Chris Meyer Builds The Ultimate Man-Cave Synth Studio

An exclusive Synth and Software Interview

Every man needs a cave. So does every woman, but Chris Meyer happens be a man.

He also happens to be a musician with a very interesting new man-cave synth studio and a new album recorded in it; a synth performer; a bona fide expert who lectures about modular synths and teaches people how to use them; a long-time music and audio technology guru (you’ve seen his writing here as well as in every music industry magazine over the years); and one of the “founding fathers” of MIDI in the early ’80s.

No matter how experienced you are, it’s all but impossible to read one of Chris’ articles, whether it’s a review or a how-to, and not learn something interesting. He wasn’t running away from us, but – as one does in interviews – we “caught up with him” to discuss his unique synth studio design and construction adventure. And more.

Chris calls the studio Alias Zone, and his latest album is called Paradise Lost (click on that link).

What were the problems where you were working before this?

I’d been working out of bedroom studios. The two main problems were room acoustics (lots of resonances and room modes, particularly in the bass), and not having enough space to set up everything at once. If I want to record a different instrument, something else has to leave the room first.

I was also performing quite often in quad, and was already sold on the idea of spatial sound and immersive audio (I’m convinced that’s the future). Just like stereo took over from mono, I do think it’s eventually going to take over from stereo; it is quite a pleasing listening experience.

Previous attempts like quad and 5.1 never really got adopted, because they were inflexible as to where the speakers had to be. I like that Atmos came up with this level of abstraction. Where’s the sound, in a cube? What speakers do you have? We’ll translate the position to where your speakers are.

That’s why people can buy soundbars at Costco that have speakers aimed up to give you the feeling of overheads, things like that. So anyone who has AirPods (Spatial Audio), anyone who’s buying any modern soundbar for their TV probably has Atmos in it… everyone will have it.

I also feel that electronic music is the best suited for Spatial Audio. Because when you see “real” musicians, you’re used to seeing them in front of you – the guitar over there, the drums in front of you… I had a friend try to record a solo grand piano in Atmos, and the first thing they did was spread out the mics from the front to the back. “Yeah. Sitting in the middle of a 35-foot grand piano. No!” Didn’t work. 

Moving things around… I call that “stunt Atmos.” Just like in the early days of stereo records, I remember my dad had had one with a glockenspiel panned from one speaker to the other. If you listen to Atmost records on Apple Music, I was surprised at how few of them were stunt stuff, stuff flying around you.

There are a few albums that are pretty crazy – Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxmore in Atmost is probably my favorite stunt record, with things panning around doing crazy stuff. I do some of that, but for me it’s much more creating an environment. When something comes from those back speakers, the brain just goes “aaaah, I’m in an environment” rather than just “I’m observing something in front of me.”

So when the opportunity to build a new studio from scratch arose, those were three things: good acoustics; space (and inputs, etc.) to set everything up at once; and a design to mix in Atmos spatial audio.

And how did you start turning those basic considerations into Alias Zone?

New Mexico is not exactly a hotbed for recording studios, plus I didn’t have an unlimited budget, so I had to take on a lot of the design chores myself.

That included learning acoustics for small studios (I took the Acoustics Insider online course, among other self-education efforts). Sweetwater’s and Focal’s application engineers were also very helpful.

After exploring different possibilities, building on top of the garage was the most logical alternative. I laid out the space myself, including letting design decisions such as having a large bass trap in each corner dictate where doors could go, looking at first reflections for each of the speakers to decide where windows could go, going with thin vertical windows to maximize the wall space available for acoustic treatment, and making sure there was enough room about the windows to put corner absorbers along the wall/ceiling interfaces.

Since I also already knew every piece of gear that had to fit into the room, I laid out all of the equipment, workstations, outlets for power, audio, and data, storage areas, and even the lighting and HVAC to make sure they would work for me.

Even though I did not use an architest for “design,” I did hire one to make sure the construction details would be correct. By chance I managed to locate a person who studied under my home’s original architect, who informed me about its “design language” (it’s a southwest pueblo design).

This allowed me to copy those design concepts over to the studio, including appropriate southwestern touches such as “vigas” (large exposed hand-finished round beams in the ceiling – which also turned out to be excellent diffusors).

What about the room layout?

Since the room did not already exist, I was also able to make decisions such as using the preferred equidistant layout for the Atmos speaker array (compared to the orthogonal layout most have to settle for in rectangular rooms). I have a 7.1.4 system: seven speakers at ear level, one sub, four overheads.

However, the downside of the requirements of the Atmos speaker layout dictated where the listening position had to be – there would be no opportunity to find an “optimal” mix position later.

The space was large enough – roughly 25’ x 19’, on average – to divide it into “mixing” and “instrument” ends. I wanted an open plan for flexibility, so there is no hard divider between the two aside from a southwest-appropriate beam dividing the ceiling for the two halves.

The instrument end is “behind” the mix position, in an homage to the old live end/dead end studio idea. A set of low bookcases also divides the two spaces, with my acoustic percussion collection.

