Studio/Rehersal Layouts

Hi, i'm new to this forum. my name is Arni and i'm from iceland Me and my band just got a rehersal space that we need to to some building in (we need to make a "lobby" to isolate cold leaking trough the door) and we want to make some studio space. The space will be used mostly for band rehersals to start with, but i'm hoping i can start to record for local bands and ourselves really soon. The space is located away from any homes, so noise leakage outside the room is not a problem. There might me some leakage in trough the front door. (There are hobby car mechanics with a space near ours) but i don't think that will be a problem Here are some plans i've made in sketchup, photos of the space and the sketchup file. This is fairly low budget, so we want to try to make the most out of as little as possible, but we will spend what we need to (altough we might then take it in steps), we don't want to spend to little and get bad results. We pay about 27000 icelandi kronur per month for the space, (wich is in direct convertion $416, for example my monthly sailary is about 180000kr ($2776). The budget might then be about 100000-200000kr ($1500-3000), but as i said we try to pay what we need. The Green lines in the top drawing indicate the direction of the first photo, the blue lines is the 2nd photo and the yellow are the last ones. As you can see there is a little cealing there were we are planning to make a little lounge (since this is a rehersal room and a place to hang out, but not only a recording studio) The rehersal room has to have room for a 6 piece drumkit with alot of cymbals, two guitarists, bassist and a singer with keyboard along with equipment. The control room has to have room for the engineer, and preferably a guitarist playing a guitar (yes, inside the control room, with the Amp head in the room and the amp speaker miced up in the rehersal room) we have those small mobile walls seen in the picture that would be used in the rehersal room to isolate the sound source a bit while recording. We were planning to put carpet on walls and floor inside the control and rehersal room (not sure what we do about the cealing) The Sketchup file has about 95% accurate measurements, the cealing seen on photo is 260x280cm and is about 250cm from the floor. The roof heigth is 310cm at the highest point and 235cm at the door, the slope is 180-190cm into the cealing.t Following is the best idea i've got so far. oops, i noticed the measurements were in mm instead of cm, but you get the point. I think i've told you most the things you need to know, but if there's any more info you need, just ask hmm, i couldn't post the sketchup file, since it was 2,3mb (and it says the max attachment is 500kb) how do i get the sketchup file to you ?

i would skip the lounge and work on sealing the door properly. then make a proper control room, live room, and if enough space, maybe an isobooth. otherwise your wasting a lot of space and you don't have a lot to begin with...

Thanks for the advise. I've been doing a lot of rethinking since my last post, and got my gear down there, and we made walls with small (160x90) gobos and blankets (stapled to the cealing) We have decided that the control room needs to fit the studio gear (monitors in a triangle with my chair, rack to my right and table for my macbook pro in the center), at least one extra chair and a couch in the back of the room. we have measured that the control room's outer measures can be 390x300 max to not take to much room from the rehersal space. We've decided that we really need a lobby to keep out the cold, and we are going to store stuff like guitar bags and drum cases there, so we planned it large enough for 3 doors and some stuff We're afraid that we will have to isolate (for cold, not sound) all the walls and the cealing by building a small wall just inside the one's that already there, we've bought a bunch of really cheap, pre-made curtains we found at a local store and were planning to hang them inside the rehersal room (about 10-20cm from the walls) to reduce sound reflection of the walls. but anyway, the control room. as I said the outer measurements of the control room walls can be max 390x300, so if the walls are about 10-15cm thick, that would leave 360-370x270-280cm if the interior would be square. I'm looking for some advise on how to shape whe control room (the outside of the wall would always be square, but the inside could be something more irregular), of course i would try to keep as much symmetry as possible (altough the door will always ruin perfect symmetry) It would be nice to be able to fit a window into the rehersal room, preferably between the monitors for symmetry, but then it could vanish behind my 23-30" computer display i will hopefully get one day, so the left wall (the same wall as the door) would probably be better for the future. I would want to take the cealing down a bit and maybe slope it a bit. what wall interior would be best in the control room.. carpet on the walls or just painted wood or what ?. I've also tought about putting curtains on the side walls, to be able to close of the window & door for symmetry when mixing (window won't be used while mixing)

symmetry is most important in the control room and since the door is a hard surface it should be reasonably comparable to your walls anyways (for sound purposes). that said, do a search here for porous or broadband absorption. do not use carpeting for anything other than floors - and you're probably better served with hard floors with small carpets as needed instead of full carpets. you could put in a window between the CR and live room so its centered on the CR wall. plan on absorption overhead as well as sides etc.