Island Studio 3

[David L. Donald]

The cobra visit reminded my I haven't
posted anything in a while. No pretty upgrades.

So a bump.

One of the booth rooms is up; Stone Saltbox room

and framing for another; Golden triangle room.
update

This is the interior of the Golden triangle room.

The black triangle, center of 5m back wall, will have a sandstone relief mounted,
this is about head height.

The whole wall is 3cm wood x 2cm spaced triangles center to all three(4) sides.
Made from end routed slates. Opposing side and roof
are floor parallel end routed slats.

All the slats are 3cm rounded takien wood;
left side is insulation behind black cloth,
right side and ceiling are black cloth over reconstituted foam.

It has a nice diffuse small room sound,
and has one wall just plaster board.
I can move an open back amp forward of backward in the room and get diffused reflections and mic
close/direct, slap back and diffused sounds.

There is an old mirror in there as it is also a guest room,
so adds andother odd angle to the pic.

I finally got to Bangkok for parts,
after assorted thing stopped me for months.
So I have the big cables and hopefully good
75Ω coax for wordclock sync, and assorted soldering tools,
and a good signal/function generator to go with my scope.
So I will get wiring shortly.
I HATE soldering patchbays.

[David L. Donald]

Well it has been awhile since I had visible progress.
But here are a few more pics of last springs
and this summer's additions.

1st is the older 'joined' rooms.
The one near the door is The Stone Room, a saltbox house tipped on end.
So 2 square corners and a triangle shaped opposing wall,
with door w/window and 2 window facing other booths
or control room.


This room will be finished with rough bread loaf stone,
like the drum room in the old Town House studio in London.
You know this sound from the drums in Phil Collin's In The Air Tonight.
Sadly that room was torn out.

To it's right, done with slab board facia is the
"Golden Triangle Room", based on Pythagorean's golden triangle dimensions.
5m X 4m X 3m with a ration of all three dimensions averaged
to give the rising height of the back roof point.

Each of these is going to have a different exterior and tile roof style.

Next is the seven sided drum or piano space on the opposite side.
It will be 5 windows plus a window double door
and exterior doubled double doors.

2.4 meters front and 4 meters at the peak.
It will be a very diffuse room allowing for a bigger sound that the space would normally have.

These are the 5cm steel random roof panel bracings.
which will be; aligned chip board, sheet rock and fiber board,
with RPG Skyline diffusers on down facing layer.


Top will be strong enough to walk on having 3 different weight layers and materials.

Another view. from across the floor at other booths doors.


I have computer calculated most possible sight lines
and put windows where needed. Subscribing to the Nashville,
get 'everyone playing together' philosophy,
which also works for jazz.

The roof line top of walls just below the trusses,
will have on end mounted versions of this diffuser prototype.
30cm X 30cm X 40cm boxes mounted on a light plywood sheet.

These will be on steel frame on end and angled 15° down all the way around the top of the large space.

Imagine being in a glade surrounded by hundreds of trees,
That is the main room sound I am going for.
thousands of randomized reflections of sound.


There will be two 5m tall rooms on either side, angled into the wall with the Thai style arc'd roof on top.
The steel and sheet rocks guys both shake their heads
about putting this one together...
Only one 90 degree corner and that will be damped.

One will be done with RPG Studio In A Box wall treatments,
Which I have from the last room, but don't need specifically.
and the other will double as a darkroom and and extra washroom/laundrey/toilet,
as well as being a tall isolation booth.
I can aim a amp cab upward and the sound will bounce back into an 180° off axis mic.

Depending on middle height wall treatment I can have it earlier or later reflections as I chose.



Both of these tall rooms bookend the view nicely.

[David L. Donald]

I am sorta surprised no one commented on the latest update.

[Johan Jansen]

Well David, this is a dream-project!
When do you want it to be ready for recording?
regards, Johan

[David L. Donald]

A year and a half ago....

Well I don't want to do a pre-opening or really put it out there
till it WORKS properly. And looks the part.
Still have a HUGE hit for AC units in the future.
But it will fly when it's ready, and not before.
I hope for mid 2010 anyway.

"We sell no wine before it's time."

[Bill Terry]

Hey DLD.. keep the pics and updates coming. I enjoy watching somebody else spending money on this stuff

Looking great!!!

[John Macy]

We are upgrading our Studio A control room--we just hauled in this 36 in Neotek that used to belong to the legendary Lonnie Mack this weekend to go with the MCI 24 track and Pro Tools HD3 (and a PARIS rig, too, just in case Bill T is wondering:))...lots of wiring a debugging on the horizon...your place is looking awesome!

[David L. Donald]

NS-10, JBL 4311, Auratones? Big butt Tanoy 15's!

Some large racks... works for me.

1176 maybe, Demeter maybe Avalon?
Lets have a pic of the rack!
Or just ship it to me for direct inspection!

Just put some KEF C3's in a voice over studio in Bangkok
sound great for the size and the money.
Doing a RPG acoustics to the room when the parts arrive.
M-audio AT4040 and Logic... nice little thing he'll have when set up.

[Bill Terry]

Wow John... looking good!

Re Paris: I finally semi-retired my Paris setup, although it's still taking up space in the rack for now. I just can't seem to get the gumption together to part it out for pennies.. and that mix bus STILL sounds great to me. How do you use your Paris system? Just for the legacy stuff or???

