studio.jory.org

The tracking room...to be.

Looking at the tracking room from the control room.

The control room...to be!

That's a bit of lumber!

Check out that suspension! Good thing the lumber yard is only a block away!

The sink and counter tops are gone.

Ah, demolition.

This is the tidiest this room will be for quite some time.

The lumber is wet, so we stacked it and spaced it and turned the heat on high to dry it. Unfortunately, the heater turns itself off after running for a solid hour. Grrrr.

Windows are boarded up and we're starting to layout the plates.

The spider on my roof.

Rob is checking out the rating of my AC unit.

Rob & Sheri, contemplating the plumbing.

Notching the wall so it can fit closer.

Can you believe they bought a new toy just for my job?

Building another wall in the control room.

There's the second wall again.

Sheri likes it when I take pictures of her butt.

There's a window and a door!

Attaching the walls to each other so they'll stand on their own.

Gotta put a new header in there. Oh, and Jack brought us a ladder. Thank you, Jack!

Rob is removing the old fixtures that I won't be needing.

Sheri and Dirk, assembling a very long wall. They built the wall behind them while I was running errands.

Sean came to assess the current HVAC situation. He ended up finding a fried compressor contactor, which he replaced and saved my landlord about $3000 of work and parts.

Dirk adjusts the spacing between the two sections of wall.

Putting fire blocks in the walls, as well as keeping it square. Note Dirk's Chimay on the window sill.

It's a wall!

That would be the entry way.

Karyn spent lots of time cutting the vinyl barrier into strips that went on top of and beneath the walls.

Big load on my truck. Dirk carried the entire thing in in one load. That's why he gets paid in Chimay.

Sheri wrote her name in Liquid Nails.

New header in place; walls are getting ready to be placed.

The control room's back wall, with earthquake blocks and plywood over the unnecessary door.

Looking from the control room into the machine room, through the tracking room.

Lots of help this Saturday! There were actually eight people here at one point!

Scott and Rob are supervising.

The machine room and its doors.

Ed put the fire blocks in the ceiling joists.

The fire sprinklers needed to be adjusted so they'd be in the new rooms. A bit pricey, but Paco did a great job!

Paco even put a new brass head on the sprinkler he didn't have to replace! Thanks!

Nice main, eh? 800 amps of extreme crispiness. I told the landlord that he'd better fix that _before_ the building inspector comes to check my electrical work.

Don't you feel like discovering what 3-phases at 800 amps feels like?

Yeah, just push those 42 bags of Fire Safing off the back of the truck and leave. I'll just bring those in all myself, shall I?

Yes, that's a lot of insulation. And we'll be using all but three bags! At least it's not fiberglass!

Tim loves the caulk!

We put deer block on the walls to keep the insulation in and the deer out. Deer are quite partial to recording studios.

Our first wall of insulation. It was pretty easy! Again, glad it's not fiberglass!

Some weird guy we haven't seen much of around here.

The second wall in the control room is done.

More insulating.

Nick came in after school to give me a hand with insulation.

Putting insulation in the ceiling is lots of fun. It rains rock wool. Note that deer in the ceiling of a studio is a particular problem. They like to burrow down for the winter and can make quite a din when their antlers get stuck on the fire sprinklers.

Very dead-sounding room!

It's HVAC time! Mike and Sean are hard at work adding legs to the spider.

That is wire flex which we ran through conduit. It's got insulation and keeps the air from racing down the tube, causing noise.

Silencers for the ducting. If you yell in one side, it's not very audible on the other! Very nifty contraption.

Just about finished with this leg.

Cutting the last section for the spider's leg.

Kinda limp, eh?

The ducting is going in, with the silencers in-line.

Mondrian insulation.

Dirk kicks ass. Not only wasn't he feeling well, but he helped me finish insulating the tracking room, which Tim and Mike did about a third of earlier. I honestly didn't think we'd get the insulation in before Thursday's inspection!

