New Garage Studio

Hello folks!! I’m relatively new to the site, posting-wise, that is. I’ve been mulling around here for a while, taking in all the great resources that are posted here. I’m finally taking the plunge and hoping to build my long awaited project studio. I’ve gotten and read Rod Gervais’ book, researched a lot of different materials and suppliers and hope to put some of my remaining questions to rest by getting input from you all. I’ve attached a drawing below in reference of my first question: With the useable space shown in the drawing, would it be better to leave it as one large room and uses mobile partitions and gobos if recording drums and such, or create two separate rooms (control and isolation area) to provide more isolation from the instruments/vocals while recording? Background on the building space: approx 1 1/2 bays of a three car tandem garage, very close to Sharward’s garage layout. I am fortunate enough not to have neighbors adjacent to my planned studio and also no neighbors directly behind our house. A major of the soundproofing will go towards reducing sound transmission to the second floor and into the adjacent kitchen. The drawing is very basic and will get a lot more detail before construction, but I’m throwing it out there for feedback. The units are all in inches. I’m hoping this initial post will lead to more dialog to help tweak my design. Great forum here and I hope to become more involved quickly!!! Regards, Chris

what type of recording do you plan on doing and what type of equipment do you have? depending, you might be better off with the single room and using gobos. how tall is the ceiling? hvac?

gullfo wrote:

what type of recording do you plan on doing and what type of equipment do you have? depending, you might be better off with the single room and using gobos. how tall is the ceiling? hvac?

Gullfo, type of recording,........occasional live drums, overdubs after rhythm tracks are done. Probably more canned drums with live instruments and vocals. Equipment.......MOTU units to PC, maybe one full rack of outboard gear ( compressors, limiters, pre-amps, etc.) No ADATS, Tape machines. Bevy of old Tube amps, guitars. Small arsenal of Mics and that pretty much rounds it out. Ceiling will end up being about 8.5 ft. HVAC,....still undecided if I want a separate system or tie it into the house's upstairs AC unit. The advantage is that the existing AC has a fresh air intake and circulation system put in by the builder. Even when the AC is not pushing cold air, there is a slow current of fresh air still being circulated. I am going to see if the additional volume of space will be too much for the existing system by contacting a local HVAC tech for a consult.

i think you're probably better off using it as a single space and build some gobos to do some bits of isolation on amps and drums as needed. an 8x10 room will be pretty cramped feeling. and if you design the framing, you could build it so you could split the drywall into separate rooms, and add a pair of new inner walls on either side (like your current design), if you find its not working out as a single room.