Hello friends.

I've been meaning to post some pictures of my studio build for some time now and I finally got around to it.

I've taken my 850 sq foot garage space and converted it into a control room and live room for my new studio Sonic Farm.

Rod Gervais provided the design and a team of local contractors have been putting it together.

We started the build in April, here are some pics from the last 8 months...




















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The gear has arrived from our friends at VK and we are opening in February.

We are using 2 48 channel Midas Heritage 3000 consoles linked together to make a 96 channel split console.

We have 48 channels of iZ ADA II conversion feeding Pro Tools 11HD.

A partial gear and backline list...

Midas Heritage 3000 96 Channel Console

48 I/O iZ ADA II

PT 11HD

Solid State Logic Alpha VHD 4 Channel Mic Pre

Pauly Ton Super Screen

Sony C800g Tube Microphone

Focal SM9 Powered Reference Monitor (2)

Drawmer MC2.1 Monitor Controller

Rupert Neve Designs Portico II Channel Strip

With Pre Amp, EQ and Compressor

Rupert Neve Designs Portico II MBP Stereo Mastering Compressor

Avalon VT737sp Tube Pre Amp (2)

Unversal Audio LA-2A Tube Compressor

Warm Audio WA76 Compressor (2)

Empirical Labs Distressor EL8X-S Stereo
Compressor

UBK Fatso Compressor/Tape Simulator

DBX 160a Compressor (2)

API 2500 Stereo Compressor

Solid State Logic X-Rack with 8 Dynamics Modules (8 channel compressor and gate)

Bricasti M7 Stereo Reverb Processor

Eventide H7600 Ultra Harmonizer Stereo Effects Processor

TC Electronic M3000 Stereo Effects Processor

TC Electronic Dtwo Delay Processor
Beyerdynamic DT770 PRO Tracking Headphone (6)

Sennheiser HD800 Mixing Headphone (1)

Manley Massive Passive Stereo Tube EQ

Shure SM57 Dynamic Microphone (4)

Shure Beta57 Dynamic Microphone

Sennheiser MD421 Dynamic Microphone (5)

EV RE-20 Dynamic Microphone (2)

Shure Beta 91A Condenser Microphone (2)

Shure Beta 98 Condenser Microphone (3)

Bock Audio IFET Condenser Microphone (2)

Beyerdynamic M160 Ribbon Microphone (2)

Nuemann U87ai Condenser Microphone (2)

Beyerdynamic M201 Dynamic Microphone (2)

Schoeps Colette Series Condenser Microphone(2)

Nuemann M149 Tube Condenser Microphone

Royer R121 Ribbon Microphone

Shure SM7B Dynamic Microphone

Coles 4038 Ribbon Microphone (2)


7 Piece DW Collectors Series Maple/Mahogany Drum Kit

18x22 Bass Drum

7x8, 8x10, 8x12 Rack Toms

12x14, 14x16 Floor Toms

8x14 DW Performance Maple Snare

6.5x14 DW Collectors Black Nickel over Brass Snare

7x13 Pork Pie Acrylic Snare

3x13 Pearl Piccolo in Maple and Brass


Sabian Cymbals:

21" HH Crossover Ride
21" HH Raw Bell Dry Ride
14" AA Regular Hats
14" AAX Stage Hats
14" AAX X-Celerator Hats
17" AAX Studio Crash
18" AAX Studio Crash
18" AAX Explosion Crash
18" AAX O-zone Crash
17" AA Holy China
19" Vault Signature Holy China
18" AAX China
12" HHX Evolution Splash
7",9",11" Max Splash Set
8" Max Stax

Tama HT741 Throne w/adjustable backrest

DW 9000 series hardware

DW 9000 extended footboard double pedal

DW 9000 HI Hat stand

Pearl P900 Single Bass Drum Pedal

Roland V-Drums TD-9 W/Cymbal Upgrades

Orange 1x12 Tube Combo Amp

Marshall JCM900 2x12 Quarter Stack

Kemper Amp Modeling System

Nord Stage 2 HA88 Keyboard

Steinway Upright Piano, newly restored










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Looking great! I briefly skimmed the gear list, but will come back to it after I've had a little more sleep!

I'd love to hear how you like the heritage setup.

Epic build!! Congratulations.

Looks like Avatar Studios :-) Great!

congrats to you and Rod!

We have purchased a 40 foot RV to accommodate our clients over night when needed, it also serves as a lounge. Its parked next to the studio.

The Midas consoles have been FANTASTIC! We isolated the power supplies to make them control room friendly. I can't say enough about these consoles, the EQ and summing are incredible.



Some additional pics....

