MDM Recording (ICEcube Records Ltd)

02/11/2018

16/07/2018

At least once a year I give away a freebie🎙️ 🎶 So, although we are still in "festival" season, if you have an EP project or a "Live" gig that is important to you for preservation/archive then now is the time!! All you have to do is send me a VERY rough demo of something you have recorded. If I get inundated with requests then of course I will make a judgement call on who I think I deserves some free recording time.

But here's the thing.... Anyone that sends a demo and wants to record with me will get a 30% discount voucher to be used by the end of this year. That way everyone that is interested will get some value for taking the trouble!! If you want some confirmation about how/if we can work together then give me a call or a private message. Cheers. G
😎

20/05/2018

Imagine you could only ever use "one" specific microphone.... to mic everything and anything! What would it be??

18/04/2018

Nice😎

16/04/2018

So you wanna build a studio? Part2.
The second instalment of Kolin's studio build.

Shared with Dropbox

03/02/2018

Anyone that has ever done an OS upgrade or a DAW upgrade will know that it is finger biting stuff!! Will my DAW software talk to my interface? Will all my favourite plug-ins still work? What is it all going to cost?

I did a lot of research, including creating an external MAC hard drive with new operating system to try before upgrading my MacBook Pro... Upgrade to ProTools12, DONE, Upgrade Mac OS and latest version of my plug-ins, DONE, and my interface still talks to my computer like a dream! Happy days, ready for my next project😎

05/01/2018

So you wanna build a studio....?

Over the last few months as part of my MDM services I have been helping my friend, Kolin Durier Music, design and build a rehearsal room/studio. We are now on the home stretch and I thought it might be useful to share some of the design issues and experiences. To that end here is (Part 1)....

With Kolin's assistance I will eventually put together a Part 2 of this blog to see how we got on? Did we meet the design goals? How did the project go from a client's point of view? We will be discussing some of the challenges to be expected in creating such a space that I hope will meet all of Kolin's Needs and be a great asset to Kolin's work and creativity.... without annoying the neighbours!!😎

Garage rehearsal room/studio, design philosophy: (Part 1)

Most projects begin with a requirement, a specification and a budget, or, inevitably, will tick all these boxes as ideas materialise. A sound studio or rehearsal room is no different in this respect.

Kolin, a musician friend of mine, needed a room to practice or rehearse using electric guitar, maybe with a keyboard player, occasionally to write and record. The starting point was to be the conversion of a classic single garage with flat roof and up and over door. It is quite a common desire for musicians to have their own “studio room” and the garage is generally the No1 suspect! Equally from an acoustic point of view there are certain limitations that make this a much harder goal to achieve successfully than may be apparent.

The construction was standard 4” brickwork for 3 of the walls, on a concrete slab, with the almost acoustically transparent up and over door as the fourth “wall” and a flat roof. The biggest unknowns were details of the foundations and the specific roof components.

So, where do we begin? There are really 2 distinct requirements:- 1) acoustic isolation (structure) ie reduction of “in-to-out” sound (or out-to-in, depending on ambient noise levels), and 2) internal room treatment, to control decay times. As an acoustician there is a temptation to overspecify on the isolation, whereas as a client there is generally amazement at just how much structure is required to stop sound energy! What we should be doing is specifying “just enough” isolation to meet the need.

In Kolin’s case he lives in a quiet residential area and was clearly more concerned about his music annoying the neighbours than any outside noises disturbing his creativity. In terms of structure the obvious weak point was going to be the flat roof, probably constructed from ¾ inch plywood with roofing felt as a weather stop, and of course the up and over door!

Acoustic isolation is predominantly determined by mass and specifically, the equality of mass in each dimension. So, the mass in the ceiling needs to be in the same ballpark as the relevant walls, if the sound isolation value of the walls are not to be wasted. We didn’t really want to interfere or attach anything to the flat roof; from a maintenance point of view this could become a future problem. A concrete slab roof would have been ideal, but was really out of the question, both on cost and possible structural/foundation issues. This is where you have to take a step back and say what is the best we can do with the existing structure and will this be “just” good enough to meet the needs?

