How to DIY a Home Studio

[sergiodeblanc]

Yeah, Doug!

The wallpaper is Bangin’!

 

[Glide-bpm]

Awesome, that board is huge! I don't think I'll ever get to that point!

I think we need a closer look @ that guitar tree too!

Presonus StudioLive 32 channel series 3. Presonus StudioLive 32R Rack Series 3 mixer is used mostly as a remote/stage box via Ethercon.

In the trailer, I have a Behringer X32 full console, X32 Rack, and Midas DL32 stage box (Midas Pro preamps) that I mostly use live and
for on the road recording live for others. Also ethercon connections to the DL32.

I primarily use Presonus Studio One 4 Pro for a DAW. Presonus 6.5" two way studio monitors with footswitchable 10" studio subwoofer.

If you knew how little I record and play for how much equipment I have, you'd call me a freaking lunatic! LoL!!!

 

[Glide-bpm]

There's definitely a skill involved in hanging wallpaper, one that I don't possess. Still, after about 30 mins per sheet (with about 8 sheets up) I think it came out pretty well.

I'm a huge fan of how it looks!

Some tile and a bit of baseboard & quarter round, and this wall is ready for primetime!! Let's see how long it takes for the string swings to get here...

For the record: that black wallpaper soaks in the light, so I'm glad the gimbals are so bright!

That freaking wallpaper is AWESOME!!!

I'll show the guitar tree after it becomes a guitar wall... LoL!!! Gonna hang 'em high just above the monitors 45 degrees!

 

[Glide-bpm]

The Dell M6700 laptop that now powers my studio was a backup top my Alienware 17 laptop. I paid $500 on eBay several years ago tho use as a backup and file mule. However, with 32gb of ram and all large SSD's inside, she's a horse and can hang with my Alienware (also 32gb of ram with multiple large storage capacity SSD's)

Gaming is the only place their performance separates. Neither breaks a sweat with 32 track simultaneous recording/playback.

If you want to significantly improve a computer, lots of ram and full SSD storage and operating system drive.

Worth every penny.

 

[Glide-bpm]

@DougUSMC

Doug,

I've got to say that I love the heck out of your project!!! Awesome vision and some really cool aesthetics!

Since we couldn't have kids, 65% of my house is a music studio and practice room. Fortunately, my wife loves music and now fully supports this old retired engineer as a part-time-full-time bar/church band guitarist/musician. LoL!

How many guitarists do you know that have a full+ kit of DM10 triggers/heads with a Strike Pro Module, a Roland 88 weighted key FA-08 workstation, plus the usual cheap @$$ Ibanez bass... LoL!!!
I am the definition of obsessive compulsive. Hehehe!!!

Looking forward to seeing your project finished in its full glory!

 

[Alnus Rubra]

Yeah, Doug!

The wallpaper is Bangin’!

A guitar case covered in material made to the same pattern? Mmmm!

 

[Warmart]

Doug, everything is just friggin stellar! Been watching this proceed and I'm very impressed.

Sure looks to me like your wallpaper skills are solid! Really sets off the room, great choice! I put some up once, got frustrated and called for help! It's tricky stuff.

 

[DougUSMC]

Only two in that room? Man....not enough!! Hahaha.....

As part of my day job, I design and implement WAN networks. Every possible network device location gets at least two drops. If two are known to be needed, then it will be four. I do not like having random switches in the field unless necessary. Plus, if a drop has an issue, you can always use a spare until properly remedied. In my house, I put 2-4 at every location that I think that I, or a future owner, might want a connection. At the headend in the basement, the first and second floors both have a dedicated 24 port patch panel and Gig switch. Cameras are on their own patch panel and POE switch. This feeds into a dedicated stand alone router/firewall that then attaches to the cable modem. Gig down, 100M up.....moving to fiber symmetrical Gig up/down in May. For Wifi, I have 3 Ubiquti WAPs. These are Enterprise grade (same as my switches) and I have full house and property covered. My setup is based off of one that I designed for a medium sized business.....it's awesome. Speed tests on this computer hit above 950M down. Wireless is maxing at 330M or so down.....with 350M being the max on WiFi anyways. I am running out of space on my switches as we keep remodeling, so looking to upgrade to 48 port managed so that I don't have to rely upon my router to handle VLANS.

You might ask why we need this type of network at home.....or why you might. For me, My wife and I have 3 boys that hit the network hard. Downloading and uploading files to various servers (they like to program and create content). Games, video streams, constant audio streams for music. They chew up a lot of bandwidth. At the same time, I have an IP phone for work and have to participate in video conferences as well. Never mind my online collaborations, sessions, and uploading and downloading of large files. Wife doesn't do a lot like we do, but when she wants to take a break from everything and watch something, well, for the benefit of us all she should have no issues with buffering due to our activity. At high peak times in our house, we can utilize 70%+ of our bandwidth. Forgot to mention that I also run a Cloud server as well as a few other servers for various things.

