Post production, training & recording facility - layout

Hello First post in a while and on with another project. I am planning the new build of a media company, audio post production, recording studio and a training facility and am now looking for the best way to layout the internal rooms within this footprint. What we would like is: 2 Studio’s: 1 for 5.1 / post production / recording and the other as an edit Suite. Live room. Vocal Booth / Voice Over. Training room: about 8 training stations (for music technology etc) 2 Office’s. Chill out room. Kitchen. Toilet. and if possible, a video editing suite...? (But not essential now – possibly turn an office into that later or the 2nd studio and live room can be smaller) It’s an upstairs space, in the city centre above a shop. The floors between are about 2 feet of concrete, as are all perimeter walls (Brick), the west side is on the main street and there is office’s etc on both sides. (Detached) The main entrance and the fire exit / 2nd exit, is on the east side of the building, so access to the west needs corridors. The build is totally flexible; it’s pretty much an open space, except for kitchen/toilet they are all ready in. The ceiling height is 3.1 Meters, so we have a bit of space to play with, I’m just really confused with the layout, so many options – so I am hoping some peeps could throw any ideas my way it would be most appreciated. There are pillars that run down each side of the wall about 3m apart and they come out about 26cm, also need a corridor for access to each room, I’ve tried layouts with corridors on both sides and I can’t decide what is better. I have left this foot print simple, hopefully to spark someone’s imagination and come up with something that I have not even thought of! We don’t have a big budget about £30,000 to start with. We have a builder experienced in studio construction and myself and colleagues will be putting in some hard graft! If I have left any important facts off please let me know, we would like to commence build in about 3/4 weeks. Any suggestions please feel free. I have attached a JPG as well as the SKP Thanks and regards

I honestly think you are tying to place a large quantity of rooms in a space like that. For music purposes I prefer a larger CR but since this is a post-production facility probably dealing with Radio/TV works you might live with it. Maybe some rooms can be neglected.. why 2 offices and not only 1 ? And why not incorporate the kitchen in the chill out room ?

Hi Need 2 office's as one office is for a music licenensing and management company, that is working alongside us. It may be possible to sacrifice an office though if there is simply not enough space. Essiential rooms are: Main Studio, 2nd Studio, Live room with built in Voice over and a training room. The kitchen is only is 2m x 1.5m, don't think there is to much space to chill out in that. The chill out room only has to be small, to fit a couch in say 3m x 2m, not much else could be done with that space anyway as it's the entrance to the toilet and kitchen The training room, second control, live room and voice over room can be a lot smaller than the proposed foot plan. What is an ideal size control room? I was thinking of using about 6 or 7m X 5m roughly with 2.8m ceilings?

There are several room ratios but yes something like that.

Hi another basic floor plan idea, flipped it on it's end basically. This feels better, any suggestions most welcome. Regards

Another plan layout, any opinions?

It's a tricky one one2. here's a possible solution. cheers john

That's brilliant John, I can't thank you enough for your efforts. It really has helped my headache on working out this floor plan! I'm actually a fellow Ozy, from Perth - been in the UK for 9 years now. With regards to your layout I've swapped the edit suite with the voice over, I would much prefer the v/o booth next door. Also the edit suite is more of a second studio separate to the post prod work. Let me know what you think please, also if possible if you have an idea of a ball park figure that would be really helpful. We have about £20-30k for build work, is this realistic?

You might want to make that live room a bit larger

One2one2 wrote:

That's brilliant John, I can't thank you enough for your efforts. It really has helped my headache on working out this floor plan! I'm actually a fellow Ozy, from Perth - been in the UK for 9 years now. With regards to your layout I've swapped the edit suite with the voice over, I would much prefer the v/o booth next door. Also the edit suite is more of a second studio separate to the post prod work. Let me know what you think please, also if possible if you have an idea of a ball park figure that would be really helpful. We have about £20-30k for build work, is this realistic?

yeah - sure - I wasn't sure which studio the vox booth was associated with - that will work fine. As Andre said you can make either the studio 2 or the live room larger if you are happy with a smaller booth.

