EPIC HOME STUDIO SETUP in a BARN 2021 | David Dicks (studio tour)

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh wow this studio is crazy david here's the most impressive parts of me i'll just cut right to it david spent 40 000 building this spot this is literally a barn building in his backyard the whole thing included decorations and everything he did the majority of the work so that's where a lot of that savings comes in but forty thousand dollars there's a control room a live room a vocal booth a drum guitar amp booth there's a lounge there's a bathroom there's a workshop with mic locker in it it's like 1200 square feet for 4 40 000 that's unbelievable amazing job david thank you for having me out so cool to meet you and hang out in your spot if you guys want to follow david his links are down in the description david and i have been chatting for a few months to try to work this out so i'm happy that it actually happened we finally got together so fun to hang out go again go check him out if you guys want to follow him if you guys like these videos make sure to hit that subscribe button there's a whole playlist of these epic studio setups make sure to head on over to the channel and binge all those videos it's absolutely ridiculous the whole point of these videos is literally for me to steal all of your great ideas combine them and build the most epic ist of studios of all time so if you guys like these videos smash that like button for the youtube algorithm if you want to support the channel you can head on over to andrewmastersmusic.com you can hire me for mixing consulting zoom calls the consulting is really cool you actually book a zoom call through the website and we can actually chat just like this those have probably been my absolute favorite so again head on over to andrewmastersmusic.com that's the best way to support the channel thank you guys so much for watching and let's go check out david's epic barn studio holy cow this is unbelievable that's usually the reaction yeah you would know i mean it's so like most places here in nashville it's it's unassuming from the outside okay so we've got this is obviously hallway [Music] you've got a little shop in here yeah which is amazing that it's separate definitely i want to have storage for a little bit of things yeah this is and then bathroom yeah you got a bathroom which is like puts you miles ahead of most home studios that was the the reason for the studio yeah okay you got a nice little lounge oh yeah fridge in the separate room i still have that buzz going in my yeah that does get annoying that's i wish there was a way to stop that i really do i killed the fans in there yeah and the gear and now i need to figure that out wow okay and then a separate patio actually that is amazing to the to the backyard of the house wow oh okay so shortcut yeah that's my way home yeah that's great you got a separate workstation out here this is like the dream setup dude record collection yeah snacks extra snares and then storage storage upside yeah that's mostly just cases an old radio and uh extra heads wow what's the story with these are these all show posters oh yeah just shows uh this posters actually that i thought were cool from the shows we i'd played in my band in the past stack and uh love strategy local local bands so i just thought they were cool posters offering them up you said you built it because of the bathroom a little bit of a joke right obviously you'd want to build this um that was probably a big motivation uh what was the process like of planning this and putting it together like from like your idea of what it was to actually doing it oh that's a lot there so we lived in nashville and we had a basement studio okay and we it just got to a point where my wife was like who are these people coming in the house yeah that was the bathroom thing yeah and so we started looking for a property that we could put a building on um found this place got like an acre and a quarter there's plenty of land for that and then as far as the planning for it you just do a lot of research yeah some of the forums we talked about that a little bit but some of the forums give a lot of good information john sayers was a real big one yeah for me and then even you have to deal with the building codes right and i did it all by myself i had a little bit of help from friends with like painting and hanging the drywall they hated me and they'll never do it again yeah with a drywall but um electrical i did it all i had help with it a little bit for like designing the air conditioning system yeah but i just ordered it online had it shipped to the house and put it all together and then the structure did you hire a company to put up the structure i did it was basically i mean originally when i talked to you about this a long time ago i was like oh i have a studio that's in a barn yeah because basically what this is is a pole barn wow so it's a metal building with you know poles holding it up yeah and then i had that uh spray foam a local company does spray foam i had to do the whole shell and then everything is built with inside that shell wow so i mean the exterior structure the spray foam the concrete and then i was all me so and this is obviously on a slab which is porter slab that's