New- needs help!!!!

I've been reading post in this forum for the last year. I believe this is the best thing since sliced bread. It has helped me, and also confused the hell outta me. At this moment i have been drawing up plans and everytime i draw one i will come back and read a new post making me have to do away with my drawing. overview[b] I plan on building from the ground up. The building size I want is 40' x 30.5'. with a small front reception area, control room, live room, iso/ vocal booth, and a drum room. i have drawn a layout i thought may be suitable, but im not sure. hopefully you guys can help me, im sorry i havent mastered sketchup yet... [b]goal my main goal is to be able to build this studio from the ground up and not exceed $100k... my total budget is $150k however i would like to have the other $50k for equipment. Do you think it is possible for me to accomplish this? layout Im sorry i hope you guys can read what i have writen. if not let me know and i will make it much better. however, ANY suggestions, comments, input and welcome and very very very appreciated!

Aloha & welcome to the forum, Let's start by flipping your image so we can read it, shall we? We need more info - please read the links below and provide as much of the info requested as possible - viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7572 viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4063 Looking forward to your build, Aloha 8)

welcome to the forum There is a mighty freeware software called sketchup (google sketchup). Most of the people here use it to share their plans You can make perfect drawings in 3d with it, what help us alot to understand your plans. cheers Mika

check out this studio - it's approx 30' x 40' http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7956

Thanks everyone for responding to my post... i have been playing with sketchup and trying to draw my plans out no there, however my learning curve for the program is very shallow. hopefully by weeks end i will have the new and improved plans up. john thanks for the link to meow mix plans.... they are actually almost perfect fro wat i want minus the fact that it doesnt include a reception area. QUESTIONS 1.) Do you think this build can be done efficently and effectively under $100k? (ground up) 2.) :cen: i had a whole list of questions which have slipped my mind for the time being.... sooooo..... once i find the list I'll be back!

Yes - if you are careful with your costing. I just had a chat with John from MeowMix and he said if you keep your finishing costs under control it would be feasible. cheers john

:cry: i had been reading this forum for a year before i even decided to join and make a post and now im seeing this was still premature... :cry: Anywho... back to my premature posting... after reading, and reading, reading some more i noticed flaws in my previous rendering of a layout. i have somewhat corrected those flaws, which in turn has made me come up witha whole new idea for my layout as follows: what i would like to do The building i have planned is still a 30' x 40' building (ground up). budget is still $100k US. i had planned on the outer structure of the building to be solid block, however to save on expenses i may have to go with a steel building. i have decided to go ahead and build in the dallas texas area as opposed to in florida. My new idea for the layout would include the control room, a nice sized live room to hold about 5 to 6 at a time, a dead iso/ vocal booth, and a live iso/ vocal booth. the way i would like to configure it is to where the live room is on one side of the control room and the other two booths are on the other side. That being said i would like for sliding glass doors to act as entrances and a view to the lounge area, however i believe that may cause problems (acoustically???). i do plan on soffit mounting my speakers. would like the capability of 5.1 sourround. What i THINK i know is wrong with my layout After reading and reading and reading somemore i have found that the way i have my plan drawn out would put windows at my first reflection points. Doors at the rear of control room may be a problem due to the need of acoustic treatment. and im pretty sure you guys will give me a list of other problems with my layout. Sorry Im sure someone is going to tell me about this great FREE software called sketchup :mrgreen: , but i do know about it and i have been trying to work with it, but im sorry im not as skilled in that department as you guys. However, i have included a drawing of what i was trying to explain. If you guys dont mind looking over it and maybe telling if in fact this is workable or if perhaps i can shift somethings around to get the same effect of kind of an open area but get the acoustics i need. I PROMISE I WILL NOT GIVE UP ON SKETCHUP AND ONE DAY.... ONE DAY.... I WILL IN FACT GIVE YOU A 3D MODEL. thanks to all who respond in advace! ~LEETOVEN~

so you are looking at something like this? http://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Left_Bank.htm

hi BAKroom3, I quite like your last sketch. But you might consider putting double solid wooden doors to the live room and iso booth. Glass is expensive and muso's can hate feeling like a gold fish when there trying to get a solo right!

