Chasing Ghosts: Learning to Understand Noise in a Hardware Studio This is probably the most uncomfortable entry for me to write in the entire studio redesign series—because it deals with a mistake that cost me a lot of time. That said, it’s also one of the most...

Powering a Home Studio: Caution, Reality, and Practical Considerations This is a slightly uncomfortable topic for me to write about—not because it isn’t important, but because it is. Powering a studio safely is a serious matter, and it’s also an area where I want...

Power, Cables, and Staying Sane in a Small Studio When my studio was still fairly simple—a computer, two video monitors, a set of audio monitors, and a keyboard controller—there wasn’t much to think about in terms of power. Everything plugged in easily, and...

Cable Management: The Unexciting Detail That Changes Everything One of the biggest lessons this studio redesign taught me—more clearly than anything else—is just how important cable management really is. I’ve mentioned this before in the series, but it’s worth...

From Looking Good to Working Well: Redesigning for Usability When I originally set up my studio, I focused almost entirely on how it looked. Visually, I liked it—but in practice, it was nearly unusable. As I mentioned in the previous post, part of the problem was...

When the Studio Grows Faster Than the Plan While redesigning my studio, I ran into several major problems—although, to be fair, some of that trouble was also a lot of fun to get into. It wasn’t until I sat down to assemble and edit this video series that I fully...

Planning a Studio (and Learning to Let the Plan Change) If you’re going to redesign your studio, it’s probably a good idea to start with a plan. What I learned through my own experience, though, is that even the best plans don’t always unfold the way you expect—and...

Different Tasks, Different Tools: Letting the Studio Evolve As I’ve mentioned in earlier entries, dividing a studio into different areas for specific tasks can make a huge difference in how usable and enjoyable the space becomes. That said, different tasks almost...

Dividing the Studio Into Zones: Why Sections Matter One of the most useful things I discovered while redesigning my studio was the value of breaking the space into distinct working areas. Rather than trying to make one desk or one corner do everything, separating...

Connections, Cables, and the Reality of Wiring a Home Studio One of the things that often surprises people when setting up a home studio is just how many different types of connections are involved—especially once the setup grows beyond a single desk and a laptop....