Starrting to build my new studio,,, at last.

Hi everyone, I'm new here and have already looked around and noticed what a great site this is. I used to have my basic setup in my conservatory but as this wasn't the best place for it have now decided to put everything in my garage. I've noticed a lot of people on here have done various things with their setup so I thought I'd share my own ideas and maybe get some feedback. My garage is at the top of the garden and measure approx 25' x 18' with a pitched roof starting at approx 7' and rising to approx 10' in the middle. It's made of reinforced concrete sections that slot together just like tongue and groove with steel girders that run through every 3 and 4 concrete sections and sits on a concrete base/slab. It was made by Marley back in 1983, back in the days when Marley still made garages, here is a link to another similar garage of the same concrete construction http://www.stewartanderson.co.uk/buildings.htm Now the problem I have is not only stopping the sound from getting out but also from getting in. I live 2 mile out from Birmingham airport (BHX) and I am directly underneath the flight path... My idea is this, I have nothing but bare roof at the moment with no insulation, I am planing at starting the internal roof structure off from the top of the 7' concrete sections and have it rising up. I intend to line it with plasterboard and the fill the space between that and the main roof with insulation/rockwool, could someone tell me if this would be enough to drop the noise down to a suitable level? The other question I have is this, I have concrete sections that make up my garage, I was going to build an inner wall made from concrete block right next to it and maybe fill the gap with insulation. Would it be better to do it this way or just to build an inner partition made up from framework and plasterboard with maybe insulation in there too?

I live 2 mile out from Birmingham airport (BHX) and I am directly underneath the flight path...

Ouch! Living inside the inner marker is not a good place to be! I bet it gets noisy...

could someone tell me if this would be enough to drop the noise down to a suitable level?

That very much depends on two factors: 1) How loud is it right now, when a heavy plane goes over noisily? (Real numbers, measured with real SPL meter). 2) How quiet do you need it to be to qualify as "suitable level"? (Again, using real numbers). Subtract "B" from "A". That's how much isolation you need. Compare the estimated TL of your intended construction method against the result of your subtraction above, and you'll have your answer. - Stuart -

Right then, to give everybody a better idea I've just drawn up a quick design of how I think the new studio should be done, please feel free to correct me if anyone thinks I'm doing something wrong. As you can see in the picture I won't be using all of the room available in the garage as we have our freezer in there as well as other stuff we'd never find the room for. The construction is simple, the outside material you see on the picture is the original steel reinforced concrete sections. The inner (coloured grey) will be 100mm concrete block which will be placed against the steel girder uprights leaving approx 4 inch gap between the blocks and concrete sections of the garage, not sure at the moment if I should leave this as an air gap or fill it with insulation. Everything in black is basically a door, the two big door at the bottom are the original garage doors, one is already welded shut and the other will eventually be the same. On the ouside of these doors I shall add render which will be approx 1.5 inch thick, again there will be an air gap between the block wall and the garage door of approx 2 inches. Now I'm not sure as to whether I can get away with dry wall (timber frame and plasterboard) along the left and right side walls instead of useing concrete blocks, it would save a lot of money if I didn't need the blocks, maybe someone could clarify?

You have to put insulation in the airgap between leaves because its the dampening factor for the MSM effect. In your case I'd go for concrete blocks for your inner leaf, because it will provide a better isolation than drywall, And you live near to a airport so go with it ! Later you can design an inner timber fram that will support your acoustic treatment for all rooms However, You could play with different shapes for each room. Since they will be all concrete, maybe you can come up with a non-rectangular shape for the live room, because you might consider leaving some concrete intact or finish with "stone style" tiles on a couple of walls for a "live" room sound if you want to

Two big points I see on that diagram (in addition to what Javier mentioned). 1) Your inner leaf appears to be coupled to your outer leaf via those pillars. You MUST totally decouple your leaves if you hope to achieve decent isolation. 2) You only have single-leaf walls between your CR, LR and booth! That won't isolate very well. You need two-leaf walls there as well, unless you really like a lot of bleed in your recordings! :) Also:

the outside material you see on the picture is the original steel reinforced concrete sections.

That sounds holey and porous to me! You will need to carefully seal that entire surface to be totally airtight. Hermetic. Perhaps a layer of stucco on the inner surface (plaster), and a good coat of paint would do the trick.

not sure at the moment if I should leave this as an air gap or fill it with insulation.

Like Javier said: Fill it with insulation. Rock wool or fiberglass, 48 kg/M3 density. It is part of the "spring" in the MSM equation. It also damps flutter echo on the cavity, and brings down the resonant frequency of the entire wall. It gains you many decibels of isolation. Without insulation in the cavity, the resonant frequency goes up, and the isolation goes down.