Nonetheless.....you need more drops. And I would do something different than Google WiFi for your house if you can.

Yeah, I dig it, I think I did my CCNP way back in ~ 2005?? I haven't done actually hands on in probably 10 years or so, with everything being virtual lately. We have a couple of drops in each room, but TBH I'd argue that over the last 5 years we've gone from "everything needs a connection" to "75% of the house is just wireless. I was with you on the managed network infrastructure, but now I couldn't be bothered. I have QOS set up for my PC, the media center, two NAS arrays, and the dedicated HT machine, but everything else is what I consider "secondary surfing" As long as those backbone items keep up, that's good enough for me. I dealt with enough disaster recovery/ QOS stuff for so long, I just want to keep the main router config backed up and replace any switch that fails otherwise.

I used to build my PCs with 4 HDDs: 2 internal mirrored (smallish) 15k RPM drives with the OS and executables, 2 internal mirrored (large) slower drives with storage. Now I just have a decent SSD for the OS, and all file storaged shared off one of two NAS. The first is 12TB (after RAID 5), and stores pretty much everything in the house. The second is 30TB (after RAID 5), and stores movies and music. There's over 700 movies (anything in the last couple of years being 70ish gig 4k), and 500 CDs on that. In addition to being RAID5, they're both backed up (delta's only) monthly to my Glacier account. So, I'm down with building the infrastructure, I just want to fire and forget it. I dig your energy on the b/w you have running through the house, I just don't have it in me to administer one more thing.

@DougUSMC

Doug,

I've got to say that I love the heck out of your project!!! Awesome vision and some really cool aesthetics!

Since we couldn't have kids, 65% of my house is a music studio and practice room. Fortunately, my wife loves music and now fully supports this old retired engineer as a part-time-full-time bar/church band guitarist/musician. LoL!

How many guitarists do you know that have a full+ kit of DM10 triggers/heads with a Strike Pro Module, a Roland 88 weighted key FA-08 workstation, plus the usual cheap @$$ Ibanez bass... LoL!!!
I am the definition of obsessive compulsive. Hehehe!!!

Looking forward to seeing your project finished in its full glory!

Thanks man, and thanks for sharing your setup in the last few posts. Having a studio and recording is all new for me, so I appreciate seeing everyone else's setups!

Doug, everything is just friggin stellar! Been watching this proceed and I'm very impressed.

Sure looks to me like your wallpaper skills are solid! Really sets off the room, great choice! I put some up once, got frustrated and called for help! It's tricky stuff.

Thanks, but there's a good bit of touchup still needed. I left each piece 1" long on top and bottom, then cut to length in place w/a razor. Of course, b/c I didn't extend the black paint down a bit, that 1/16" between cut and paint sticks out like a sore thumb!! Same with the couple of places that the seams didn't adjoin perfectly. The only other thing that has me nervous is what looks like fading on those seams. I'm worried that my wet rag, cleaning up the glue, discolored the paper a bit. I'll have to check it out today, to see if there's anything I can do about it. It's a LOT more noticeable in the pics than IRL, but it's still bothering me. The touchup will be easy: blue painters tape the edge, then do one more cut-in with the paint. Those discolorations tho, we'll have to see...
I'm happy with how it turned out (I haven't papered in ~ 15 yrs since I did w/my mom), and definitely aware that BLACK wasn't an easy way to get back into it!

 

[Bill SAS 513]

Looking awesome, Doug...(and glide)
My OCD wants me to recommend to watch how hot those lights run. I've been in stores where lights continuously shine directly on the basses/guitars, and the fingerboard wood shrinks, and the frets pop out the ends.
I'm suggesting NOTHING about how PRS dries/treats woods at all...but if you heat neck wood long enough, frets' ends will pop. The place really looks fantastic...just a suggestion.

 

[DougUSMC]

Looking awesome, Doug...(and glide)
My OCD wants me to recommend to watch how hot those lights run. I've been in stores where lights continuously shine directly on the basses/guitars, and the fingerboard wood shrinks, and the frets pop out the ends.
I'm suggesting NOTHING about how PRS dries/treats woods at all...but if you heat neck wood long enough, frets' ends will pop. The place really looks fantastic...just a suggestion.

Yeah, I dig it, this is definitely a valid concern. I remember PRSh commenting in the video on his Dragons (I think?) on a guitar that had a permanent shadow faded into the headstock veneer from lighting while on a museum tour? I think the lighting bleached out the other parts of the veneer so badly, that you can see what looks like a permanent shadow in the area NOT faded out. While I don't think I'll ever have that much lighting, on the guitars for anywhere NEAR that duration, I think it's a valid concern.

