John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

I live in Melbourne Florida and I am starting a new design. I am a musician (rock, blues, acoustic guitar) who has played professionally years ago but today it's just a serious hobby. This will be a stand alone detached dedicated building in the back of my residential property. I am thinking around 8 by 8 meters. Our predominant construction here is monolithic slab on grade with exterior walls made of hollow concrete block (cmu). The interior walls are generally wood studs. The roof is asphalt shingles over plywood sheating over wood trusses. I am an engineer with a decent understanding of room acoustics and a thorough understanding of construction. My objectives are:

1) Rehearsal space that keeps the noise in

2) Good acoustics without pushing the performance envelope to the bleeding edge

3) Basic recording capability that does not have to be production level grade

My ouestions:

A) Should I stick with concrete block construction?

B) Should I just create a single live room or should I consider a drum booth, isolation booth for vocals, and/or a seperate control room? I know that a production studio would have all of these but for my advanced amatuer needs I seek guidance for the tradeoff between rehearsal space and technical refinements that I might regret not having created at a later date.

Thanks,

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George
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Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.

do you have any plans to re-convert this later? such as a 2-car garage? or in-law suite?

i'd stick with the concrete and block as that's pretty much standard for FL. what is the proximity to neighbors? traffic?

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Glenn

Yes, and concrete/block has a higher initial STL. You can break up that large area for functionality. An 8 by 8 meter room is not ideal acoustically anyway.

Try this (LWH): CR = 500cm X 416cm X 335cm
The remaining space will be 'L' shaped with one area 800cm by 384cm and one at 416cm by 300cm.

Of course, you will loose some room with the isolation walls, etc. But this could work very nicely.

Cheers,
John

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John H. Brandt
"Twenty Thousand Dollars worth of Snap-On Tools doesn't make you a Professional Diesel Mechanic"

If it works out, i would design the space for future conversion but not if it significantly compromises the design.

Low traffic on one of many 1 acre properties in the woods.

I realize that a square room is poor, acoustically. 8 by 8 meters is just my starting point for an allowable footprint. I can adjust that if it significantly improves functionality. If the advice is that a single live room is the beat choice for me, I will adjust the ratio. I have a pretty clean slate here, I just wanted to get a starting assumption on the table. My attitude on these things is to keep spending money until the return starts to diminish and additional spending becomes a luxury.

At this point, I am seeking advice on what rooms/capability I should create to have a studio with good functionality for my needs without spending money for marginal return. That said, I have never had a studio before so advise from those who have is a big help.

Besides the live room, which additional discrete rooms (if any) do you recommend?

Thanks

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George
______________________________________

Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.

Welcome to JLS RSD! You gave a great honest introduction to what you are seeking. There is sticky at titled something like Before you Post at the top of the forum. Answering those questions will help us provide you with useful responses.

Looking at your initial questions, and commenting on things you have not brought up:

John is correct in that CMU provides the best sound Transmission Loss (TL) for music. Sound isolation is like a fish tank. All sides have to have equivalent minimum isolation to your spec. The walls will have to support the heavier than usual roof. The top will be probably end being a two leaf assembly, as teh walls will be. Budgeting concern is then those pesky doors are the weak point. High TL doors are expensive, and/or time consuming to make.

Without knowing your space needs (the questions in the sticky), the usual recommendation for that size space is one big room.

Study and absorb my signature line.


Good luck and keep the questions, and answers, coming!

Andre

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Good studio building is 90% design and 10% construction

Not having any previous studio experience I do not have a live room size in mind other than knowing that a standard 2 car US garage works (high school days), hence the 8 by 8 meter building (exterior) starting point. The live room would need to house a drum kit, 2 guitar players, bass guitar, electronic keyboard, and vocalist. I thought that I might get some guidance on what size room I should shoot for and then of course as the previous ouestions have asked - if any of the seperate rooms normally considered, make any sense for me.

Are any of the isolation rooms/booths created for reasons beyond track seperation for "live" recording and control/work area seperation - such as for specific voice recording characteristics?

Thanks,

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George
______________________________________

Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.

many times you can just get away with a single room and use gobos to separate the instruments a bit and provide some minimal isolation for a vocalist. if you find you need an isolation booth for vox or amps (or re-amping) later, you could add one.

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Glenn

That's basically it, I think. From my point of view, I simply cannot imagine tracking live acoustic drums in the control room, nor even in a poorly isolated live room. For me, I just have to be able to hear each individual mic though the control room monitors clearly, all by itself, without also hearing the same things booming through the walls. I want to know how that mic in that position on that drum will sound in the mix, and the only way that I can conceive of for doing that is to have the drum kit in a well isolated area of its own, where I cannot hear the direct sound from it at all, so that I can only hear the sound that will actually be recorded when I hit the big red button.

