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So, now that my studio is more powerful than I ever imagined...
Wednesday, 19 July 2006 10:25It's time for a major re-arranging.
Aside from my Holy Grail, I also recently acquired (courtesy of an un-named dumpster)an equipment rack.
So now all this rackmount equipment I posess will actually have a permanent place in the studio instead of being piled up on shelves. (AND with much room for growth built in!)
I have a smaller rack, but it actually never fit where I really needed it to be and also, the holes weren't threaded.
Anyway, I pulled down a shelf and then moved in the new rack and put in two new shelves, moved my desk, moved the old rack (freeing up massive space in the wall unit) and am now slowly getting everything re-settled and arranged. I also upgraded one of my outlets by the workspace, doubling my previous number of grounded outlets. I'm thinking that eventually I want to give the studio it's very own ground lead to the cold water pipe, and may supplement it with it's own grounding rod, like back in Alexandria. A power conditioner will probably also pay off and be a good safety measure in the future.
(maybe *that's* what I need to get rid of the hum in the record player)
If this works the way I want it to, then nearly ALL of the usual tasks I do in the studio, recording, mastering, practicing, and cross-media dubbing/editing will ALL be able to be done within reach of one chair. Also, equipment reconfigurations will be vastly facilitated thru judicious use of my existing patchbay and the laying of groundwork for either some custom built patch points or acquisition of more patchbay-like equipment. I'm hoping that all of my usual needs and that as many of my foreseeable contingencies as I can will be streamlined.
I'm also hoping to vastly reduce the number of breeding grounds for what I call "Cable-Born Elder Things" that tend to form whenever one cable comes in contact with any others just the wrong way,and forms a dimensional gateway to Evil. All too often I've let these things go in their ealy stages only to find myself later locked in pitched battle with an unholy cyclopean blasphemous writhing mass of bloodthirsty tentacles that once were simple cables when all I wanted to do was something like plugging the Mini-Disc player into the stereo.
What's more, this simple rearrangement seems to have resulted in a tripling of the amount of equipment and work space that I had on that side of the room. Yow!
Two major changes also in the works: Now that I have an enclosure for my SCSI drives, they and any other peripherals for the Multitrack can now live in the old (short) rack, either mounted (quasi) properly, or custom mounted. (I dumpstered the old rack too and I really like the freedom of "since I paid 0$ for it, I don't have to feel guilty about drilling holes or otherwise vandalising it to suit my needs). The other main thing I'm going to try is to not keep the Multitrack in an insulated suitcase. It turns out that there's a system setting that turns off the fan, whose noise is the major reason why I keep it isolated during recording sessions. I'm hoping that running it outside of a case, (sitting on a big metal heatsink- the old rack) without the fan on, will be less heat-stress than having the fan on, but being in a suitcase. Taking it out of the suitcase reduces it's overall footprint to the point where I have a WHOLE lot of other room now. I would, of course, turn it's fan back on for sessions of playback, practice, and editing, etc- anything that does NOT require silence in the studio. Now I'm wondering if the suitcase environment (and heat buildup) was part of what did the old recorder in.
The whole studio is still an unholy mess, but I should be able to resume at least some of the functions sometime next week. The entire job will probably take until fall as I determine what things (patch-wise) I can build and what I'll need or want to buy.
In the meantime, something that I'm finding that I've not needed for a long time but am now short of is good old-fashioned computer rack-mount hardware. I have screws (which cost FAR too much at Guitar Center IMHO), but I find myself in need of brackets, braces, parts for mounting drawers, shelves, a couple of drawer sliders, etc. If you have any of this crap lying around or know where I can get it surplus/free/real cheep, I'd be much beholden.
I scrounged a bunch of this stuff back in the days when I hung around Unix mainframes, but have long since used it up or passed on the bulk of it.
Then after it's all rebuilt, maybe some decoration.
And, of course back to work.
Too bad I won't have anything finished in time for Pennsic. But I *will* have a new CD out in the fall, and then, thanks to all this innovation AND improvement in my abilities and resources, I'll be able to release stuff much more frequently subsequently.