The next most important aspect of sound isolation is de-coupling. Simply put this means not connecting structures, or if essential, connecting via resilient materials to limit vibration being transmitted through structures. For the purpose of Kolin’s room a “lightweight”, room within a room structure was used. I say lightweight, but this is relatively speaking in acoustic terms. In actual fact we added more than ¾ tonne of material in constructing the internal room and outer ceiling, and a further tonne for the front outer wall and doors! The first stage was to redefine the “outer” room structure by creating a new ceiling fixed to the underside of the existing joists. It consisted of 2 layers of 15mm plasterboard (30mm in total thickness) fixed such the joints were staggered, with 100mm rockwool medium density mineral fibre batts above and between the joists. The top of the mineral fibre was approx 100mm below the inside of the flat roof. This “new” outer ceiling was extended one extra joist further than the footprint of the planned outer concrete block wall.

Then, a 100mm wooden stud frame was built to create the structure for the “inner” room. No floating floor was planned. From Kolin’s brief there were not likely to be any live drum sessions, which can transmit significant structural vibration. Floating floors can be useful, however, if not essential then why add cost? It’s all about diminishing returns. The higher the specification the more it is worth doing, but in this case the ceiling and doors were more likely to be the weak links, rather than the solid concrete floor, so no floating floor. A good quality underlay and carpet would in any case act as a resilient layer as well as being part of the internal treatment.
The whole stud frame structure was built on strips of heavy duty felt underlay. Although this may have some minor resilient benefit the prime reason is to create an airtight seal between the lower surface of the studwork sole plate and the rough concrete floor surface. Under load the underlay compresses significantly to effectively become a solid. The original outer side brick walls had a 9’’ pillar approx half way down as structural support. This spoilt the line somewhat and also would have wasted valuable width if we had taken the finished inside line of the studio to the inside of the pillars. A tricky piece of carpentry created a kink in the rear of the stud frame around the pillars. The compromise being that the clearance around the pillars was reduced to about 50mm whereas in the remainder of the 3 outside walls there was approx 140mm clearance from wall to front face of the studwork(ie back surface of plasterboard). The entire stud frame(including new ceiling joists) was filled to a depth of 100mm with rockwool SL930 batts and the inner walls/ceiling lined with 2 layers of 15mm plasterboard, again ensuring the joint seams of each layer did not coincide. The layers were attached in such order that all corners produced a step joint and all corners were independently filled with mastic before proceeding to the next layer. Additionally, “Green Glue” was applied as a constrained damping layer between the plasterboard layers. Finally the whole inner room was finished with a skim plaster coat.

Home projects often do not take into consideration the fact that you actually have to breath in the room. Full studio quality air-conditioning is expensive! The main issues being to get air in and out of the room without sound leakage. I came up with a plan, that Kolin was happy to go along with. Although untested, since it would be created as a “one-off” on site, the theory behind it is based on empirical data and calculation. It will supply just forced ventilation and extract, no conditioning, with enough fresh air for at least 2 people with slight overpressure.

Once the inner stud frame and plasterboard was complete (with door opening), a separate concrete block wall was built extending sideways between exterior brick walls and from structural floor up to the underside of the outer skin (plasterboard) ceiling, with approx 40mm air gap to the inner room stud work. This completed the outer room structure. The compartmentalised structure of the ceiling and the extension of the outer skin ceiling one joist further than this outer block wall served as an additional barrier to any flanking transmission from the cavity between inner and outer skin. A second door opening was formed in the outer block wall adjacent to the inner door opening.