amazing what's the what's the size of the building the building is a 30 by 40 so it's 1200 square feet that's amazing yeah it's not quite that on the inside because the wall are yeah thick in places well it's cool i mean you've got like a lot of different shapes to the rooms in here it's not just one or two spots kind of more of uh it wasn't like on purpose that i wanted i mean obviously i did it on purpose but yeah i think well this room's going to sound better if i put an angled wall in it yeah as far as like the isos and things like that most of it was just done um to maximize the space sure well great job man how long did it take it took me nine months wow yeah that's not that's not bad considering the extent that you went to in each room here there's a ton of there's a lot okay so let's get into it let's check out the control room first oh yeah i love the the color scheme right off the bat i think rock and roll yeah thank you yeah this feels very rock and roll in here which is which is cool and i i i don't see a lot of this in nashville particularly but this feels very rock and roll like very home to me i grew up listening to a lot of hard rock so right this was a lot of the color a lot of the albums we had were in this scheme yes obviously i like red apparently but yeah no it's definitely i i had a color scheme when it came time to paint that i picked out yeah and i got they all you know my friends who's a painter he was like man i don't know if that's gonna work yeah and then after we got done he was like oh it was a good job man that's a good good color pick yeah so aside from like the the red lights and screen it's actually in the um what are these little red panels those are from a company called gik acoustic and it's um i think they call them diffusion absorption panels i can't remember what their name is for them yeah but you can order them special like that you can pick the fabric color because it's it's basically a a panel wrapped in fabric and then they put that wood face on the front of it and you can get them all different finishes and colors and that's gik acoustic cool i think i've heard of them yeah it feels it feels really cozy you know definitely does which is super important it wasn't really um i mean all this you're just doing it as you go yeah and so you know i didn't really think about what the walls would necessarily look like finished but when i was designing it but it turned out pretty well i think a lot i will give you perhaps a lot of detail on lights which is something not a lot of studio people think think about when planning a studio but the lights down on the the riser that you built here behind the couch you know you got the leds you got the sconces like as someone who's shooting videos like this is like the first thing that draws my attention and under the desk yep that's amazing so you've got this back area yeah on a riser what was the thinking there to make the speakers level with the ear you know for the clients yeah that were sitting back there this brought them off the ground a little higher and and got a better picture back there nobody's ever really said anything but it's like a theater yeah definitely interesting yeah it's definitely like that it feels really cool sitting back there because sometimes i can go back there and just let the mix play yeah and see what it sounds like just see what you're missing and then you have a pretty wild collection of guitars here yeah so like this one and this one they're actually mine um but the rest of these my dad has his own uh small studio back in his house like in a home studio as well yeah he just has a bunch of guitars and every once in a while he'd be like hey bring me that one back i'll give you this one all right you need you have some more room i can give you another one some loaners yeah so they're they're here to use we use them all the time got a couple things in this outboard gear rack here you got a beautiful desk let's see let's break down this rig sort of one by one computer what are you using as your computer is a 2012 mac pro tower 2012. okay is that this one the silver one yeah i bought that in 2012 new and then last year i put the rest of the upgrades that you could have bought at the time so i upgraded the processor all that good stuff all right processor video card and ram maxed nice so and everything's everything's rocking and rolling it is i've actually got as you do more with virtual instruments and more expansive plug-ins and things like that it does kind of you have to work it make a different workflow yeah yeah um so i am looking at getting the new mac pro i just don't know about if i want to wait for the m1 yeah dude that's the that's the tough call because it's like 20 grand to juice up of current one now you've got the avid contrast three s3 and the remote and the dock dock which holds your ipad which i see a lot of guys on here on your channel um talk about how do you i play drums so how do you record like obviously i don't run to the other room yeah that would be a little bit annoying i used to do that but you can actually just take this in there with you you can set up your session it's not on right now but yeah you can set up your session with that app you can they even have it on your phone now too so that with