help with studio construction

[Machinated]

i've always worked out of the same room and while it serves its purpose well its always lingered on my mind how best to treat and adapt the room properly.

the building is rectangular, id guess about 18ft x 25ft.

at the moment I'm doing everything in one room and ideally id have a separate0 live and control room.

what would be the best way to divide the room? building an extension wouldnt be out of the question, but it would be interesting to know the relative (rough) costs of building an extra part on the side of the building against building inside the existing one.

I'm pretty clueless on acoustics etc, and I dont really have enough interest in the subject to trawl through more dedicated forums on it. Studio construction doesnt interest me anywhere near as much as recording music does.

any kind of help would be appreciated, it would give me an idea of targets to set myself.

EDIT: here are photos of my place

 

[heshian46]

Would you mind putting up a quick drawing so we could see the placement of windows, doors, etc.?

 

[Machinated]

yeah, no problem. can anyone recommend an easy program to do it in that works on mac that even an idiot like me can figure out?

the windows and door you can see in the photos are the only ones on here, ill try and draw something up still though

 

[ArthurD]

See http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

 

[heshian46]

It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You could just do it in paint if that works for ya. Otherwise Google SketchUp works great for this type of stuff.

 

[Machinated]

apologies for the crudeness of these images/designs. they should give the idea of the space though.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/303799/EAS/Studio/EAS%20Design.skp

I've found a few similar shaped designs below:

So assuming I arrive at something similar to those 2, what comes next? how would I go about building inside what I already have? and does anyone have a rough ballpark on what it would cost to put the extra walls/insulation in?

 

[heshian46]

Well unfortunately this can be as easy or complicated as possible. Whats the budget? What exactly are you looking to get out of it?

If you just want to put up an additional wall, with some standard insulation, drywall, tape, mud, and paint, you could probably get away with doing it for less than a G. But if your going to put up a wall with the intentions of the room being a permanent studio space you may want to do it right.

If you want maximum separation, acoustic treatment, possibly a viewing window to see into the live room, etc. your looking to spend a few G's.

 

[gabriel g.]

its like 7,5m x 5,5m which is 41,25m^2 in total.

I wouldnt split the room into two rooms, because it could be to small for some things. I would build in a guitar and vocal booth (with like 5qm)
If a extra build (which would be perfect) would be to expansive I would go for two 20qm rooms. Like one straight wall in the middle. so you would have two 5,5x3,75m rooms.

You would need to build a wood constructions, damp it with drywool and build in a window ( if you want) plus one solid door.
I think this will be about 1k.

 

[crillemannen]

Hire an acoustic architect. If you can't afford one drawing the entire studio pay one to get his advice. This is the best tip anyone can give you period.

My 2 rooms are approx. 15m2 each. Works well for me. I would never build a separate vox room for such a small studio. Then it is better to build portable diffusors if you don't wont to have any ambience. And don't build a stupid small control room which i've seen some people do. I would rather have a bigger control room and a smaller live room. You will be spending so much more time in the control room than in the live room.

 

[Machinated]

Cheers guys. I agree on the control room, can't stand small ones and would want enough space to get a band in comfortably. I like larger rooms but it's unreasonable to expect to turn what I have into an incredible sounding huge live room, so really id be best off keeping it a bit smaller but good sounding.

I think I'd have to go the route of paying someone else to design and build it as I don't have the know how or in all honesty the interest. Was just curious on how much different options would roughly be as there's quite a few guys here who've done similar projects.

 

[Machinated]

I also agree on the booths - I'd rather just have one good sounding live room that can do drums well and then a decent sized control room. Would rather use any excess space for storage.

 

[crillemannen]

My room sounds awesome even though it is really small. Of course no ambience but the drums are really punchy and the sound response is practically perfect. And if i want "natural" ambience i put some reverb on the stereo ambience mic's work like a charm

 

[heshian46]

I would probably lay it out similar to this

 

[crillemannen]

I would probably lay it out similar to this

And that is a poor idea.

 

[jipchen]

Hire an acoustic architect. If you can't afford one drawing the entire studio pay one to get his advice. This is the best tip anyone can give you period.

My 2 rooms are approx. 15m2 each. Works well for me. I would never build a separate vox room for such a small studio. Then it is better to build portable diffusors if you don't wont to have any ambience. And don't build a stupid small control room which i've seen some people do. I would rather have a bigger control room and a smaller live room. You will be spending so much more time in the control room than in the live room.

This. Your 20 square meters are more than enough for the live room, and an additional vocal/guitar booth is both needless and waste of good space.
Acousticicians / acoustic architects / studio designers are affordable and will save you a lot of money, time and nerves in the long term.

And a big +1 for a bigger controlroom rather than the liveroom. It's where 90% of the people in your studio will spend 90% of their time, and where you need the most linear response for proper mixing. Also depending on the band you will have to press 4-5 people in the CR. My liveroom is only 12 square meters and it's enough space for a drumkit or gangshouts Though I would love to have a few square meters extra haha, just 2 or 3 would make it more comfortable and practical I guess.

 

[Machinated]

Nice one. Will probably try and save £2g or so and go that route.

 

[colonel kurtz]

if i was building into that same space, i think i would go for a single large room to act as both the live room and control room together, and have one corner walled off to function as an iso booth

i almost bought a house with a big-assed old garage - about the size of your space - where i was going to do just this, and was planning on setting up some sliding doors with diffusers on them, which i could pull shut to give the mixing area some separation from the rest of the space, but without completely closing them off from each other

 

[JeffTD]

Ed, having been to your space, I'd be inclined to go with a lot of treatment, new floors, and reflectors/diffusors on the walls to get the most out of a single large space with maybe one iso booth if you feel you need it for gtrs/vox, but judging by how you track I'd be inclined to say you don't need it. It sucks to be in a single room, but unless you build an additional space onto the area I think you'd end up with 2 lackluster rooms instead of one good one.

 

[heshian46]

And that is a poor idea.

Well im no acoustician, so im open to criticism. I drew it up quickly with the idea of no parallel walls in mind. What would you suggest?

 

[colonel kurtz]

Ed, having been to your space, I'd be inclined to go with a lot of treatment, new floors, and reflectors/diffusors on the walls to get the most out of a single large space with maybe one iso booth if you feel you need it for gtrs/vox, but judging by how you track I'd be inclined to say you don't need it. It sucks to be in a single room, but unless you build an additional space onto the area I think you'd end up with 2 lackluster rooms instead of one good one.

exactly

looks like your building is big enough to have 1 sweet good-sized room...or 2 sub-standard smaller rooms. given the options, i'd take 1 bigger space to work in, especially if you track live drums