Lots of insulated walls!

But we still have lots of insulation to go. Still need to do the ceiling in the tracking room.

Get that water pipe outta here! Cameron Mason capped the pipe in the control room wall. Turns out he used to attend the school that used to occupy these buildings.

Yeah, just push it off the back of the truck. We'll just take it from here, shall we...again.

Sheri and Rob are back! Sheri's putting up more insulation. Fun job, eh?

Another load of plywood. At least we got to remove it from the truck ourselves this time!

Um, there goes a forklift. What does that mean?

Ugh! Not again!

4-foot by 12-foot sheetrock is lots of fun to move. I had to get 3 people over so we could get the 45 sheets moved quicker. Oh, did I mention that it was raining earlier and was supposed to continue?

Whew!

Hat channel arrived. We were worried it might be difficult to work with, but it's been pretty easy. Cuts nicely with the chop saw and the funky oil cap ViseGrips work like a charm to get it into the clips!

The Resilient Sound Isolation Clips are going onto the walls.

Rob is inserting a stick of hat channel into the row of clips.

All the walls get clips. It's what isolates the finished wall from the studs, causing the inside to float.

Nick's here again, helping install the clips this time.

I have lots of photos of Rob's pyro displays, but none with him in them!

Great tool for this job! Its other uses: removing oil caps and opening fog bottles.

A channeled set of control room walls! Now we're ready for plywood.

We have a projector window!

Rob, hiding behind the duct, is attaching the first sheet of rock. Note the extremely fun vinyl barrier sandwiched between the rock and the ply. That stuff is _heavy_!

The second sheet goes up.

A better view of the projector window.

The third wall is ply'd and we're ready to rock!

Shan came for a short visit...so we put him to work!

Here you can see how the wall will float from the studs.

The doors arrived. At least they didn't push them off the back of the truck!

Doors a-plenty!

Bill came down to help with the effort. He's fastening the plywood at the top corner.

A week late, the vinyl FINALLY arrived around 4 PM.

...but the shipper destroyed the first 20 feet of three of the rolls. That's one entire roll's worth destroyed.

Lovely fork marks on injured roll number two.

Yep, they hit the third roll, too.

Lovely.

Nice work guys.

A whole lotta sheetrock goin' on!

We put vinyl barrier in the window openings to make a tunnel.

The first window goes in!

A view of the window with the vinyl barrier tunnel. Looks great now!

We decided to adhere the vinyl to the sheetrock. It makes life easier, although it takes several hours for the adhesive to cure.

Sheri's modern art...in construction adhesive.

Stacks of sheetrock, curing overnight. Tomorrow, we'll put them all up.

Nearly all the walls have been plywooded now.

And more sheetrock is going up.

A nice view of the window tunnel.

The second window gets installed by Jon Meyer.

We covered the windows to avoid damaging them, then continued plywooding.

A nicely-framed window in the Control Room.

A view of the door between the Tracking Room and the Control Room. At this point, all the walls have been sheetrocked!

Looking from the Control Room to the Machine Room, through the Tracking Room.

Side detail of a finished wall before the door goes into its frame.

The Tracking Room, looking at the entry and the two closets.

A good view of the projector window now that the sheetrock is up.

Dirk is putting closed-cell foam in the gap under the walls so it can be sealed.

Sheri is sealing the gap using acoustic sealant.

Clips on the ceiling in the tracking room.

Clips are going on the ceiling in the control room.

Using a panel lift to raise the hat channel to the ceiling.

Channel is up on the ceiling in the control room.

Clips going up in the tracking room ceiling.

Sean came back to continue on the AC. We added an outside air intake to provide fresh air. Remember, these will be air-tight sealed rooms, so we need fresh air from somewhere.

We also installed the new thermostat, which resides in the machine room. The stat connects to two thermisters to read the temperature in the control and tracking rooms. It then averages the temp and adjusts the cooling and heating appropriately.