me you can set up the hotkeys for their soft keys or whatever new playlist i mean it's great it's very customizable and you can just push one button when you sit down that's yeah that's especially in a spot like this if you're in here on your own like that's a bit of a hike and what an amazing looking live room teaser through that window by the way beautiful uh so you're using pro tools you got that s3 which is looks so fun yeah and beautiful how do you like using that i love it i used to have the single fader port from presonus yep and i didn't use it yeah and i was like but then i i don't know i don't know something just wanted to be more hands-on yeah of course and i saw this thing and i was talking to my dealer about what can we do to get more hands-on yeah and just get that feel back ended up going with this and i've loved it ever since i got it it's there it's challenging to get away from these two things yeah but once you do and once you force yourself to to work on this kind of a control surface it's awesome yeah it's really cool what desk is this this is actually a argosy desk designed for the s3 wow you got the two nine space racks on either side and in the back they have racks as well there's eight rack spaces in the back where you can put uh power conditioners and whatever else you want in there i put the headphone just distribution back there yeah stuff that you don't need right up front it comes in about 20 boxes oh wow yeah i mean it's big this is a big desk yeah we got the akai mpk controller over here i just got this in i think i got it because i thought it looked cool i haven't another midi keyboard but i was like black on black keys yeah black desk it looks slick you got the warm auto 273 eq i like it just like i just i kick and snare live here yeah but i can't wait to let the rest of the kick mics and the rest of the snare mic and the rest yeah live there so okay and then you've got the presonus monitor station here yeah i've had this for quite a while uh i haven't actually had any other kind of monitoring since i since before this this is the only one i've ever purchased but i like it it does i get the talkback function that i line to the headphone amp uh that's the biggest piece for me there's plenty of other monitor controllers but i need this button this is an hd system you're on pro tools ultimate okay and then your interface so the interface starts with and i guess i'll just go through them in the chain i have hooked so it's you have the hd omni which has two mic inputs on it and then i have a couple other press connected to it it's got four line ends uh analog and then a digital which i have this art mpa in going into there into the digital one just have six inputs on it and then we have the aurora eight which actually it's eight but there's eight digital connections also from the 4710d by ua that go into there so this is actually 16 inputs yep and eight outputs and then these digidesign 182 they're freaking cheap yep so 350 bucks and you can get another great records were made on them that's true if it goes out it's a big deal because this one actually did recently go out i got another another one coming yeah but uh yeah headphones go out of here on 16 then it gives me another eight inputs analog i used to have two but i don't i really don't need it yeah i just like to have that standalone for the headphone so total how many inputs 24 38 38 wow 38 right now what are your like go-to pres over here obviously i see the 710s i love this uh you'll you'll never find this anywhere this is a custom piece that my father's uh friend he used to design um guitar amps he worked for soldano and a bunch of other companies this is his version of a mic pre this thing you can crank this knob all the way up the gain knob yeah you don't know it's on until somebody does something on the other end you don't hear a hiss yeah nothing is so quiet it doesn't have phantom power uh the 4710d i love it this is one of my first big microphone preamp purchases you know you got the transformer tube blend knob on there those are great i love guitars on here and you can get a lot out of that i think right now i have my mid-side for the drums oh cool bloom line uh set up going through there these are gimmick they're trident but what's funny is that as you you know the level comes in yeah this piece here glows brighter like a tube oh okay dude but it's not okay yeah so it's i bought them just to see what they were about you can't they're not i bought them used a guy had like 10 of them he was selling um but they they work great what what's the model on them they're the s20 a dual microphone pres okay and another cool thing is they have this a b switch so you can get two inputs on it they got the gain knob and then your they have a low filter on there that goes all the way up to 200 which is pretty good especially when you're trying to get guitars cleaned up or whatever this is the first microphone preamp i ever bought the la610 mark ii yeah a lot of guys will be like that's the first one well i wanted something really cool yeah that's a good one man and i've used this on bass and vocals since i got it then the millennials millennials super clean yeah that's right super clean really nice preamps um what do you use those on dis okay