Studio Pics

That's what every home studio looks like to most people.

  On 12/19/2022 at 7:57 AM, Squee said:

Yeah, it's the Blackmagic Multidock

feel guilty about this, but that's one sexy dock

  On 12/19/2022 at 9:00 PM, tbf said:

feel guilty about this, but that's one sexy dock

It's some good docking.

  On 12/19/2022 at 10:44 PM, Squee said:

It's some good docking.

Now that's what I am docking about!

slimmed down in the last 2 years. modular became a new roof and some other stuff.. other extraneous bits went little by little. just these 2 bits of hardware synthesis left which is plenty. laptop stuff w/software of course. ipad and bunch of hard drives out of view

  On 12/22/2022 at 8:15 PM, ignatius said:

slimmed down in the last 2 years. modular became a new roof and some other stuff.. other extraneous bits went little by little. just these 2 bits of hardware synthesis left which is plenty. laptop stuff w/software of course. ipad and bunch of hard drives out of view

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Oh fuck yeah - and BM6As as well. Amazing!

  On 12/22/2022 at 8:15 PM, ignatius said:

slimmed down in the last 2 years. modular became a new roof and some other stuff.. other extraneous bits went little by little. just these 2 bits of hardware synthesis left which is plenty. laptop stuff w/software of course

i've been considering slimming down my hardware as well. how do you deal with hardware + software at once, routing/recording? or are you just in the camp of recording on one piece at a time and assembling later?

  On 12/26/2022 at 1:59 PM, auxien said:

i've been considering slimming down my hardware as well. how do you deal with hardware + software at once, routing/recording? or are you just in the camp of recording on one piece at a time and assembling later?

same way i've always done it. sequence from computer.. monitor on mixer then when ready to record..  route audio to computer.. multitrack then mix... usually just build tracks w/multitimbral midi stuff. use drums from the computer sometimes or synthesize drum sounds from the synths. 

sometimes everything is in the box but i add a few synth parts from hardware... 

previously everything was mostly coming from the modular... sequencing, sounds, fx etc.. in long jam sessions multi-tracked and mixed in the box. but modular is bye bye.

there's so many options for sequencing w/software. i've used five12 numerology a while and can jam w/that but also all the m4L stuff in ableton and eventually i'll make some max sequencer type things and send a bunch of midi + modulation to the synths and see how that goes. still early days w/max though. 

  On 12/26/2022 at 2:14 PM, ignatius said:

multitrack then mix

ah yeah that's what i'm not sure i can deal with: i've gotten spoiled and have to hear the whole thing at once when writing/recording. i've never been into multitracking anything. 

i've done the sequencing hardware with software before and it's pretty decent....but if i slim down my hardware like i'm considering then i'll not only have to do that but also have to use Ableton as a sound source and potentially for some audio processing. that latency, combining the hardware and software sounds/effects/etc all at once is something that i've never been able to nail down in the past when i've tried. it's always a little too much off to be okay.

took these yesterday.. if anyone's curious how it works I would love to explain it

How's the fan noise on that computer?

I use an old server I picked up a decade ago and it's still more than powerful enough for how I work, but the fans are so loud I had to build a wooden rack for it and stick it in the closet at my old place, adn at the new place I ahve it in the unfinished half of my basement with a hole drilled through the wall for the cables - but it's STILL pretty loud (not too loud to mix my own stuff but loud enough I'd hesitate to mix for anyone else)

  On 7/12/2023 at 3:54 PM, TubularCorporation said:

How's the fan noise on that computer?

 

I use an old server I picked up a decade ago and it's still more than powerful enough for how I work, but the fans are so loud I had to build a wooden rack for it and stick it in the closet at my old place, adn at the new place I ahve it in the unfinished half of my basement with a hole drilled through the wall for the cables - but it's STILL pretty loud (not too loud to mix my own stuff but loud enough I'd hesitate to mix for anyone else)

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well the GPU has three fans already.. I squeezed one 140mm fan on the top front intake, the ones below it are 120mm.. the CPU has a push&pull double fan setup and then there's one above the CPU cooler as well just slightly pushing air out the top in case the PC has trouble with too much heat building up.. and the back fan too. I tested it for aages, writing new fan curves, restarting, doing GPU stress tests, watching temps at 100% load for half an hour in the middle of the night.. the three fans for the front intake are controlled by 1 pin only so they're all in sync.. the top one is the most efficient and blows directly into the CPU so they're pretty quiet.. I think it's now a positive pressure setup? so dust doesn't really build up in it which is great.

