The Perfect Studio - Does it Exist For You?

I have told myself “Now I got everything I need” at least two times at year since I was 14 y.o. I stopped believing it when I was twenty, I think. However, I have always let myself enjoy the illusion. It is a good feeling to be satisfied with gear for a period.

In theory it should be hard for all of us to reach such a point simply due to the biological phenomenon of habituation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation

In a broad sense habituation can be understood as the tendency for your brain to get used to a constant stimulation to such an extent that it does not longer respond to it. A drug addict’s body stops responding to a fixed amount of drugs and need more to react to it. A clock´s ticking may be noticed if you attend to it, but it will soon disappear from your perception as if it was not there. The look of your wife that once blew your mind may fade as extraordinary as the years go by. The song that you once loved bores you now. Likewise with the stimulation of your gear: The look, sound and feel that inspire you may fade to the extent where it does not give you the kick needed for making music or having fun with it.

I have no chance against habituation, but sometimes need change of set up from tune to tune to keep moving, thus having more roads to Rome ITB and OTB in different sizes. The only solution for me. And sometimes one road has to be closed and another opened. That is just musical life.

However, that does not mean I am sure no one can reach a point of status quo and satisfaction for longer periods of time, so now I will simply ask you to share your thoughts and experiences on this for curiosity.

Kindly
Gothi

"Perfection" only exists to me as an idea, I've never experienced perfection IRL

Very true. We’re so fortunate these days to have so many options when it comes to creating.

It's endless for me. If I had more space I'd want a grand piano. If I had even more space I'd want a pipe organ.

I’ve made a lot of progress on this; I no longer get jealous at other’s impressive studios. The key to solving this jealously was to simply spend £25,000 on buying an impressive studio

That's a very interesting topic you raise there. Feeling satisfied with what you have. At least, that's how it seems from the outside but in reality, I think it's really a state of mind. It's a difficult thing to explain but I think i have the perfect example for this, bare with me , it'll be lengthy.

I'm Canadian and live 6 months every year abroad (South America mainly) for tour/gig/job reasons.
Last year I was having one of those deep conversation with a Colombian friend in my apartment watching the sea.
He asked me, which period of your life were you the happiest?
It caught me by surprise but after a few minutes, I told him, I think it's when I was about 20 years old and didn't have much. That time when sometime I was wondering how I would eat until the next paycheck.
He turned around and told me, same thing. When his father died ( he was a diplomate in Costa Rica) he was left in the street because he was an adult and the succession was not fixed. So he started selling grass in an abandoned building infested with rats and had only a meal a day at lunch .

My whole point is, when I was working in a big studio, I was not comfortable. It was a lot of pressure and I never wanted to stay there to work on my stuff. I just wanted to get done with the client and go home to sleep.

On the other hand, I remember being 17 years old at my friends house and playing with a sampler and a small footprint console and it was the best time of my life.

Later on, in my 30's , I started buying every single 12 bit samplers ( and 8 and 10 bits as well ) I could find and filled one of my bedroom with keyboards and samplers. 5 years later I sold them all and just fixed myself the simplest most effective turntable/sampler, AD/DA room to HAVE FUN !!

To this day, I still do prefer my time when I was a kid playing with that sampler and my current setups. One being a professional space for my Mastering rig andf the other just for fun and giggles. Both are simple yet effective.

The last thing I want in life is a big studio. Be it empty or filled, it wouldnt make me happy in any shape or form. A busy studio is just overwhelming and an empty one mean a lot of bills to pay out of your pocket and a lot of empty space where people should be enjoying. So thats a big no-no for me. No more for me thank you.

Cripes, not in one go I hope? 25k could be a huge pile of stuff these days or a few fancy things. Which way did you go?

I must be somewhere at the contentment stage. Actually it's more that it's a headache to fit any more stuff in!

I don't really lust after the expensive stuff. The new stuff is only going to depreciate and the old stuff is only going to break down. The only things that tempt me are "bargains". B stuff the prime example, but I know it's a slippery slope. Do I need a CR-78? Do I need a Jupiter 8? Do I even need a Wave when I've got a Microwave? Not really.

The main thing that makes me jealous when I see a nice studio is the space and tidiness. I know lack of fancy gear isn't holding me back at all, it's mess and bad ergonomics!

Getting purpose made studio furniture made a big difference for me. I’m not 100% satisfied, I have a list. I’m pretty satisfied though, compared to when I first started.

Heh, the 25K thing was just a random number for sake of the joke I wonder how much I actually spent, lol. I have relatively few top-tier synths, a number of mid-tier synths, a fair bit of modular and then everything else is obscure 80's/90's digital bargains that no one wanted 10 years ago - Ensoniq VFX for £100? Yes please!

Habituation and the desire for new gear stimulation is real. And this forum, the music magazines, and social media feed it to us. To me the key is asking myself ( especially while on GS ) is if I didn't know about a piece of gear, would I need it? Does any future purchase fill a real gap I have experienced in my writing/production process? The answer is almost always no.

A few years ago I downsized, sold off a ton of gear, and now I have the perfect space and the perfect amount of gear. It's small, streamlined, uncomplicated, and thoroughly visually unimpressive in the world of home studios. And I fight to keep it that way every time a new piece of gear or software appears on GS. The struggle is real...but not insurmountable.

