Happy new year, and welcome to 2015! Myself and Ross had a much-needed break from the building work over Christmas but we’ve upped tools again and finished the structure of the new walls that I talked about in the last post. This has allowed us to finish cutting the trenches in the existing structure, so the original two walls are now entirely decoupled.
There’s not much more to say regarding the walls at this stage so in this post I’m going to talk about pre-launch deals and equipment. The Noisefloor will be opening in early February (my initial plan for January was slightly optimistic!) and in the run up to the big day you can benefit from special early bird rates on Membership schemes and Pay As You Go accounts. Prices start from just £4.75/hr for Members and £6.80/hr for PAYG. You can read more information or sign up via the freshly expanded website – have an explore!
So, while I’ve been enjoying the work on the space itself I’ve just started the really exciting part: ordering the equipment. After the soundproofing and sonic treatment the key factors are the speakers, the audio interface and the microphones, and users of The Noisefloor will benefit from the industry standard quality of the following:
RME Fireface UC audio interface
RME interfaces are a no-brainer: rock solid on PCs and Macs via USB or Firewire, amazing sounding with tiny latency and excellent preamps. Sound on Sound say “the sound quality is as pure as you’d expect, imposing neither any character of its own nor any unwanted noise or distortion… If you value features such as the absolute freedom to route anything to anywhere, the ability to use soft synths at negligible latencies and, above all, confidence in your system to remain stable in the middle of an important session, RME’s Fireface should be your first port of call. “
KRK VXT6 active monitor speakers and 10s active subwoofer
I’ve been using KRK Rokit 6’s in my home studio for a while and have been hugely impressed with their sound. The VXT6’s are a step up – as Sound on Sound say; “Sonically, these speakers tick all the right boxes… the bass end is believable, the mid-range clear and the top end nicely detailed without being harsh or splashy.” There will also be a pair of Genelec 8020a monitors for comparison.
<a href="http://www valsartan diovan.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=item&category=128&item=24039″ target=”_blank”>DPA SMK4061 stereo condenser microphone kit
I first encountered these microphones at University and my initial reaction was incredulity: how could something so tiny be any good? However, the DPA’s went on to be my mic of choice time and time again. You can get them in places other mic’s won’t go which means you can record just about anything. Sound on Sound say “[the DPA 4061] would rate somewhere between really useful and absolutely vital. I can honestly see it, often as not, as the mic I’d reach for first.”
Exciting, eh? You can see a list of the other equipment that will be available at The Noisefloor here.
The next part of the building mission is to finish the walls and start constructing the double door frame, and it’s this that I’ll talk about next time.