And if I need to track more than one thing at a time, then I really like to have them in different isolated spaces, for the same reason: I don't want the electric guitar bleeding all over the vocal track. So for tracking things simultaneously, multiple rooms are a must, in my opinion.

For me, separation is what it is all about: it is the entire purpose of building a studio in the first place. If you don't need isolation, then why bother building one at all?

But that's just me: Others might have different points of view.


- Stuart -

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

Perhaps I did not communicate my priorities and questions very well. At the risk of being repititious:



As a young man trying in vain to become a rock star, I found 3 things as consistent problems on the way to getting good enough to get paid:

Finding someone with a good PA system
Finding a good drummer
Finding a place to practice where nobody called the cops on us

So merely creating a building where the sound does not get out is a big move in the right direction. It is detached so that I do not violate the first priority and piss off my immediate family (or have to spend a lot of extra money on the design making sure that I don't).

Once inside, making sure that the room acoustics are good enough to make good quality "live" recordings is also a requirement so that I can create a quality documentary of my midlife crisis attempt to recapture my mis spent youth. I see the path to picking the right decoupled wall systems of proper mass, "golden" room dimensions, irregular wall shapes, etc. although I am sure that I will seek advise on those particulars later in the process.

So even if I stop right here, I have met my minimum goals and it will have been worth it. What I am still trying to straighten out is that given that I will spend this much time and money, am I all set to play and record at my "advanced amatuer" level or will I regret not having created the isolation capability that we have been discussing because that is where we all end up. Even at this level, do we end up wanting isolated tracks to do a proper job of monitoring/editing/mixing, etc.?

I suppose that it would not be as big a deal if the live room dimensions were not so important. You would just start with a single large room and if you changed your mind, you could just chop up the room to create the isolation/control booths but then you may find yourself struggling to hit the room acoustics.

Thanks for all of your inputs so far,

_________________
George
______________________________________

Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.

A couple more questions here, George:

1) You say that you want "basic recording" capability, in your new studio, but do you also plan to mix in that studio, or will you mix elsewhere? By "mix" I mean that the several individual tracks that you have recorded, and put them together as a complete song, with all the EQ, dynamics, effects and stuff, so that the song sounds polished and professional, such that you could put it on a CD and send it out as your demo, or maybe even sell it to friends and relatives? Or do you just want to record basic scratch tracks to listen to at a future date, to remind you of how you played?

2) Is this just going to be a hobby studio, or might it become more professional at some point? In other words, are you just going to only ever record yourself for fun, or might you also record others in order to give them good sounding, nicely finished songs?

The reason I ask is because using this space as a basic hobby practice space and just recording yourself for fun is rather different than using it as a professional practice space to record yourself (and others) for the purpose of selling your musical skills. And the problem is, changing your studio from "pure hobby" to "pro" is a huge deal: You'd most likely have to rip stuff out and rebuild if you think you might ever move up from hobby to pro, so if that is even a vague possibility, it would be better (and cheaper in the long run) to design with the future in mind.

In other words: if it is only ever going to be a hobby for you alone, then just do it as one big room, and that's it.

But if you need to mix properly, even at the "advanced amateur" level, that implies that you DO need a decent control room, which already changes things, even if it is only ever going to be you in there. You can't mix well if you don't have a suitable environment for it. You can't just shove a desk in the corner of the room, plonk a couple of speakers on it, and hope to produce a passable demo CD. If that's what you need, then it implies an area specifically designed for mixing, with good stereo image, hopefully RFZ, hopefully soffit mounted speakers, first reflection point treatment, etc. So even if it is only you in there alone indulging in your hobby, then you still need to at least set aside part of the "big room" for that.

But the moment you think that you might have to record someone else as they play something, or even just have someone practicing one thing while you mix another, then you need two rooms.

Personally, with an 8m x 8m space, I reckon I'd split it from the start, into a control room and a live room. That would avoid expensive demo- and rebuilding later, as your needs change. How much space you assign to each depends on what your priorities are: If you want to play more and mix only occasionally, without being too worried about world-class mixes, then assign more space to the live room and less to the CR. But if your whole life is mixing and mastering, and you only ever need to record occasionally, then assign most of the space to the CR, and just the bare minimum to the LR.

As with everything related to studios, its a matter of trading off one thing for another. The trick is finding the right trade-offs for YOU. What works for me might be no use at all to you, and vice versa.

Not sure if that helps at all! But basically the only person that can decide what your priorities are is YOU.


- Stuart -

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

+1 Stuart.
... what more can I say?

