I always wondered how they get the voices to sound so natural in tv and movies, now a part of that is revealed. Thanks for sharing the technical without putting me to sleep! PEACE!!
I was intrigued by the patchbay. Why the mini-telco stuff and not TRS 1/4"? I was also struck by the "top row is outputs, bottom row is inputs" notion. After digesting that I had to crawl under the desk with a flashlight and rearrange some cables :D
Suggestion for the upstairs room: You may have explored this, but adding some staggered baffling in front of the railing facing back down may work to break up reflected waves. You could stagger them at something like 40 and 60 degrees. It may soak up vibrations on the front and block reverberation from behind.
Also, maybe some more soundproofing in the top corner of the loft.
Thank you, Rhett and Sweetwater for doing another giveaway. It looks as if your studio is coming along nicely.
Btw, I have owned several pairs of Sennheiser headphones of various quality over the years; over the ear with open as well as closed sides and earbuds as well. They have changed the way I listen to recorded music. Just thought I would mention it.
Keep it up, Rhett.
HELP! TONE KINGS AND GEAR HEADS! This seemed like the perfect video to engage this topic and I would love some feedback. I’m a backing track bedroom player and have been advised for years that 20W is plenty of power and optimal in order to push the amp (not to mention I have neighbors and that thing rarely gets above 3). BUT I see so many videos of pros with 50W-100W amps running in their bedroom or studio rig. I mean 100W even in a studio? What am I missing here? Is it just the presence if a master volume that allows the amp to be pushed without blasting everyone?
Building my NAS server was a game changer for my workflow. I'm a computer nerd so I had a bunch of spare parts to piece one together with about 5tb worth of drives. I use FreeNAS as the operating system. If you have some technical ability this is the way to go. You don't need crazy performance to have a stable machine. I can't speak for any of the prepackaged options unfortunately.
use that entire mezzanine area, open 6 bags of wool insulation. that will help the bass build-up.The capi are based on the API pre BTW.
For storage, I have found that Dropbox is the best for my organization and work flow. If you get a business account, you can have unlimited storage. I put every video project on my local Dropbox folder and then I make it available online only when I am done working on it.
we want to see more of chris!! he s a great player!!!
Me too! His IG wasn't in the comments
Hey Rhett, as usual, killer content!
Concerning your storage needs, a NAS is great for making files available from several computers, and storing more files than could fit in your computer, but not very good for very long-term archival. The reason is that any hard drive will fail after a bit, and ssd too, especially if you don't use them regularly. For the stuff that you have finished working with and just want to "store and forget", I would suggest setting up a Amazon Web Services S3 storage and then you can download and upload simply from their website, and the pricing can go from 2$/month/TB (if you can wait a few hours to retrieve your files -- 5$/month/TB if you want instant retrieval). Sure, costs more than an SSD over the long run, but for long-term storage it's safer.
If it seems like it could be interesting for you and you have any questions, or need help setting up, let me know -- I'd be happy to repay for everything that I learned with you
I got a QNAS for my big storage solution. It's been incredible
Your signature amp is amazing! You should do a giveaway for that item! Much love from Alaska
Have a look into AWS Glacier for archiving, especially if you want to be able to access the data from the internet - solves the headache with setting up the NAS system. Happy to help with getting that all sorted!
Great video, I have a couple of suggestions. For the digital storage a NAS is definitely the way to go, I've heard Synology is a pretty user friendly and reliable brand in that regard, and for the bass issues in the room acoustic, maybe a Helmholtz resonator would be a good option to target specific frequencies, it could get rid of the bass without completely killing the room liveliness. Hope it helps.
I recently saw a video about a Synology NAS that also has a Thunderbolt connection. Seems like a great solution for a studio. Probably need to keep it in another room though because those mechanic drives (and the fan) can get loud.
Right on man! everything is coming up Milhouse with the Studio!!!!!!!
Synology is the way to go for a home NAS. Super simple setup and usage.
Computers...Might suggest some Mac Pro desktops, the cheesegraters and fill them with two 3TB SATA and two 3TB SSDs with MDisc drives...Now you have three formats and the MDisc drives are like $20-30 each.they last 25+ years...Set up your own LAN ..find yourself a decent router and switch and since it's going to be in house, you do not need expensive gear...Use Cat 6 Ethernet and you should be fine....You can also go the Linux route and then you can use any MAc or pC you feel like as long as it covers the basics..If you can find the computers from the same place,even better..I dont know if Apple has server software yet I am sure they have some because they used to make XServers. I would suggest them yet from what I heard on some videos, they sound like Boeing 747s on the runway..
I love Suzy! I was on the team that did her single "At All."
That'll be a bunch of fun!
I now finally understand patch bays because of this video. Thank you Rhett!
I love that what Rhett is using as a "monitor controller" is capable of rather faithfully recreating everything he is doing with his outboard gear all by itself.
Very informative video Rhett. Excellent work. More studio equipment, set-up and operation videos please.
Great studio overview. Just picked up a UA Volt 476 and an SM 57 to capture guitar,
Piano and drums. Still trying to get the hang of the DAW. Can’t recommend the QNAP NAS enough. Simple WebUI, built in media and backup options. You can get them with or with out disks, helpful if you have existing drives you want to reuse.
Thanks for the breakdown of your studio. I'm always learning something new from your videos.
Can’t wait to see that Masco Amp video! Love that little thing.
To be honest, I have no idea what most of this stuff does. However, I watched the whole thing and i found it all fascinating, if occasionally puzzling. Thanks!