Mom & Dad came up to help with my business plan. This is their first time seeing the monstrous project I've gotten myself into! Jory is showing off the only completed portion of the studio.

Mom insisted on there being more screws in the sheetrock. In fact, if there aren't 7 screws across every foot or so, the inspector won't sign off, so we put her to work.

Geeks.

Bill and I lifted the first sheet of ply onto the ceiling. We lucked out with the placement of the ducting, which just happened to be exactly at the edge of the sheet!

A hanging piece of ply in the control room!

Measuring the placement of the next duct for its hole. We also had to carefully place a hole for the fire sprinkler, which worked out perfectly!

The second sheet is in place.

Nearly all the ply is up. You can see the chalk lines we made as we put each sheet up so the channel alignment, as well as the joist placement, was easy to find.

All ply is up in the control room! Now it's time for sheet rock and vinyl barrier.

We used 12-foot sheets of 5/8" sheetrock, which are unwieldily, but allow us to create fewer seams. Here is a sheet on the panel lift, preparing to be lifted. Incidentally, the length of the control room happened to work out to precisely 12 feet.

Bill is placing the hole for the return duct in the rock. We used a hole saw to create a 2-inch hole and a jigsaw to cut out the duct hole.

Lifting the first sheet into the air. Oops! We forgot to put the vinyl on it!

Okay, so we've got the vinyl on there now (we caught it before lifting it entirely into place). Bill is working the duct through the very tight, but quite perfect hole.

As you can see, it's a tight fit, but that'll make a good seal, since we also used the vinyl barrier to enhance the seal on the hole.

The first sheet is screwed into the ceiling! We're ready for sheet number 2.

We decided to jump to the other side of the room for the second sheet so that the seams of the plywood and sheetrock wouldn't match up. It also worked out that we had a precisely 9-foot piece of vinyl to use there. Beautiful!

Putting channel on the ceiling in the tracking room.

The longest pieces need to be longer than the 12' lengths, so they are joined using sheet metal and self-tapping screws, making the channel's strength better.

Hanging the last few pieces of channel using the panel lift. I couldn't have done these alone without the lift!

Channel is completed for the entire studio! Yay!

For the small gap between the glue lam and the wall, we put a perpindicular channel for support.

The first piece of ply goes onto the ceiling. I was worried about doing this myself, since I've never done the measuring and cutting myself, but it worked out perfectly.

Ed is putting up the next sheet with the DuraSpin. What a fantastic device!

Half the ply is done.

Plywood is up. Time for sheetrock.

Ready to lift the first sheet.

We started with this sheet to ensure that the seams in the middle of the room would not line up. This helps keep the sound in.

This was the hardest piece in the entire room. There were two sprinklers, an A/C duct, and the glue lam to work around. It went up perfectly, though!

It took a while to get this sheet in place, but it fit very snugly.

Most of the room is rocked now. We're nearly ready for tape 'n' mud.

Rock is complete! Yay!

You might think I'd done this before.

We also finished up the sheetrock in the control room, so we're ready for Bill now.

Another view of the completed rock in the control room.

Taping is under way. It's an interesting process. I hadn't realized that there is actually a taperd edge on the sheetrock, which allows for the joint compound to make a smooth seam between sheets.

Bill is VERY fast at this. He did the entire control room in just a couple hours.

Walls are taped.

Bill is putting tape on the joints in the ceiling. Then, he'll swab the joint compound over them.

As you can see, the screws get joint compound over them, too.

Surveying a job well done.

The room is taped!

Bill came back today, after Fairfax Festival, to tape the tracking room. Rob & Sheri are returning to help me get the outside walls skinned and put down the floor, so it's important that the rooms are ready.

Bill scolds the photographer about the previous picture, which shows him in a compromising workman's position.

Walls are done in the tracking room. Time for the ceiling.

Damn, that was fast! The ceiling is well under way. In fact, there's only about 15 minutes work left, but it's dinner time.

