John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

I'm an architect designing a recording studio for two friends of mine who are professional musicians. I'm posting here for all of us to get some feedback for our design. At some point we might be interested in paying for some acoustic consulting - especially for room treatments. Currently they are recording in the basement of a house with room characteristics about as bad as can be - so just having something relatively decent will be a huge improvement. This is NOT a professional, commercial studio that will be used 24/7, but rather a private studio to be used by only a select group of bands. Mostly electronic and indie pop music and the Live room will probably not see hours on end of extremely loud bands. However, there will be some times when it gets loud in there (mostly guitar, bass, drums, electronic stuff, vocals, some piano). I have read some of Rod Gervais's book and the musicians know a decent amount about sound - but none of us know enough about studio design.

The studio is located in an old brick warehouse building. It is on the top floor and in the future might have tenants, but currently does not. There are some residential apartments on the other side of the building about 20' away that we do need to be aware of. The budget for the project probably will only pay for the basic enclosing walls right now. However, adding additional isolation to the floor and ceiling could come at a later date (especially as other tenants begin to move in), as well as sound treatments - bass traps, diffusers, etc.

The construction materials will be 3 5/8" metal stud walls with 5/8" layers of drywall. The Live room will have a double stud isolation wall with 2 layers of 5/8" drywall (separated by Green Glue), sound batt insulation and separate bottom and top plates. The Control room will have a single wall with 5/8" drywall, with a RC-1 channel on one side - except where it shares walls with the Live room. The exterior 12" thick brick walls will be left as they are. The existing wood floor, wood truss, and wood ceiling will be left as it is. Huge wood trusses (8-12" thick members) and 3"x6" joists (really purlins) make up the ceiling structure and are exposed. The ceiling height starts at 12' at the exterior wall and rises to about 18'. The doors will all be solid core wood doors treated in some way to make "super" doors - examples of which I have found on this Forum (many thanks!). There are windows that will have some removable panels to cover them up during recording and mixing.

The emphasis is on getting the Control room to sound accurate and to sacrifice (to some degree) the characteristics of the Live room. Due to rent cost and space constraints it might be difficult to get both rooms to one of the recommended room ratios. Also, please note that this is pretty close to what we will have, but the dimensions and ratios shown in the linked images are not 100% finished. They will all adjust slightly (+/- a few inches), but we wanted to get some feedback first and see where to take things.

Our concerns are as follows:

1. We tried to get a good layout, have non-parallel walls, and get good room ratios, but if anyone has any comments regarding that please comment. There might be a chance to expand the Live room width and achieve a better ratio, but we aren't sure if we can afford to do so (more s.f. = more $ rent).

2. We will do a more through investigation into room treatments, but if anyone has ideas regarding treatments that might effect the basic layout please comment. I say this mostly because the budget only supports getting the basic walls up right now and room treatments will have to come later.

3. Currently, partially due to budget, we are NOT treating the existing wood floor and ceiling. However, as Rod points out in his book, what is the point of having super isolated walls if all the sounds transmits through the floor & ceiling. This is something we would love feedback on - more right now for noise coming IN…but as more tenants move in perhaps also for noise going out.

4. Which leads me to our next concern which is the huge wood trusses and wood joists that are inside the space and penetrate the exterior of the space since they run across the entire building, of which we are only occupying one side.
Will this be a huge problem for transmission?
Will they distort the sound - emphasis on the Control room?
I can only image having the wood ceiling exposed in the Live room (and the truss perhaps) that they might actually add something to the sound - much like the many wood paneled rooms we have seen. Our current plan it not to drop a ceiling on the underside of these joists and the trusses will always be exposed.
But do the trusses need treatment or a soffit built around them?

5. The existing brick exterior wall is left untreated and presents the same questions: Does it need treatment? Does it need to be furred out for isolation purposes? Again for the Live room it probably adds something unique to the sound - I'm assuming.

6. Lastly, there seems to be an emphasis on wood paneled walls, especially in Live rooms. We thought about cladding the Live room in wood, but currently the budget will not allow for this.
Would adding a layer of wood add to the sound quality in the Live room?
Is there a difference using plywood vs. solid sawn lumber?


Here is the link to the images, floor plans, and details: http://www.asonearchitecture.com/index. ... Itemid=154


Thanks for reading. Sorry for the long post, given the emphasis on details I tried to include as much information as possible,

welcome! the main challenge is that sound is 3D in nature and so the ceiling and floor will be the weak points. and (let's assume you create separate walls inside - assuming the structure can support it) the flanking via the ceiling and floor will likely negate almost all of the efforts on the walls. the trusses will also conduct a significant level into the structure as well - so you'll want to encase those.
i recommend you do some testing to determine how much isolation exists currently and how much structure transfer you have to deal with. some sine sweeps/pink noise/drum-bass pushed at 110db @ 1m in the proposed location then measuring with a sound level meter on different floors and outside to determine what you have. particular attention to the roof and floor. using metal and rubber hammers to tap and identify the flanking paths.
on the design - more of an angle on the walls (6°) would be better plus the ratios are nearly square in some regards so you might reduce the room width slight in the CR and expand it a bit in the LR. the high angled ceiling are ok as you can add lot's of trapping there and if they are symmetrically located in the CR should not be an issue as you'll likely hang a cloud over the desk. in the live room, hard treatments across the corners and flying some hanging absorbers + panels in the peak will help keep it nice and lively and diffuse. gobos can be used to semi isolate instruments as needed. drum and amp risers using damped membranes will almost certainly be necessary.

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Glenn

"6. Lastly, there seems to be an emphasis on wood paneled walls, especially in Live rooms."

You could be seeing John's inside out wall which will require the slats, since that is what he does. OR you could be seeing something similar in other places on the web, which are most likely, well, the same thing.

More often than not, and this depends on the room and the designer if we exclude the Inside Out Wall, it is simply a matter of choice. Wood offers a brighter response in respect to acoustic reflection, where sheetrock has known acoustic holes in the areas you may be trying to target.


I think Glenn said it best in what you may be up against. I would like to extend this statement he made "drum and amp risers using damped membranes will almost certainly be necessary." to include the entire floor

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Brien Holcombe
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Sound: You can't stop it, you can only try to contain it.