Interesting article in NY Times

Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:07 pm

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Home Studios in the Big City

R

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:11 am

For non-trade press, this is a pretty good article. It debunks the novice approaches of carpet, foam and (gasp!) eggcartons. They talked to folks who had been through the painful learning curve. The quote about sound as water was good (if you consider water not being bound by gravity!).

I'm sure glad my soundproofing challenges are far far less. A buddy of mine in New York had the additional challenge of not wanting to publicize the location of thousands of dollars of equipment that can be easily converted into crack. He played very quietly for just that reason. Of course, it didn't help that he was in Hell's Kitchen.

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:50 am

It doesn't always only happen in a city. I live in a small town in middle America. It is a college town with quiet neighborhoods and we do not get many aircraft flying overhead even though we are on the flight path into the big city airport located near by. It is a great place to have a mastering studio. I hired an acoustician to do the room and to control the noise from inside my house and to control the noise going to the outside.

When I started in business I talked to all my neighbors and promised them that I would not be doing any live recording and that all noise would be contained within my house. I can play back at 85 dBSPL inside the mastering studio and you cannot hear it at all outside the building.

The acoustician did a GREAT JOB!

About a year ago I was sitting in my mastering studio doing a project and all of a sudden I heard a chainsaw startup very near my house. I though it was my next door neighbor working on trimming some limbs from her trees but it went on and on and on. I finally walked outside to see what was going on. There was a women dressed in overalls and wearing a logging hat and visor working on what looked like a telephone pole. I stood there for a while watching and the person finally saw me and stopped what she was doing. I asked what was going on and she replied that she was an "artist" and that she carved totem poles for a living. Needless to say this is not something I wanted next to my mastering studio. The town I live in has very strict laws concerning what you can and can't do in a home based business and she was out of business within a day after I filed a complaint with the city/

The only problem with my mastering operation that the acoustician could not deal with was the roof (which is open beam construction) so the only outside noise problem I normally have is when it rains very hard. To do something to the ceiling to isolate it more would cost a great deal of money and would probably entail a complete reworking of the structure of the house. Not something I want to do.

So I guess it does not matter where you live you can be the recipient of and the maker of noise.....The trick is to minimize it.

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