Remembering the Basics: Lessons I Had to Learn the Hard Way

In a previous post, I mentioned that during my studio redesign I somehow forgot some very basic concepts—things I already knew. At the time, I brushed it off as being caught up in the excitement of redesigning my studio and stepping fully into the world of hardware. Looking back now, that explanation is true… but it doesn’t change the consequences.

One of the biggest concepts that completely slipped my mind was separating power cables from audio cables.

When Forgetting the Basics Gets Expensive

After spending a huge amount of time setting up my two production desks, the piano wall, and finally the synth wall, I realized I had made a fundamental mistake. In several places throughout the studio, audio cables and power cables were routed together—sometimes even secured in the same cable clips.

As most people with studio experience know, running audio and power cables side by side can introduce interference. That interference finds its way into the audio path as hum, buzz, and unwanted noise. And that’s exactly what happened in my case.

The only real solution was to undo the work and redo it properly.

That meant taking apart large sections of the studio and rewiring them with proper cable separation. There’s no sugarcoating it—it was time-consuming, frustrating, and it absolutely didn’t help my chances of meeting the deadline I had set for myself.

How This Fit Into the Bigger Picture

This mistake also forced me to reflect on how I approached the redesign overall.

I’ve written before about how I started with a plan, how that plan changed, and how things eventually spiraled into a wonderfully out-of-control process. New ideas led to new gear, which led to new workflows. In many ways, that chaos was a blessing—it pushed the studio in directions I never would have planned, and I’m very happy with where things ended up.

But with each new idea and piece of gear came added complexity.

What I hadn’t talked about before was the one part of planning that would have helped—without dulling the creative chaos that made the process enjoyable.

The Research I Wish I’d Done First

Looking back, there’s one thing I wish I had done differently:
basic research before introducing new equipment into the studio.

Not deep, restrictive planning—but foundational research.

A few examples stand out clearly now:

• Remembering to separate audio and power cables from the beginning would have saved a massive amount of work rewiring.
  
• Knowing ahead of time that using an outboard compressor would require an audio interface with at least two inputs and two outputs would have influenced the order in which I bought gear.
  
• Understanding that USB audio can be noisy would have saved me nearly a week of chasing audio problems that couldn’t be solved without USB isolation.
  
• Expecting a loss of output level when switching from a powered monitor controller to a passive one would have saved days of confusion while trying to “fix” monitors that weren’t broken.
  

None of these issues were catastrophic. But each one cost time, energy, and momentum.

One Regret I Can Live With

Interestingly, despite everything that went sideways during the four-year redesign of my studio, this is really the only thing I regret.

I wouldn’t undo the experimentation.
I wouldn’t undo the changes in direction.
I wouldn’t undo the mistakes that led to better solutions.

But doing a bit of foundational research—especially around signal flow, cabling, and hardware behavior—would have made the process smoother without taking away the excitement of discovery.

If this is my one regret after four years of rebuilding a studio, it’s one I can live with.

And if sharing it helps someone else avoid tearing their studio apart just to move a few cables a few inches apart, then it was probably worth writing about.