Taped walls in the tracking room.

Rob & Sheri are back for the last time! Bringing back materials to build the floor in the control room.

Sheri laid out the 2x4 stringers and I placed electrical boxen where I wanted AC.

Next, blocks were placed at 24 inches. The planset called for 12 inches, which would have created 8" x 8" squares. This is done to make the acoustics of the floor less resonant, but we decided it was a little excessive.

Now, the conduit for the electrical is run. It should be noted that the control room has three kinds of power in it: 2 20A circuits, 2 UPS-dedicated pigtails for the rack equipment, and a UPS-dedicated pigtail for the speakers.

Next, mineral wool insulation goes in the grid.

...and the first layer of T&G plywood begins.

The first layer is done. Note the notch left open for the installation of the door.

Layer number two begins with an odd-sized piece of ply to ensure that the seams don't match up.

The sub-floor for the control room is complete!

Now begins the prepping of the electrical outlets.

Look, Ma! No mess!

The machine room hasn't been cleared out since the framing was completed.

The tracking room floor is laid out in the same manner, beginning by marking the locations of the blocks on each stringer.

Next, we lay out the stringers and begin to attach them.

Once the stringers are all attached, we put in the blocks and toe-nail them into the stringers.

Laying out the machine room floor. Technically, the machine room doesn't need this floor, however its height needs to match the tracking room, so the easiest way is to do the same thing.

Now, we lay out the Super W pads the floor will float upon. They are 1 per square foot.

...and we fill the grid with insulation again. Note that all electrical in this room is running along the outside edge of the room. Nothing crosses the center, or we might get an induction hum when recording.

As we assembled the floor, we had to use it as our staging area.

The machine room needs electrical, too!

The tracking room floor is complete!

Now that the machine room floor is done, Rob & Jeff Titus put plywood on the back wall.

In the meantime, Sheri was busy putting plywood up on the lobby wall.

The electrical for the whole place terminates here, although the sub-panel has yet to be installed and wired up.

Now, sheri has built resilient blocking for the lobby wall and used it to plug the gap, completing the face of the entry.

The first panel of sheetrock goes up in the tracking room, showing the window for the projector.

The machine room is now entirely skinned and ready for taping and mudding!

The entry has sheetrock!

Yesterday, FedEx Freight delivered two pallets of acoustic treatments to the studio. Unfortunately, my camera was stolen Sunday night, so I didn't get any photos of this massive delivery.

As you can see, there were a lot of panels delivered.

It's time for the doors! Before we could begin, we had to bring the plates the doors will sit upon up to the floor level.

This is Kerndog. He hangs out with Jack during the week. Mostly, he handles the tough decisions....like when to have lunch.

Prepping the first door fram.

Jack checks to ensure that it is plumb and has an even amount of space between the door and its jamb.

That's a mighty big saw!

Finishing the second door.

Surveying a job well done.

Door 3 goes into its place in the machine room.

As does door four.

Before the 5th and 6th doors can go in, we must build a tunnel similar to the window tunnel so the construction isn't visible.

The tunnel is stapled into place.

And then it is trimmed.

And now the door can be installed.

And closed!

The second door to the control room is installed.

In the mean time, Juan is sealing up the ceiling edges witih acoustic sealant in preparation for finishing the walls.

That's a whole lotta acoustic treatments!

The wall joints are getting smoothed over so a topping layer can be applied.

Another view of smoothed joints.

Nicely smooth walls, ready for sanding!

Juan is finishing up the corners now. We used paper tape so that the walls don't crack if they move a bit.

Sanding. Everyone told me how dusty this would be, but with a vacuum sanding attachment for my ShopVac, there was almost no dust at all.

Once the sanding was complete, Juan put up the primer. Since I'm using a dark paint, a tinted primer helps reduce the number of coats necessary.

More primer.

Once the primer was done, Juan started with the final paint. It looks a bit dark in the photos, but it's really a nice deep purply.

