hello everyone,
I am opening/building a new studio. Below is a rough diagram of the space. Here is my problem. .
I will be purchasing a JLM Audio TMP8 8 Channel Preamp and an Apogee Rosetta 800 A/D Converter, and I already have a Tascam FW-1884 (8 ch) interface. I want to be able to use all 16 inputs at any needed time, and I also have a Focusrite Twin Track Pro that I currently use through the first two inserts on the Tascam.
How can I set up my studio so that I can input mics in the various tracking rooms, etc and so that i can route the signal to the desired preamp/input? I was thinking I'd like to have all 16 inputs in the main tracking/drum room, at least 4 in the iso/tracking room, 2 in the vocal iso, and 4 in the lounge/tracking, and 4 in the control room just in case. I'm sure this will require a patchbay, but i have no idea how to set this up, how to route it, make the connections and all that good stuff. What do I use in the various tracking rooms? A snake/stage box? any useful links on where to purchase the necessary item?
Also, as far as headphone distribution, I have a Behringer 4 channerl, and I was thinking of running each channel into a Rolls 4 channel headphone amp thereby giving me 16 headphone outs for the various rooms. (probalby put 2 Rolls boxes in the main room, 1 in the iso/tracking, 1 in the lounge)...then what do i do for headphones in the Vocal Iso?
Im sorry this is a long post, but i seem to have everything else figured out for the studio except for this. I'm stumped as to the best way to go about this. Your suggestions are extremely appreciated!
**note: drawing is DEFINITELY not to scale!
Data 12 mb cache Maxtor
Comments
So there's a window so people in the vocal booth can see people
So there's a window so people in the vocal booth can see people in the bathroom?
To completely answer your question would require more typing than what I have time for. You seem to have the basic idea of what you want as far as connectivity for each room. Those sound good to me.
Generally a studio will have the equivalent of a stage box mounted in the wall. If that's not possible you will need to rig up some sort of stage box thing that is available in each room.
As for the wiring, what I would do is wire the 16 inputs from the main room into a half-normalled patchbay. Wire those directly to your TMP and Tascam FW maybe use the first 8 for the TMP and the last for the Tascam
Half-normalled means that you can interrupt the signal if needed.
Wire the other rooms into the patchbay, but these don't need to be wired to any device. You will use these to patch into whatever input you want.
Here's how this would work. Lets say you are tracking a band and have the drums and bass in the main room, the guitar in the big iso room and vocals in the vocal iso. Lets assume the drums and bass take up 8 tracks. You can plug the mics from that room into whatever channels you want to use, maybe you want to send all the drums to the TMP8 and the bass to the Tascam. Those connections would all be direct, no patching required.
Now for the guitar, you may want to send that to a channel on the TMP. So you plug the mic in the room into one of the channels from that room. On the patch bay, you patch the corresponding channel into an open channel on the TMP. Since your patchbay is half-normalled, this signal will interrupt the signal that the channel is hard wired to.
For the Vox, you would set up a mic and from the appropriate channel in the patch bay you could take that and send the signal to your Brick then back into the patchbay into one of the Tascam inputs.
You could wire the brick into the patchbay to make it easy to hook up and use.
Well, that's the basic idea. Take your time when coming up with the wiring scheme the patchbay and it will save you a lot of work in the long run.