-John

_________________
John H. Brandt
"Twenty Thousand Dollars worth of Snap-On Tools doesn't make you a Professional Diesel Mechanic"

Stuart

Excellent work, you have given me a lot to think about.

Thanks,

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George
______________________________________

Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.

"which additional discrete rooms (if any) do you recommend?"

A restroom...your gonna want that and you should consider where your closet(s) will be. You may can do without the restroom, but you have to include a closet for the things we bring into these rooms.

Which brings us to HVAC. The price jumps every time you add a room, and if money is the guiding factor and if you are comfortable with it, I would have one well made room that would include a symmetrical control room on the one end but have the ability to track live or rehearse in the rest of the room.

It can be done, but it depends on how you want to work

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

Studio design and building is following details. Answer these questions if you are serious.

Andre

_________________
Good studio building is 90% design and 10% construction

Its been a while but I have been on an interesting side track. A builder friend of mine got a job turning a rectangular CMU outbuilding into a "bomb proof" (bombs going off inside) practice room for a metal band in a very ritzy neighborhood. I studied up on isolation (2 leaf systems, mass and airspace calculations, doors, ceilings, etc. Thanks to Stuart and others for your help) and helped him design the decoupled room in a room and solve the unique problems of the building. We were shooting for 65-70 db of isolation (well I was, nobody else even cares what that means) because they needed Live at Leeds db levels inside to yield whisper quiet levels at 50 ft. They are not technical clients and wont even make the time for isolation measurements to determine the outcome but they are extremely happy. Point being is that I have developed at least the basic envelope isolation skills so now its back to layout for my studio.

Here is where my thinking is after this forum, these thread ideas and discussions with fellow musicians:

Budget is not constrained per se. I want to be efficient and not waste money and keep the scope consistent with my goals. I am funny that way. I buy my blue jeans at Walmart because they fit better and last longer for $8 but I spent almost $10K on a TV because I could tell the difference.

8" CMU shell, all cells filled with concrete, both sides painted twice, air tight.

Trusses will be for 10' ceilings, any room can be lower or pitched from there.

4" monolithic slab floor, oversized footers.

Room in a room construction all walls/ceiling 2 leaf, wood frame, free standing (coupled only at the floor unless isolated couplers at the top are required for code) , 10" air spaces w/batt insulation, 2/3 layers of drywall, all leafs airtight.

Dont make it square (asthetics and it blows apart harder in hurricanes).

Dont worry about future conversion of the building.

Do a control room now, mixing is certain but not the main priority. Assume that some compromises can be handled with treatments, just dont want to make really big mistakes and start in a huge hole (no cubes or even multiples).

Better have a bathroom and storage.

Better have a hallway for time outs (bands are harder than being married).

Starting dimensions based on Bohner or the top 2 Louden or Sepmeyer ratios for the control and live rooms. Lots of differing opinions on if this matters once you leave a rectangle but I have used average dimensions to start.

Prioritize the live room.

At least one dead room for vocals and other isolation.

If drum isolation is needed, use the live room for natural reverb and space (think LZ/Levee).
If additional isolation is needed beyond drums, use the other iso room and/or the control room for guitars. Consider a vocal/amp booth.

Be able to convert part of the storage area to minimal kitchen if nesessary(code thing).

Doors with double airtight seals, solid core with additional MDF mass.

No outside windows. Interior windows non-parallel panes, gas filled.

HVAC isolated, baffled, low air flow.

Electrical and plumbing staggered.

Cabling chased under the slab with conduit.

Floorplan attached, dimensions need tweaking.

QUESTIONS:

Any benefits to stick building the roof with old school rafters?

Does this plan need another small iso booth for vocals (see second plan)?

I see that I probably need to move the CR side window back to allow for first reflection control and rethink the CR door for rear wall control, comments? Is the front window worth the aggrevation for line of site to that booth vs reflection control? There have been some interesting comments about performers liking the isolation and not having engineers staring at them, video monitors, secong floor CR's that work, etc. Lastly, and because they are all related - soffited or near field in a smallish room like this?

Many competing opinions on minimum control room size and the benefits of splayed walls in a small room. Comments on my starting point in the CR as far as overall dimensions?

Also it looks like the 7.5 degree splay for each wall of the CR meets the 12 degree total "rule" so if there is a benefit then at least the starting design makes sense but the resultant live room total of 7.5 degrees does not so is this even worth the trouble for flutter, etc. or should I just go back to a rectangle so at least I can nail down a good ratio (Bohner, Louden, etc.?).

Is cabling better through wall chases or wall jacks vs. floor conduit?

Should I consume some of my ceiling headroom and slant any of them or get 10' everywhere?

Any other observations/comments?

Thanks,

_________________
George
______________________________________

Just hoping that my work is coherent and upon reflection,
not very colorful.