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Recording Musician

Garage Studio

Article from Recording Musician, November 1992

RM reader Martin Smith talks about the trials and tribulations of building a serious home studio in his garage.


Martin is the proud owner of Garage Studios — a 16-track studio built, as you may have guessed, in his converted garage. Shirley Gray investigates.


Martin started out as a guitarist, doubling on bass, in the early 70s with a pro band called Charlie, touring the States and recording a few albums. Then in '77 he joined up with some musicians from The Spiders from Mars, including Woody Woodmans, David Bowie's ex-drummer, to form a band called U-Boat, subsequently signed to Bronze, Gerry Bron's record label.

"We did a tour of Europe and made an album in which I had quite a heavy production involvement, which led me to doing some freelance production work and eventually to becoming a full-time producer. I've worked at many of the top studios, but did the majority of my work at The Roundhouse, producing Gerry's acts.

"I spent three or four years doing that, and also working for CBS, Red Bus, RCA, Epic and RAK — Mickey Most's label. By that time, to be quite honest, I was getting fed up with production — I was finding myself needing to make big career decisions and being turned into something of a diplomat, which didn't suit me at all. It seemed too high a price to pay for the joy of working with the music. So I slowly went back to my first love, which was being a musician, helping out Richard Tandy and David Morgan of ELO with Dave's solo project.

"Dave had a little 8-track studio where my production knowledge and skills came in useful — arranging and pacing the songs, as well as playing guitar. This was when I first really became involved in a 'hands-on' way with the engineering side of things — as a producer there's always someone to do it all for you — and I found I got a tremendous buzz and a lot of fulfilment out of dealing with the actual mechanics of recording, being able to manipulate the equipment. Subsequently I met up with Geoff Lynne and we did a charity single. ELO were about to go on tour promoting their latest album, and he asked me if I'd like to play bass for them. I toured with them on and off for about a year and had a fantastic time, it was a marvellous experience."

The First Home Studio



Martin now has his own 16-track, but at what point did he decide he wanted his home studio? I asked him to fill me in on some background.

"Between tour dates, Richard, David and I worked on library music and we did a movie soundtrack. At the same time the family and I were in the process of house-hunting. My wife was always counting the number of bedrooms, whereas I was wondering where the studio was going to fit, and was far more interested in whether there was a basement or a garage! As soon as we looked at this house I saw the garage and thought 'whoopee — room for my own studio!' However, there was one drawback — I didn't have a clue how to go about it.

"We were due to take our annual holiday, so I took some relevant reading material to America with me and surprised everyone by spending a lot of time reading on the beach! I'd taken a lot of advice from friends and colleagues who had previously been the route, so before we'd moved in I'd already got the builders to construct a partition wall separating off the back half of the garage, and to construct a false ceiling. They put in a row of rafters, to which they nailed the plasterboard, then in between they put a layer of absorbent material — I think it was heavy-duty polystyrene — and a layer of Rockwool, which I'd especially asked for, and another layer, this time of heavy chipboard, and then they repeated some of the layers. The walls were treated similarly, a false wall construction with beams and Rockwool again, the false wall being about four or five inches away from the brickwork. The floor was left alone because it was concrete so didn't need soundproofing. I also got them to put in a separate fuse box which was isolated to avoid clicks and bangs caused by interference through the mains.

"Then I started buying the equipment, which started with a Fostex B16 — that was the best machine for the price at that time — and an Allen and Heath Mark 3 System 8 mixer. I used a Revox for mixdown initially. When it came to choosing the gear, I read up about everything in the recording books and mags and took their advice, had one reverb initially, which was the Alesis Midiverb II and a couple of dbx 163x compressors, a Drawmer stereo gate, and Tannoy DTM 8s, which have to say I thoroughly recommend as near-field monitors, especially in a fairly small room like this."


Acoustic Problems



On the subject of monitoring, I asked if Martin had encountered any problems getting the sound right in Garage Studios.

"Actually I did have a bit of a problem getting it this good. Someone told me I should isolate the speakers by putting them on bricks to cut down the resonance.

