About the Glow Worm Studio
The Glow Worm Studio is a ~80 m2 project studio, containing a host of instruments, most but not all electronic. This studio is suitable for projects such as film music, music for exhibitions, but most importantly, it is a perfect environment for creating weird music just for the sake of it. Apart from that the studio is currently used for the creation of sample packs.
Besides a host of old and new synthesizers, both analog and digital, the studio gives home to a wide variation of outboard equipment, an acoustic drum set, Bechstein grand piano, Fender Rhodes, Hohner Duo and a collection of singing bowls, to name a few.
The “Towers”
The heart of the studio consists of a D&R Stylix analog mixing desk (24 x 8 x 2 plus an additional 8 x stereo inputs). Connected to each of the stereo inputs is the balanced stereo output of a Roland M-480 or M-16E rack mixer. Unfortunately the Roland M-series have been discontinued long time ago, but they are great for accommodating vast number of synths. All M-series mixers can be linked to increase the number of input channels, they are reliable, flexible and save lots of space compared to desktop mixers. Each rack mixer is part of what I call a “tower”, see picture below.
The description below is based on the first tower (of 8) as shown by the picture above. All towers contain more or less the same basic elements, but may have different mixers, fx units and rack synths.
On top is a modified long Laney Sound spring reverb (and when you look carefully you see an even longer spring reverb lurking in the back: A Great British Spring, build in a sewer pipe).
Roland M-480 (I also use for one of the towers two connected Yamaha AW4416’s which I basically use as a 48-channel digital mixer)
Some local effect units. In this tower:
Korg A1 (a very versatile multi fx unit)
Korg DRV-3000 (a vintage algorithmic warm sounding reverb unit)Next a series of rack synths. When I foresaw that I would run out of space one day, I changed many of my keyboard synths for corresponding rack synths. Unfortunately, 19” rack synths are out of fashion and most manufacturers produce desktop models nowadays… In this particular rack are the following synths:
Studio Electronics ATC-1 (analog mono synth, bit like Minimoog, but with 4 filter options)
Casio VZ-10M (Digital and rather complex synth, able to produce DX7 type sounds and some more)
Studio Electronics SE-1 (analog mono synth, bit more like Minimoog)
Kawai 5000-R (digital poly synth, based on additive synthesis)
Crumar Bit-01 (6 voice analog synth, rack version of the Bit-99)
Korg Wavestation SR (wavetable synth)
Korg Wavestation A/D (wavetable synth)
Korg 01 R/W (warm sounding rompler)JB Systems PC-8 power station. Before the Ukraine war I usually turned everything on when I went in the studio, but since the price for electricity went through the roof I invested in a series of these power switches so that I am able to switch on just the sections I actually use. I saved a fortune since… Also see the chapter on The Power System for details.
Headphone amp: Behringer Powerplay Pro-XL. 4-channel headphone, cheap and good. From the headphone outputs of the monitor mixer a series of these headphone amps are connected, linked together actually, a handy feature of these devices. The idea is to be able to plug in a headphone wherever you are in the studio. Also see the chapter on the The Monitor System for details.
MIDI matrixes. You see here three Roland A-880 8x8 MIDI matrix units. Those devices all have MIDI 8 in/out connected to a MIDITEMP MT-16X, a 16x16 MIDI matrix. Each tower has some A-880’s for a total of 16 (actually some more which are used as MIDI thru boxes). Refer to The MIDI System for details.
Audio patch bays: Behringer PX2000 & PX3000. All audio signals are connected via patch bays: instruments (inside and outside the rack) to mixer inputs, effect send and returns to/from external effects, etc. There are people who would rather eat their shoes if they had to have Behringer gear in their signal path, but I can tell you that I use almost 50 of these units for many years and I never experienced any issues with them. The are also very flexible, so I can recommend these particular units.