Acoustic doors are very expensive. Ideally they should be of similar mass/unit area as the wall in which they are fixed. This is of course practically impossible for very massive walls, but nevertheless, they are built as heavy as hinges and frame allow and manufactured to high tolerances regarding perimeter seals. Here again we have to be realistic. We could easily have blown half Kolin’s budget for the whole project just on the doors!! After much online searching we decided to go out on a limb and DIY the doors… In my heart I knew that this could jeopardise the good craftsmanship and vigilance that had gone into the project thus far, but I also knew that we could not justify “full spec” doors for a nice-to-have rehearsal room, rather than a business that relied on these doors for 24 hour production. We started with an excellent bargain (black Friday I think?) 2x solid core, 30min fire door blanks for just over £100. Kolin also purchased the matching frame kits, 2x Lorient surface mount drop down threshold seals and batwing door stop seals for the remainder of the door perimeter. Heavy duty hinges, door spring latches and pull handles also ate into the budget , but so far all good value. The only problem.… we knew on paper that they just were not going to be heavy enough, despite each door weighing 35kg. I had a plan for adding mass but suggested to Kolin that we do some initial sound tests and see just how much further we have to go.

I have managed to get this far without speaking numbers or discussing the technical design issues regarding noise criteria. Well let’s start with a few numbers. First off this room is predominantly for Kolin to play guitar. In terms of frequency content the guitar spectrum diminishes significantly below 80Hz. [If ever a bass player did play in the room with Kolin then he may have to be restricted on volume and the same for synth bass. This is a penalty of “lightweight” construction]. However, regarding Kolin’s guitar, which was the main brief, let’s suppose for a minute that he is playing and producing 95dB(rms) measured in the room at some random point. The target in simple terms would be to reduce this to less than 40dB(rms) outside at a distance of one metre from the garage walls. This doesn’t take care of frequency specific sound levels for which NR, or Noise rating numbers, are used. The target here would be to not exceed NR35 outside() while Kolin is playing inside. The NR curves more closely mimic the perceived loudness due to the way in which the ear works, so they are more relevant than raw sound reduction figures. The ambient noise level in a quiet neighbourhood actually works against us in these type of design goals, since a louder background noise would mask some of the sound in the room that is transmitted to outside. At night time we really should aim to produce below NR30 outside of the room since the ambient noise levels are likely to be even lower!

Just to confuse the issue, sound reduction capabilities of building assemblies are commonly expressed as an STC (Sound Transmission Class) number. It is actually dimensionless but often people regard it, incorrectly, as a sound reduction index in dB. It is also limited in frequency range between 125-4000Hz, which means that it is missing a lot of information on the high energy, low frequencies that relate to many musical applications. Nevertheless, it does allow a useful comparison to be made of the likely sound reduction when considering a variety of building assemblies. We were needing STC55 to get near to NR35 curves, if we did better than this I would be delighted!

The last thing I want to talk about is resonance. This is particularly important when considering the low frequency performance of lightweight structures and can negate a huge part of the expected sound reduction based on mass alone. Building elements like panels, boards even solid walls have frequencies at which they exhibit resonances. Wherever there is a secondary adjacent panel/board and associated air gap there will be a mass-air-mass (MAM) resonance. This is true in the case of stud wall partitions, or in Kolin’s room where we have a plasterboard partition separated from a wall by an air gap. Just like any other vibration isolation solution the aim is to get the resonant frequency as low as possible, which means either increasing mass or increasing the air gap by separation. Just to put it into context for a full spec recording studio this means getting the wall resonance down below 10Hz, which would require in the order of 2x 200mm concrete block wall with a 200mm cavity..!! It is also the reason why in general it is best to avoid triple leaf constructions for acoustic purposes, since there are 2 sets of resonances in play. Due to overriding practical limitations we were forced to create a triple leaf structure in Kolin’s ceiling, the third leaf being the flat roof. However, this is mitigated by the extra mass added with 2 independent ceilings and the fact that the masses and air-gaps involved create quite different resonant frequencies. If we had more headroom to work with then we could have added more mass to the inner and outer ceiling or increased the air gap but eventually you would end up with a room that a tall person may not be able to stand up in! It also becomes a diminishing returns type of balance, since you need to keep doubling the mass to get an additional 5dB improvement in isolation.(NB, If ever you want to build a “pro studio” find a room with at least 3m ceiling height…. Air-conditioning, secondary ceilings and acoustic treatment eat up a lot of real estate.). Ultimately, although the ceiling was going to be the weakest link the maths and empirical data predicted that it was going to be “just” good enough. Which is essentially what we should aim to achieve for maximum cost/benefit ratio.