Finished walls.

Finished walls in the control room.

Next, I put foam in the cracks between the walls and the door jambs. This will get sealed with acoustic caulk so sound doesn't leak through.

I also caulked all the joints in the floor in preparation for the finished floor.

A better view of the caulked floor in the control room.

The edges also get caulked.

Here we have a door jamb primed for paint.

Drew is priming doors.

Flooring materials are here! This is (hopefully) enough for the control, tracking, and machine rooms. As you'll see, it's a nice spalted maple flooring from Mannington.

Laminated flooring needs to sit on an underlayment. As I researched the options, I was informed by a hardwood flooring dealer that the highest quality underlayment is is EthaFoam. Thankfully, I've got about 1000 square feet of that already!

The EthaFoam is layed out and I cut holes for the electrical boxes to poke through.

Jack came to help me begin the flooring. We had to scribe the first row so it would rest evently against the starting wall. Also, we cut a a couple inches from it to ensure that we have a mostly-full board in the final row.

The paint buckets are used to hold down the floor while the next piece is inserted. Otherwise, it comes apart again.

Jack is cutting a hole for an electrical box. Note the blue tape to keep the face of the board from chipping away.

First couple rows done.

Andrew came by to help paint the finish coat on the doors.

A couple more rows. NIce looking, eh?

The process goes pretty quickly when there aren't any obstacles. When there's an electrical box, though, it takes a long time to work around it.

Nice looking maple floor in the control room

Bringing home the closet shelving that will become cable trays. (The truck sure is getting good at carrying 12-foot objects!)

The first cable tray goes into the control room.

Another view of the first cable tray.

To install the cable tray, I used an auto-leveling laser line. This neat device gets pinned to the wall and draws a laser line across the wall in both directions.

Then, clips ar placed a foot apart and screwed into the wall.

From there, the tray is clipped into place and dangles from the wall until the suppots are installed.

The supports are installed every 3 feet and at each end.

In the mean time, Julie helped paint the first coat on the doors.

All the cable tray is up in the control room.

Putting up the first tray in the tracking room. The same procedure is used, but the trays are only 12' long, so two have to be joined.

One wall done.

The doors are painted with their first coat.

Second coat of paint is complete.

Door hardware goes on!

The door hardware is Schlage AL2 series. The entry door is a Primus cylinder, that only I can get copied. Pretty cool.

Electrical feeder materials are here! Let the real fun begin!

This box contains 90° bends, connectors and couplers, a meter socket, and pulling compound.

This is the 1.5" conduit I'll be running over the roof of the length of the entire facility.

1/0 wire. These are 2 of the 3 wires. This is some hefty wire!

I began by laying out the conduit on the roof.

More layout.

A coupler on a 90° turn.

The coupler again.

Making a turn to go up to the next roof.

The conduit is coupled and sitting on pressure-treated 4x6.

The turn is made and continues across the roof.

A fun turn.

The conduit run has to scale a 35' wall in order to get onto the roof in the first place. Bill Johnson came to help me with this, which was fantastic!

We put 4 45° angles to get past all the conduit mess others have created.

Then, we hoisted the entire thing up the wall using a block & tackle.

The conduit bypassing all the other mess.

Bill is placing the meter socket.

Then, we attached a 2x4 so we could fasten the conduit to the wall.

Across the roof, after scaling the 35' wall.

Another, more in-depth look at my power main. It turns out that my power is 3-phase 320/208. What this means is that PG&E is transforming the electricity to 3-phase 320, which means that if I pull a single phase, it will be 208 V, instead of 240 V. This is _bad_ for audio and electronics. I guess we'll be upgrading to 3-phase power now. At least the conduit is big enough.

Larry came to help out in the studio! Here, he is beginning to terminate the electrical outlets in the control room floor.

Finished outlets.

Julie brought Bonnie by to see the studio and go get lunch with us.

The gear has moved into the room.

