"Turnkey" "Studio" Prospect building, Opinions please!

Hi, I'm new here and am seeking some initial opinions regarding a building I have just found (today!) which is a prospect for a studio. I think I've covered all the bases in the posting instructions but forgive me if I leave anything out. Some background: I'm a freelance producer/engineer in the Nashville area and for a while now have been considering building out a suitable mix/overdub room, with the possibility for tracking on lower budget projects. I have been tracking at larger facilities and will most likely continue to do so unless the client's budget dictates otherwise, or it's my own material I'm working on, etc. For overdubs and mixing I have been frequently working at smaller (cheaper) rooms in town or at my home studio, which is severely lacking in acoustical treatment (a few bass traps as afterthoughts and a pathetic attempt at some foam on the walls by the previous owner). I have considered building out my basement to use for the above purposes, but there are several downsides: 1. There would be considerable work involving moving some support poles, AC ductwork, plumbing, laundry, and AC air handler 2. The ceiling hight is a bit low, even after shifting things around a bit 3. I imagine the ceiling hight would get even lower once I isolated well enough to suit my tenants who live in the rooms above the space 4. There are zoning restrictions regarding operating a business that receives clients on site (which I could probably get around by laying low, but not ideal) 5. A "home studio" doesn't carry quite the same value perception as a dedicated commercial space and I'm fond of separating my living and working environments for my sanity. I have also considered building an addition to the house, which would eliminate SOME of the above issues, but is still not ideal and carries a pretty hefty upfront investment. The next option, is finding a suitable commercial space and building it out to suit my needs. I have just found a location which may be ideal, but needs further investigation. From what I can tell so far, the location, vibe, landlord, size, etc. are all fantastic. But, I have reservations about the existing buildout. The property has been built as a "studio", which I put in quotes only because there are several issues in the construction that I noticed that immediately made me question the methods involved etc. and wonder what else may be lurking beneath the finished surfaces. I should mention that the reason I even noticed these issues is that I've been reading this forum for a while, and took a studio design class a few years ago. Please keep in mind though that I have a lot to learn and am seeking the experience of some of you who I'm sure have encountered similar situations. After doing about a 20 minute walkthrough today, here is my best description of the space. I have attached pictures and a floor plan that the landlord provided. The space is one of 8 units, 4 up and 4 downstairs, located in a commercial "strip" containing various other businesses. The 4 units upstairs have access from the front and function a "retail" type spaces. The 4 units downstairs have access from the front (down some stairs) and the back on a lower level. The unit I'm looking at is downstairs. From what I am told, the building is concrete on all sides. The floor is "slab on grade"; the walls are concrete block, and the ceiling is concrete as well with what seem to be concrete "joists" every 48 inches. The unit's exterior shell is rectangular in shape. On the floors there is commercial type carpet of various types (not sure if there's a subfloor above the concrete slab). The walls are all sheetrock and from what I can tell (by peeking into a couple power outlet boxes) there seems to be two layers of it. I don't (yet) know how it's hung (i.e. RC or directly on the studs), but I believe it is wood frame construction with rockwool in the walls. The ceilings are all of the suspended type ("acoustical tile"). I'm pretty sure the slab wasn't cut between any of the rooms and I'm curious about how the walls are contacting the ceiling and each other. The doors between the spaces seem to be simple single metal doors. In the first tracking room, there doesn't seem to be any acoustical treatment (or remains thereof) except for some styrofoam sheets left glued to the sheetrock walls. Tracking Room 2 is even more bare, and is finished basically like any typical office would be (sheetrock walls, carpet, etc.). The control room has a raised section (about half the room) to accommodate cables but no apparent acoustical treatment aside from some bass traps (I think!) in the rear corners. Interestingly, the door to the control room is in the middle of the wall between the spaces where the monitors were soffit mounted. The landlord seems to think there is a separate tech power circuit installed. There don't appear to be any remnants of mic panels in the walls, but I did notice channels built out on the walls for cable runs. The HVAC system is a single unit type with the compressor and air handler in one external unit which is mounted on an outside rear platform (fire escape type metal). It seems there was possibly some thought given to dampening the ductwork a bit, but I can't tell much. One important point that the landlord pointed out is that all of the interior walls are non-load-bearing and could be moved easily as needed. So, here I am trying to make my best assessment of what I have on my hands. Best case (which I'm afraid is highly unlikely), is that it's a turnkey studio ready to go, just insert gear. Worst case, is that the place would need to be gutted, or at least significantly changed to make it functional, rendering it no more useful than any other similarly sized commercial space. I expect the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but am looking to dig deeper and figure out the answers to my already-existing questions, and more importantly what additional questions I should be asking! Here are my thoughts and questions as they exist now: 1. What exactly is the wall construction? Is it two layers of sheetrock on RC on wood frame with rockwool inside? Will I need to "remount" all of the sheetrock properly if it's not already so? What is the STC (or other meaningful transmission loss data) between the rooms? 2. What is the noise from the HVAC like (it was powered off at the unit when I was there, so could not test today)? Is this type of system (single unit outside, ducts throughout) viable in a studio environment? What additional treatment of the ducts, registers etc. will I need to do? 3. I would be planning on ripping up the carpet and putting in inexpensive hardwood or laminate wood flooring. Seem smart? 4. Ceiling height and construction: I haven't measured yet, but I'm assuming I would pull all of the suspending ceiling out and replace with another ceiling and/or absorbtion/treatment. 5. Control Room Layout: Is this wacky (with the door in the front wall)? I haven't seen it before, but I suppose with the right treatment it could work. 6. Isolation: From what I'm told, they had sessions involving live drums that were barely audible if at all by upstairs tenants, but this may be a concern. Adjacent tenants downstairs mostly involve manufacturing facilities that are fairly quiet. As for a budget, since this is a leased space and one which I may outgrow within 5 years or so, I would obviously prefer to keep the buildout to a practical minimum while making this space functional. To put a finer point on it, I would be fairly comfortable spending $5k or so in improvements but could possibly justify upwards of $10k if necessary. The rest of my budget is allocated towards gear upgrades. I would love to hear any initial thoughts that this information triggers! I'm planning on making a return trip to do some further investigating and possible get some rough idea of the isolation between rooms just using a monitor blasting pink noise and an SPL meter. If there's any other info I can provide just shoot it at me! Thanks in advance for any and all advice. Ted

