A large amount of work has been done on hAx Studios over the last few months. It has been so frantic I don't really have too many photos of how we got here but, I can tell you that about 75% of the walls have been framed and drywalled. And about 50% of them have been treated with Auralex.
The flooring has been cut and placed, yet I have to secure the seams. The seams are not as great as I would have wanted them, but in order to utilize most of the flooring, the seams had to suffer. I will be buying some throw rugs to help mask their appearance. But on the positive side, the acoustic qualities 
will still be there. Tested some drums in the space and there was alot of reflection off the floor and the bass drum really resonates well without being overbearing. The Auralex Wedgies really help cancel out reflection from wall to wall, but floor to ceiling is a bit boomy right now. Until the ceiling is drywalled, we cannot treat it.The workstation is about the same except I replaced the table for a shorter one. I took some time to really run the wires behind the table with some sort
of order. I wanted to be able to pull the table away from the wall and re-wire stuff as I needed to. I put in a long power strip and my network switch, and mounted them behind the table. I like this set up but there is a draw back. The computer noise really is intense when the studio is at full strength. I will have to do something about housing the racks under the table and build some sort of housing to dampen the noise.I have been using only one side of my space for so long I forgot about actually using both halves of the room. On the
opposite side of the workstation will be the listening area. I have given this area alot of thought. I wanted the listening area to be cozy and have lots of space for guest equipment. Secondly, I wanted a listening area not only to be an audio referencing area, but also I wanted it to be a viewing area for video so I could take on some soundtrack and video editing work, as well as just being able to watch a movie down there.Previous Post:
Rock Alaska Records is happy to announce the creation of hAx Studio. hAx Studio is a 20 x 12 foot space with 6 inch cinder block walls on 3 sides. One wall is more than half way underground, and its opposite wall has a garage on the other side. So needless to say...I lucked out. Its a great environment to start out with. What is still needed is 1) insulation and drywall to the ceiling, 2) construction of a fourth wall, 3) three sub walls up against the cinder block, 4) Flooring, and 5) Auralex foam over the drywall. It's going to take time, but it will be worth it.Construction on hAx Studio began back in February 08, with the insulation and drywall being applied to the ceiling (shown above). Lots of pipes, electrical boxes and wires to deal with but once its up there, you can hardly tell. My buddy Colin and I put up most of the ceiling drywall, although I had to put a lot up myself with the help of a twin box spring to help hold up the drywall as I put in some screws. This is very hard with 5/8 drywall, and not to mention we have to put 2 layers of the stuff on there.
I took this opportunity to go ahead and figure out how I was going to lay out my workspace. (shown right) I knew I wanted to hard wire the drums and have MIDI capabilities right from the drummer's chair. Not to mention I needed access to my mixer, headphone output, computer keyboards and the rack. I set this all up in one corner of the room, as I constructed walls in the opposite corner. It took me a few days to set the mix just right but eventually I could record and play drum lines to mixes I made in the MIDI interface. The downside was that the walls were not completed so I had to be courteous to my neighbors and stop making noise by 9pm. Which really slows me down since I do my best work between 10pm and midnight.
In March I applied for an Independent Artist Grant with the Juneau Arts and Humanities Counsel. After a call back for a 20 minute interview, I was approved for funds to help me construct the fourth wall. So I went to the hardware store and spent my grant on 2x4's and 2x6's, fiberglass insulation and some fasteners. I decided to build the fourth wall in 2 sections, mostly because my room was occupied with music gear on the other side. I would construct the vacant half of the room first, then move the equipment in to the newly constructed side, and finish the room. I started by finishing the ceiling adjacent to the 2 walls I was building. Then, putting the 2x6's up and then the backside drywall, the insulation, and then capping 2 layers on the studio side.
Yes that is toilet paper! There is a toilet behind that blue chair AKA "the Man-Let". (shown right) This fact and the placement of the boiler caused some issues with the construction of the fourth wall in phase two. But I will fill you guys in on that when we get to it. Right now focus is on the vacant side of the room, which really went without a hitch, it was just a lot of work. My buddy Sean helped out alot, as I feel framing and drywalling is a form of meditation for him...or maybe even a form of sex! He enjoys it for some insane reason and as a man who needs to hang alot of drywall, I could use a man with this form of fetish.
Now that half of the fourth wall is completed, its time to tackle the sub-wall against the concrete. This wall will be insulated 2x4 construction with 2 layers of 5/8 drywall. This wall is relatively easy to build but it has a window that needs to clear the header, as well as building an access panel for this same window, in case I ever want to get to it in the future. A little fancy work with the sawzall cleared the header problem and then it was off to the "wall-building" races. Sean was still putting studs in as I was installing the insulation. It went up so fast I don't even have photos. Once this wall was up I can move on to flooring that corner of the room.