In order to place the panels, speaker locations had to be determined. To do this, my desk was placed at my precise listening position. Then, a center location on the desk was marked with a line (using blue tape) and a speed square allowed for choosing an angle. The level sitting on the square (triangle?) has a laser pointer on it, so we could locate the point at the wall.

The tape on the wall indicates the location of the point from the laser pointer. The angles are 0° for the Center channel and 25° for each the Left and Right channels.

The rear channels are at another angle.

Now, the laser level paints a line for me and the first panel will go where the first reflection point is.

To find the reflection point, we used a mirror, a lamp, and a person. The person stood where the speaker will be located. The lamp stood where the listening position is and pointed at the all. The mirror was slid across the wall until the light from the lamp reflected upon the person's face. That was the point of first reflection.

With the equipment here, now it's time to put the StudioPanels on the walls. The same laser level was very useful for aligning the panels.

Once the first panel's location is found, they alternate absorber/diffuser on down the wall.

The first four panels are hanging!

The same mounting is done for the Bazorber (bass absorber).

The rear pair in the control room.

I decided to purchase a PBX for the studio for a few reasons. It arrived today and here it is!

This system allows for 6 telephone lines and 16 extensions, far more than I'll ever need.

The system also allows me to put a doorphone at the front door, which when activated, will call my desk. If I wish to allow someone in, I can open the door from phone!

One of the new telephones. Strangely enough, this is the same kind of phone system we used at LucasArts, so some of my clients should feel at-home.

Today, the finishing row of the control room's floor was installed.

And the tracking room is being prepped for its floor now, too.

The machine room wall is being taped and mudded.

Before the floor can go into the tracking room, the seams all needed sealing, just like the control room.

The floor is ready for the laminated panels.

The first rows in the tracking room are going in.

Gee, another 16' load on top of my truck cab. These are all the baseboards.

The floor is coming along.

And now it's completed.

Before they can be installed, I needed to paint the baseboards.

The first baseboard is going in.

The first corner. Note that the baseboards are also raised off the floor. The only attach to the wall, so it limits the mechanical connection points between the walls and floor.

In the mean time, the ceiling panels in the tracking room are beginning to get installed.

Before the baseboards can be completed, the door trim needs to go in, so it has to be painted, too.

Juan is mudding the entry wall.

Along with other finishing touches, many of the doors need stops to keep them from damaging the walls.

The first door casing goes in.

At the same time, I begin to install the doorphone at the front door.

I cut a hole big enough for the handy box to mount in. The wall behind is actually a closet inside the entry.

The doorphone is installed! Nice looking, eh? It's all pro here.

Door casings are getting installed! They make the room really start feeling close to completion. Note that this corner was an interesting problem. The door is so tight against the wall (with only a 1/4" of clearance of the other door's handle, in fact!) that we had to find a way to complete the casing. So, I asked Juan to turn the corner and come down that wall.

Now, the baseboards in the tracking room are going in.

The control room baseboards/door trim looking nice!

Bill is spackling the trim so it can be sanded and touched up.

A nice looking corner of the tracking room.

The entry has been primed now and is ready for painting.

The completed wall in the machine room is also primed and ready for painting, despite the still open wall at the end. That wall cannot be closed until the electrical is completed and the inspector has signed off on the final.

The new 3-phase electrical panel is here and ready to be installed.

And Hialeah Meters shipped to me a 3-phase 200A meter, as well as a 7-jaw meter socket.

Here's the meter socket (exterior).

And here's the inside.

Today, the Caller Identification Interface (C6 Module) for the PBX arrived, too.

The entry wall is now painted.

Looking good

More than half way through the trim around the tracking room window.

Note that it was necessary to trim the inside of the window first, because it is recessed so far into the wall. The inside trim is also holding a piece of vinyl barrier in place, to limit the mechanical connection.

Juan is building the inside trim for the projector window.

A finished projector window!