Direct injection: Behringer DI800. Those are used to create a clean and balanced connection from any instrument to de AD converters (2 x RME Fireface 800 + Ferrofish A16). See the chapter on clean audio for details. I am not sure if I can recommend these DI units, I had a few channels failing over time and LEDs seem to be of low quality and have failed on several units.
The Power System
When the studio space was still in its rudimentary phase, just the walls had been repaired, decking tiles on the floor and walls and sound absorbing ceiling painted, it was the ideal time to overthink the power and ethernet requirements. A dedicated 6-group main power control and fuse box was installed with an earth pin directly underneath. A proper power surge and switches for 5 of the six groups were installed as well. One group is always on (for the NAS servers and computers for instance, the other five can be switched off with the switches shown at the bottom of the picture. The different groups have been color coded and those colors are also found on the various power outlets, to keep things organized.
Another major part of the infrastructure was the building of a cable duct along most of the walls, which contains the outlets for each group (only the permanent-on group and a dedicated group for the lights are spread across the room, the other 4 groups are each positioned in their respective section), and 16 CAT-6 connections (routed to a 48-channel switch elsewhere in the building. As shown on the picture most outlets have their own power surge. Probably overkill, but rather safe than sorry.
When all equipment was finally connected and installed, a problem occurred. When all equipment connected to a given group powered up at the same time, every so now and then the fuse for that group would blow. So I had some 20 power delays made, 5 for each group. Those are basically a timer relay controlling a power relay. This solved the problem.
Since the Ukraine war the energy prices went sky high, so I installed a number of power switches to be able to switch on only the sections within a group that I actually need for the job on hand. The power delays are still in place as they allow me to switch on multiple sections in one go. Anyway, this solution saved me a fortune already as also the air conditioning now has a lot easier job to keep things cool!
The Monitor System
The monitoring in the Glow Worm Studio serves two purposes: 1) Monitoring for tracking and mixing and 2) To provide a satisfying stereo sound wherever you are in the room. This last function is complicated by the fact that the room has sort of an L-shape and two different sections for the grand piano and Fender Rhodes and some various synths on one side, and another section which contains the acoustic drum set, the modular and some other synths.
Acoustic treatment of the studio has been provided by a large number of 60-CD boxes for sound diffusion (I had to store them somewhere anyway, but it proved very effective for the acoustics), sound absorbing tiles on the ceiling, high pole carpet tiles on the floor, some heavy curtains which can be used to isolate the two sections described above, a number of home made bass traps and some professional studio diffusers. The studio is not “dead” but also not having annoying echoes or reverb. The racks and synths probably help as well.
Let’s have a closer look at the monitor system.
All monitors are controlled by a set of two linked Mackie Big Knobs together with a Mackie passive monitor controller.
All monitors can be switched on or off from a central JBSystems power controller (which means that quite some power cables run through the studio, but it is very convenient and it is easy to switch on monitors (and the D&R mixer) when everything else is powered on and vice versa.
For mixing (and tracking) four monitor systems are available:
Dynaudio M1.5 (powered by a Bryston amp)
Dynaudio BM-5A + KRK Sub
Sony SS-B3(powered by a JBL/Urei amp)
Avantone MixCubes
For general amplification there is a stereo H&K (900 Watt) PA with four slave monitors. The two subs are each on a side of the room (not shown), while the four full range slave monitors are connected diagonally (LRLR) so that you have stereo sound where ever you are.
On top are 4 KRK Rokit 6 monitors which can be connected via a patch bay for quadraphonic use (I needed that for a project).
Behind the drum set is a pair of OSC K12-2 monitors, providing more than sufficient sonic power to go wild if desired.
The section housing the grand piano has another option to play quadraphonic or dual stereo, provided by 4 Adam Audio t7V monitors.
