John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi everybody!
I´m a student of architecture and this year I´ve chosen a project of a residental house with a recording studio.
Now a space for studio is 7,7x10m, but it´s possible to change it. Height is now about 3m.
What I want to have here:
control room, one room for drum set with opening glass wall for "off-air" playing, one room for singer/acoustic instruments sensed by microphones, one big room,where could play at least 4 people and some resting room, connected with main recording room with a window and doors, if it would be possible.
Why I write here:
Is there some recomended height of rooms in recording studios? From layouts in your forum I saw most projects has height of normal residental rooms. But I saw f.e. Abbey Road Studio, where height was more than 15 feet. What influence does it have for room acoustics and final sound of record?
How windows affects acoustics of studio? I would like to project studio, where everybody sees everybody thru windows, but I´m affraid of sound.
Is it possible to build a control room as good, so you could use it for mix and mastering? Or should I project a separate room?
It´s all my questions now, about technical solution I have found tons of information in you forum, thanks BTW.
So could anyone answer me, please? If you will have some free time, I would be very grateful for some elementar floorplan in dimensions, I wrote above. I will post here my floorplan, about tomorrow. But after two days reading this forum I know, it is totaly bad
Thanks for answers! Martin from Czech Republic

Hello everyone!
Here is my schematical floor plan. The studio would be diagonaly symetrical, so I did anotations only at one half. I would like to have windows between a resting room and recording room, control room and recording room and big glass doors between control room-drum room, vocal room, drum room-recording room, vocal room-recording room.
What do you say?
Is a control room big enough to master records?
Thanks for answers!
Yea, and anotations are in milimeters. If you wold like to, I can do it in feet. Just say.

I forgot about budget - It´s a school project, so it´s limitless.

Basic layout looks OK. The trick will be to isolate and treat those rooms correctly!

As high as possible! The reason you see low ceilings on most home studios, is because that's the height of the house ceiling. You can't go higher, as that would require modifying the roof, which is a huge additional expense. Most people just have to live with the height restrictions imposed by their existing structure. But if you are going to build something from the ground up, then go with as much room volume as you can get!

What effect does it have? For example, think of putting overhead mics on a drum kit. They are usually about 6 or 7 feet above the floor. If the ceiling is low, then the mics are only a foot or two form the ceiling: comb filtering, reflections, UGGH!! Not nice. Then there is the overall dimensions: small rooms sound small, and not nice. They don't support modal response at low frequencies, or even if they do, it is very spotty and uneven. You need a really large room to get even modal support in the low end. Also (for the same reason) a small room does not really have a statistical resonant field: only large rooms do. Plus many other things...

They are reflective, and also resonant. The effect depends on where you put them, the mass, dimensions, angles, etc.

You can do that. You just have to ensure that the angles are carefully designed to keep first order reflections away from important locations, such as the mix position in the control room, for example.

You can, yes. In that case, just design it for mastering, and it will be good for mixing too.


- Stuart -

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I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.