Interesting space. The depth of the control look quite narrow in the pic. Would the engineer sit on the lower section or the raised part. Can you rent the space short term say 1-2 months? Get your gear into the control room and have a listen? John has designed a few studios with doors at the front, so I don't think thats a big issue. as for the live room- easy fix. Ripe that sh*t of the walls back to the shell and start again. Have a look above the false ceiling in the live room too, are there hangers and absorsption?

interesting space. The depth of the control look quite narrow in the pic. Would the engineer sit on the lower section or the raised part. Can you rent the space short term say 1-2 months? Get your gear into the control room and have a listen? John has designed a few studios with doors at the front, so I don't think thats a big issue. as for the live room- easy fix. Ripe that sh*t of the walls back to the shell and start again. Have a look above the false ceiling in the live room too, are there hangers and absorsption?

Yeah, the raised section is interesting. It looks as though the wood square on the raised section was where the chair went, with the console right in front, possibly on the lower level. However, this would put the listening position almost up against the back wall, which seems less-than-ideal. It's certainly possible to pull up that floor and rethink the layout of the ctrl room. From peering into the ceiling quickly, there don't look to be any hangers (springs etc.) and no absorption. Just a standard drop ceiling. Above is the concrete outer shell.

I think you are looking at the control room backwards. Placing the board on the riser, facing the blank wall(door to engineer back) puts the engineer into the correct position to view out the side glass. It also takes away the poor placement of the speakers in the corners...that could have been a quad system from last century;) Just some thoughts.

