HOME STUDIO Build MISTAKES and DIY Hacks

[Music] okay so today I wanted to show you some of the pitfalls of the studio and clue you in on some of the DIY stuff that I've done I've seen acid in the comment sections and hopefully we can both learn from it and do better the next time around or improve the current situation that we have to work with so yeah smash like four-four studio [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right so as you guys know this is the mothership for the studio this is where all of the action happens where I am working we've got a few things here this is the main desk for all of the microphone preamps the interfaces are listening spot monitor lighting for videos I have my MIDI controller under here to my right is a guitar boat I have these guitars that are sort of go-to for when I am writing producing and recording and then to my left I have a 88 key weighted keyboard here occasionally I'll connect it into the rig and actually use either the sounds in it or you just use it as a midi controller because it's weighted back to over here okay so my only issue with this is the heat from the equipment so the Apollo x8p gets pretty hot so what I would like to do is to have a side car over to the side or somewhere not right in my face when I'm sitting here because between the light and the interface it gets pretty hot sitting here the next issue my harddrive dock this thing as convenient as it is should be somewhere else this makes a lot of noise specifically when I'm doing these videos or when I'm recording with a large diaphragm condenser this makes a lot of noise here listen see the next thing is really a non-issue it's the keyboard drawer for the output desk this is a problem that I think will never go away now output did a good job of resolving this as good as they could which is by cutting out this center section here so when you're not using it and that center section is cut out you can sit at a comfortable level with the desk and not bump the keyboard drawer the issue is when you are doing work on the main part of the desk and then you go to pull this out they're sort of you have to sort of reposition the height of the chair because otherwise you're gonna be knocking your knees on the corner now I think output did the best job that anyone could do but that is sort of a existential problem that I'm sure many of us are dealing with ok jumping to the back check this out the way I have everything routed I can actually move my desk so it's pretty snug when it's back up to it but because I can move it I can get back here so check this out all of my mics on the other side of the studio go to a panel which has a snake that runs all the way up this part here comes out right here and then goes up to the desk one extra XLR that goes to the hi-hat now it's not super easy to see here but this is actually really well managed and it for the most part does not hang down everything back here is routed in a way that it's easy to access and change if I need to make any changes but for the most part the setup is designed so that I don't really have to change anything the dog hair is a real problem so as you can see my screen was not designed to work with one of these boom arms but my DIY workaround was to cut out a piece of wood and then mount it to the boom arm and I just glued it to this piece of wood and it's actually super sturdy it came off one time but my second workaround was much better I used much better adhesive and then caulk to seal it around the sides so this is a DIY solution but next time I'm definitely picking a screen that's compatible with this mount because this mount is awesome link for this in the description this is a amazonbasics monitor arm you can rotate it 90 degrees you can tilt it you can raise it up super high super low far back behind the desk in front of the desk it's awesome this is a hundred bucks off amazon link in the description yeah and then down on the floor here it's pretty clean so it's all accessible this is just a little strip for my lights that I have going on the side all right so these are updated versions of the lights that I bought from Amazon I built the panel I put it on door hinges so this thing actually opens up and allows you to access storage behind it and then what I did was I mounted some wall lamps it's kind of hard to see but this is the actual lamp and it's sort of a nightlight type of lamp that I bought off of Amazon and it just works on a little switch to turn it off and on so it's not really permanent it's just connected to this little door that I put here now the light I mounted to a piece of wood inside the panel for the lampshade I just bought some shelving wood this is just some nice finishing wood the lampshade is super necessary because it makes the light indirect which brightens up the room without being in your face which is cool all right the next thing that would have made a really big difference would be if I had some sort of cable management to run through these walls I use walls and quotes because these aren't actually walls they're just 12 inch deep bass traps that look like walls so this is just pure bass trapping everything that you see on this on the wall is actually just framed acoustic treatment with no drywall it's just wrapped in fabric so what would have been really cool is if I would have put some PVC through so that I could snake some cables through them without actually having it go along the wall now this is very petty because there's only a couple of cables but every little bit helps it would be really nice to be able to run my snake XLR through the wall not have this weird dangling thing going on here that's just my fault I just didn't finish that part that's the original wall behind these base traps here here's the problem with these doors they aren't enough of a problem for me to come up with a great solution but they are just enough of a problem to irritate me more than twice a week for instance I got these cheap curtains that just velcro to the top of the door so if I'm filming or want privacy in the room we can just velcro them up if I need more light or I want to see the windows I can just pull them down this brings me to my next problem which is more of a video lighting issue so when I film up here at the desk there's a certain white balance that I have to use to get this color right there's a bit of inconsistency with the coloring when I'm filming which is just another little irritation that this is something that could be fixed if I spent a little more money on lighting but I'm not gonna do that right now