I had started out by having them on some shelves I'd built for them but they sounded like huge bass bins, being right up against the stone wall — wonderful having all that bass end hitting you in the guts, but not a good idea for accurate recording purposes! So the speakers ended up on breeze-blocks — and the sound was still rather crap.

"I did my first session for a friend as soon as I'd got all the gear in — I couldn't wait to try it all out. He came down with all his sequencers and stuff and we plugged it all in, and to my dismay it sounded awful, all clattery and horrible. Then I phoned up a pal of mine who'd done this sort of thing before and he came round and told me I'd got excessive early reflections, which I'd thought were something you got off your shaving mirror first thing in the morning! He told me I had to kill the room — make it as dead as possible, to stop all the sound waves bouncing around and interacting with each other in nasty ways. Out came all the newly installed gear and in went lots of carpeting — the ceiling, the back wall, everywhere. I spent a week doing that and got covered in dust. Have you ever tried carpeting a ceiling? Even new carpets are full of dust, so when you're holding it above your head and banging nails into it you get showered with particles of dirt. Before I put the gear back in I got my knowledgeable friend round to check it out with me, and we reckoned it was better, but you know it still wasn't right. Later I discovered that carpeting isn't the answer, as carpet only absorbs high-frequency sound, leaving the bass and lower mid-range to run riot.

"A major problem was the cuboid shape of the room, so it was suggested that I put 2" battens on the two side walls, put up some more rockwool and fibre glass, and cover it with hessian to deaden it as much as possible over a wider range of frequencies, which we did. After that I thought, well, if it's not right now it never will be — so we shifted all the gear back in and I apprehensively put on a CD and sat in the hot seat. I shall never forget that moment — it was heaven, straightaway — no colouration, just a really pleasant sound with the right amount of bass. This kind of treatment can't solve problems with the really low bass, but the choice of the DTM8s was fortuitous, as they don't generate enough low bass to aggravate the room problems.

"Although the room was pretty small and I had no separate recording area, there were records released out of it, as well as some film and library music. And nobody's ever complained!



"A major problem was the cuboid shape of the room, so it was suggested that I put 2" battens on the two side walls, put up some more rockwool and fibre glass, and cover it with hessian."


Digital Mastering



Martin now masters to DAT. But when did he decide to go digital on mixdown?

"Peer Southern [music publishers] hired myself and a few colleagues to do some hi-tech modern library music — theirs was sounding a bit old fashioned. I bought another reverb and a few more compressors and we mixed the stuff down onto a hired Sony F1, which was one of the first digital mixdown setups, using video tape. I was struck by the difference in quality over the old Revox. Peer Southern were very pleased with the result and it went onto CD. I suddenly realised that with the advancements being made in technology, the gap between pro and semi-pro gear had narrowed so much that it crosses over now — there's a lot of records now in the charts which, if not actually recorded and mixed at home, started off life with what would have been called semi-pro gear. That phrase seems to be being used less and less now, especially where the new Tascam and Fostex 1" machines are concerned — with 24 tracks and Dolby S they are out-performing some 2" machines."


The Garage Conversion



Martin has recently added on a separate studio area to the original garage conversion. I asked how he went about doing this.

"Well, after much deliberation what remained of the garage had to go. The first problem was to find a new home for all the accumulated rubbish — including the car! Once we'd done that, we set about the serious business of building the studio area. We spent quite some time planning it first. The idea was to put a window in the existing partition wall and close off the car entrance, using the remainder of the garage to give a live area of about 12 feet by 8 feet. I realised pretty soon that I needed some expert help if I was going to take it seriously, so I roped in a couple of local guys, one of whom was a good carpenter. From what I'd learned when building the control room, I had a good idea of how wanted the studio area to sound and look.

As Paul White has already written elsewhere, one of the main problems with a home studio is lack of space, and when using a garage you tend to end up with a square box which can be an acoustic nightmare! The other problem was the increasing flow of people wandering through the house to use the loo, so, to prevent my wife from leaving me, we fitted a small toilet. This had the added benefit of reducing the squareness of the room, but also took away some of our studio space.