Aside from my Holy Grail, I also recently acquired (courtesy of an un-named dumpster)an equipment rack.
So now all this rackmount equipment I posess will actually have a permanent place in the studio instead of being piled up on shelves. (AND with much room for growth built in!)
I have a smaller rack, but it actually never fit where I really needed it to be and also, the holes weren't threaded.
Anyway, I pulled down a shelf and then moved in the new rack and put in two new shelves, moved my desk, moved the old rack (freeing up massive space in the wall unit) and am now slowly getting everything re-settled and arranged. I also upgraded one of my outlets by the workspace, doubling my previous number of grounded outlets. I'm thinking that eventually I want to give the studio it's very own ground lead to the cold water pipe, and may supplement it with it's own grounding rod, like back in Alexandria. A power conditioner will probably also pay off and be a good safety measure in the future.
(maybe *that's* what I need to get rid of the hum in the record player)
If this works the way I want it to, then nearly ALL of the usual tasks I do in the studio, recording, mastering, practicing, and cross-media dubbing/editing will ALL be able to be done within reach of one chair. Also, equipment reconfigurations will be vastly facilitated thru judicious use of my existing patchbay and the laying of groundwork for either some custom built patch points or acquisition of more patchbay-like equipment. I'm hoping that all of my usual needs and that as many of my foreseeable contingencies as I can will be streamlined.
I'm also hoping to vastly reduce the number of breeding grounds for what I call "Cable-Born Elder Things" that tend to form whenever one cable comes in contact with any others just the wrong way,and forms a dimensional gateway to Evil. All too often I've let these things go in their ealy stages only to find myself later locked in pitched battle with an unholy cyclopean blasphemous writhing mass of bloodthirsty tentacles that once were simple cables when all I wanted to do was something like plugging the Mini-Disc player into the stereo.
What's more, this simple rearrangement seems to have resulted in a tripling of the amount of equipment and work space that I had on that side of the room. Yow!
Two major changes also in the works: Now that I have an enclosure for my SCSI drives, they and any other peripherals for the Multitrack can now live in the old (short) rack, either mounted (quasi) properly, or custom mounted. (I dumpstered the old rack too and I really like the freedom of "since I paid 0$ for it, I don't have to feel guilty about drilling holes or otherwise vandalising it to suit my needs). The other main thing I'm going to try is to not keep the Multitrack in an insulated suitcase. It turns out that there's a system setting that turns off the fan, whose noise is the major reason why I keep it isolated during recording sessions. I'm hoping that running it outside of a case, (sitting on a big metal heatsink- the old rack) without the fan on, will be less heat-stress than having the fan on, but being in a suitcase. Taking it out of the suitcase reduces it's overall footprint to the point where I have a WHOLE lot of other room now. I would, of course, turn it's fan back on for sessions of playback, practice, and editing, etc- anything that does NOT require silence in the studio. Now I'm wondering if the suitcase environment (and heat buildup) was part of what did the old recorder in.
The whole studio is still an unholy mess, but I should be able to resume at least some of the functions sometime next week. The entire job will probably take until fall as I determine what things (patch-wise) I can build and what I'll need or want to buy.
In the meantime, something that I'm finding that I've not needed for a long time but am now short of is good old-fashioned computer rack-mount hardware. I have screws (which cost FAR too much at Guitar Center IMHO), but I find myself in need of brackets, braces, parts for mounting drawers, shelves, a couple of drawer sliders, etc. If you have any of this crap lying around or know where I can get it surplus/free/real cheep, I'd be much beholden.
I scrounged a bunch of this stuff back in the days when I hung around Unix mainframes, but have long since used it up or passed on the bulk of it.
Then after it's all rebuilt, maybe some decoration.
And, of course back to work.
Too bad I won't have anything finished in time for Pennsic. But I *will* have a new CD out in the fall, and then, thanks to all this innovation AND improvement in my abilities and resources, I'll be able to release stuff much more frequently subsequently.