Hello Right, after a lot more deliberation and hair pulling, I'm quite happy the latest layout (around a bout anyway) not so happy with spiralling price of this project!! I have had a studio design specialist come down and have a look and his estimate for construction costs for them to build and supply, including everything, comes to around £80-90k plus VAT based on current commercial specialist construction rates! More realistically he has offered a complete design-only package, this would include: Initial layouts Full constructional design and drawings Full M&E design and drawings Finishes visuals Bill of Materials 4 site visits - 1 initial, 2 @ in-progress and 1 on completion to carry out testing and provide a performance document. Thats for £4K plus Vat. In his opinion with this design and for self build it would cost £30k for materials and probably £20k for the extra labour needed! Which is double our budget and at the moment my head is down and my heart is low! Can't believe how much just the Air Con is gonna cost! How has anybody else worked out their material and construction costs, is there a method or a good way of breaking it all down? Thanks

Doing a quick calculation, the prices quoted seem reasonable. The price isn't rising, you are starting to estimate it realistically. Andre

The place where you can save money is in the soundproof.. the question is.. can you do this ? how does this decision impact the work in your studio, your possible neighbors and the performance of musicians ? Last time I had a client who was going to build is own studio (100 m2 area studio) it would cost him around 15k but his space was an warehouse where sound insulation did not needed to be so demanding. 5k was for the air conditioner

John, Should the fire exit be accessable to all in the building? Expecially if the office belongs to an outside company that may lock the doors over th weekend. I would open up that area or change the layout. The studio area looks fab.

Hello again, hope the new year is treating everyone well! Been about 7 months since posting this original design, and finally the building purchase is nearly at completion! Hopefully start building work in 4-6 weeks, our budget is £50k for everything - including cutting a hole through concrete floor to floor below, and the build of new stairs and a new front entrance from the street. So the design has had to change from the last one to accommodate a new entrance. I have just thrown this together to hopefully get some ideas from people, the studio's have not been done to a ratio or anything just re-sized to try and fit, obviously this may cause problems and undoubtedly need changing but it is just a rough idea of the use of space - so I would love any advice or further ideas? One thing I forgot to mention before was that there is a busy city centre street outside the east wall, so I thought it wise to move the live room from that position and put the training room there instead, plus there are windows on this wall - natural daylight and all! I've attached a jpeg and the skp. Thanks and my regards to all.

Hi One, Glad you still here! that design looks great, can you tell use what ratios you have yused for the control rooms.

Second floor? That raises several issues: What is below you, and how much isolation do you need between you and "them"? Have you thought about how to obtain that level isolation? Have you considered the weight of the construction and treatment that will be necessary for this build, and can the existing structure support that weight? Another comment: the sketchup image you posted shows really huge doorways in the control rooms. Is that a mistake (I saw where you said it is only a rough outline), or do you really plan to have extra-extra-large doors and windows in there? - Stuart -

lilith_envy wrote:

Hi One, Glad you still here! that design looks great, can you tell use what ratios you have yused for the control rooms.

I haven't used any ratio's yet, it was a just rough draft, I simply re-scaled the control rooms to fit the space.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Second floor? That raises several issues: What is below you, and how much isolation do you need between you and "them"? Have you thought about how to obtain that level isolation? Have you considered the weight of the construction and treatment that will be necessary for this build, and can the existing structure support that weight? Another comment: the sketchup image you posted shows really huge doorways in the control rooms. Is that a mistake (I saw where you said it is only a rough outline), or do you really plan to have extra-extra-large doors and windows in there? - Stuart -

Hi Soundman There is nearly 2 foot of concrete between the floors, below is an audio equipment shop that has music playing all day, people demoing gear etc - so some isolation may be needed, but i think we should be ok. No issues with the weight either. The doorways were actually windows from a previous model, I just rotated and scaled the control rooms around and never actually filled in the windows and replaced them with doorways. Some imagination may be needed at this moment. Thanks for your comments

Hello again Just quickly put another floor idea down, combined the vocal booth with the live room and it has freed up more space for chill out area and the ability to make both control rooms bigger. Please ignore windows and doors on the control rooms, they are from previous models - it is just the layout that i'm concerned with at the moment. Thought and opinions please? Thanks

Bump! Any opinions please?