John, thanks, thats exactly the feel i am going for. So does this mean having glass at the reflection points will not acousticaly hurt anything? thats was my main concern after reading so many different posts saying that may be a problem. lilith, thank you as well for your response. i was kind of thinking while i was drawing that some people might not want to be "on the spot" from all angles like that, but i really think on the other hand as far as environment goes a lot of people may like the openess of the layout. as far as the expense goes i have been doing a little research on glass door prices, i think i can find a way to fit those in my budget.

BAKroom3, Actually, those glass doors are not going to reflect back to the main mix position. If you look at the angle the speaker has to go to hit the glass, if I think about it like a pool shot, that first reflection is going to go back behind the head of the mixer. This is because of the way the walls are splayed outward. I like billiards, and that's one good way to look at the reflections on glass. Second and third reflections will be less of a problem, particularly if you have proper absorbtion, and especially since this design has so much bass trapping in the rear. The glass may affect the listening position in the back, but the average person sitting there won't know the difference, and the person in the mix seat is where you want that sweet spot. I look forward to seeing what you do with the space, I'm a bit jealous that you can actually make it out of a seperate buildling. Peace, Bryan

if I think about it like a pool shot, that first reflection is going to go back behind the head of the mixer.

Well, that's partly true for high frequencies, where the wavelengths are small: Those are indeed highly directional, and can be represented as rays. But its a bit more complex for mids and lows, and even highs tend to spread out across a spherical or cylindrical wave front. In addition, the soffits on that sketch appear to be at the wrong angle: They look like they are at 45°, but it should be 30° to get the correct speaker / mix position geometry, which means the speakers will be pointing much closer to the center of the rear wall, or roughly at the middle of the glass. That seems to send the reflections pretty much right at the mix position. I reckon there will be bad stuff coming of that glass, right back at the engineer's ears, messing up the stereo imaging, making the sound muddy, and perhaps even causing comb filtering. From what I've learned, you don't want a large hard reflective surface behind you. It should either be absorbent (in a small room) or you should have diffusers of some type back there (in a larger room), or maybe a combination of diffusers and slot resonators, absorption and slots, etc.. The bass traps don't seem to be very large either: If those glass doors weren't there, they could by much larger. I don't recall ever seeing a successful pro studio with such a large hard reflective surface directly behind the mix position, without any treatment on it. That's not to say that there aren't any studios like that: There might well be some, but I don't think I've ever seen one. And since they are so scarce, there must be a good reason for that! In any event, all of those walls need to be doubled up: The sketch shows single-leaf walls, but in reality they will have to be two-leaf, of course, which means twice the number of doors, twice the price. If that were my room, I think I'd go with smaller swinging doors (two of them, back to back, one for each leaf), much like Rod suggests in his book, and with treatment of some kind on the door itself, as well as on the entire back wall, to control reflections Or turn the entire room around, and do it like Jon suggested.... :) Anyway, that's just my $ 0.02. - Stuart -

Thanks Bryan, and Stuart for your responses. I know all about the two leaf sysytem and needing to have a door on each leaf, the drawing was for illustrative purposes only, so you could see what i was trying to explain... as you see im still only in the sketch/design phase, nothing is set in stone... Im just trying to throw some ideas around, get opinions and feedback as to whats wrong and what may need correction. my next question was going to be if i were to do as john did in his and flip the room to where the glass to the lounge area was BEHIND the counsole would that be a reasonable solution? And that way i could put proper bass trappings and diffusors on the back wall then as far as the windows from the control room into the live room would it be possible to maybe move them forward or rearward a little to prevent the stereo imaging from being compromised? again im sorry for the rough sketches, im still working with sketchup trying to learn it. and thanks to you all for helping me and others.

:( anyone?

my next question was going to be if i were to do as john did in his and flip the room to where the glass to the lounge area was BEHIND the counsole would that be a reasonable solution? And that way i could put proper bass trappings and diffusors on the back wall then as far as the windows from the control room into the live room would it be possible to maybe move them forward or rearward a little to prevent the stereo imaging from being compromised?

Yup! :) John's design is the best way to do it. Flip the room like he has it, so that your mis position is facing the door, and the rear of the room is against the wall, where you can treat it properly. Also note that John did pocket doors on that wall, which I imagine he did in order to get enough room to to the soffits and trapping in those front corners. Another option might be to do back-to-back swinging doors with large glass windows, if you really do need to see into your foyer / rest area. Of just plan solid doors if you don't really need to see in there. - Stuart -

:yahoo: thanks stuart!