Today is alarm installation day. Doug came by with the alarm system, ready to put the thing in. I had already run the wires to the various locations.

Wiring up the alarm brain.

The arming station.

The door-opening sensor.

The motion sensor.

Now that the alarm system is in, it's time to install the phone system. I've run three 66 blocks: 1 for incoming telco service, 1 for the PBX, and 1 for the Caller ID box for the PBX. Way overkill, but I didn't feel like making an amphenol pigtail.

The phone system is installed next to the alarm system. Yes, the Machine Room has its own extension!

Today, the headphone distribution system arrived. This is a very cool thing.

The system is made up of a main hub, where 8 different audio signals can be sent to personal mixers. I have 6 personal mixers, which means that everyone can have the source material mixed however _they_ want to hear it in their headphones!

Big boxes. 400lbs of big boxes, in fact!

The studio welcomes its new mini monolith. There are actually two speaker stands there. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to separate them, since they bolted 'em together! Definitely an interesting, and effective, packing method.

The first speaker stand goes into place.

3 speakers, all placed according to degree measurements. Using the desk for reference, as before, I found 65° from parallel using a speed square (!?) and a laser pointer. For the surrounds, we use 20° from parallel.

Left surround mini monolith.

Right surround mini monolith.

Now that the speakers are in, and the approximate speaker height and placement determined, it's time to use the mirror trick again and hang the CloudPanels.

Look, Ma! A hole!

This conduit connects the control and machine rooms together so the noisy rack of computer gear can send its cables through to the quiet racks. The 2 90° turns help greatly reduce the amount of noise that comes through the pipe. In fact, I was entirely unable to hear the computer from the control room through the conduit!

The noisy rack goes into it's new home. Unfortunately, it will have to move again, since the floor in here hasn't been done, and can't be until the end wall is completed after the final inspection.

Rack of quiet gear, connected to the noisy rack through the conduit.

A familiar sight. For now, the LCDs will sit on the table, but when the new LCDArm arrives, they will be lifted off, allowing for still more table space!

The last door gets installed!

The last door, along with the last door casing.

Drew is putting a diffuser on the ceiling. All acoustics of the tracking room will be customizable, however the ceiling will be a wee bit inaccessible, so an equal amount of absorption and diffusion.

Dan is putting foam around the edges of a diffuser. This will prevent it from sympathetically rattling against the ceiling.

Lots of diffusers and absorbers on the ceiling.

Painting the trim around the last door.

I installed an electric strike for the entry door. The strike is controlled by the phone system, allowing the door to be unlocked from the control room, or anywhere else in the facility!

Innovative Office Solutions has a product called the ArcView. It is a fully articulating arm for 3 LCD displays!

The ArcView with my Planar displays mounted and tilted a bit back, allowing for better sound imaging.

The first diffuser/absorber panel pair for the tracking room. There will be 28 of these pairs in the room, which can be rotated in order to customize the acoustics of the room. This first panel pair took 2 days to build! I had been mulling over the design for 3 or 4 months.

As you can see, there are two hanger clips. These are storm window clips, which allow the wedged panels to hang nicely from the walls.

A laser level was used to ensure that all the panels are perfectly aligned. Note that the panel pair hangs from the wall using two stairway handrail supports. These allow the clips to hold the panel pair the perfect distance from the wall.

The first two panel pairs hanging.

First, we get a 4' x 8' sheet of the cheapest plywood available. This sheet is mahogany, which cost $19/sheet. The sheet gets cut into quarters. They should be close to 2' x 4', but will get trimmed a bit, so exactness is not totally necessary.

Lay the StudioPanel template on top of the plywood sheet. This helps find the location of the v-bars. You can actually just measure down 6.75" from the top of the ply and mount the v-bars back-to-back.

It is a good idea to pre-drill sets of v-bars, so the holes will line up. Then, drill holes through ply where your holes are in the v-bars. Use pan-head screws, washers, and capture nuts to mount the v-bars back to back.