Hi People Ok it's been a long time, days, months, years slip by- but finally we are ready to do this build. Things have changed a bit though. We now are only having 1 control room and 1 live room. The rest of the space is made up of a electronics repair room, storage room and a music production training room. The toilet, kitchen, repair room and storage room have been built and plasters finished today. Phase 2, studio build will commence soon. We have paid a local studio designer / acoustics engineer to design the studio and he has given us the plans and building methods / material list for our builders to build them. I would like your opinions on the design and wall structures please – as it’s not quite the same as I’m familiar with. The wall and ceiling structure makes sense and is similar to me but have not seen the combination of materials used before and would like your opinions? Also for example the design does not have any angled walls and when I told him my understanding was that you should have angled walls to avoid standing waves – this was his response “All walls cause standing waves. If they're angled, the damping of these waves increases, making the tuning less critical. By making the room the right dimensions to space the modes evenly, we can use a lot less damping, reducing the need for excessive amplifier power (and speaker coil heating) for a decent listening level, and making the room psycho-acoustically acceptable to the human animal. Before we had computers, we couldn't reliably calculate all the modes' frequencies and decay times (and hence level) so we invented various fudges like golden ratios, masses of absorption, angled walls and graphic equalisers. These all reduced the impact of getting it wrong, but not by as much as getting it right does. Flutter echoes are a different matter, and happen when the sound source is between parallel reflective surfaces. This is why the area where the speakers are mounted is flared both laterally and vertically.“ Attached is the floor plan, the wall structure for most walls, a double skin for the east side as offices are on the other side of the wall, a ceiling structure and some build methods attached. The medium performance wall is made the following • 12mm Plasterboard • 12mm Softboard • 18mm Chipboard • 50mm Rockwool • Air Gap • 50mm Rockwool • 12mm Chipboard • 12mm Softboard • 12mm Plasterboard The double skin is virtually this doubled Your opinions would be most appreciated Thanks and regards

Just encase you can't read the measurements on the attached picture, they are: Control Room - 4050mm x 3050mm Live Room - 5350mm x 4360mm These are the inside measurements after the wall construction. I've attached a new rough floor plan, so you can see whats going where (it not to scale what so ever) Thanks

the control room ratio seem almost square on width vs. height (assuming 2830mm high)... h 1.00 w 1.08 d 1.43 that might be problematic or not...

gullfo wrote:

the control room ratio seem almost square on width vs. height (assuming 2830mm high)... h 1.00 w 1.08 d 1.43 that might be problematic or not...

Good catch. I missed that. The Walker's spec is for ratios to be at least 10% different, which 1.08 does not meet. The spec is detailed in RD 1993-08. Andre

What he says about modal spacing is kind of OK, but there are some things in there that are "unusual"...

so we invented various fudges like golden ratios, masses of absorption, angled walls and graphic equalisers.

I'd hardly call ratios and absorption "fudges", although I certainly would agree that graphic equalizers are "fudges", and have no place at all in a control room. But choosing a good ratio is extremely important, and that is exactly what he claims to be doing by saying that he wants even modal spacing, so on the one had he is saying that using a good ratio for a room is a "fudge", while on the other he is actually doing exactly that! :shock: :?: In fact, the ratio that he has selected for that room is pretty close to Boner's ratio, but that is by no means one of the best ratios: it ranks at #14 on Eric Desart's list of good ratios, and fails one of the three tests outlined by Walker. That doesn't mean its a BAD ratio: It just isn't one of the BEST ratios. In fact, for that room, the modes will dominate the acoustics between 42hz and 139hz, so you WILL still need treatment in that range. It is a small room: it could not possibly be any other way! Angled walls seem to be personal taste. You can design great rooms with splayed / angled walls, and you can design great rooms without them. Personally, I like splayed walls. But that's just me...