I’ve had to damp the large wind gong and crystal bowl (they were resonating when I monitored), but otherwise they’ve been well-behaved.

And the construction? You didn’t take the room-within-a-room approach.

We did have to fight with maximum height regulations for our neighborhood. That forced some decisions, such as making the ceiling for the “instrument” end of the room lower than the “mixing” end to meet those restrictions – while still having a high enough ceiling for overhead speakers on the mix end. 

The height restrictions also meant there was no room vertically to include a sub-floor to run the cables in, so I had to do a lot of pre-planning to embed all of the cable runs I could envision in the walls. (This decision is the one that’s come back to bite me the most, as some of the in-wall cabling has proven to be problematic.)

Staggered stud construction was used for the walls, with QuietRock installed for the inner ones. The builder didn’t really understand the concept of using staggered studs, and he threw in a few wider studs that reached from the inner to outer wall surfaces because he thought that would somehow be helpful.

I had to make him trim those down to restore the staggered stud integrity. (It still isn’t perfect, as the window framing reaches all the way through.) But he did add a layer of styrofoam outside the house before stucco-ing it to get another layer of insulation in there.

It took a bit to educate him on vibration transmission; he was used to thinking just about thermal insulation. And a material that’s good for one is not necessary good for the other. Vibration considerations are why we went with Gypcrete for the floor: to reduce bounce, with a floating laminate floor on top of that.

Overall I would tell people that you can have plans drawn up and create documents complete with models numbers explaining exactly what you want… but once the hammers start flying, builders largely improvise or fall back on what they’ve done before.

You have to keep on top of them far more than is comfortable to make sure you get some semblance of what you want!

Please tell us about the acoustics of your room

I know that non-parallel surfaces are preferred for acoustics. However, I was not willing to lose any floor space to non-parallel walls, and those height restrictions meant there was no room to play with sloping the ceilings. So I had to treat the walls (and wall/ceiling corners) the best I could to knock down reflections and resonances.

After taking an acoustics course and spending some time with a porous absorption calculator, I decided that most commercially available acoustic treatment (mainly 1″ and 2″ thick panels) was useless, especially for bass control. 

I tweaked the design of the Acoustics Insider bass trap/acoustic absorber, and had a local woodworker build me 40 6″ deep panels (two of them on wheels to use as mobile gobos). The contractor built in the corners a set of floor-to-ceiling bass traps that were 8″ deep, with a significant air gap behind them – so significant that the fronts of the panels are actually hinged so I could use the air gap for extra storage (mics, cameras, and lighting stands, etc.).

The mix end has mostly acoustic absorbers, as I learned that in surround mix rooms you really need to tame reflections even more than normal (i.e. a 2-speaker room) to pinpoint sound sources. The instrument end has absorbers with binary diffusor slats on most of their fronts to make it a little more lively for acoustic recording. 

Overall, I’m very happy with the sound of the room(s): dead but not claustrophobic like an anechoic chamber (I’ve been in a film composer’s studio who went to that extreme) There’s no fatigue spending hours on end in here.

I do have a few isolated floor/ceiling resonances on the instrument end (the one without the round viga beam diffusors along the ceiling); I have tamed them temporarily with area rugs, and plan to hang some spare 2″ thick acoustic panels from my old studio from the ceiling to break up those remaining reflections.

You’re using Focal speakers, which I’d characterize as tight and controlled. What went into that choice?

I already had a pair of Solo 6s that I was using for stereo monitoring. Some people have separate stereo and Atmos systems, but I combined mine (because I didn’t have an unlimited budget). It’s set up so I can do it as stereo, quad, 5.1, or Atmos. But I talked to Focal about matching speakers, because I filled out the system with Alpha 65 Evos, which are less expensive Focals, and they suggested that I use a Solo 6 for my center as well.

While speaking with the Focal application engineers, they mentioned that the Dolby studio notes for home theaters recommended tilting the speakers so their faces would not be parallel with each other (for reflections and resonances). Since the ceiling has more acoustic treatment than the floor, I decided to tilt them upwards.

I used IsoAcoustic ISO-200 stands, which have the option to build a tilt into them. This necessitated sitting some speakers upside down to make sure the tweeter was aimed at my head in the listening position.

Also, I set up the room so I’m equidistant from the speakers. People who use standard rooms often have short sides with the front and rear farther away, and then they have to do time alignment for their speakers. 

You have a *lot* of connections.

One of the goals of the new studio was to have all of my instruments out and ready to go, rather than in storage closets. Part of that is making sure I can use it – so there are audio and MIDI ports for every single instrument, including 22 channels from the main studio modular synth.

The instrument area has two main electronic instrument workstations, each with its own audio and MIDI interfaces. Each has its own network (AVB for the audio; direct-connected Conductive Labs MRCCs for MIDI) so they can talk to the computer and each other.

I also have word clock, plus HDMI for recording in-studio video performances running around the room.

