John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

I guess like many...I'm looking to get a studio space happening. I've got a place on hold pending some numbers to see how bad this is going to hurt me. I've got some basic understanding of what's involved but will need a good bit of help to really complete things.

Anyway...The space is about 1200sqft. 20x60. (The internal side dim. is actually 19' 4" and the internal depth isn't quite 60'.)

I'm thinking I want a control room, live room, machine/tech room, and maybe an iso room if I decide to do a couple of instruments at the same time.

Where to go from here!?

Thanks!

James

Hey!

That looks like a potentially really fantastic space for a studio! Color me jealous

Anyway, I'm not much of help, I just wanted to say that a good thing you could do is to download Google Sketchup, and do at least a top-down floor plan of the space with measurements as accurate as possible.

Also, I suggest you read through this viewtopic.php?t=3231 and iterate a bit more on what you want to know, so that the people with the knowledge here can answer a bit more specifically.

Okay...So let's dig in some more detail...

So the pictures give a pretty good overview of the structure. It's pretty basic. Metal building, concrete floor, block on either side up to about 6 feet or so then...I dunno. Even though I'd love to take advantage of the really high ceilings...I just don't think I want to try to building beyond 16' high or so.

The area is somewhat industrial and as such there are decent sized trucks that roll through from time to time. Since this is predominately going to be my evening hideout spot...I don't think I'm worried about that too much.

About 75' away from the OH door is some residential space. Since I might be kickin' it late at night...I need to keep the levels WAY down.

I want as much isolation from the instruments as possible in the control room. For the past 7 years I've been in a two room basement with nearly no isolation. Not being able to really hear what the mics are hearing because you're pretty much in the same room with the source sucks.

Rock music is my main thing. But I need my main live room to be flexible. Drums, acoustic guitars, guitar and bass amps, strings, and vocals will most likely all be tracked in it. Being able to flip the room from "live" to "dead" would be great.

I'd like the control room to be large enough to seat myself and four others comfortably. My old "control room" was a 12x15' room with enough room for me, one person cutting guitars or vocals, and one person sitting in a corner. Not much space to work with.

Other than that...I don't really have a plan. Just an empty space and a soon to be empty wallet. I need some help filling in the gaps.

Thanks!

James

looks like a nice size space - what is that water (oil?) on the floor near the door? a roof leak? assuming the building is all sealed, the making room within a room isolation should get you most of the way there. depending on what you can do with the existing structure to add mass, you might add an additional ceiling layer and leave the large open air gap above for the ventilation and HVAC.

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Glenn

The water is somewhat bothersome. The roof doesn't appear to have any leakage, but there is an issue with water runoff from the excessive amount of rain that we've had lately. The building owner is looking at some options for dealing with the water run-off and is one of the conditions that we're looking at before I sign a lease.

I don't want to try to get all the way up to the existing ceiling. That's just way too high. So I was thinking I'd go up about 16' or so and put a new ceiling there. That will leave plenty of space for HVAC above.

I need to try to mock up some stuff in Sketch-up I guess.

maybe go with rooms 12' high and leave the overhead for the AC etc.

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Glenn

I've been kinda driving myself nuts with this stuff.

Room ratios, design methodologies, splayed, floating, blah blah blah...

Not to mention near total ineptitude with Sketchup.

I was wanting to attempt to take advantage of the height of the room but that's proving to be difficult as most room ratios I find put some dimension WAY out there if I use the height as the "1." What's really hurting me is the 20' dimension. I think I'd be better off with less length and more width in the structure...But hey...You gotsta to work with whatcha gots.

Beyond that...Looking at time tables and learning curve...I'm thinking I just need to hire someone for the design task. I can swing hammers and operate the gear, but learning everything I need to know for some good rooms reasonably fast with all the other stuff I have going on is going to be difficult.

James

Room ratios assume a ten(10) foot height.

Use that as your (1) and you will most likely get past this hurdle.

That said, a 6 degree slant in the walls from the front to the back, can help create a diffuse environment.


Simple thing is to NOT build a square room, a room with measurements divisible one by the other.


The treatments on the interior side may be more complex as to what you have to do and where you have to do it...but if it eases your mind, it can still be done.


It's like borrowing money with a 12 month interest free rate. Your going to pay it...it's just a matter of how interested are you in staying out of debt and for how long?

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

Thanks for that. Any project has three governing variables:

Good
Cheap
Fast

You can have two of those with exclusion of the other. I need the fast....(more self-imposed than anything) so by the rule there...I need to pick either good or cheap and I'd rather have good.

Soo....It seemed that room ratios were more of a big deal with control rooms than they are with live rooms. Meaning that ideally the control room would match some ideal ratio but the live rooms can be somewhat random as long as they don't have some even multiple of a room dimension.

When soffit mounting a monitor...Is that portion of wall 60 degrees in relation with the front wall so as to create an equilateral triangle with you at mix position? Creating a wall with that angle seemed pretty sharp and not quite like what I've seen around here.

Continuing on with the CR...If I use a height of 10', my depth is 19' 4" wall to wall of the existing structure, but if I lose 4" of that per side I'm more like 18.5' interior. That actually gets me pretty close to Louden's "best" of 1:1.4:1.9. So I'm 10' high, 14' wide and 18.5' deep without accounting for soffits (or does that even matter?).

Okay...So...If I use those dimensions for the CR...That leaves me something like 20x45' of space. I'd like to have a live room for pretty much anything but will mainly be used for drums and then an iso room for guitars/vocals. I'd like a maintenance/tech/machine room for the noisy stuff and that would probably be off the iso room.

I guess that pushes the ball a little further down the field.

One thing that I'm a little concerned about is an uneven concrete floor. About a 1/3rd of the way in from the back is a drain and the concrete has a slight slope down to it for a few feet around. I'll have to pay closer attention to it. Any major concerns with that?

Thanks,

James

Hi James,

I'm just about to take on a very similar space to yours although mine is a bit skinnier - 16.6' x 60':

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16166

My priority is mainly to construct a control room to house me and my synths etc [I make predominantly electronic music] but with the option of a live room for recording drums etc. later on, once I get another album made and released to pay for it.

What is your building schedule?

Ott.

Ha! Indeed Ott, your space is very similar to mine with some of the same concerns.

I just recently moved and the new place doesn't really have a space that's convenient for music. Plus I wanted to separate my music and home lives a bit. So I've got this warehouse space of approx. 20'x60' to work with.

The old place had a finished basement with "high" ceilings (about 11' high, rare!) and I had three rooms, a "live" room, a CR, and a "machine" room that I used for guitars sometimes. The problem I had with the old CR was that it was pretty small once you put gear in the room and speaker stands, and a desk....You could at most fit three people in there. Also there was nearly no isolation between rooms. Everything was a cut it, then play it back and see how it sounds...Then move some mics around if needed. Repeat until right.

The new place...I want to do away with those limitations and further enhance the functionality. With a live room, CR, and iso room I could pretty much track a whole band at once. Drums in the live room, a guitar amp in the iso room, bass and keyboards DI in the CR and maybe even a singer in the CR for a scratch vocal. Plus I'd love to be able to have the whole band in the CR to discuss and listen to things.

As for a time-line...The sooner the better for me. I went from doing stuff...To not.

James

Ditto.

If you have any specific queries hit me up with them because I may have already stumbled upon the answer.

Good luck with your design/build. I shall be scrutinising your every move.

:0)

Nice one! and oh so true...

But with studio design, you only get to chose ONE of those, not two!

( Take a wild guess as to which are the two that you normally DON'T get.... )


- Stuart -

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

Very nice dude... Best of luck for your design.

Good Luck!

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