nice like that uh for turn-based guitars you know you're trying to get an amp sim going yeah i always go through that this art digital mpa i think i have this on the high rooms in the live room i'm going there i'll show you there's mics up in the on the wall and i have that on there and this thing here audient asp880 oh yeah audience i can't say enough good things about this thing if you're if you're tracking drums the most amazing thing is when you have all the same pres yeah and not a hodgepodge of a bunch of different things yeah to me it sounds more cohesive yeah and as soon as i got that that was my first you know real preamp that sounded good and that i could do that with and that that changed the world for me i love this thing so that's the audience what's the model on that asp880 asp880 cool it has digital interface in it as well so you could run it live pipe to whatever um whatever you want so if you had like a an old double o3 laying around that you were just bored you could get that you could pipe another eight into there i also have this focus around octopri these two pieces here is what i used to run my recordings with yeah three in that and that's all i had for a lot yeah man i don't really get into this rack much occasionally if if depending on the acoustic i might use one of these dbx uh compressors because sometimes i like to use those just on acoustic di these are old-school 80s equipment uh hush you know it's a noise gate this thing here my dad sent me these two because he'll send me he'll bring a hard drive for the alesis and i can uh patch him into my system and go from you know whatever he wants me to do well and then this is a uh it's like i think it's i want to say dat yeah it takes like a little uh cassette and what patchbays are these those are the redco audio redco yeah you're looking for a db25 tt patch bay yeah buddy those are the ones to get they're affordable you know as that means affordable 500 bucks a piece okay and then we got some compressors up here too these are the go-to's huh yeah so the warm audio it's 1176 style compressor both of these are this one the warm audio i mean i've got them in the computer but it's great to have outboard gear yeah uh just to record it and so i use that a lot this bluey is uh chris lord algae's version that's made by black lion audio and the cool thing about this is that you can blend so it's still 1176 but it's got a blend knob on there interesting a little bit different version of 1176 yeah based on whatever revision or whatever but i like that one i like them both speakers those dyn audios lyd 48 yep i've seen them on your channel a few times yeah uh i love them as soon as i got them it mixing became easy they sound huge they sound great yeah they sound really good and the ones in the wall that are soffit mounted those are just some cheap mackies how do they sound in the soffits what was that they sound a lot better than they did just individually yeah you can actually crank those and i didn't sit in the back of the room it's yeah it's way different experience now the soffit speakers than if they were on stands and i just took them the amps off the back and put them on the wall as far as like the layout and kind of how the room should be again john sayer's forum they have like the angled walls like it's kind of like a blueprint that he has on that on that website that forum and i kind of took it to my own take on it i guess a little bit most of it is you know the the floor plan that it would have been off of his off of his blueprint but i took the walls and did like uh it's basically like a broadband absorption with a different style slats or different width slats behind the soffits it's packed full of rock wool insulation behind these walls it's just effaced kind of with insulation covered with fabric and then slotted and so you get different frequency absorption as yeah as the slats come away from it's actually a square room yeah built as a square and then this was built with inside of this room and then behind underneath the speakers it's fabric on those walls and again those have more rock wool behind them for more low frequency absorption and then you've got traps in the back corner too yep um those again are just like a two by four frame put the rock wool insulation in there cover it with fabric trim it up awesome let's go check out the live room yeah oh my goodness look at this freaking room holy cow what was the inspiration with this room like when you were imagining it what when i imagined it i didn't imagine it quite like this i originally wanted to have rock wall which i may still do on this wall over here to add some diffusion to it i originally just had like you know homemade panels all the way around it yeah the whole place is homemade but more more you know 4x2 panels you know yeah just around the mid section of the room but there's still a lot of room here so just to try to tame it down uh early at the end of last year i built these skinnier panels and i wanted them to light up i always wanted them to light everything so cool man the panels have the lights behind them but then there's those sconces yeah and if you don't like the colors i can push a button we can get a different color yeah did you build these panels yeah what my first question