Long distance USB and Thunderbolt ended up being the biggest headaches. The higher the bandwidth, the shorter the cable runs before you run into data dropouts. Even going through female-to-female wall plate connectors corrupted the signal too much to be reliable.

I had to go with fiber optic runs and powered hubs, and even then I spent many weeks troubleshooting to find which cables and hubs were the most reliable. USB over ethernet was not a solution for me, as the bandwidth is reduced significantly.

But now that I’ve got this sorted, I can plug a USB device into the wall virtually anywhere in the room and have it talk to the main computer in the equipment closet. I even have some long Thunderbolt runs to I can have a remote display/keyboard/mouse down in the instrument end, plugged into the same computer as the mix end.

And the other wiring?

There are audio and power outlets behind each of the “7.1” speakers to reduce running cables across the floor. My electrician called it the most complex floor he’s done. The same was done for the ceiling speakers as well.

I used Mogami W2820 Permanent Install Quad Mic Cable for the speaker runs, and kept them spaced away from the AC runs. Ironically, modern electricians are not used to soldering anything anymore, so I was the one who had to hand-solder all of the audio connections (floor and ceiling plates for each speaker, all learding to connection plates behind the main computer desk wing where I planned to have my surround controller – an Audient ORIA).

The AC runs for the speakers come to two master switches to power them all on or off at once. I would have preferred one switch, but our building codes allow for a maximum of ten outlets per switch. So I used one switch to turn on the speakers needed for 2.1, 4.1, and 5.1 monitoring, and the second switch to turn on the remaining speakers needed for 7.1.4.

I could not get the electrician to grasp the importance of a star wiring system! I wrestled them into using it for the speaker power, but they used conventional daisy-chain outlet connections for the rest of the wall AC. 

With clean power being a priority for recording, I enforced a star system on top of their outlet wiring by plugging a Shunyata Venom V16 power filter in the outlet with the shortest run to the breaker box, and then “starred” out from that using 10 AWG extension cables and lots of Furman rack and floor boxes for the instrument end. Furman filters plus an iFi AC iPurifier clean up things on the mix end.

One touch my wife requested was a switch in the studio that turns on a “recording” light at the bottom of the stairs, so she knows not to talk in on me while I’m recording. The builders agreed it was the best feature they’ve seen for a “man cave” and were going to recommend it to future clients(!).

You don’t have a sci-fi-looking console in your studio.

I do most of my mixing in the computer; I have a motorized fader mix surface I can plug into USB ports around the room so I can have mix control near wherever I am working. The exception to all this is the SSL BiG SiX, which I use for finishing as well as final overdubs.

To get around the issue of where to place the center channel speaker, I went for a 65” flatscreen TV for my main computer monitor, placed behind and above the center channel speaker.

About that main computer: it’s located in the main storage room directly off the studio, to get the noise and heat out of the main studio. And boy does that room get hot, even with a pair of vents built into it for passive convective cooling!

A second closet on the landing to the stairway leading up to the studio holds the large linear power supplies for my studio modular synth (again, vented to the outside for passive convective cooling). Solid doors contain the noise.

The Eurorack! I see you use a miniature starter system… 🙂

hahaha

Actually, when I did educational videos, I did use a small, non-threatening case, because I didn’t want people to get overwhelmed and think “I have to have 100 modules.”

And for my performances I had a custom case built to match the American Airlines overhead luggage space requirement, becuase I don’t want to check that! But with the studio system, all bets are off, and that’s the one that’s about a meter by a meter and has about 140 modules in it.

What are some of the things you bring with you to perform?

I bring with me my portable case, which is technically a 14U by 94HP case. It has built into it a USB audio interface (Expert Sleepers ES-9, which is 14-in, 8 back out). There are about 40 modules in my performance case.

Then I hook that up to what was previously an M1 laptop, but I’m moving to an M4 Mac Mini. Although I do everything live with Ableton Live, and I bring a lot of stems from the modular into Ableton Live, I have it set up with effects loops so I can send them out from Ableton Live and through the modular and back into Live again.

That’s why I have the audio interface inside the modular, not just a stereo feed. 

For controllers, I have Ableton’s Push controller for playing, and I use it in all ways: as a keyboard, to launch samples, etc. And I bring a flying fader mix controller, because I tend to have 24 to 32 tracks going when I’m playing live, and I wanted to know where all the faders where when I bank between them.

A general rule is if I need to adjust it, it’s in the modular case, and if I only need to start and stop it, it’s in the laptop (now the Mac Mini).

What kinds of venues are you playing and who are the audiences?

A wide range of ages! But they do tend to be on the techno-nerdier side…

My album release party was at a place in Denver called Prismatic, which has five different rooms; there’s Knobcon, which is a big music convention in the Chicago area, where we’re set up in a ballroom. Then a church in Philadelphia as part of the Gatherings concert series. Then Chuck Van Zyl’s radio show, a llve set on air. And a lecture about electronics/performance at the Sigal Music Museum in Greenville, South Carolina.

So the venues go all over the place.