Problems

What were his biggest mistakes?

The biggest one, he says, was failing to use punch blocks for his patch bays, and just hard-wiring them instead. As a result, upgrades are really tough, and the system lost a lot of flexibility.

A minor problem was failure to provide adequate air-handling for the vocal booth, so it gets a litle toasty and a little ripe during those long punch-in sessions.

Dave was terrified of RF problems (he'd had a disastrous battle with local FM stations in his last Buffalo studio), particularly with the World Trade Center TV and Empire State Building antenna arrays just two short miles away. He managed to beat the problems in SkyRoom by very careful installation and exhaustive listening to the electronics, piece by piece, as they went in. He also did a lot of experimentation and trial and error fiddling with the grounding, including much shielding in the vocal booth. The result is an electrically quiet studio, in spite of the serious exposure to major urban RF transmission just outside.

The things that worked out best? Simple little things. The custom trackball installation, which tilts the trackball down in back to relieve wrist tension and carpal tunnel syndrome. A master monitor volume pot downstream from the Mackies on the way to the power amps, which has proved to be a godsend in terms of basic levels management.

When All Is Said And Done . . .

SkyRoom is particularly remarkable for its economy of means in a difficult and expensive urban environment. This is a MIDI project studio gone up-market with a vengeance, resulting in a room that sounds, looks and runs great, competitive for private production work in one of the biggest and toughest audio markets in the world. And the guy that runs it is one of the truly nice guys of the universe.

For fun conversation, call Dave Musial, One World Media, 201-217-0282

Dave Moulton is envious, as usual.