Once again I followed Tommy D's lead and ended up upgrading(?) to a Mac based system running Logic 8. I think he's all but out of the Paris biz now.

On the subject of limiters, I once had a black 1176 that I bought at a Showco garage sale in Dallas (remember them from the 70's?). They used to strap bunches of 1176s across the main amp racks as limiters, literally rack after rack of those things. I'm pretty sure I paid less than a 100 bux. Later on, I got offered some middle of the road stereo limiter as a trade at some point, and thought 2 comp/limiters were better than one right??? File that in Stupid Trades 101.

Sorry for topic drift DLD..

[David L. Donald]

Bill no problem. I am interested in the demise of Paris,
heard nothing but good things about it.
I have Logic Studio now but will always like Digital Performer.

I added a Mac Pro and Motu 828 mkIII to make me a running rig again,
The old Protools was just not gonna work out too much longer.

Here is some of the latest shots of the main room.
Got back into gear in Feb.


This is looking SW corner towards N NE
On right is most finished East Tall Thai Room,
OSB board on all external faces so far.

Then Golden Triangle Room and future Stone Room next to door.

Celie is living in the Stone room also in the shape of a saltbox house on its side.
Over this room are 4 RPG corner resonance dampers tuned a 40hz, 63.5hz and 80hz,

Next is the drum room with all but a final sheet rock and mud treatment to go.


three different weight layers of panels, Sheetrock, fiber board 6mm lywood,
then reconstituted foam inside steel frame,
then 3 different layers rock fiber and smaller rock.

Inside you can see a small scale diffuser panel set boxes about 3" square, but all different depths.

To it's left is West Tall Thai Room they start it's initial roof OSB board layer tomorrow.
I plan on 2 pieces of 'carpet under sheet',
then 2 layers, of gypsom and fiber board
and either bambo or scatter style wood treatment.

Above all these rooms are 30cm x 40cm x 30cm diffusers,
aka 11" x 16" x 11" boxes,on a sheet of plywood.
Like looking into an empty case of Seagrams quarts but bigger.
These are set on end close to wall at bottom and 50cm out from wall at top.(20")
So it takes reflections and rather one hard slap back
it breaks it up in hundreds of, out of time, and out of phase
little delays, thus giving the effect of randomness.
Also eventually the spaces behind the diffusors all be stuffed with insulation and will help damp the lower frequencies as the resonate between flat wall and diffusors angled face plate.

There are 12 up now and I plan on 12-16 more around the room. 4 on each side will go behind each Tall Thai room.

The sound on this one end is MUCH changed for the positive because of this simple technique.

I will have several similar version flying around the room up above but minus the back panels, thus breaking up any ceiling / floor reflections.

Once I have this as a nice sounding live space,
then I can damp it down as needed for any type of session with heavy curtains with or without 1=2mm rubber sheets.


If I can swing it, ( pun intended), I want the overhead airduct
to be a chinese dragon with one of those big gnarly heads.

[David L. Donald]

I had a week back started soldering the patchbay,
which left me with a weak back....

We got the 24 channels to the front of big room in, with a shakedown session that night...
Only to find many channels were not good, not the 2-3 typical mistakes...

Canceled session.
Roland and I went over both ends over and over al week and....
Nothing.

Finally 5 nights later, we went into the cobra pit under the control room
with flash lights, inspected the 24 channel Amphenol Snake...

It has been installed a year back, but never wired in.
Well, against instructions, the electrician had just stuffed the cable through a hole in the cement block
and no plastic electrical conduit around it as ordered.

AND with a nasty, sharp edged, loose chunk of cement block angled UP
underneath the cable... which over time of workers above
and below moving it about, had worn a 2" x 1" and 1/4" gash into nearly 1/3 of the cables... explains why so many channels were soldered well and IN-OP..
MERDE ALORS!!!!!

And this problem was in the ONLY 6 inches left in the wall, but was 1 meter/yard from where the plug pannel would go...

So I lost 1 meter of an 11 meter cable...
at 1,300 baht or $40.20 per meter....
Not gonna get full placement of racks in control room
thank you very much...

[Bill Terry]

David, exactly how big is this space??? It looks huge!!!

I see that, and then walk into my converted garage (one end of it actually) and it sure seems small... I guess because it is.

[David L. Donald]

The main room is 15m long x 12m W and between 6.5 and 9 meters tall

or 49.2 feet /16.40 yards L x 39.4 feet / 13.1 yards W
x 21.3 feet to 29.5 / 7.1 to 9.8 yards tall

In one shot you can see Yuth working on a tall room ceiling.
Yuth's about 5'5"

Also the green/blue diffuser panels are built from
standard 1m20cm x 2m40cm plywood sheets.(4 x 8ft)
One 10mm backing sheet, and two 6mm sheets cut for the box grid.

Of course the bar stools and drum kit give a reference too.

Control room is 9.2m L x 7.6m W and 5-6m tall
Good for a non coupled/ non smearing 17-19hz low freq cut off.
In other words where a low frequency note starts
to just rumble the space as noise pressure,
but not as discernible sound.

A low piano goes to 32hz, and a Bosendorfer extended bass piano goes to 16hz.

So reasonably safe for most sound ranges I would want.

Also I designed the big room and the control room to b
'Inverse' size ratios', so their frequency resonance modes
cancel each other out between recording and monitoring spaces. At least some what and in theory.

[David Collins]

Fascinating Stuff, keep it coming as you can.
Hope all goes well.