Studio Build Phase I - the audio station

[midKnight]

Hey everyone,

Well a while ago I decided that I was going to turn my 2nd bedroom into a control/record room, as this is probably one of the few times in my life that I'll ever have the "freedom" (no gf's/roommates/relatives living with me) to do as I please with a room in my house.

So I've been reading a TON on the subjects of acoustic room treatment, and the more I read the less I think I know, but that isn't going to discourage me from attempting to turn this room into a studio...

the first thing I wanted to do was get rid of the old crappy desk I had been previously using for my recording machine and get a nice new audio-designed type desk. I started looking around at popular designs, and after finding out that the type of desk I wanted (Argosy style) was about 2k-3k or so, I figured hell, I'm bad with power tools, why don't I just build my own?

So I did.

As previously mentioned, I'm about as good with power tools as I am with calculus (ie not at all), but fortunately I have a friend who is excellent with them. So a few 6 packs later, this is what we came up with.

I won't bore you all with a ton of construction photos, just a few...

first, the original idea for the desk came from this pic.




Here's the start of the desk, with my buddy Jeff in red and me attempting to look like I have any f*ing idea what I'm doing.




and here's the top of the desk with the first coat of stain...



a couple of six packs later, here's the assembled desk, unfinished.


and finally, the finished desk (not completely filled up yet), check out the brand new JBL LSR 4326P's...(plug plug. ha ha)


In case your wondering where the pc is, its on the left side of the desk, covered in sound deading material (12" wedges). it's extremely quiet, you can barely tell it's running.

All in all I'm quite happy with the results, but the job was seriously massive, so I scaled back a bit, I skipped the glass doors (as they would just interfere with my pc access anyways).

The desk in the first pic (that this is based off of) retails for $3600, and takes the company 4weeks to build. My cost? About $450 ($425 materials, 2 six packs, 1 pizza and 8hrs of my buddies time.)

Phase two of the room will be using some room analysis software to figure out what type of traps I need to get.

The point of this long post is not to brag about my desk, but hopefully to get some of you guys to post cool stuff you've done to your studios, as I'm sure you guys have thought of some really amazingly cool/cheap/excellent treatments or features that never even crossed my mind.

I'm hoping to pick your brains for the next (and harder) parts of this transformation, so bring on the pics/stories!

-Nick

[Vulconizer]

I could tell right away in the one pic that you actually knew what you were doing. You had your fingers out of the way. lol

Seriously cool job on the desk. Looks great and I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it.

[brandondrury]

You can tell just by looking that Mr. Construction Dude is badass with power tools. He has the "Circular Saw Stare". I bet he also has a camoflauge beer insulator gadget, too. AWESOME!! I have good friends who also have this stare, but if they were to help me, it would cost me several cases of beer.

I'm better off losing a few fingers!

The desk looks great, dude.

I can't wait until I'm in a position where I can start playing with aesthetics!

Brandon

[midKnight]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

You can tell just by looking that Mr. Construction Dude is badass with power tools. He has the "Circular Saw Stare". I bet he also has a camoflauge beer insulator gadget, too.

Oh he does. He rocks with power tools. He's the kind of MaGuyver type who would build you a space shuttle of out two rolls of ducktape and a couple of coconuts. I on the other hand would just end up wrapping my head up in ducktape and losing a finger out of it.

I've got a ton more "action" shots of him using all kinds of crazy-ass stuff he hauled over to my house to do this, but that would just bore the crap out of everyone.

Yeah it's strange, I've lived alone for the past year and it just "suddenly" occurred to me to redo this room since I'm using it so much for audio these days.

Crap. Now I have to redo my sig graphic, as I'm using the JBL's now and not the polk's. work work work.

-N

[Heclairs]

Wow! cant deny telling this,with this here in Nigeria that a Rocking Rockroll one its incredible man! love your plans.

[jamort]

Yeah also another option is like the desk I had it was $200 scratch and dent regular computer desk and I added a thing in front of it like a little table with two slideing things one for a keyboard and hte other for my workstation and then I added threee liitle boxes with two open ends for my monitors then removed my sliding droor and added my interfaces and stuff... It was like $300 and a broken finger and 40 stiches later I had myslef a compact recordin desk.... Sadly I had to sell it when times got tough something I will regret the rest of my life

[scooterlow]

I am having such a hard time deciding what to do as far as changing my set up. I have a corner style desk and it's like a big V.
I really want to get rid of it and put a straight desk on one wall freeing up the space on the other side. I just don't have the money to buy a cool one or spend $300.00 building something that will turn out half assed. Do you guys think there are any benefits to have a desk in the corner or is it bad news all the way around.

[midKnight]

Originally Posted by scooterlow

I am having such a hard time deciding what to do as far as changing my set up. I have a corner style desk and it's like a big V.
I really want to get rid of it and put a straight desk on one wall freeing up the space on the other side. I just don't have the money to buy a cool one or spend $300.00 building something that will turn out half assed. Do you guys think there are any benefits to have a desk in the corner or is it bad news all the way around.

Well, having you're audio station in a corner of the room is about the worst place you can have it for many reasons (inaccurate bass frequencies, stereo field imbalancing issues, etc. etc. )

However you don't have to spend a ton of cash like I did (and actually for what I spent I built a hellva desk), you could easily scale back and do it for less, I wanted mine to be 8-feet long and 3 feet deep, and i used fairly expensive plywood, so you could make yours smaller and use cheaper plywood, or I even saw a guy who built a desk entirely out of pvc tubing and only used wood for the desk surface, and it was very inexpensive and actually looked really good when he was done.

Just some ideas to kick around...

[brandondrury]

I even saw a guy who built a desk entirely out of pvc tubing and only used wood for the desk surface, and it was very inexpensive and actually looked really good when he was done.

I don't believe you!

[midKnight]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

I don't believe you!

Understandable, I didn't believe it at first either..

I will have to see if I can find the forum where he posted his pics, they looked pretty darn good (for what he spent on the project).

-Nick