It almost killed me but….

[László]

I'm new here; looks fantastic.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Preliminary thoughts are:

1) 2 Mono Comps and 2 Mic Pres for input side. Have both, but looking to possibly upgrade.

2) Stereo Bus Comp for Bus Mixes.

3) 2 Pultec style EQs just because. Already have one.

Empty rack spaces are en eyesore and beg to be filled.

Patchbay is on my list, too.

Over the course of switching from a UA interface to RME, I REALLY can't stand the Total Mix dynamics for treating vocals on the way in so I decided to buy some outboard compressors.

First I grabbed the FMR RNC. They're kind of legendary affordable compressors that have been around a while now and you tend to see them hidden away in every studio. What's awesome with them is they are stereo so as well as being nice for tracking, they're really flexible if you want to use them for mixing too.

As soon as I tried the RNC I thought its awesome but I had that feeling of knowing I'd prefer the RNLA for vocals, so I grabbed that as well. The RNC is definitely a compressor, and quite often with vocals what I actually want is some limiting (where it can get the fuck outta the way again). They're so affordable it's great having both on a rack and you have a few flavours for not a lot of money. Worth a look!

 

[EOengineer]

Missed this thread somehow. That listening space looks awesome @MirrorProfiles. Out of all the work you’ve done, my favorite part is that you set your listening position in front of a nice big window.

I just find that after long hours hours at the computer I’m usually in a much better mental state when I can look outside or catch some sunlight, etc.

I have a 3 year plan to get my basement finished, and then I’ll have a legit control room - but unfortunately not much chance of a view.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Missed this thread somehow. That listening space looks awesome @MirrorProfiles. Out of all the work you’ve done, my favorite part is that you set your listening position in front of a nice big window.

I just find that after long hours hours at the computer I’m usually in a much better mental state when I can look outside or catch some sunlight, etc.

I have a 3 year plan to get my basement finished, and then I’ll have a legit control room - but unfortunately not much chance of a view.

It's wild how much difference it makes. One of the many (wrong) iterations of my studio have involved blocking the windows completely with acoustic panels. Not only is it actually worse acoustically for the front wall, but even if it sounded better, it made the room so uncomfortable to be in that it's not worth it. I get an awesome view of squirrels and wildlife in the background which is definitely nice to have in eyeshot all day. Kind of mad how even though I'm looking at the screen the peripheral vision of nature is such a positive influence.

Excited to see what comes of your control room!

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Was looking to sort my racks out so they were matching - prior to this I had a Chunky Furniture rack and a Thon. The seller of this 3 bay Chunky rack kept dropping the price more and more, to the point where I should be able to sell my old ones for about the same price.

While I was at it, I tried to address a few cabling things. The Behringer ADA I was using for extra I/O was doing some weird impedance things, it has quite a high output impedance on the D/A and some gear was doing strange things. Grabbed some Arturia ADAT expanders (cheap, have a decent ADDA chip and 24dBu headroom). Also added some crusty Alesis reverbs and FMR comps for some vibe when tracking as I can’t really stand the Total Mix FX.

 

[la szum]

Tight!

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Have I found something to finally dethrone the ns10’s? Quite possibly.

Found some ATC SCM20 PRO ASL’s for a good price and figured they’re worth a punt. I tried some PMC 6’s last year which were amazing monitors but ended up being a bit too similar to the Neumanns and it didn’t feel beneficial to really take the ns10’s down.

I’ve owned SCM25A mkI’s before which are excellent monitors, but I found them a bit light on low end. and the top end a little rolled off. The 20’s have the SL driver and a tweeter made in house by ATC, and while they also need a sub IMO they’re better monitors than the 25’s.

Figured due to the size of the 20’s (they’re twice as deep as ns10’s, weigh 25kg each and are quite tall) I’d build some stands out of concrete blocks. Concrete had a very low resonant frequency and are pretty hard to beat for stands.

The downside is, at almost 200kg per stand, it’s a lot of carrying to move things around. They also needed sealant applied to them to stop them being crumbly/dusty and as much as I love brutalism, it made sense to cover them with fabric.

 

[Allexi]

@MirrorProfiles Hey! Really nice room! What cable length you use to connect your mac to rme? I guess it is quite long there

 

[MirrorProfiles]

@MirrorProfiles Hey! Really nice room! What cable length you use to connect your mac to rme? I guess it is quite long there

Yeah, it’s 5m IIRC which is within USB spec. I actually changed from a Thunderbolt rig because I wanted to be able to position it further away and I don’t need the massive channel counts of TB. It was also hard to find a good quality monitor controller that fitted by needs and the UCX and ARC remote worked out cheaper (I only really needed total mix, AES and SPDIF to send signals to the ADI and Neumann monitors.

I was also weighing up just moving the entire computer off to the side and running a longer cable to the monitor, but it made a bit more sense to run USB-C for the monitor. Most Apple computers these days need a TB hub for studio needs so they can help a bit for extending cable distances without issues (or having to fork out for fibre optic cables).

 

[[Nathan]]

View attachment 48101

The downside is, at almost 200kg per stand

After rearranging the speakers a few times