The ceiling clearly is of no use to you at all, and those rooms cannot sound very good with a concrete ceiling above a thin "acoustic" tile false-ceiling. And STYROFOAM???? What use is that, acoustically? It's closed cell!! I get the impression that whoever built that place and "treated" it, was guided by some of the myths and legends that we all love so much. The only thing missing is egg crates on the walls! Did you look for those? (Maybe that's what is in side the "bass traps!!! :) ) Serioulsy, I reckon Lilth has the right idea: Since it is such a mess, rip it all out and re-do it. You can probably re-use some of it. Drastic, but probably the best idea overall, since you just don't know what surprises are inside those walls / floors / doors / bass traps... It might be an idea to go back with some equipment and actually test the room, listen to some music in there, etc. but from what you say, the plans and the photos, my guess is that it won't sound at all good, and I'll bet that isolation isn't very good either. That's my US$ 0.02. - Stuart -

I'm planning on going in next week and trying to measure transmission loss between the various rooms. I don't have much experience taking these measurements so I'm up for advice as to how to best go about it. I'm planning on simply taking a powered monitor and a CD with test tones/pink noise. I would then take a measurement with my SPL meter (C-weighted, slow) at a given distance from the monitor (1 foot, for example), and then take a measurement in the other room. I could do this simply using pink noise, or take a measurement at each frequency of test tones. Any thoughts? I'm hoping that by doing this I can work backwards, so to speak, taking an educated guess at the construction methods and materials based on the transmission losses. For example, knowing that the walls seem to be double layers of sheetrock, if the TL values seem low, I'll know that perhaps they were mounted without RC or green glue etc. I know this approach is not very precise, but I think it's my best guess at stabbing in the dark, short of taking down sections of walls. Any advice is more than appreciated! Ted

I think that is a far better idea to begin with. It may come to removing wall material, but why do it if it isn't required? There should be several examples of how to measure your room at this site, or from where ever you got your measuring software from, maybe in the help files of the software.

I would head the route of determining if the isolation was adequate before I started tearing anything down. And if you aren't experienced - just do it the easy way........ bring an amp - some speakers - a cd player and a bunch of CD's that cover the range of music you will work with........ keep turning it up until you can just begin to hear it and then measure the SPL with a sound meter......... You don't have to do a ton of testing......... If the iso is OK - then at least you have a decent starting point......... Rod

rod gervais wrote:

I would head the route of determining if the isolation was adequate before I started tearing anything down. And if you aren't experienced - just do it the easy way........ bring an amp - some speakers - a cd player and a bunch of CD's that cover the range of music you will work with........ keep turning it up until you can just begin to hear it and then measure the SPL with a sound meter......... You don't have to do a ton of testing......... If the iso is OK - then at least you have a decent starting point......... Rod

Thanks Rod. Just got your book yesterday and it's fantastic. The more I learn, the more it looks like I may be best served to start over with the room, taking it all the way down to the shell. But, I'm going to go investigate nonetheless. On another note, knowing the ceiling height is my friend on all accounts, is there any kind of practical minimum for a viable commercial studio? I know that with proper treatment and layout, I can get away with some lower ceiling heights, but I'm just wondering if there's any baseline that most folks use when evaluating commercial spaces..? Thanks! Ted

tedpenn wrote:

On another note, knowing the ceiling height is my friend on all accounts, is there any kind of practical minimum for a viable commercial studio? I know that with proper treatment and layout, I can get away with some lower ceiling heights, but I'm just wondering if there's any baseline that most folks use when evaluating commercial spaces..?

Ted, most project designs utilize as much height as I can possibly fit within the building frame - but I have never had anyone pick a building to develope in with that as a pre-requesite. I wouldn't like to design a (pro or semi-pro) studio with ceilings averaging less that 8 1/2 feet in height...... and (if height is no problem) I really like to be able to get around 16 to 18 ' heights at the peak in a perfect world. Rod

rod gervais wrote:

Ted, most project designs utilize as much height as I can possibly fit within the building frame - but I have never had anyone pick a building to develope in with that as a pre-requesite. I wouldn't like to design a (pro or semi-pro) studio with ceilings averaging less that 8 1/2 feet in height...... and (if height is no problem) I really like to be able to get around 16 to 18 ' heights at the peak in a perfect world. Rod

Just got some some figures back about the dimensions of the building shell (slab, block walls, concrete ceiling). It's 58'X24'. The height from the slab to the concrete ceiling is 9'2" and the height to the bottom of the concrete ceiling joists is 8'1". That being the case, am I wasting my time with this space? In other words, could you foresee a buildout to make this a viable commercial studio? My concerns would be 1. getting enough ceiling height to build a control room with a favorable ratio and with enough room to fit proper acoustical treatment. And, 2. having a live space "large" enough to get decent drums sounds. Would you have the same concerns?