The storm clips used for mounting the panel pairs come in this package.

An example of the clips.

Measure in 3.5" from top edges of the ply to find the location of the hanger clips. Line up the edge of the bent part of the clip with 3.5" mark. Mount the clips opposite directions using the same hardware as used for the v-bars. The center of the two clips should measure 17" apart.

Put Velcro on the middle and bottom parts of the ply. I used the fuzzy part on the ply because it wouldn't catch on the fabric of the panels.

Then put the scratchy part of the Velcro on the middle and bottom of the absorber. Use a staple gun to ensure that the Velcro makes good contact with the panel's frame.

Velcro on the diffuser can be placed on the ribs and the cross support.

Before assembling the finished panel pair, trim down the ply on three edges. It is only necessary to take about an inch off the ply, just so it makes a nice, clean, hidden edge between the panels.

Two walls of panels!

Today, we will be bending conduit for the electrical feeder. This is the hydraulic bender, or at least a part of it. 1.5" can't be bent by hand. You must use a machine.

The bender is pretty much just like a regular hickey for bending smaller conduit.

Fred Bretz puts the first piece into the bender.

We can figure out the bends by simply measuring the distance between two points and the difference in height between those points. Ah, geometry!

A large protractor is used to measure the bend as you go. It's pretty tough, as the hydraulic bender is not exactly gentle or easy to control.

The first bend is in place.

Once the first bend is made, we measure to the location of the second and make it.

As you can see, we have a piece of conduit that can jump around an obstacle. The other pieces will be bent for other purposes, such as transitions from one roof to another.

Super Dave cuts a piece of the existing wall in the machine room in order to make room for the electrical sub-panel.

A new header is put in place to make sure the wall is strong enough around the panel.

Super Dave uses his Hole Hawg to drill holes for the 3/4" conduit that will go to the lounge and the 1 1/2" conduit that will receive the feeder.

A pilot hole is drilled where the conduit will come through the roof.

Drilling through the roof.

The 3-phase panel goes into place, attached to the conduit that goes through the roof.

Preparing the gutter for receiving 13 pieces of MC wire.

Conduit protruding from the roof. Pole vault anyone?

The gutter is in place and the MC is ready to be installed and terminated.

Kilowatt inspects Super Dave's work, to ensure he's doing it to code.

The gutter has all its MC run and the grounds are terminated.

The panel is terminated, with the exception of one circuit.

Time for a photo shoot! Tanya brought Mignon, a model, to take photos of the studio for publicity.

Setting up lights!

Tanya swaps lenses between shots.

Snapping pics.

Surprise! I gotcha!

More panel pairs in the tracking room.

The entire room is wrapped!

The new Millennia 8-channel HV-3D microphone pre-amp arrived today.

The Millennia HV-3D in its new home.

Wiring begins. First on the list: Elco connections between the tracking and control rooms.

The first 6 channels of an Elco 24-channel connection.

A nearly-completed Elco.

A nearly-completed female Elco. Once the other end is done and the connections have all been verified, the heatshrink can be shrunk down and the strain relief installed.

I picked up these two breakout boxes at NAMM last week. The 16-channel box will take microphones from the live room to the control room. The other box will provide 8 channels of returns to the Hear Back headphone system.

Wiring up the 8-channel headphone return.

Wiring up the 16-channel microphone box.

The wiring for the 16-channel mic box is nwo finished.

The finished floor boxes, with an Elco on the end.

8 channels of a male Elco.

The control room-end snake is complete! It is a male Elco to 3 8-channel XLR pigtails.

Everything, of course, is anally labeled.

A nearly completed male Elco.

Sean is back! To complete the HVAC, we need to install these 4-foot-long diffused registers. They will provide two features: quieter & less direct airflow.

The diffused register, installed near the machine room's projector window.

It's now time to tune the control room! Tony & Kier came over with their very fun toys to do the job.

Tony & Keir, making changes to the Ashly room EQs.