Ha, I thought you'd joined the big spenders on here! I probably have spent a frightening amount if I added it all up, even with a frugal bargain habit like your VFX. I like to think I'll get a big chunk back when it comes to selling when I realise I'm in my dotage. It's a funny market now. I noticed Ebay have just added a "buyer's fee" of 4% so that's either 4% inflation for the buyers or the sellers have to absorb it.

Do you have a video tour?

I have given up until I see someone make a synth that is close to my idea of perfect.. it seems so easy to me but it never happens, and I'm tired of settling.. especially for what to synth's cost.. I just want these synth companies to realize they have a untapped market waiting to be filled.. those of us that don't really love playing keys, but play pads.. but want synth's.. not Roland's or multiengine, in a box.. that we can play.. like a amazing sounding synth but I'm a analog 4, or tempest style package.. is that too much to ask?? Because it never really happens.. I feel like that would sell, too big a risk though I guess..

I only have this one from two years ago

The 'perfect studio' for me is one that's set up to go with just a few power switches flipped to on.

As much as I like fiddling with new configurations, having a core set up ready to go in seconds is pretty dang 'perfect.'

I do not have that right now, sadly.

not til i die. life is growth!

I think I’ve built what is a perfect studio for me. I’m lacking nothing except perhaps that one or two drum machines. I could own every drum machine on earth and still feel the need for another.

I'm working on building purpose built furniture my "music room" that will accommodate my current gear with a little room to add gear in the future. I really have too much gear to need to buy more but at least I am recording a couple jams a week.

That’s what counts the most, are you actually making some music with all those toys? Happy to say I’ve been pretty productive lately too.

The presumption here seems to be that the perfect studio is some static condition with the perfect selection of hardware units. Personally, that's not my idea of a perfect studio. I like trying new things out and switching things up so the thought of being stuck with the same gear does not appeal to me. I have some key items that I've owned for a long time and I can't envision ever getting rid of (but that's always subject to change), some items that I enjoy for now, but are replaceable when something more interesting grabs my attention, and one or two items that will probably be sold at some point in the not-too-distant future. This is just the way I like it. I also have a very diverse musical background, so my musical style swings all over the place, which also influences my preferences and sometimes erratic choices in studio gear purchases. So, in that regard, I have no complaints about my current studio.

All that said, my studio is not what I'd call perfect, but it has certainly exceeded what I dreamed about as a younger musician and has more than enough to achieve whatever I want to achieve. If I could improve it all, maybe it would be a little bigger to allow me to replace a couple of my desktop modules with the keyboard versions, space for a nice comfy couch when I have guest musicians over, and I'd also love to have a nice iso booth for recording vocals.

I’m not one of these ppl who want “anything to be possible”. I’m not gonna suddenly start making pop music, or country, or whatever. I’m not crossing off a checklist of “types of sounds” either.

I’ve been building my studio to cater only to my own idiosyncratic preferences in tone and use. I would never just suggest to a random person that my solution is their solution. It’s almost definitely not.

But yeah there’s a handful of sound generating devices that I’d take if one drops into my lap for cheap (sp-1200, prophet vs, Jupiter 4…. I’m not holding my breath on any of these) but for the most part I’m good with what I have. I’d like to upgrade a few pieces (exchange the tascam 688 for a tascam 388, maybe a better two track reel as well. Having two functional monitors shouldn’t seem like an upgrade but at this point it obviously would lol) and I’m always down for some cheap fx/eq/compressors tho I’m probably running out of easy to use space for those soon.

Honestly, I love my studio’s basic layout. A few things need better infrastructure than I have now, but that’s a bit more on look side rather than anything else. I dig the vibe surrounded by records and ephemera on my third floor.

Switching out the mackie 24:8 for the soundcraft 600 really was exactly as much of an upgrade generally as I had hoped for and in some ways even better than I’d guessed.

Anyway, yeah I think of my ideal studio as being fairly static and I am fairly close to having it.

I tried for years to have a studio with all my stuff in it.

Now I just store it all and build small setups to work with.

I lose my mind with all the cables and repairs and expenses but fvck it, gotta use old analog gear. Otherwise I’d just quit it all for the saxophone.

Growth, stabilization, decay, rebirth.

I think in all honesty maybe perfect doesn’t even exist. But spot on, you build what you think is perfect for you. A basic layout is something I’m admiring more and more as I get older.

It affects the thinking IMO, clean and basic frees the mind to be creative. We are spoilt for tools today, the biggest thing is to not give in to all this new gear hype and keep only what works for you. I remember I used to buy all the latest new synths, thank goodness I stopped.

I’m currently selling off a heap of things and putting away what I can’t sell in boxes.
My aim to have a simple but very effective set-up.
Only keep what I admire/like and use in terms of gear.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

Wonderful. That seems like a studio collected over several years, if not a life time, and fairly steady. You are not one of those selling much are you? More adding?

I remember someone saying something like when you’re happy with your studio you’ve lost interest.

Very much like when you’re bored of london you’re basically dead inside or something equally nonsense.

That’s not a good thing

The perfect studio is the set of tools that help you finish the job

For me, the perfect studio consists of having the space to lay out your gear that suits your needs. There is nothing worse than not having enough room and the feeling of being cramped with limits to your space as you acquire more gear.