Feature: "No distraction mode"

[Josh Wolfer]

I know that some people may find this silly, but I figure I might as well ask, even as silly as it might be to most.
I have 2 monitors in my studio, as such: 

I'm working on films quite a bit and when I want to audition my score / sound edits, I start play back and look above to watch the film. The challenge is that I get distracted by everything that's going on in the main cakewalk window. If I minimize Cakewalk, it minimizes the video view window as well. 

It'd be nice if maybe there was a "no distraction mode" where the main view was opaque and dark, so it doesn't distract when auditioning. My current go to in lieu of this is to open up an image and max it out over the main monitor during playback, like this:

I know it's likely a one off that many other people don't care about, but if it happens to be low hanging fruit, I figured I'd at least ask :). 

Thank you bakers for all that you do. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Josh Wolfer

[Starship Krupa]

Ooh, nice desk you have there, Josh. Very nice. Really a beautiful workstation. Mine is....funky by comparison. Sort of a Millenium Falcon. But I do have more monitors for referencing mixes.?

My first thought was whether a Workspace might be able to handle this, but Workspaces and I don't get along very well so I have no specific suggestions.

[Josh Wolfer]

I have yet to really use Workspaces. Frankly, I don't really understand their usefulness. I get that you can customize a lot about them, but I'm just accustomed to using 1 workspace for everything whether it's tracking or editing. 

I've really been focusing on making everything streamlined. These monitors and this room transfers so well, I haven't found the need to add a second set of monitors yet. I'm sure I will at some point, but these Adams were an insane investment

[Starship Krupa]

If your mixes are transferring well, then who needs it? You have what we all want. I was being  funny anyway, because if you saw my setup, well, look in my sig. I can at any moment flip between 4 sets of monitors.

I finally set up a reasonably flat response mic (Oktava MK 012) at my listening position and ran some sweeps and pink noise, and the Events are the only ones that are on the same continent as "accurate." The Monitor Ones don't even have the same curve between left and right, and it looks like a mountain range. Both they and the Point Sevens have a huge dip and spike around 150. I was pleased to discover that my hearing still goes up to about 12,500, which surprised me. Age 59 and veteran of many live shows. The A70's are really 1980's bachelor pad speakers.

The price on the Events was  pretty insane. One channel didn't work, so I got them for free. Replaced a fried chip amp and  they were fine.

My studio is a friggin' hodgepodge, which is why I love how yours is set up. Everything in its right place.

[Josh Wolfer]

I was waiting to add bass traps to re-analyze the frequencies. I need to do that now. I still have some cloud absorbers to put up, but that's final touches. After I do the analysis with bass traps (they're installed now), I'm going to finally turn on my sonarworks reference 4 tuning that I picked up a while ago. Should be the icing on the cake. I'm lucky enough to also be in an odd shaped room. It's not just big rectangle.

[Starship Krupa]

Very nice.

I think the one place that I got super lucky with my "okay dining room, you're it" studio was the fact that it has  a 10' ceiling with coffer beams, a bay window, and several bookcases. One of the corners has a fireplace at a 45-degree angle. It's all dumb luck, but let's hear it for idiosyncratic Victorian architecture. When I'm tracking drums, my right elbow is next to some really great literature, in case I want to read some Mark Twain or Robertson Davies.

For my "vocal booth" I did something I've never read in any budget studios article. I got  my camcorder with its decent quality stereo mic and had my friend speak and we walked around the room shooting video. Then we played it back on the monitors and noted on the video where I was standing when it sounded best. Bang, that's where I set up my vocal mic. Crazy, but then a few years later my buddy visited Sun Studios in Memphis, and they show people the "sweet spot" in their very live, untreated room, where they had their artists stand. There's a hole in the linoleum floor tile that is said to be from the peg of Bill Black's bass (swoon).

I like my idiosyncratic setup and the sound I get, but it sure is nice to see a room and workstation that's done "right."