So, how did we do? If you are interested keep a look out for “Part 2”….

13/12/2017

27/11/2017

Building my rehearsal studio has definitely been challenging- all ready for the outer skin wall to be build tomorrow

08/04/2017

Written and performed by Dinghus Khan. Recorded and mixed by Gary Frost, MDM Recording ©2014

31/12/2016

16/09/2016

It's that time again...! The festivals are coming to an end, the nights are getting longer. Time to consolidate, make that EP/Album you have been writing all year?

Most bands I work with have at least one person in the band who maybe has an interface and Macbook. Yes, of course you could do that totally self produced EP..... But sometimes it's nice "just" to concentrate on the music, let go... let me take care of the "recording machine". No more running backwards and forward to the computer, relax between takes and let me do the running around with mics and cables..! Plus I can offer you a mic choice that maybe you don't have access to? U47, U87, KM184, TLM103, C414, C451, EV RE20, MD421, K2 valve, plus the rest of the plain vanilla usuals.

Get in touch now. A "fixed" price for your project however long it takes. You will not get more for less in Norfolk.

11/08/2016

15/06/2016

Ok. Time for a short update/plug. This Friday 17th June I will be at the Waterfront Studio the last gig of Reckless Caution, supporting headline Thieving Icons, recording sets from both bands. Come down and support your local music scene at this event Thieving Icons // The Big Alabama // Reckless Caution // Mount Hood

Also, recently helped out with some vocal tracking for awesome young band Secret From Richard. They are working on an EP to add to existing 2 tracks that are available for download at the moment. "Get that vocal comping done Shaun Banham, I wanna here it!!"

Got a project in mind? Demo, EP... ALBUM? Give me a call. You won't get trendy "music speak" out of me, BUT, what you will get is studio quality, clean, clear, audio multitrack which we can work on together, or to your exacting demands?? Oh... and if you do dirty, then I can do that too... cleanly.

27/05/2016

Love this. Listen, enjoy, share. Remember the name SECRET FROM RICHARD. I get to listen to a lot of "start out" bands, these guys are right up there with the best! Festival bookers listen up....

"..I just wish you guys had finished studying aaargh!"

Feel My Fire - New single

02/04/2016

As a musician you like the sound of recording to tape... right?? Well, from a musicians point of view I totally get it.

I come from the days of analogue, and, although from a technical point of view digital has much to offer there is definitely a musically pleasing colouration that analogue tape provided.

However, from an engineer's point of view you can keep the tape machine.....!! Sure, as "pure" engineering goes, something like a Studer A800 is a work of art, akin to a precision watchmaker. But how many tape machines are maintained and lined up to the original spec? A badly lined up machine can ruin a session. A lot of the skills required are dying out.

So, I wanted to try and meet the need someway. After much experimentation I have settled on the Slate, Virtual Tape Machine. Without going into the multiple technical reasons behind the subtle sound of tape, the Slate plug algorithm pretty much does it all, without the hassle of maintaining the tape machine and the cost of the tape!!

Record to multi-track tape(Studer), mix through SSL4000E or G channel strip, master to 2 track tape machine. All the benefit of tape colouration, without the hassle. I am a cynical sceptic when it comes to audio, but, there are experts out there that have failed to tell the difference between the real hardware and the plug-in.

Give it a try??

23/03/2016

08/03/2016

This article explores the idea and importance of creating ambience in a mix.

07/01/2016

We're raising money to help Dan and all at The Owl Sanctuary because we love the venue and want to do what we can.. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.

05/01/2016

NEW! for the MDM mic locker 2016. The ubiquitous Neumann U87A and the delicious U47FET.

23/12/2015

This is why I do this! I can enjoy all music, from a musical point of view, and most genres when played well. But every now and again a band, or an artist, stands out from the crowd and demands my full attention. Secret From Richard are one of those bands. This is just the beginning.....

