John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi everyone out there, been in the sidelines mostly and soaking up all the great knowledge everyone possesses which is incredible (SWEET).

I decided I want to make my project studio, with just a separate control room. After reading much about double car garages being just to small for a good drum room and real estate is a factor, and not to angle the control room walls since its small, I though I would ask for any kind of pointers?

The room is 18x25, and the ceiling is 10ft. I just pretty much need to be able to monitor the drums and it's kind of rough when you in the same room and the drums bleed heavy in the headphones, or if someone might have an already cool design that would be great too. THANKS

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DIGI 003 CONSOLE + PT9, DIGI MAX FS, ASP8's, DECENT MICS

You might try something like John's basic design for a small studio:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5457&hilit=small+studio

You can angle them... provided that you do it intelligently, so as NOT to lose any space. Which is what John did with his design, above. Since the walls of both the drum booth and the control room are angled, the leaves run parallel: there is no lost space like that. Where one room is wide the other is narrow, and vice versa. Works great for BOTH rooms.

OK, so that's not the same shape space that you have, but you can adapt the basic concepts to fit your space. With an 18 x 25 space you have 450 square feet of floor space, which should be enough to have a decent control room and a decent (but small) drum room. And with ten foot ceilings, you have a good amount of height for your drum room, too, and good volume. That gives you a total available volume of 4,500 cubic feet, to split between your two rooms... Lucky you!

The issue with drums rooms is that drums need space to sound good, and they need height to record well. You have reasonable height, and reasonable space. Obviously your place won't sound like Abbey Road, but it also doesn't have to be terrible. If you look around the forum, you'll find several examples of drums rooms that people have built, that are considerably smaller that what you could have, yet turned out just fine. Potentially, you could have as much as 2000 cubic feet for your drum room, and another 2000 cubic feet for your control room. That's pretty darn good, on both counts! ITU and EBU consider 1400 cubic feet is decent for a control room

I guess the real question here is, what is the purpose of your studio? It probably won't be up to the level of a high quality commercial studio, but with that amount of space and good design it sure can be among the very best of home studios, project studios, and even some commercial studios. I've been in some commercial places with rooms smaller than yours, and that sound like junk for drums, but they still do good business, so there's hope for your place!

As a point of reference, the entire floor area of John's small studio (link above) is less than half of yours (about 220 square feet) and the total volume is barely 40% of yours (about 1800 cubic feet). So if that one worked great, then yours can be even better!

I'm totally with you there! I find it really hard to monitor drums if I can't hear the direct sound clearly on the monitors in the control room, with no bleed through the walls. It seems like some people don't have any problem monitoring and micing drums even in the same room, but for me it's a distraction: I like to hear the clean sound of each mic, and hear it on the monitors, not on headphones.

With a good isolation plan and a good design, you really should be able to get quite a nice studio in there.


- Stuart -

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

Soundman2020, thank so much for spending the time to help me move forward.

I pretty much a remodel man by trade so whatever needs to be done I got it covered. I guess I did get lucky on the 10ft ceiling.

I'm kind of been tracking vocals outside since building out here in the middle of nowhere, funny thing is it's dead quit cause I'm not in the city except an occasional cactus wren bleeding in the mic, but truly amazing results since there is no wall for it to bounce back.

Do you suggest squeezing a vocal booth somewhere in the plan?
RATS, I CAN'T OPEN UP THE DESIGNS?, WHAT PROGRAM DO I NEED TO SEE THE PLANS?

THANKS AGAIN SOUNDMAN 2020

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DIGI 003 CONSOLE + PT9, DIGI MAX FS, ASP8's, DECENT MICS

SketchUp! It's from Google, and it is free! It's what we use around here for modeling studios. Very powerful tools, very useful, but it takes a bit of getting used to.

You probably could fit one in, but at the expense of some space in either the live room or the control room (or both). The question is; do you need one? If you commonly record vocals and instruments at the same time, then most likely you do need one... but then again, you could record vocals directly in the control room, if it is well isolated... a lot of people do that.

Adding the booth will reduce the space and also complicate the build a bit, since it needs to be properly isolated too, just like the other two rooms. It also increases your budget, as you'll need another two doors, hinges, seals, closers, plus more glass for the window, etc. If your budget is good for that, and you really do need one, then yeah, you probably could fit one in without too much hassle.


- Stuart -

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

Understood, I guess I was gravitating from simple to little complicating (LOL). I guess I will just keep recording vocals outside, or if it gets to hot here, like now in the summer here in Phx I can always record them in the control room, thanks bratha, Have a great weekend.

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DIGI 003 CONSOLE + PT9, DIGI MAX FS, ASP8's, DECENT MICS