ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Wiring a Basement Recording Studio

Funny you should ask...I'm a guitar player (26 years) and have put together a few studios of my own (ALWAYS on a budget). Without writing a novel, here's a few basic tips I hope will help you...

1. Pipe in all power anywhere even near your equipmet to avoid AC hum (EMT, well grounded of course)

2. If you have any fluorescent lighting in your house, either get rid of it or make sure it's off and remains off during recording.

3. Don't let any audio cables, no matter how well shielded, lay over concrete. This may be difficult to impliment, but well worth the trouble in avoiding hum infiltration.

4. Make sure you have enough ampacity and outlets to handle your equipment. Put extra outlets and/or 4S boxes than you need, and outlets even where you think you will not need them, because you will...

5. Use XLR balances cables whenever possible. They are designed to cancel out unwanted sound, and are far superior to even the most well-shielded single conductor cables.

6. Not related to electrical persay, but install a "phone flasher" (available at Radio Shack for around $25) and turn off your ringer permenantly if you have a phone down there. In fact, turn off all your ringers in the house. A perfect performance is sometimes hard to get and easy to ruin...

And most important, have fun and good luck!

-S Cannon

You could always put in these receptacles: http://www.wattgate.com/prod-381.htm

comments?

Kale — Foolsgate is probably a more accurate term.

I'm sure the gold plated strap holding the receptacle in place makes a world of difference to the sound......

This high-end "audiophile" stuff makes me wonder how carefully the people who buy it stop to figure out the situation. Haven't they realized that the PoCo isn't using gold-plated connections? Or that the record company that cut the disc didn't use $2000 cables?

Hi Mike;
I just finished building a recording studio in my basement. We have the Korg D1600 board chained to a Mackie 16 channel mixer as so not to take up all the inputs on the Korg. We've investigated the construction side to the proper wiring of a sound room. The info is unlimited. One problem we ran into was the proper wiring of extending the inputs to the next room for instruments. We used a 18ga twisted shielded cable for this. Seems to have eliminated static hum and noise. Also we grouped A/C separate from power. Another thing I've done is wrap some of the twisted cable in aluminum foil for addtional RFI and EMI protection. The only noise problem we've had so far was using my line6 212 spider amp. It's programing I belive is over driving or over gaining. I belive a DI box or like cannon mentioned using XLR. Y9ou could run a 16 channel snake into the instrument room possibly. Hope your project works out good, good luck.
~Ange

Thanks guys,

Couple of things:

I'm planning on having power cable runs on only one side of the room . . . The other side will have audio cable runs. I plan on using a 19 channel Mogami snake for the audio and 20A isolated ground branch circuits for the power.

Zapped . . . why would running audio over concrete induce hum? . . . provided it is away from the power runs?

Thanks,
Mike