John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

I might move to a room in the near future and
I´ve played with the idea of keeping it a "one room".

Keep the front wall live, front sides and whole ceiling really dead.

Keep the back of the room sortof motownish, dead below waistline, lots of diffusion on backwall, sidewalls to the playing end partitionally, irregullarly live, diffused.

Basstraps in all corners.

I work in a "one room" studio today and i find the advantages larger than the dissadvantages. Communication is easy, i spend most my time mixing or overdubbing in the controlroom anyway. I hear what the instrument sound like in the studio contra control room (Recording) instantly. No need to run through 2 doors to just move a microphone. The players can hear a take straight away. Ok, i do need earprotection from time to time...

In a room this small, audiowise i would probably just be able to build a wall that really wasn´t totally soundproof anyway and if it was it would be expensive, take a lot of time and valuble space.

Seems like i made up my mind;)
How would you build a one room room ?

Any input more than welcome! /Cheers /Toby

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Aloha Toby,

Congrats on your possible studio build.

Would you happen to have any floor plans/layouts you could post? (With measurements - L x W x H?)

Aloha

In general I enjoy my set up where I track and mix in one large room. Most of the time I am working with small groups of people that want to listen in on mixing and edits. I have a small iso booth for critical vocals and acoustic guitar. The main issues I have with the one room approach is isolating the noise of the recording equipment from the mics, and isolating several acoustic sources from each other being recorded at the same time.

If you can find a good way to isolate the noise from your gear and if you dont track multiple acoustic sources at one time, I'd say the one room is good.

Tom

Incidently,
The new studio I am building is larger so I did put in several iso booths but still left the mixing and main performace room together. I simply made an iso room for the computers and power amps and wired every thing from there to the mix room.

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Tom Menikos
T-Mix Studios
Mansfield Tx

Thanks for the input so far. This forum is just so great.

I draw worse than i write and this my first "Sketchup" but i think it explains my thoughts well enough. Any thoughts and suggestions welcome. Toby

I re-arranged your graphic so it meets the forum requirements for width; you can do this in Paint if you have windows. Just remember that "white space" gets you nothing except too-wide drawings... Steve

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I've worked in two room ( or more) imvironments most of my career.
The new room I'm building will include bass, grand piano, and B3, not Leslie, as well as OD's in the control room. The only thing I want in a separate room is Leslie, drums and electric guitar amps.
I like having the players in my space as much as possible.
Probably because I've been on the other end of the process so many times.

I could name several studios that have done this for years.
With the advance in new headphone technologies I think this is the new BEST WAY to do it.

Lets all make a recording together! Makes good artistic sense to me.

Thanks Steve for sorting out my picture..Will better myself in future postings...

My plan is still aiming for a One room studio. The main objective being that i can´t have a huge live room being unused for so much time, as i normally do work in the control room and the fact that a bigger room nearly always sound better.

I will add an iso booth and machine room towards the hard frontwall side or to the sides of the mixing positioning. I would like a damped iso big enough for drums. What size would YOU recommend?

I also would like to get suggestions of the size of my "one room" (I want to be able to fit bands up to 8 people.) Small enought "to work" (Space is expensive.. )

This studio is meant to be built from the ground up.
Any inputs more that welcome! /Thanks /Toby

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Drums - I can't stand a room smaller than about 8 x 10 feet AFTER treatment, which includes some fairly deep slat absorbers, clouds... so I'd say about 10 x 12 feet MINIMUM, preferably with 13 foot ceiling. That makes it work acoustically with AND without treatments, and still leaves room for a kit, mics, and enough "walk around" space to actually FUNCTION, not to mention keeping the "phone booth sound" somewhat at bay...

I'd want at least 25 square feet per person in a working room, plus MY space of at least 10 x 12; so roughly 25 x 8 + 120, or around 320 square feet. I'd also want a button I could lean on, that lights up a big blinking sign that says, "THINKING - PLEASE SHUT YER PIE HOLE" - that many people in a room when I'm trying to concentrate usually makes me wanna reach for a gun, or at least a slingshot

HTH... Steve

Where is Kungsbacka? Even the CIA doesn't know...

(Never mind; Wikipedia to the rescue - )

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Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...