John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

hi all,
i just posted another question in here and since it doesn't have to do with this one, i figured i'd keep this seperate.

i live in nj, usa. and i am building a studio in my detached garage. i have three rooms and installed a bunch of lights. in two of the rooms, i have the lights on dimmer switches.

after i installed them all, i read on here that people have had problems with a buzz coming from this sort of set up. is there always problems with this, or is it only sometimes a problem?

basically, i'd like to know if anyone out there HAS dimmer switches in their studios and have no problems with them interferring with the audio?

the lights i bought and installed are FAR too bright when on at full blast, so the dimmers are a must. and i'd definitely hate to (won't) replace all the lights, so i'm hoping for the best here...

thanks everyone,
pat

I have dimmers and fluor'os and had no problem with the control room gear - rack gear, console, moniotoring etc. As soon as I plugged in a guitar amp, off it went, have three different amps, they all pickup really horrible buzzing from the lights specifically with dimmers.

Get rid of them before it becomes a serious problem one day when you have a paying artist coming with their guitar amp!

Michael

Do not use regular dimmers. If you require dimming, there are options. Everything from high end low voltage controlled systems, to midlevel cost dimmers. Click here for the Technical resources info I have posted at the top of the forum. There are some links to dimmer info...

http://www.superiorelectric.com/PDF/Lux ... ntrols.pdf

http://variac.com/staco_Variable_Transformer_Map.htm

http://www.lutron.com/grafikeye/3545.html

Hi Aaron,
Thanks a lot for the advice! I did actually look at those pages you linked to in the Sticky thread. I just.. honestly I can't really understand what it all means, sorry! :/
I basically bought a dimmer switch from Home Depot and installed it. This won't be a commercial studio, so I'm not interested in top of the line anything. But I also don't want to have a hum or guitar amps dropping in and out, thats unacceptable. So, is there a dimmer switch I can painlessly buy? Or is it a high cost Dimmer System that I'd need? The way I'm looking at it, its a lightswitch that I need. And I don't haev the budget (or the willingness) to spend more than, say $35 on a light switch, if that makes any sense to you? Sorry if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. That's only because I don't know what I'm talking about

Much appreciated,
Pat

I'm also pretty ignorant when it comes to this subject, but this much I do know (I think)... Most regular dimmers work by rapidly turning a switch on and off, like a strobe, and it is this effect that wreaks havoc with audio equipment.

Am I off base, Aaron?

--Keith

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"Converting a garage into living space requires a city permit . . . homeowners insurance won't cover a structure that's been changed without a building permit . . ." --Sacramento Bee, May 27, 2006

Hi Keith.

Honestly, I hadn't dug that deep into the cheap dimmers, but I seem to remember hearing that somewhere.

I had a couple of those "Home Depot" priced dimmers around my house. And guess what...they cause a problem.

Pat, you can do it cheaper as I did. As long as you're not in a hurry, and don't mind making a larger hole in your wall, you can find a variac controller for a reasonable price on Ebay. I used some of the Staco variacs, bought a 6"x6"x4" metal enclosure box, mounted the variac to the front cover plate (drill a hole) and installed it. I haven't had any issues at all with them.

Basically the variac is a transformer, and it isolates it from the circuit so it doesn't feed back any noise into the AC lines.

most AC dimmers work by cutting sections out of the phase cycle - cut more sections = less power = dimmer lights - which means spikes and noise and these occur as base and harmonics of the line frequency... and can get picked up by equipment with sensitive preamps - like guitar amps, mic preamps, etc... variacs work by adjusting delivered voltage like a "variable transformer" where you select some number of coils = fewer coils = less power = dimmer lights... much cleaner but harder to make = more $... fluoresent dimmers are even worse that normal AC ones - don't go there...

low voltage DC circuits can use resistive (one way) circuits to reduce voltage (and dim the lights) which is clean as long as the power source is clean.

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Glenn