is what is this fabric it's actually so the the big thing that i've learned through those great forms we go to is that you need a breathable fabric yep it doesn't if it's too stiff it's gonna it's not gonna absorb through the fabric right so this is like actually i don't have it's stretchy yeah it's a faux uh velvet yep so it you know it i don't know it feels smooth but it's it's it's like it's almost reflective in yeah it's a metallic visually gray yeah all right and you got some bass traps in the corners so i see the ceiling kind of rises up and comes back down and then you have the the walls are also sort of changing angles right almost on each wall you know you don't really want a square room it's not really that live in here it's definitely more lively than in the control room but i just just try to spread out the sound around the room and get a little more diffused sound and i just wanted to be as really as big as i could make it so the height was that's as high as i could go yeah within my shell the angled walls over there i was just trying to be different it's well it's cool because you have a you have two booths back there uh yeah it looks like an amp booth and a drum shelf second amp booth right obviously lots of amps in the room cabs so there's plenty of space you could literally have a full band play in here it wasn't doesn't make it any more functional the way i redesigned it at the end of last year the big thing is that it made it more comfortable yeah it made it a lot more inviting and just interesting of a place to be i just wanted it to be a little more polished and you got the big loud speakers yeah so oh so you can just rehearse yeah just for rehearsal yeah yeah just for rehearsal mostly or some bands have come in here and they've shot videos because the room's big enough so i can just take my drums out of the way and they can throw their backdrops up or whatever so you're a drummer you got some drums here is this the the a kit well yeah surprisingly i love this kit uh i bought it just so i could play live and just have a kit that i really didn't worry too much about the finish or whatever it's a pearl decade maple i have a couple of other kits that i'll dig out but for the most part this is the one that gets used so i guess it would be the a kit right now what are these headphone system that is power play x16 x16 so there's a cat five cast six i can't remember yep and you can get your brain in there and then all that runs to each room and then i have another splitter out here to power them so as far as the mics i'll just leave it all set up because i'm recording drums a couple times a week yeah usually it's a d6 on the inside this is a sterling audio st51 i didn't pick it because it sounded great there it just sounded best of what i had yeah you know i had a couple different ones i tried it out this one landed there so it's just the outside kick and then this is the salomon low freak on the triad this is a must if you have this thing because they're kind of hard to position yeah but that's the triad orbit like ball mounting is really cool and then on the toms this is the d2 audix d2 audix d4 i have another one of these if i use four toms and then a audio technica always forget i think atm atm 25 and then snare is 57 top and bottom beautiful and so overheads these are sc electronics se1a and i tried those a long time ago and i just loved them and then you got a bunch of room mics too so these are actually sterling audio this is all the local guitar center really had that kind of fit my budget and what i was going to do with it one of them is in uh figure of eight yep and the other one is in cardioid the cardioid gets your mono signal always and then the figure of eight is facing over here and then in pro tools you duplicate it and pan the other one all the way so as you bring up this mic is now duplicated as you bring that up you just get this crazy width yeah and and you gotta you duplicate it and flip the phase that's what you do right um but it's it's just a really fun trick and then these are just uh mxl ribbons i've got them spaced across the room these uh they're 140 mxl 144 is what it is r144 yeah nice and i mean they're really inexpensive and they do the job and they sound pretty cool so those are wide low rooms yeah and you've got these guys up top too yeah those are the blue spark a couple amps here what's that called splan splun yeah this is this is my guitar players amp uh we'll use it you know here and there my guitar players keith white he he's got this one he actually had an endorsement through him uh with our one of our older bands they're uh they're a high gain like a marshall but it's it's this thing just sounds amazing sweet so way better than any martial he's he's always buying them and trying them and whatever this one always wins and what is that a 609 on the cab yeah e609 and that's this is really just for us to rehearse with for the in-ears or for recording rehearsals or whatever nice um if i have to use it on something i'll use it on the it's not a bad sounding mic by any means it's good we got the uh the big fenders over here so the basement you can throw a guitar in there and get a little wild on that too yeah the lab series not many people have this it's an inexpensive solid