Studio wiring: Why It's Important

Рет қаралды 2,221

5 жыл бұрын

In the film, I discuss the parts of my studio and the wiring that makes it work without me having to plug in and unplug pieces of equipment. Spending a little time on the planning of the studio layout and then spending a fairly modest amount of money on specific cabling and connectors will yield a setup that should give you years of trouble-free recording and mixing.
My personal experience originated in London, where I was a maintenance and studio installation engineer at EMI Townhouse studios, where cabling and connecting were given an extremely high priority, and with good reason: a studio that charged £3000 a day had to work without a session being halted by faulty connections and cables. Studio 2 was given a full refurbishment in 1996, involving tens of thousands of solder terminations and huge amounts of cabling. How lucky I was to learn that trade at a top studio. Everything I know about audio installs comes from my two years at Townhouse, and the fifty or so studio installations I have done since then have yet to throw up a single fault (I offered a guarantee on all soldering faults, and always installed extra cable channels in the event that a fault may occur).
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Пікірлер: 19

@rolandmarckwort 3 жыл бұрын

I have a Spirit 16 console as well, great desk!!

@skylightmusicshowree 5 жыл бұрын

Great stuff Dan! I tend to work in the box these days, but I still use my vintage outboard from time to time. I have an eclectic mix of gear, amassed over the last twenty plus years, including a patchbay. When I had saved enough money to start buying my own gear, I used the patchbay to overcome the lack of inputs on my hard disc recorder. Next, I bought a sub-mixer for the sound modules and FX returns. I still used the patchbay, but more as a stagebox (for the reasons you stated in your piece about wearing out input connectors on the gear). My patchbay sits in my rack now, connected up to my soundcard on two channels, for when I need to patch in an old reverb or perhaps my E-MU ESI 2000. It still has my old labels on telling me how it used to be though! :-)

@mb2776 5 жыл бұрын

Great video! What about gates and compressor? How did you wired those in your studio?

@croaky8155 5 жыл бұрын

Great video Dan, as usual. How have you split the cabling to go to the digital recorder and the Fostex?

@leafsmithleafsmith691 5 жыл бұрын

Replayed at 13..30, the bit where Dann says “I have a problem with Channel 3”,clearly noticed the red group fader for Channel 3, lift up and away from the front panel of the Spirit mixer desk,as Dan pushed it full travel.Wonder if this relevant ?

@leafsmithleafsmith691 5 жыл бұрын

Time was about 4:07

@DanBakerMusic 5 жыл бұрын

Ha! I saw that...it’s just the fader cap. Channel 3 is good on the reel to reel so it’s the manky horrible phono on my hard disk recorder. I’ll get around to sorting it one day!

@tonymiller9359 5 жыл бұрын

Studios eh? Recorded in quite a few in my time. Great places, all had character - as did their owner/ engineers! One thing interests me - how big is your studio dimension wise? Cheers and great video.

@DanBakerMusic 5 жыл бұрын

Very small. Internal 5m x 3m!

@muleman72 5 жыл бұрын

What is the emu orchestra, what does it do exactly?

@croaky8155 5 жыл бұрын

Sorry to be a pain Dan, doesn’t putting three cables on top of each other and sending them to various inputs affect the input or output impedance of the various bits of kit?

@DanBakerMusic 5 жыл бұрын

You’re absolutely right that it does affect impedances, but the outputs of the desk have solid amplifiers on them, so much so, that I’ve run an oscillator through a desk input and through to the outputs, and each machine is flat all the way to 20kHz. I knew engineers back in the day who’d use the headphone outputs of two track gear to feed amplifiers instead of line outs!

@bubz75 5 жыл бұрын

How often do you service your Reel to Reel tape machines?

@DanBakerMusic 5 жыл бұрын

I clean them before each session (pure alcohol and cotton buds) and line up with a test tape as often as possible but it’s usually clear from the sound if something has slipped. I also demagnetise on a semi-regular basis: it’s scary how a magnetised head can destroy tapes...

@coolvibesradio3267 4 жыл бұрын

why you use an hard disk machine? the white fostex I mean. isn't the same to record on the daw?

@DanBakerMusic 4 жыл бұрын

Hi there - I use the Fostex for live recording, as it’s generally a little bit more reliable than computer for longer recordings, such as live bands, etc. I then transfer from the Fostex via a couple of light pipe cables to computer for mixing.

@coolvibesradio3267 4 жыл бұрын

@@DanBakerMusic ah ok thank you for your explanation. have a great day

@croaky8155 5 жыл бұрын

Great video Dan, as usual. How have you split the cabling to go to the digital recorder and the Fostex?

@DanBakerMusic 5 жыл бұрын

Cheers! I forgot to mention that-the line amplifiers of the mixing desk are powerful enough to feed three sources at once and I just put three small cables into each output jack.