Speaking of flooring...When I purchased this home, the previous owners left 4 giant pieces of wood flooring saved from the old Juneau-Douglas High School basketball court. (shown right) Score! Its 2 sheets of 1/2 inch plywood on risers with slat boards rabbited together. The thing is, it is only enough to cover about two-thirds of the room , so additional flooring will have to be purchased to complete the studio floor. Nevertheless, the drum area and workstation will be elevated and have the acoustic qualities of hardwood floors. I can't wait to capture my first drum tracks from the new location.
I will have to seal up the window and give up the light on this wall. I plan on putting foam in the window before sealing it up so sound wont leak out of it. I will also not mud around the access panel so if I ever decide to get to that window, I will be able to with the removal of 4 screws. Next is attaching the flooring to the wall, and cutting a piece to fit around the entry way. This could be tough as the flooring is so thick...it leaves little room for error.
Cutting the floor to fit around the doorway was relatively easy. Placed it in and plan on building the 4th and final wall right on top of the flooring. This allows the flooring to go under the door and solves alot of problems, but of course, it creates some problems as well. I went ahead and foamed in the window, and painted with 2 coats of Killz. Now I am concentrating on moving my workstation across the room.I have a stock pile of 1ft x 1ft, 2 inch thick Auralex Wedgies and started to place them on the walls in the corner of the room. I just didn't want to have to try to muscle behind my workstation to place these later. I put in a shelf for my Monitors and tucked my Carvin Main in the corner. I
placed it on a couple of P3 towers I had laying around, but I plan on building a proper riser or something.During all of this construction I went ahead and got together with Alaska Media and built a rack mounted computer. It was tough to find a case that fit into my Gator rack, most were way too deep, but I did manage to find one online that I liked. I filled it with a dual core motherboard, 2 GB of Ram and 2-500GB
storage drives. Had some initial trouble with its stability, but it was just a bad jumper. I slapped it into my rack and I am currently testing my Sonar templates. Big thanks to my bro Ryan over at Alaska Media for helping me to get this machine together.
Workstation has been moved, but the table I'm using will have to be replaced. It is about a foot too wide and I cant utilize the space under the table because of how the legs are constructed. But in the mean while its time to work on building the rest of the walls.
After moving the workstation to the other side of the room, it opened up the remainder of the space for wall construction. First the ceiling would have to be double drywalled where the header will go. Then we placed a 2x6 constructed wall. It had to be this thick because there is a stairway that leaks sound to the second floor, so we
decided to give it some girth. Then we added a 2x4 wall to cover the exposed concrete wall, insulated it, (thanks Colin) and now we wait for another drywall adventure.
I took some time off from the construction this winter and concentrated on balancing out the capture system at the studio. I balanced it out so you can switch from drums to bass to guitar without turning too many knobs. I invested in a Samson Stage 5 wireless set up. I bought it used and for a song. Its probably not good enough to capture from but its nice to use while developing guitar or bass parts. I also moved a lot of gear around, but I will get to that later in the post.
But now that spring is here, I decided to finish my fourth and final sound wall. I started by framing around the door and the breaker box, being careful to stay close to the concrete wall and at the same time avoid all the conduit and the giant drain pipe in the middle of the wall. I also had to take in account that the breaker box will have to remain un-blocked and accessible, as well as leaving ample room around the door for finishing purposes.
Next was a bit of electrical work. This light switch, the two outlets, and an outlet in the ceiling are the only electrical boxes in the whole room.I had the opportunity to place
more outlets in the room when the other walls were built, but I did not want to leak sound anywhere along the new walls. I had to rewire the 2 outlets to new electrical boxes and place them farther forward to avoid the drywall, as well as the light switch. One strategically placed 2x4 and a couple of cover plates to turn the old electrical boxes into junction boxes did the trick.
Next comes the fiberglass insulation. Most of the cold air comes through this last wall, so I really wanted to insulate this wall well. One layer of R-13 and making sure to staple it tight against the framing was crucial. I didn't want to take short cuts on this wall, as it faces the street and is not partially underground.
Now we can take a look at the other side of the room. First of all I got a door in over by my boiler. It is just an internal door but it sure is quiet when it’s closed. It stops almost all the boiler noise from bleeding into the studio itself. I cant wait until I weather strip the door and beef up the door density.
If you’ve read my previous post, my rack gear was really loud when running at full strength over at the main table. So a second table was put in and I 
moved the mixer over by it. But more importantly, I moved the rack just outside the door I put in, and added a server with a terabyte of storage, thanks to Alaska Media.
It works pretty well having the rack out side the studio. I just kept a quiet media machine, (that also runs my
