Not a great deal of studio building this weekend - I had some jobs to get done in the house. Nothing too exciting just reorganising kitchen appliances ready for delivery of a new dishwasher on Monday. Like always the job took 10x longer than I first thought!

 

Anyway, back to the studio. I'm at the stage now where I'm making double/triple sure that I have everything in place before finishing the mineral wool filling and ultimately drywalling. I don't particularly want to remove this stuff when its in place just because I didn't take that little bit more time to think about any possibilities. Though I accept that there always be something I wish I had allowed for I hope I have at least covered the obvious and the slightly less obvious.

 

I did need to re-route, in the end, one 2.5mm T&E cable for the studio ring. A little tricky to do but I managed to clip it down along a joist and through the stud-work of the alcove and back into the socket. This run was actually slightly shorter so the cable had to be cut down. I left the second cable as it was because it would have been a longer and awkward run than currently. I think that is it now with the cabling - I now just have to make some channels in the stud-work and tidy up as much as possible.

 

I have been re-thinking what and how to run the cables from the DAW (PC) to the desk and instead of making my own DVI cables I am going to use pre-made ones and run it over the top and down through channels in the front inside surface of the stud sole plate. I did some searching and reading on the net and found an ebay trader selling 7m long DVI-D dual link cables for £7.99 each delivered. I did spend a bit of time looking into the differences  between expensive and cheaper alternative cables with no true conclusion , so I decided that for £16 I would go for it. The trader has completed 1000s of transactions with 100% rating so the worst that could happen is I lose £16. Anyway, the cables arrived the next day and...  they worked a treat and actually looked pretty good quality - result!!!

 

A quick recap on the cables to feed from the airlock to the desk (and checklist):

2 x 7m DVI-D dual link for 2x24" displays

1 x 6m 25 pin D (for the Edirol DA2496 sound card)

1 x 5m USB extender (PC keyboard)

1 x 5m USB extender (PC mouse)

1 x 6m CAT5e

1 x 7m HDMI cable  

1 x 5m Firewire extension

1 x Cable for the PC on/off switching