all in all I fucking hate fan noise, any noise that gets in the way of music making/listening.. the amount of troubleshooting I had to do in this room with two different phases (so many noisy signals at first) on the electrical plugs has definitely been a bit of a pain to say the least.. I think what I had to settle with eventually is that it's fine to run your GPU at temp limit.. if I wouldn't mind more noise all this air could cool this GPU under full load to 70°C which is ridiiiiiculous. maybe look into noctua fans for your rack, the two on my CPU are super quiet.. but writing your own fan curves def helps

If your server is consistantly loud maybe the thermal paste is old. because they really only go to 11 when your CPU goes above 80 degrees, they all follow CPU temps.. which shouldn't be too hot doing music things unless you're autechre.. but then what happens when GPU intense software barely works your CPU.. GPU overheats because the fans are just adjusting to the CPU.. yeah the GPU has its own fans but that's where heat builds up.. so maybe you're hearing your GPU fan(s?) going crazy too.. definitely worth adjusting/repasting if it's that annoying. I have it set to very low RPM until the CPU goes above 68°C or so, because usually with Renoise and the lot it stays below that, so with making music I have zero noise issues.. and with games the CPU is usually above the 68°C mark so the GPU begins getting help there.. can't play games at 240hz without a bit of wheeeeeee though

Very nice environment! Looks like my place when I lived in Europe. 
I had alot of gear back then but sold mostly everything. 

The only gear I regret selling so badly is the DSI Evolver Keyboard. Damn that thing was a beast!

How come you don't have the PG-200 to the Jx3p? Is it Kiwi-modified maybe? 

Looks awesome and big nice screen! 

  On 7/12/2023 at 5:00 PM, cern said:

Very nice environment! Looks like my place when I lived in Europe. 
I had alot of gear back then but sold mostly everything. 

The only gear I regret selling so badly is the DSI Evolver Keyboard. Damn that thing was a beast!

How come you don't have the PG-200 to the Jx3p? Is it Kiwi-modified maybe? 

Looks awesome and big nice screen! 

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Ah well I sequence everything from the Polyend Tracker. If you input notes via MIDI to vanilla JX-3P firmware you can't use the PG-200 unfortunately. Which kinda messes with my workflow. I want to write things and then tweak the synth live to it.. doesn't work that way yet.. I got it as a gift from a friend who had it standing around in his shed, still gotta fix up the battery and decide if I want to go for the Matrix or Kiwi mod something fell on it once I believe, it's a little bent on the left side, esp the pitchwheel, doesnt even work in one direction, volume pot too, need to fix her up.. stereo outputs fucked too, a bassist owned it once, I wonder if he wanted it mono for some reason and messed with the output it's really odd, as soon as I plug in both jacks it goes mono.... so one cable is like half in there for now and the signal's fine

here's the routing.. prob some mistakes in the diagram but yeah.. I luv it

ah ya found the mistake.. maybe think before posting chronical.. sorry for spam mods lols

909 doesnt get midi from kenton, it gets it directly from the midihub.. &the midiverb left goes to input 5+6..

basically i press play on the polyend tracker and it sends clock to the midihub. that sends clock directly to all units that have a seq I want to use, 909 and model cycles.. at the same time it feeds it to the computer via USB, so the clock of renoise, 909 and the elektron are all almost perfectly in sync with the tracker, and perfectly in sync with each other.. the 303-MO and JX3P get a midihub out too for either filtering (JX3P listens on all 16 channels always like an idiot) or just quick 303 timing.. 101 can be a little late, same with the 2nd normal 303 so they get the kenton output.. I can't make psytrance levels of accurate perfectly timed transients this way but jungle works pretty well minilogue's both the input for the tracker with the keys and a synth on channel 2.. if I want to add a softsynth I just add the VST in renoise, assign any channels left and I can just use it as an extension of the tracker instantly.. I tried to make an envelope generator synced to the tracker in VCV2 that outputs all kinds of synced waves to synths I can modulate (minilogue xd and model cycles,td-3-mo) but I think I hit some kind of sync/bandwidth issue there.. whole thing started to bug out but there was also matrix CC modulation going on with the xd's joystick so maybe shooting too high there

theres so many possibilities with this routing tho.. transform a 6th octave note into a trig for a phrase in renoise.. check.. transform a 7th octave note into a trig for an LFO reset going to midi CC from the midihub.. check.. write really long watmm posts about it even tho nobody asked.. check