"For the internal, reflective surfaces of the studio we used a combination of exposed brick and carpet on plasterboard. I bought some cheap kiln reject bricks and we started work. Another layer of brick was added to the existing partition wall to aid separation, and this was quite tricky because we then had to cut a hole exactly the right size to put in the previously made 15" deep frame for the studio window. The main cavity wall closing off the garage entrance came next and was finished surprisingly quickly, apart from some minor hassles and fiddling about getting the bricks to fit the door frame. The toilet wall went up next and I could begin to see the studio area taking shape.

"We were getting rather low on bricks and my sneaky thoughts of having some left over to build a barbecue went out the window! The two side walls, which were part of the original structure, were studded out four inches and filled with fibre glass insulation, then double skinned with plasterboard. Then we had to decide what to do about the vaulted roof. After some discussion, we decided to pack in between the rafters with sound insulation and seal it with plywood, then create a flat false ceiling hung on 6x2 beams attached to the internal walls. The tops of the beams were sealed with tongue and groove chipboard, while on the bottom we inset some plasterboard strips, exposing one inch of beam. The air gaps between the beams were filled with a combination of polystyrene and fibreglass. The exposed beams looked attractive with the rustic brick, and the fact that the surfaces were so uneven helped break up the sound reflections.

"For the doors, we bought a couple of fire doors, built them out with battening and filled them with fibreglass. I thought might want to change the sound-proofing material at a later date, so I opted to seal the doors with screws. The carpenter did an excellent job of building and fitting the doors, which ended up about seven inches thick, and the fit was airtight. I must say recommend finding someone who is good at carpentry for these sorts of jobs, because severe sound leakage can occur both ways even with slightly ill-fitting doors, and it's difficult to remedy later. For the sake of aesthetics all the wood surfaces were stained a nice shade of Antique Oak.

"I got Mike Page of Ampsound to sort out the electronic side of things for me, and ended up with a foldback amp and a wall box made to order with mic and line inputs, foldback outputs, and MIDI In/Out/Thru sockets. In addition, hardwired four long jack leads through the wall. Not very pro, perhaps, but still a good way to get a guitar signal to an amp from the control room."

And Finally



It seems that all the hard work paid off, and Martin is very pleased with the resulting sound.

"In all modesty, it's pretty damned good, not too live or too dead. The spectre of uncontrolled bass or the usual 500/1k honk was haunting me as I did the first acoustic tests. A hint of 1k bounce is evident but it's minimal and hasn't proved too much of a problem. Surprisingly there is a rich low-end response in the room, brilliant for toms and bassier percussion, which seems sympathetic and controlled when using several mikes. At present there is a bit of a problem with outward sound leaking from drums, so I might have to upgrade the soundproofing in the roof. In the main, I have ended up with a small but good-sounding live area to complement my original studio, that is pleasant to work in. Oh, and the toilet works, too."

Garage Studio Equipment

  • Fostex G16 with Dolby C NR
  • Allen & Heath System 8 desk (soon to be upgraded to a Soundcraft 6000 series)
  • Lexicon LXP1 multi-effects x 2
  • Sony DTC 1000ES for mastering
  • Luxman DAT for copies
  • Tannoy DTM-8 monitors
  • Assorted Shure and AKG mics
  • Neumann U87 mic
  • Atari 1040/C-Lab sequencing system
  • Akai ME35T trigger-to-MIDI converter
  • Akai S1000 and S950 samplers
  • Roland D50 synthesizer
  • Roland Super Jupiter synthesizer
  • Roland MKS 20 module
  • Roland MKS 50 module
  • Alesis SR16 drum machine
  • Ensoniq ESQ1 synthesizer
  • Assorted outboard

Martin Smith's studio is available commercially and he can be contacted on (Contact Details).


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Publisher: Recording Musician - SOS Publications Ltd.
The contents of this magazine are re-published here with the kind permission of SOS Publications Ltd.


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Recording Musician - Nov 1992

Donated by: Mike Gorman, Colin Potter

Scanned by: Mike Gorman

Topic:

Home Studio


Feature by Shirley Gray

Previous article in this issue:

> Classical Sound Engineering

Next article in this issue:

> Bits 'n' Pieces


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