Flutter echoes are a different matter, and happen when the sound source is between parallel reflective surfaces. This is why the area where the speakers are mounted is flared both laterally and vertically.“

That sounds decidedly odd, to me. I've never heard of angling soffits in order to reduce flutter echo! To me, soffit mounting is for a whole different purpose. One of the side effects is that it helps flutter echo involving the front wall a bit, but I've never heard anyone say that is the MAIN reason for soffit mounting, nor even for splaying the front walls. That sure sounds strange to me.... In my book, soffit mounting tries to create an infinite baffle, which brings a whole army of acoustic benefits regarding the speakers themselves and how they project sound into the room. And the biggest reason I can think of for splaying front walls is to create an RFZ around the listening position, not to control flutter echo. Even with those splayed soffits, you will still have flutter echos between all other parallel surfaces, so you'll still need to treat them.

Attached is the floor plan, the wall structure for most walls,

There are some things in there that got my attention too. First, you say : "a double skin for the east side as offices are on the other side of the wall". You cannot isolate a room by treating only ONE side of it, any more than you can build an aquarium by putting glass in only one side of the frame! Isolating a room is the same as building an aquarium: you MUST do all sides of the room the same, because if you don't then it won't hold water (or "hold sound" in the case of the studio). Sound is like water: it takes the easiest path out, and once it gets out, it spills everywhere. If you isolate only one wall of the room, then sound will ignore that wall and take the easier path out through the other five un-isolated walls. And once the sound is out, it will spread around that one "good" wall anyway, and still get to whatever is on the other side. So all six sides of the room must be done to the exact SAME level of isolation: Doing one better than the other five means that you just wasted a lot of money pointlessly doing that one. It is "all or nothing". Do all six sides properly, or don't bother.

The medium performance wall is made the following • 12mm Plasterboard • 12mm Softboard • 18mm Chipboard

I don't see the point of that at all! The 18mm chipboard is fine, but 12mm plasterboard is too thin, and I'm not even sure what 12 mm "softboard" is, nor what acoustical benefit it might be supposed to have. In general, 12mm plasterboard is too thin, too flexible, and has a too high resonant frequency to be much use in MSM walls. I'd go with two layers of 16mm plasterboard, instead of those two layers of 12mm stuff. Far better acoustic qualities.

The double skin is virtually this doubled

That sounds like you might be talking about a four-leaf wall!!! :shock: :!: Maybe you could describe the proposed construction for that in more detail, like you did for the simpler wall? There are more things on the plans: I also don't get why he seems to be using staggered studs for the walls, when you seem to have space to go with totally separate fully decoupled studs, with the resulting improvement in isolation. What is the reason for that? Is it that you don't really need much isolation, so it isn't a priority? I'm also more than a bit skeptical about what I see in the second of the plans that you posted: Is that REALLY the way he intends to support the ceiling? All that mass hanging off 3x2 joists, supported on 2x1 notches and sitting on 3x2 ledgers that are just screwed to the wall, THROUGH the layers of wall cladding that is already there, and spanning ten feet???? :shock: Are you SERIOUS? I don't know about the UK, but that sure as hell would NOT pass code here in Chile. Sorry, but please don't invite me to sit in your studio, if that's the way the ceiling is built... That's an awful lot of mass, hanging over your head from thin joists on unstable supports.... I'm no structural engineer, so maybe guys like Rod and Brien and Andre can comment on that, but to me it seems questionable, at the least. And that doesn't even address the issue that the entire design shown there is not even providing any isolation! It is all fully coupled, and therefore pretty useless as isolation. There are numerous flanking paths there, so that wall / ceiling will not isolate well, even if it does pass code. I'd also question the control room layout: You have the door in the rear corner, right where the bass trapping should go, and from the soffit angles it looks like your mix position is going to be exactly at 50% of the room length, which is the worst possible position.... But those are just me thoughts, from my limited understanding of acoustics and construction: Maybe the real experts here can correct me if I'm wrong on any of that, and add their own comments. - Stuart -