  On 7/12/2023 at 4:28 PM, chronical said:

If your server is consistantly loud maybe the thermal paste is old. because they really only go to 11 when your CPU goes above 80 degrees, they all follow CPU temps.. which shouldn't be too hot doing music things unless you're autechre.. but then what happens when GPU intense software barely works your CPU.. GPU overheats because the fans are just adjusting to the CPU.. yeah the GPU has its own fans but that's where heat builds up.. so maybe you're hearing your GPU fan(s?) going crazy too.. definitely worth adjusting/repasting if it's that annoying. I have it set to very low RPM until the CPU goes above 68°C or so, because usually with Renoise and the lot it stays below that, so with making music I have zero noise issues.. and with games the CPU is usually above the 68°C mark so the GPU begins getting help there.. can't play games at 240hz without a bit of wheeeeeee though

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No, I upgraded the motherboard and CPUs in 2020, with high quality thermal paste.  It's loud because it has 6 fans and whatever surface I mount it to amplifies the sound.  They aren't actually running anywhere near full speed.

What I need to do is make some kind of proper damping sysyem to isolate the rack bracket from the wall it's mounted on, but it's not bad enough to be a huge problem, jsut bad enough I'd hesitate to record acoustic instruments with a room mic or do "real" mastering or anything. It's sitting at around 40C most of the tim, except on really hot days. I watched the peak temperature for a couple months during the hottest part of summer a few years ago, and even on the worst days it was a couple degree below the manufacturer say it shouldn't exceed more than 5% of the time to avoid shortening its usable life.

"loud" for audio is, like, the sound of a refrigerator fan running at the opposite end of the house, with the kithcen door closed. If I was using it for normal server stuff it would be unusually quiet.

  On 7/12/2023 at 8:23 PM, TubularCorporation said:

No, I upgraded the motherboard and CPUs in 2020, with high quality thermal paste.  It's loud because it has 6 fans and whatever surface I mount it to amplifies the sound.  They aren't actually running anywhere near full speed.

 

What I need to do is make some kind of proper damping sysyem to isolate the rack bracket from the wall it's mounted on, but it's not bad enough to be a huge problem, jsut bad enough I'd hesitate to record acoustic instruments with a room mic or do "real" mastering or anything. It's sitting at around 40C most of the tim, except on really hot days. I watched the peak temperature for a couple months during the hottest part of summer a few years ago, and even on the worst days it was a couple degree below the manufacturer say it shouldn't exceed more than 5% of the time to avoid shortening its usable life.

 

"loud" for audio is, like, the sound of a refrigerator fan running at the opposite end of the house, with the kithcen door closed. If I was using it for normal server stuff it would be unusually quiet.

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why are you running it at 40°C though? no wonder it's loud if you're trying to cool it that hard. I'm not too familiar with server hardware but it should be similar to normal computers? 60-65 idle, fine up to 80-85 degrees on both GPU and CPU..  

  On 7/12/2023 at 8:38 PM, chronical said:

why are you running it at 40°C though? no wonder it's loud if you're trying to cool it that hard. I'm not too familiar with server hardware but it should be similar to normal computers? 60-65 idle, fine up to 80-85 degrees on both GPU and CPU..  

Because I do most of the intensive stuff with hardware so it isn't workign very hard.  That's just where it sits (proably more like 45-50 really) with the default cooling settings during the cooler parts of the year.  If the room itself is getting up around 32-33C during the summer then the CPU can get up closer to 80 easily.

It runs about as loud as a typical microwave oven.  For audio work, that's LOUD. Still quiet enough that I can hear myself rubbing the tips of my fingers together when my hand is held at arms length from my ears (which is a good base line for a quiet room IMO) but loud enough that I can hear it.

I don't use it for anything grapically intenive so it just has a basic, passively cooled GPU and that helps.

  On 12/19/2022 at 3:30 PM, TubularCorporation said:

That's what every home studio looks like to most people.

Sadly yes. To us it's a thing of beauty.

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

Ergonomics is my passion

  On 9/28/2023 at 8:40 PM, Silent Member said:

Ergonomics is my passion

The bottom keyboard's a bit low for ergonomics, but it's only for playing basslines anyway.

Almost done with the new studio. Still need to set up my rear speakers and there's some pretty nasty flutter right above my listening postion which makes sense when you look at the naked ass walls right above the long absorbers. So I need to build some extra absorbers and maybe two extra clouds.
But it's finally sounding a LOT better!