No overdubs, no multiple takes, no auto tune, just young talented guys playing live. Enjoy.

Collide - LIVE - recorded by Gary Frost - MDM Recordings, at Norwich Waterfront studio

08/12/2015

31/07/2015

In this special edition of The Music Mash we spend some time with local rock band Bad Touch, who discuss their journey from turning their passion into a profession, performing at Dowload Festival, winning the Marshall Ultimate Band Contest, beating almost 400 bands from all around the world to take…

20/07/2015

****We are very excited to announce that Enigma will be playing this years Sundown Festival on Saturday 5th September at 7.00pm!!!!****

Ready to warm up the crowd for the awesome "SIGMA" who we've been told are coming to check our set out!!!!!!

Come join us for Enigma's first "Big" festival we are hyped already!!!

Sun / Beer / BBQ / Live Music and much more!!!

Sundown:

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/344006929136111/

Website:
http://www.sundownfestival.co.uk/

Box Office:
http://nationalboxoffice.advancedticketing.co.uk/en/all.html

20/03/2015

It's been a while Facebook.... I know, I know, you keep reminding me!

A long while ago I was part of the project team for a refurb of BBC Maida Vale 4. We installed the first SSL4000 desk that the BBC ever bought (not sure if it was the last?). Anyhow, the console was awesome. The punch, the clarity and the routing options made it a great desk to operate and of course the SSL4000 has gone on to become one of the legendary great consoles. As much as I would love to own one in a fixed facility it ain't gonna happen soon :)

However, I have taken some quiet time in the MDM schedule to acquire the Waves SSL4000 series plug, and put the man-hours in to get comfortable with the channel strips.

I see a trend within the muso fraternity yearning for the sound of analogue tape again. I come from the days of analogue, and, although from a technical point of view digital has much to offer there is definitely a musically pleasing colouration that analogue tape provided. So, I wanted to try and meet that need someway. After much experimentation I have settled on the Slate, Virtual Tape Machine. Without going into the multiple technical reasons behind the subtle sound of tape, the Slate plug algorithm pretty much does it all, without the hassle of maintaining the tape machine and the cost of the tape!!

Record to multi-track tape(Studer), mix through SSL4000E or G channel strip, master to 2 track tape machine. All the benefit of analogue without the hassle. I am a cynical sceptic when it comes to audio, but, there are experts out there that have failed to tell the difference between the real hardware and the plug-in. Give it a try?

Oh yes, nearly forgot, now monitoring on the Adam A7X's.... love em!

05/02/2015

Blues | Norwich

01/02/2015

Here's a little thing from VicFest last year.... Thanks to BAD TOUCH for letting me share this. I thought about editing into individual tracks and then again...why not just re-live the moment? These guys are seriously good to watch live and although there are no pictures to go with it I hope you can enjoy the audio.

This is a whole "live" set from VicFest 2014, held in the village of Martham, Norfolk. Recorded and mixed by Gary Frost, MDM Recording. "I was going to edit it and select tracks... then I thought, na

21/01/2015

Listen to the music not the room.....
http://icecuberecords.com/MDM-Acoustics.php

MDM recording (ICEcube Records Ltd) offers Mobile Digital Multitrack recording services to all musicians throughout East Anglia.

20/01/2015

My friends DINGUS KHAN have let me share this. A little something we recorded as a demo a while ago that has now served it's purpose. If you ever get a chance to see these guys live..... just do it!
https://soundcloud.com/icecube-records/milk-of-every-mammal

Copyright 2014, MDM Recording

18/11/2014

Forked Tongue - Live @ VICFEST 2014 www.facebook.com/forkedtongueband www.soundcloud.com/vinny-shillito VICFEST: www.facebook.com/vicfest.martham Video produ...

25/10/2014

http://icecuberecords.com/MDM-Acoustics.php

MDM recording (ICEcube Records Ltd) offers Mobile Digital Multitrack recording services to all musicians throughout East Anglia.