Martin Sheehan thinks about the sensible spots to plonk all that recording gear type stuff.

It is probably a foregone conclusion as to where your studio is going to be. Someone is trying to watch television downstairs, the bathroom is too wet, the loo too small, the loft is too old and dark and it's murder trying to play when you are worried about slipping astride the joists. Most people, consequently, end up in a bedroom but, whether or not this is your predicament, many of the following points will still apply.

A suitable site for the speakers should be first on the list of objectives. Speakers sound different in various places. Some are designed to sit on shelves, some to be mounted upon brackets — rarely are they at their best in a corner. Try to find a position where you will be operating from a point which is closer to the speakers than to any wall in the room. This cuts down the chances of your ears being messed about by reflected soundwaves. The majority of speakers will sound best when they are angled in towards your head with the tweeters (the baby bits) pointing at your ear level.

When you have found a place where the speakers are sounding good, and you are sitting in a place that feels comfortable, the mixer will necessarily need to be made to sit in front of you. Any bench or table of appropriate dimensions will do for this and if your equipment is small enough, a deep shelf could quite easily prove adequate. Cassette based multitracks, often combining both mixer and recorder, can be ideally suited to shelf use. It is, of course, quite possible to place some open reel recorders on a shelf in front of the mixing desk but a position to the right or left of your sitting position will often prove more suitable for the bigger multitrack recorders. The mix-down recorder, be it cassette or open reel, will be best placed next to the multi-track as they will need to be started and stopped at the same time during mixing.

It is either an incredible hiccup in the laws of probability or a pleasant collaboration on the part of manufacturers that most effect units are nineteen inches long. This makes it sensible for them all to be stacked together in rack strips. As well as housing the 19in units some of the rack positions can be turned into shelves to hold the power amp and cassette decks etc. An obvious lineup for a rack such as this is to place the most frequently used units, such as digital delays, nearest the top working down to possibly the power amp at the bottom. It is a good idea, if space permits, to leave an empty slot above the amp for ventilation. If your set-up is comprehensive enough to involve more than a couple of outboard effects units you will find the use of a patchbay to be a boon. It is as well to place this below the effects in the rack so that your knob twiddling is not unduly hampered by dangling leads. Another good reason for positioning the patchbay beneath the effects is that it will not hinder the airflow around the amp as much as an encased effects unit.

With all the equipment in place, now give some thought to the wiring up procedure. The main thing is to keep the mains cables (no pun intended) away from the signal cables. If they have to cross let them do so at right angles in order to minimise hum pick-up. It is unusual for the mains sockets in a room to be ideally positioned for running a studio (or even a sidelamp) so securing a multiway plugboard in an appropriate position away from the signal cables could prove awfully useful. Arranging all the equipment to be within an arms reach as much as possible should have ensured that no cable runs need to be excessively long. It should also mean that as much room as possible has been left for the business of singing and playing — without which there would not be much need for all the gear, would there!