The MIDI System
The heart of the MIDI system, when looking from the hardware side is a rare MIDITEMP MT-16X. This is a flexible 16x16 MIDI matrix, allowing to connect up to 16 input ports to up to 16 output ports. It has a remote control unit which is connected with a dedicated ethernet cable, so the distance is not an issue. Connected to each of the 16 MIDI in/out ports is a Roland A-880 which is an 8x8 MIDI Matrix
The idea is that all synths with a keyboard can play any other synth, and that any synth can be controlled by any computer if so desired. The problem is that there is a maximum cable length for the MIDI signal to be transferred reliably from one side to the other (9m). This has been overcome by placing the MT-16X at a central point in the room (it is operated from the remote controller anyway). Each “tower” has one or more A-880’s but they are all within 9 meters distance of the MIDITEMP.
Believe it or not, but the 112 MIDI in/outputs that are available via this system where by far not sufficient to connect all synths and some computers. Two solutions have been used: 1) using either Roland A-880’s as MIDI thru box or Kenton Thru-5 boxes, or use the MIDI thru outputs provided on most synths.
In fact this is a rather old-fashioned way of connecting synths, but effective just as well. Everything runs on MIDI channel 1 and just the proper ports are connected via the MIDI matrixes.
To use more advanced options in Cubase or other DAW’s a parallel MIDI system is provided by a single MOTU midi express 128 device. Connected (via Kenton MIDI Merge-4 boxes) to the 8 MIDI outputs of the MOTU are a number of synths (Yamaha Montage, Yamaha Motif, Korg Kronos, Moog One, Waldorf Quantum) and many outboard effect units. The Effect units have been set to different MIDI channels, the first in the chain is connected to the MOTU, the next is connected via the MIDI thru of the first unit, etc. This way presets of most (newer) effect units can be controlled from the DAW.
Clean Audio for Sampling and Recording
To make sure audio from anywhere in the studio arrives at the AD converters (RME Fireface 800) without noise or other unwanted signals, I use the following method. Each “tower” has a Behringer DI-800 direct injection unit of which the parallel outputs are connected via a balanced multicable to a balanced patch bay in the rack which houses the RME units.
Suppose I want to sample a (stereo) synth at the other side of the studio. I then use two unbalanced split cables to connect the synth outputs via the patch bay to both the mixer and the DI-800 inputs. On the RME side I connect the relevant DI-800 outputs to the desired RME inputs, using balanced patch cables.
This way I have sort of a “private balanced path” from the synth to the computer. For sampling I use a dedicated computer, so that means that I can use the main computer to work on a Cubase project, while the other computer takes care of the sampling process. Works perfectly.
How to do Tracking in a Large Space
This is the situation: The computer which runs the DAW (Sonar or Cubase in my case) is located in one corner of the studio, and so are the video monitors, keyboard and mouse. Suppose I want to record a acoustic piano part, the piano happens to be located on the other side of the studio, and I am just on my own. That would mean that I must press the record button, then run to the piano, hope that I arrive there in time, then hopefully play the part in one go, run back to press the stop button. You got the picture…
Solution for that problem is to use a laptop which connects wireless to the network via an access point. This laptop runs an application called Remote Desktop and can take over the computer running Cubase. This laptop is on a small stand with wheels, so it can easily be placed where the actual playing is being done. Works perfectly.
Book Keeping and Marking
You may wonder what book keeping has to do with setting up a studio. Quite simple: hundreds of cables run from one side of the studio to the other so it is essential to mark cables on both sides. I use a bit of printer paper and some cello tape. Cheap and effective. I use colored tie-wraps to mark inputs and outputs, left and right as follows:
Left = white, Right is red
In = white, Out is red
MIDI cables have one side marked green (connects to MIDI input of the device), the other side red (connects to MIDI output of the device).
You may have noticed that I did not mark or sticker the audio patch bays and MIDI matrixes. To keep track of what has been connected to what, I carefully maintain a spreadsheet with a tab for each audio patch bay and one tab for all MIDI connections. See examples below.
I sometimes help people organizing their home studio, and it all starts with proper marking, “book keeping” and then keeping everything up-to-date. Some cable management will help as well.