I'm still MIA!

[Elk_wrath]

And by MIA I mean I’m still busy lmao

I was able to work some patches earlier this week, and have plans to record again soon.

In the meantime, I ripped up my downstairs floor today to see the damage before I begin flooring tomorrow.

A bit disappointed in the previous owner. I’ll have to kilz primer the subfloor to eliminate the cat urine odor that has permeated my senses after removing the carpet. Also a big fat spot of water intrusion due to a cheap (aka lazy) fix.

Overall not too bad, just some minor things.

Dropping in some Lifeproof LVP flooring tomorrow, which I am excited about. It’ll be a nice change from the carpet, and it looks pretty nice.

If my project is wrapped up Saturday, there is a decent chance I’ll be able to record something on Sunday!

I’ve patched a sick water droplet sound out of my 0-coast, and running into my strega’s. I found a beautiful sweet spot on each strega that doesn’t phase, which I’m looking forward to.

I upgraded my main power supply to a 12 port model. 8 are filtered, 4 (sequencers) are direct, I have noticed an audio improvement tbh. Now I’ll be able to add more gear if I need it.

Gear wise, I am pretty set. I have a bastl SP2 on preorder for next month, and I’m waiting for the “NOON” from landscape.fm to launch preorders.

I’ve fully committed to using strange CV based gear 100% of the time.

That being said, if you are in the continental US, I’m going to be selling most of my traditional gear soon.

If anyone is interested in what I am letting go, feel free to DM me and I’ll send you a list of stuff I’m parting with.

I’m fully embracing experimental sounds for the foreseeable future.

Hope all is well, and I miss you guys.

-Elgmóđr a.k.a. Elk Wrath

P.S.
Elk Wrath is a direct translation of Elgmóđr (my middle name), if you’re curious as to why I sign off differently from time to time

[jon]

Wow! It really seems that you are busy!
Provoking question: will that be the future “Elk’s studio space”?

[Elk_wrath]

Oh man, that would be awesome, unfortunately this project is for my lower level right now haha

However, when I get around to flooring my upper level, my studio is indeed going to be getting some treatment.

I’ve actually been thinking about it a lot, and there is a decent amount of stuff I want to do. I will have to tear down my walls though. I’m kinda wanting all of my audio cables to be run inside of the walls, and each wall would have a patch bay panel that I could jack any synth into any wall and have it routed into my mixer.

I’ll have to think of how to approach that, especially with multiple panels, but I have plenty of time to test the theory out before I get anywhere near approaching it

[QuestionMarc]

Hey Elk,

I probably missed some forum action recently (and sadly will be mostly away for the next couple of months). Had no idea you were in the middle of home renovation. Good luck there! And yes, there will be the cat pee, the rat poo and the termite trash, it’s just there waiting to be found…

@Elk_wrath

Elk Wrath is a direct translation of Elgmóđr (my middle name)

Depending on the dialect, my middle name translate to nuts. So I can relate.

[Elk_wrath]

Hey Marc!

Sorry to hear you’re taking off for a bit, hopefully it’s for fun and enjoyable reasons!

This project was actually a weekend project.

I started tearing out carpet and moving furniture on Thursday.

Odor killed main subfloor with primer, then cut and laid a second subfloor down to bridge the height gap to the kitchen, cut and primed baseboards, and began laying flooring over Friday and Saturday.

Today I finished up the last bit of flooring with all the specialty cuts, finished install, and tacked in the base.

Tomorrow is just caulking and finalizing paint on the base.

Would’ve been done today if I didn’t have to lay an entire second floor unexpectedly, but overall not too bad.

I think it came out pretty nice, and I’m looking forward to a long break in between my next project so I can finally flipping play with my synths.

Hope you all are doing well!

[QuestionMarc]

Looking pretty, @Elk_wrath! Great job there. I miss America, DIY’s heaven…

When you work on your studio, don’t fall for internet’s immense “wisdom”, namely:

1. Control Rooms or home studios MUST be carpeted;
2. Ceilings and walls MUST be angled;
3. You MUST employ ceiling and wall soundproof padding.

That is because:

A. Looks like you have 4-legged family members, so carpet gets in the way of a clean house. If anything, you can buy a large rug and, if you ever record acoustic instruments or voice, you’ll get enough padding to cut some of the natural reverb with that – and also prevent the chair from making noises.

Now, bear in mind that natural reverb can actually be awesome! In fact, why do we try so hard to suppress it (and with expensive paddings!) just to then spend a shitload of money with reverb processors? Sony’s DPS units cost nearly $2000 back in the day! I myself live in a house that has a long and wide corridor, stemming from very ill-conceived floor planning! But when clothes aren’t drying there, I can play my guitar very lightly and it gives back the creamiest room reverb you can think of. Or else, I can play with some of the hangers there and cut it down just a bit.

B. Unless you’re playing through amplifiers with microphones and/or recording acoustic instruments (guitar, cello, piano – for a marimba you can surely pass), the angling of walls and ceiling do very little for you. Think of a modern theatre, where the stage kind of opens and the walls fall a sort of perspective line from the centre of the stage, much like the walls of a square horn or the cone of a speaker. What it does is to diffuse the sound in a way that provides little reverberation. To just monitor your recording you don’t need to waste your money or time with that. Of course, if you have the time and willingness, doing so definitely doesn’t hurt and improves your overall perception. But bear in mind that the key here is how good your monitors are and if they’re placed at the proper height – basically, your eyes must be at cone centre level.

c. Only after you put your studio together you’ll realise how much (if any) padding you need, not ever before. It doesn’t matter how many PhDs the author of the article chastising you for not adding sound paddings has, only when you actually propagate a soundwave through a room you can fully assess how much of it gets reflected and how. In fact, North American wooden homes have the added benefit of absorbing quite a lot of it – unless you have a basement studio, of course. And the wood itself has qualities that vary wildly from one house to another. So build it first, add padding afterwards. It might be the case that a large canvas painting, a cloth or even that bullhead will be as effective as a $200 square metre of ugly, gray padding. I myself had a wonderful, large cloth given by a friend from India on my wall, and it did wonders.

Good luck with the home renovation, looking forward to more music.

Here’s to a 2022 with more music and less trouble.