OK, so you have set up your empty/spare room, or cleared an area of your bedroom. You have a stack of equipment in the hallway, and you cannot wait to set it up and start creating some tunes, but where to start?
Well, firstly, well done for thinking hard about what equipment you have bought, and well done again for not just plugging it all in straight away!
When setting up a working studio it is very important to take your time in thinking about where the gear will go, how you will connect it all together, how it will all interface with itself, and generally making it a nice environment to work in and be creative in.
Here is an idea of a well designed, comfortable home studio, that does not take up too much room, yet is a pleasurable area to work in.
Where should all of this new equipment go?
The starting point of your new studio's layout should always be the monitoring position, in a stereo system the two speakers and your head should make up the three corners of an equilateral triangle. That is, the distance between the two speakers should be the same as the distance between either speaker and your head.
This will produce a stable stereo image, and allow the speakers to project their sound.
Once you have a suitable speaker placement and monitoring position, now arrange the rest of your equipment around you, starting with the most important/most used, and working down to the least important/rarely used.
Think about making the regularly used equipment easily accessible, and position it in a place where you will not get annoyed each time you have to reach over for it.
A lot of people make the mistake of spreading equipment out, to make their studio look bigger. This may look better to your friends and family but what you will end up with is a studio that is hard work to operate, and therefore it will not be a productive place to work.
Before permanently cabling your studio, set it up and work in it for a day or so to test that everything that you like to use regularly is easily accessible, and not a chore to get to.
How is it all connected?
Now that you have everything where it is going to be, it is ergonomic, and a comfortable place to be, now is the time to design a cabling system.
This may sound scary, but it really is not that difficult.
Think about how your equipment connects together and write a list of cabled items.
Temporary, or moveable connections should be made via a suitable patchbay.
A patchbay acts as a central nervous system to all of the equipment in your studio. They allow all of the equipment in the studio to be connected to the back of the patchbay, while the front of the patchbay is used to connect this equipment together using short, cheap patch leads.
Patchbay's are cheap and readily available in today's market form manufacturers such as Behringer, Samson and Neutrik.
What cables to use
Many, many people underestimate and under budget for good quality reliable cabling.
Remember, your studio is only as strong as its weakest link. You can have the best equipment that money can buy, but if it is connected together with poor cabling it will sound poor, be unreliable and may even get damaged.
If you have the skills, it is definitely most cost effective to solder cables yourself, using premium grade cable and connectors, it is possible to make up custom wiring looms, specifically designed for YOUR equipment.
If soldering really isn't your cup of tea, then contact or come down to Quest Musique and pickup pre-made cables, and also if you need custom looms designed and built for your studio Quest can do that for you.
If you are in any doubt about your skills as a solderer, or you are unsure how your equipment would best be connected it is often quickest and cheapest to employ a professional, with experience in this area to set your system up for you.
Quest Musique can setup your studio for you!
Using Quest will ensure that all equipment is connected properly, you will not have unreliable wiring, and you do not have to worry about the huge job of soldering all of those leads.