First of all, I'd like to say that this room doesn't photograph very well - the black and white scheme doesn't seem to get captured well - and the funky look of the foam in real life doesn't get captured at all. Oh, well...

I'd also like to thank the people of homerecording.com BBS for the advice and help they gave me and continue to give me with this project. Looking more or less from the doorway. The woman is my fiancee, Margaret. This is her studio, but I record her here. You can see the Yamaha keyboard, her guitar and a hint of the Peavey 4 channel amplifier/mixer hiding under the keyboard stand. All that feeds into the computer, which is where I do the real mixing and recording. Right now, I'm only able to record track by track, but I hope to change that soon! I've got evil plans...

Next to her music stand, you can see the SM-58 mic which I use on her trumpet (her main instrument). Nice sounding mic for trumpet. You can also see the bass traps (LENRD) in the corner - not needed much for what I'm doing in the room right now, but, hey, they came with the kit. All the foam in the room is from the Roominator kit from Auralex. Pricey foam, but high quality, good looking and nice sounding. And fireproof, which is nice.

Don't have any really decent monitors yet - the computer speakers I have sound nice, but aren't the real thing. Sigh. Yet another money pit. You can't really see, but going down the right hand side of the big segment of foam are two cat5 and a cat3 cables - providing connections to the house network and to the phone. :

A side shot. You can see a bit more of the foam. The box under the table has a midi controller keyboard in it - Margaret's first. Not a bad keyboard (weighted keys and nice action) but man, it didn't handle moving well at all. She moved with it 4 or 5 times and it just wasn't up to the strain. Still in semi-working order, but only because I know how to use a soldering iron. I had feared the windows would be a problem, sound wise, but the neighbourhood is pretty quiet so there isn't much sound coming in, and the sound just doesn't seem to carry like I feared. Having foam on the other walls seems to help. This room was REALLY live before I started (so much so that Margaret couldn't play trumpet in there because of the echoes deafening her) so the foam has done a great job. :

A shot of the bass traps in the corner, plus a look at the wall o' foam that Margaret plays into when she plays trumpet. There is a similar wall on the opposite side, beyond the keyboard.

And that's the studio. No pictures of me yet, sorry!

 

Chris Rovers

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