The plan calls for a cabinet on one end of the wall, that will hold two guitars and have internal, smaller LED lighting. I was considering looking at humidification systems, but now I'm thinking I should also validate my lighting choices...

 

[bodia]

There's definitely a skill involved in hanging wallpaper, one that I don't possess. Still, after about 30 mins per sheet (with about 8 sheets up) I think it came out pretty well.

I'm a huge fan of how it looks!

Some tile and a bit of baseboard & quarter round, and this wall is ready for primetime!! Let's see how long it takes for the string swings to get here...

For the record: that black wallpaper soaks in the light, so I'm glad the gimbals are so bright!

Dude! I LOVE that wallpaper. Freakin' LOVE it! Such a great project.

 

[RickP]

Everything is looking sweet, Doug. Awesome project, and you're doing a straight-up pro job on it. I don't think you'd have gotten better if you hired in contractors to do it.

Looking at the old washer/dryer nook, I wondered if that wasn't a nice place for a small wet bar, with a under table fridge/wine fridge/whatever you and your friends consume whilst doing musical things. Hot and cold water and a drain already there, and maintains the facilities for returning it to it's former service should you ever sell.

Just an idea as I daydream about how much I need to gut and redo my music space one of these days!

 

[alantig]

There's definitely a skill involved in hanging wallpaper, one that I don't possess. Still, after about 30 mins per sheet (with about 8 sheets up) I think it came out pretty well.

I'm a huge fan of how it looks!

I don't know - that third sheet looks a hair off to me...

 

[DougUSMC]

Everything is looking sweet, Doug. Awesome project, and you're doing a straight-up pro job on it. I don't think you'd have gotten better if you hired in contractors to do it.

Looking at the old washer/dryer nook, I wondered if that wasn't a nice place for a small wet bar, with a under table fridge/wine fridge/whatever you and your friends consume whilst doing musical things. Hot and cold water and a drain already there, and maintains the facilities for returning it to it's former service should you ever sell.

Just an idea as I daydream about how much I need to gut and redo my music space one of these days!

Ha, I dig it! I would, but don't really need to.
Standing here, looking down the hall towards the music room:

Turning 110 degrees to my right:

Thats a full bar with fridges, sink, dishwasher. If I turn 90 degrees to my left, I walk into a full bath.
I didn't get rid of the service totally. I had a plumber come in and terminate the pipes, just cutting them and capping them inside the wall. I could always bring it back into service pretty quickly.

I don't know - that third sheet looks a hair off to me...

You joke, but you're not wrong. There are a few places where the seams are a hair off, and it's KILLING me. Do you know how much a WHITE seam that's a hairswidth stands out, in a field of BLACK wallpaper? Oh, and BTW: a sharpie is two hairswidths, so it won't fit in there to color it dark.
Ask me how I know?

 

[alantig]

You joke, but you're not wrong. There are a few places where the seams are a hair off, and it's KILLING me. Do you know how much a WHITE seam that's a hairswidth stands out, in a field of BLACK wallpaper? Oh, and BTW: a sharpie is two hairswidths, so it won't fit in there to color it dark.
Ask me how I know?

I do joke. And it would drive me nuts, too.

Are you talking a regular Sharpie or one of the ultra fine points? They have a pen that's roughly .6 mm.

 

[DougUSMC]

I do joke. And it would drive me nuts, too.

Are you talking a regular Sharpie or one of the ultra fine points? They have a pen that's roughly .6 mm.

Hmmm, I have tried regular, and jumbo. I don't know that I have an ultra fine point, I'll have to dig thru my drawer.

 

[alantig]

Hmmm, I have tried regular, and jumbo. I don't know that I have an ultra fine point, I'll have to dig thru my drawer.

PM me if you don't. I have an old black one.

 

[dmatthews]

Dayum Doug, this is awesome!

 

[RickP]

Ha, I dig it! I would, but don't really need to.
Standing here, looking down the hall towards the music room:

Turning 110 degrees to my right:

Thats a full bar with fridges, sink, dishwasher. If I turn 90 degrees to my left, I walk into a full bath.
I didn't get rid of the service totally. I had a plumber come in and terminate the pipes, just cutting them and capping them inside the wall. I could always bring it back into service pretty quickly.



You joke, but you're not wrong. There are a few places where the seams are a hair off, and it's KILLING me. Do you know how much a WHITE seam that's a hairswidth stands out, in a field of BLACK wallpaper? Oh, and BTW: a sharpie is two hairswidths, so it won't fit in there to color it dark.
Ask me how I know?

You are THE man. I withdraw my suggestion, lol. I think you're covered.

 

[DougUSMC]

PM me if you don't. I have an old black one.

I tried all of these, it's almost like a Sharpie isn't the answer to the coverup. NEVER thought those words would come out!

Thanks for the kind words gents!