My studio in progress
Bought some laminated, uh, chipboard today (the boards arcade cabs are made of, laminated to look like my desk). I cut them up and made proper shelves for my monitors.
The acoustic absorbant ceiling made a huge difference already! But having the speakers in ear-height and about 20cm farther from my ears, so that my head is in the so-called 'sweet spot', really made a difference :)
Been browsing through my Reason tracks this evening (that is, after 9PM, which is when the shelves were finished...), I have 3 tracks that I will soon trust to mix by ear... the room is still very bare, ie. not enough soft stuff to stop the parallel walls from reverberating a bit too much for comfort. Everything in front of the monitors is all right, ie. if you 'smack with your tongue' (pro audio engineer trick ;)) nothing comes back. But the back and sides need work. "Just short back and sides" (c) Monty Python Lumberjack sketch!!
I got the reverberation down to a short metallic click, but I hope a 3+2+1 sofa combo will do the trick. Either way it's 5% of the cost of 'pro' materials. Listen and fix the big issues first.
The shelves are made by 2x 3 slates, each 32x32cm, of this board. I first made an 'L' using a right angle bracket, and screwed on two right angle brackets of the same type near the "bottom" of the vertical L you see on the pics. Those brackets was screwed to the underside of the desk, as you can see the screws were a little too long so they penetrated the desktop surface, I'll be nipping them off. But before I could screw the brackets to the underside, I had a hell of a time making the L quite vertical and press a little to fit the right angle of the desk corner, with only two hands!!
So I had to hold the L's to make the underside brackets flat and tight to the underside, draw lines with a pencil, and fasten the L to the desk edge with screws, before I could drive screws into the underside brackets. Those temporary screws are still in the edge of the desk, they make it stable and flush.
When it was all straight I fastened the shelf proper with 3 countersunk screws made for this specific board, so that they wouldn't scratch the underside of the monitors. The shop didn't have heavy 2-3mm rubber sheet in stock, I will put that between the monitors and the shelf when I can buy it. I will also cut off some of the vertical 'L' since it's not needed, and perhaps drill some holes to avoid any 'boom box' effect (3 boards form half a box). I've heard no such tendency so far, in fact the vibrations in the desktop is the same, or less, as when I had the monitors on a stack of books!!
Total cost, about 10€. Cheaper than buying the stack of books :D
If I have time tomorrow I will go look for a cheap sofa to make the room less like an empty box (and more comfy!!)
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