Need Help on Studio Design

Hello! This is the studio floor plan I've created for the studio I will be setting up. The studio's main use would be for sound design projects for films, commercials, AVPs, etc. It's other use would be for tracking music. Definitely, a drum kit inside would be kind of impossible so more on vocal and guitar tracking. As you can see from the photo, there is a vocal booth. I'd like to know some suggestions on how I could soundproof it to minimize noise from the outside from coming in. Also, would it be ok to use the small booth as a recording booth for amps? I know its quite small and vocal booths are usually "dead" rooms but is there a way to incorporate the booth as an amp booth as well? And would it be advisable to have the entrance to the booth (slanted line) as a sliding glass door? I still want to have eye contact with whoever will be inside the booth. By the way, the booth has to be soundproofed from noise/sound coming from the outside in and vice versa. Next off, with a small floor area, is there an altenative to soundproof the whole room without eating too much space? I wouldn't need that much soundproofing as my neighbors are used to hearing loud music from my home. My priority would be to minimize noise coming from the outside. My place is in a small subdivision far away from busy streets but occassionaly or perhaps once in a day, you could hear vehicle noise from the outside. In case of weather noise, particularly rain, this is definitely a factor that I want to address on soundproofing as well. I will also be sealing up the windows at the vocal booth area and the wall parallel to the DAW table wall. Of course, a bit of sound minimization coming from the inside would be a plus. Next, the wall with the sliding glass door and couch will be fabricated. This small studio is actually a portion of the living room. So the sliding glass/solid door will be the way to access the living room and other rooms in the house. Its main purpose is to provide easy access to the bathroom. What materials in junction with the soundproofing of the whole room would suffice for its construction? I will be adding treatments to the room if needed but will be working on it after the initial setup has been done. The DAW Work table would be where my system would sit. The near field monitors will be placed on top of the table. An LCD monitor will be in between the speakers. On the wall where the table is placed, video will be projected on it as well with two Hifi speakers (w/ surround speakers at the back, to the other parallel wall) on both sides. Any additional comment on the studio would be much appreciated. :) Thanks in advance!

The most important aspect of a control room is usually the listening position. For an optimum listening position, you should position your desk so that when you're sitting at it you're facing the 8 foot wall, with your ears at about 38% of the length of the room. Also it's generally a bad idea to put your monitors on your desk, as the desk causes unwanted reflections. If you can wing it, get some speaker stands that you can fill with sand, and position your monitors on those so that they make an equilateral triangle with your listening position. Doing all this may require that you lose the corner couch in favor of a love seat, or you could put it where the vocal booth is now and move the vocal booth somewhere else. I don't know, you'll have to play around with it a bit. Isolation is generally achieved with mass, so good isolation is pretty expensive to build. Check out some of the Studio Construction threads to see how those guys are building their walls. Most often I see people using 2-3 layers of drywall glued together with Green Glue, followed by a layer of insulation with good acoustic properties (OC 703 or Roxul or some form of mineral wool). I'm not sure how important it is to float your walls, but I imagine it would help minimize transference of vibrations to the floor and ceiling. Hope this helps!

CptVagabond wrote:

Isolation is generally achieved with mass, so good isolation is pretty expensive to build. Check out some of the Studio Construction threads to see how those guys are building their walls. Most often I see people using 2-3 layers of drywall glued together with Green Glue, followed by a layer of insulation with good acoustic properties (OC 703 or Roxul or some form of mineral wool). I'm not sure how important it is to float your walls, but I imagine it would help minimize transference of vibrations to the floor and ceiling. Hope this helps!

Shaww...what'd you, write a book ?

thanks for the reply. I guess i will go with the desk facing the 8' wall. I thinking of removing the vocal booth and just creating the control room as the recording booth as well. I would just have to enclose the amps and computer withn iso boxes to minimize or cut out totally the noise. what do you think? :)

xSpace wrote:

Shaww...what'd you, write a book ?

Unbelievable