state but it sounds really good and you use both of these for bass yeah either way i mean we got a keyboard or something i used to have like a electric keyboard that i would throw in to this lab series and it sounded really cool nice there's something new sometimes you need something to inspire you just plug it in yeah you know ah then you got the svt more bass everybody always needs more bass yeah i actually got this from i really used to love this band called or i still do a band called cartel and i followed the singer on instagram and he was he had posted this up for sale oh nice and i was like heck yeah i don't even play bass let me get a bass rig but it's a great bass rig because i've seen them you know it's got the history i love the band all that stuff but and then a couple hundred bucks in maintenance and it's rocking and rolling it's killer and then this acoustic is kind of a frankenstein i believe this is more of a guitar head but that's a like a 118 cab all right and then we got drum booth uh yeah guitar booth yes drum storage vocal drum storage guitar locker or whatever this pearl masters maple kit was the first kid i ever bought i played on a cheaper kit for a long time and i just you get tired you want to have good drums so it's like i'm going to buy me a kit i bought that was in high school i don't even know how i did it this is a 60s 1960s slingerland bought this one was like my second kit i bought and i re-wrapped it the only thing i had was the shells got it when i got it um so i sent them off to get a new bearing edges all i just built it basically just put it all together it's not really the i have the actual kick for it but i never finished it because i didn't really want a shallow kick then yeah um so this is actually a pearl export kick drum that i bought rip the wrap up and off brand new and put this wrap on there this is a slingerland as well it's from the 50s yeah it's classic right there cloud badge again this one didn't have hardware um but i tried to do as best i could putting it back the way it should be that is the original wrap as far as i know yeah that's on there and it sounds great i love it um it was huge i mean 14. right there bro yeah 26 26 inch kick there we got a saldano head beautiful beautiful amp this is also keith's head i told him if he ever wants to get rid of it he can't it's mine if he gets rid of it another marshall cab a couple more headphones and then the 50s these these mics are just hanging out in here uh i don't always use this it's audio techno technica 40 30. you're right i just leave it set up sometimes i'll use that one or grab a different one but the 57 is always going to land yeah always going to land there and then vocal booth yeah vocals guitars whatever else i made all the panels for the studio wiring those i ordered those from redco audio i believe yeah i think that's where i got the the snake and the panel and then just finish it out with some wood and make it look nice this blue baby bottle as far as vocals goes i've i mean there's obviously better mics out there but i even had one of these it broke whatever i don't even know what happened to it i bought another one that's i'm just comfortable with it yeah you love it yeah so that's use what you know yeah absolutely defender princeton just a cheaper marshall practice amp down there it's not tube yeah and it's vht tube head this one's kind of cool because i it's like three watts and then five watts you can high power low power yeah something like that and it gets it gets loud if you hook it up to a cab again with the linahan this is my dad's uh old friend that built these this is like a custom cab that i ordered i had some speakers just laying around guitar speakers well i want to get a crazy looking cab so it's red snake skin you know and then this is an old laney that's been modded that's but the low input is actually another volume knob so it's just loud you just go loud jet city cab just different options really yeah man you got a great collection well dude thank you so much for showing me around thanks for coming check it out man amazing before i go i'd love to hear you play some drums if i can do that if somebody sees this and lives nearby or wants to come into nashville and book some time with you how can they do that or can they do that it definitely can it's rfrstudios.com or redfeatherrecording.com and then obviously facebook red feather recording instagram is david dix rfr okay and just hit me up on any of that just send me a message awesome i'll put all those links down in the description everyone go follow david check out the studio and uh yeah i'll get out of here thanks man thank you see you later later [Music]

Channel: Andrew Masters

Views: 150,459

Keywords: home studio, studio tour, home recording, mixing, how to, aea, ribbon mic, gear review, recording tech, technology, affordable, producing music, investment, recording studio, recording, audio engineering, productions, music, millennial, mixer, home, diy, universal audio, luna, uad, plugins, soundtoys, studio, drums, big drums, drum sounds, sounds, sweetwater, senheiser, coffee, session, consulting, andrew, masters, vintage king, dangerfox, studio desk, Epic studio gear

Id: X8SIXe-C8y4

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021