Looks great and I imagine it will sound that way, too, with Rod's design/experience and that gear list.

Congrats!
Michael

Thanks for the compliments guys!

We've booked February for a full length, our super doors will be installed this week.

We're looking forward to putting up the house drum kit and receiving the piano this week as well.

The place looks amazing - the workmanship is 1st rate........

Congrats.

Rod

Nice! Without the equipment and RV, just wondering what the total "neighborhood" number would be for your build-out?
design, materials, construction, air . combined Thx

Sweet. So jealous!

It's a 6 figure ordeal to do it properly. This build extends beyond my garage, an isolation room will be constructed in the basement as well.

Thanks. I wasn't sure if 850 was the total square footage or how the rooms were broken up but extending the area and adding an iso below makes sense. gl

Why did you choose the H3000's? I can imagine a pair of XL3's or XL4's in there would have made more sense.
And since these are live consoles, how do you handle the Radar returns? Do you have one console to handle all the inputs and one to deal with the returns? Or do you have the inputs split out across the two consoles in order to be able to use a total of 48 groups to send stuff to Radar?


Dutchy

We chose the H3000's because they offer the same EQ and Pres as the XL4 with greater routing flexibility and a more modern design.

10 VCAs, 24 groups and 24 auxes per desk, sweepable highpass, 4 band parametric EQ and balanced insert points on everything.

We use one console for inputs and it's groups output to our converters (which are iZ ADA IIs).

We use the other console as a monitor section (essentially a split console).

The consoles are Bus linked allowing us to build headphone mixes from the auxes on both desks (for zero latency headphone mixes). These consoles were designed to be linked together. This setup has advantages you don't get with an inline desk, having separate EQ and insert points on the way in that don't affect your monitor channels is actually a really useful feature. The consoles also have a Solo In Place function that most live desks don't include, making them a great choice for a studio.

We are Beta testing a new version of RADAR that runs PT 11HD, it's called RADAR studio and currently uses external converters (however the public release will be a self contained system that can run any DAW).

So this is what IZ Corp was working on. I was told a few months ago to hold off on upgrading to Radar 6 till after NAMM as they were coming out with a big change, interesting.

Yes, they will be making an official announcement soon.

Your studio is awesome, i'm jealous.

I can't seem to get any answers about the latency over in the iZ thread, and you made a comment about the low latency. When you spoke of the low latency, was that while running in DAW mode?

I imagine it must be good, if this is a new way of integrating an interface in to a computer workstation. Did they mangage to pipe it directly in to the mainboard? To me this is the most significant thing about this new product, its something different besides fw, tb, usb, pci, ethernet, etc.

Is there anyway you can get some roundtrip latency figures from protools? Do the radar studio channels show up as asio like somebody mentioned?

thank you

Thanks for the kind words.

The latency on our system is not audible in DAW mode , I suspect it's 5ms or less running Pro Tools HD11 with 48 in/out.

Nice work~! Congrats and best of luck, bound to be an awesome studio!

One quick question, does the exterior stone work have any appreciable acoustic mass/isolation effect, or, it is mainly cosmetic? I am looking at similar finishes and wondering what you have learned in this area-thx

We did it for cosmetic reasons, Rod's design provided nearly 100% isolation without the stone in place.

Here are some new pics of the live room (which is now complete)...

Really looks great. I'm curious about the mini-split. It looks as if you have some actual HVAC ducting in place so was wondering about how the mini-split was being used.

There is a mini split in each room that we use for heating and cooling. They are residential Mitsubishi Mister Slim units 12,000 BTU each. On the low fan setting they produce 19 db of noise.

The ducting you see is for our fresh air make up system. Rod designed a baffled system that allows fresh air to be cycled in and stale air to be exhausted to the outside of the building without allowing any sound to pass through the ductwork.

The ventilation system is completely silent and we can easily record with the HVAC running and the circulation fan running.

In addition - the ventilation system utilizes a Broan HRV so the incoming air is tempered and the client does not throw away all of the money he spends conditioning the various spaces.

Beats the heck out of dumping air in these spaces that's -30 and then trying to heat it up (no one likes a blast of cold air down their neck regardless of the overall room temps) and the energy savings amount to quite a bit over the long haul.......

Rod

Nice, nice nice!
Michael

Great build! What is the finished flooring used in the live room?

Looks like two part epoxy floor finish.......Or just garage floor paint. But the sheen usually indicates
epoxy. Im curious also..:-)

Yes it is a 2 part epoxy like you'd see on a factory floor.

Hallo!

Do you have any kind of measurement of the rooms? Do you have any test data lab for those panels?