Recording - March 2016 - 13

buy and which monitors I would obtain for soffit mounting, so Lou
could work them into his plan. I have worked on many consoles,
with SSL and Neve being my two favorite all around consoles. I
checked out an old 80 Series Neve that I really liked, but ultimately I
decided that the maintenance would be too much of a pain. I ended
up buying an SSL AWS 900 console; it's a super-flexible analog console and a DAW controller. In my opinion it was perfect for my
needs. For soffit-mounted monitors, I bought the ADAM Audio S5VA
mk2. I had used them a few years ago at another studio, and
thought they sounded great and translated well.
Lou had some really cool ideas, like having a reflective side of
the live room while the other side was absorptive. This would give
me the flexibility to set the drum kit on either side and get totally
different sounds. Lou also added a movable curtain on the live
side so that I could damp down that side to varying degrees. The
studio would have its own electrical panel with separate breakers
for lighting and technical power. Lou sent over some 3D drawings
that really helped convey the look and feel to me. A few tweaks
here and there, and we were ready to go. (Photo 1)

The buildout
First, I had to become intimately familiar with the local building
codes. They had more rules than playing a gig at a New York
City theater. Each worker had to have proof of workers' compensation on them at all times. Everyone in the building had to wear
a safety helmet. It astounded me that inspectors actually showed
up to check these things!
The home we built has a concrete block exterior with a concrete
slab and a gable roof. The first thing Lou worked on was isolating
the studio's concrete slab. The goal is to keep all the sound contained in the studio, similar to keeping water in a pool. When we
poured the slab, expansion joints were added at the perimeter of
the studio to decouple the studio slab from the rest of the house.

I have never been able to build a
studio from the ground up. When my
wife and I decided to build a new
home, that was my chance to have
the studio I'd always wanted.
An expansion joint was also placed to decouple the live room
from the control room. The perimeter walls are 8" concrete block
filled with poured concrete. First, furring strips were attached to the
block walls. Then the walls and ceiling received resilient hat channel and Isomax resilient sound isolation clips to decouple the interior drywall from the concrete walls and ceiling. (Photo 2)
The dividing wall between the live and control room was actually
two separate walls. Separated walls are effective to isolate sound
waves from transferring from one room to the other. (Photo 3)
The frame of the wall had wallmat between the bottom plate and
slab. Wallmat was also between the top plate and the trusses. The
studio perimeter received two 5/8" drywall sheets with Green Glue
soundproofing sealant (see October 2010 for more about this cool
acoustic treatment material) in between. The partition wall between
the live room and control room received three drywall sheets on
one side and two on the other. All the drywall was hung so that the
top and bottom had a 1/4" gap. We filled the 1/4" gap with Green
Glue to decouple the walls from the ceiling and the floor. We fed
the electrical cable through small holes in the drywall. When we
surface mounted all the electrical boxes, we caulked the holes in the
drywall to keep an airtight seal. (Photo 4)

RECORDING March 2016

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