the next annoyance this area here is great because coffee right coffee creamer milk Inessa studio necessity if you will extra storage is great the problem is we Hinde here is wasted space because the fridge is blocking it all of the shelving behind it is unusable now if I had a way for this to be accessible I would keep extra stands and hardware back there and that would be awesome but I haven't figured out how to make that happen maybe I could get a lazy susan for the fridge so I can rotate it and move it out of the way but and I don't think that would work either all right now this part is gonna be more of an ergonomics thing this path here is too small every time I try to walk through here and I end up kicking my guitars to get back through it looks really nice and it's nice not having stuff blocking this but this boat right here a necessary part of my workflow to have it here and can be sort of pushed out of the way but there is no good position it basically just needs to be back one foot or two feet to be able to easily walk through here small subtle annoyance but still an annoyance now the next thing I would mention is storage storage for me is super huge I like to not see things if I can because they distract me and I go down a rabbit hole of oh I could do this and my avb kicks in so well I like storage I like things being organized and put away because it allows me to focus on what's the task at hand so right now my storage is mixed between these two sort of corner based traps this little thing here which is almost pointless not completely almost pointless these shelves right here and these shelves right here part of the issue is that I'm making these videos and things need to sort of look a certain way because yes this is a functional studio but it's also a functional set for filming here here's what I think the solution is I think the solution would be to add at least one side car because here's the thing with the side cars you can put your rack gear in it but also if you do it right you can have a door for storage a lot of these issues actually stem from space space a lot of these issues actually stem from spatial issues so not having the space to put things but if I could go back and spend a little more time on the walls I could have made the space within the walls so there is a creative way to sort of overcome that I did not do that and now I pay the price but next time next time next time I will take the time and make sure that those considerations are met because it makes a big difference the drums this is actually complicated I like this and I dislike this here's the reason the fact that the drums are in here encourages me to put live drums on things more frequently because I just have to walk from here to here and it's easy to see so I'm more likely to put live drums and do live drums on projects because it's right here the downfall well there in this room right so it'd be nice if this just wasn't in here I could just have like a nice couch with more space more breathing room that would make things a little more comfortable and a little less cramped this is just one chair this this everything you're seeing here is a little deceiving this lens is a very wide lens so this looks bigger than it is it's not really that big so so if this so if the drum set if we could just pull that out and then put a nice couch or futon or seating arrangement or something that was a little more comfortable I would really dig that then I can move the boat out of the way and things could be a little more functional in here so for the next time around there's gonna be a drum room so this will not be in the listening room that will have its own room for short now I do want to say I actually like for the most part how everything is in here this is way better than nothing and this is so much better than what I had before this but as humans we like to complain about things and we like to sort of improve things to the nth degree so this is things that I would improve if I could and will for the next time around alright so I think the motto for this year is hindsight is twenty-twenty I think we can all agree on that so this studio is actually nearly perfect for what my work flow and career right now as I look forward and sort of planned for a couple years down the road there are definitely some things that I would like to function differently and that would make the day-to-day stuff a little bit less annoying but on the whole this place is awesome and I pointed me pointing out the flaws and sort of the things that could be better in this room and sort of how I did some of the DIY stuff is to hopefully share some value with you if you are working in a home studio or planning on building one or fixing your own to just show you some things that maybe you didn't consider or that you're also struggling with and trying to figure out a solution to so hopefully at the very least that you can get some value out of seeing that and be prepared for the next time around because well that's what I'm trying to do is to they in the next two years I want to build another studio I wanted to be much bigger I wanted to be basically excessive I'm essentially referring to this room as studio one and the next studio that I want to build I will call studio two stealing from east to west because I've you know worked there for a long time and they have studio one two three four and five actually but I want my own studio too so the next room will be as close as I can get to what you know I like about studios you eight you sweat so essentially that's where I'm going with all of this make sure that you jump over to Andrew masters musicom if you want to book me to mix your song do some session drumming on your project or if you just want to jump on a zoom call for a consultation you can book me again that's Andrew masters music.com make sure to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm hit subscribe if you're not subscribed hit the noddle notification bell to be notified the next time i upload and thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in the next video [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Andrew Masters

Views: 38,535

Keywords: home studio, studio tour, home recording, mixing, how to, aea, ribbon mic, gear review, recording tech, technology, affordable, expensive, investment, recording studio, avid, pro tools, luna, ableton, logic pro x, universal audio, warm audio, apollo x, home studio build, diy, home studio diy, diy hacks, home studio setup

Id: l9BB9OM3PyU

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020