100mm concrete block which will be placed against the steel girder uprights

That would be a mistake. If the inner leaf touches the girders, then you are coupling your inner leaf to your outer leaf, and killing your isolation. Leave a small gap so that it is impossible for the masonry to touch the girders, even if mortar drips out the back, or bits of rubble fall in the gap. Very important point! Any bridging at all between inner leaf and outer leaf will kill your isolation.

again there will be an air gap between the block wall and the garage door of approx 2 inches.

2 inches is not much! You need at least 4 to make it worth while, and maybe more in your case, if those planes are really loud. And once again, your block walls appear to be touching the outer leaf at the door frames. If you do that, you will have very poor isolation. The inner leaf must be a totally free-standing, fully-decoupled structure, with no mechanical connections to the outer leaf (except through the floor).

Now I'm not sure as to whether I can get away with dry wall (timber frame and plasterboard) along the left and right side walls instead of useing concrete blocks, it would save a lot of money if I didn't need the blocks,

Your isolation is only as good as your weakest link IN THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE. so if you do drywall for the side walls, then it makes no sense to do blocks for the other two walls, since they drywall is much less dense than the blocks (unless you use MANY layers of drywall, to attain the same mass as the blocks....) Also consider your doors, windows and HVAC. Those are all potential weak points. They need to be as good as the walls and ceiling. So you need really heavy, well-sealed double doors (back to back), two panes of thick laminate glass with a large air gap for your windows, and large silencer boxes for your HVAC (plus long duct runs and multiple 90° turns, etc.). But first of all you need to define your numbers. Without those, all of the above is moot. You might be over-building for your needs, and therefore wasting money, or you might be under-building for your needs, and therefore wasting money. - Stuart -

This is the double 100mm concrete wall TL prediction Is a good starting point if built properly

Many thanks to everyone for your input so far, it's given me a greater insight into getting this thing off the ground. I understand then from what you're saying that I could build the internals out of concrete block straight off the floor providing that it has no contact with the external sidewalls of the existing garage, but of course further shielding the inner walls from things such as drum kit etc. With regards to noise bleeding through the inner walls I was imagining that certain things would be recorded on there own such as drums against a click/sample drum track and then bass, guitar and vocals seperately etc. I would have expected that my own real concern would be noise from the outside of the building during recording. This wouldn't be a problem to do it this way and the insulation sounds about right with the fibreglass, wouldn't the fact that the fibreglass touches both the external in internal wall give you a bridging effect though? As you have mentioned, maybe 2 inches between the blocks and garage door is a bit small, I could always allow for more I guess without any problems. Going with what jbassino has mentioned, the way that I was going to go was to have the main walls as they are and then maybe fit screens in the corners to cut out the parallel connection between the walls, since the inner roof will be rising anyway then that's got rid of that problem with the floor. With regards to the plane noise, there are restrictions on planes that come and go from BHX as to how much noise they are allowed to create, they fly in on idle anyway and those that take off are usually pretty high by the time they come over here on take off, unless of course it's the C-17 Globemaster or the VC10. The VC10 is being petitioned to be banned from BHX as the residents have had enough of the noise, the C-17 just gives us a low level rumble and is few and far between anyway. It's funny, I did have the idea of actually digging under the foundations fo the garage and building it that way but that's just too much...

If you have the money, build your studio of concrete blocks (double walls for everything) and I can promess you you'll throw a bomb in there and nobody will notice

Thanks for that. Money is not a major problem as I have a fulltime job but as I don't have lots of money this project is going to be one of those slow things, it'll be worth it in the end though. As I'm getting more into this I'm starting to realise from searching the internet along with the useful advise you have all given and it's all starting to make sense. I shall now probably render all of the external walls of the garage to seal it in. I may also seal the roof to make it airtight and then add plasterboard to the interal surface of the roof and make that airtight too. I can then start to build the internal blockwork as I need it 8)

Right then, here's the revised drawing based on new information you guys have given me, you'll notice that the block section is now seperated from the external walls. I have my first 2 loads of concrete blocks arriving tomorrow so once all of the junk is moved out of my garage I shoudl be able to make a start on things pretty soon 8) Only about another 7 loads of blocks to go after that, plus all of the other stuff I need.

... wouldn't the fact that the fibreglass touches both the external in internal wall give you a bridging effect though?

Not really. It doesn't have enough mass and isn't rigid enough to create a flanking path. Now, if you really stuff it in hard, packed tight, then yeah, you'll create a bridge. But if you just lay it in there normally, without forcing it, then you'll be fine. And you do need to fill the entire gap: It gains you several dB of isolation, for several reasons.

With regards to noise bleeding through the inner walls I was imagining that certain things would be recorded on there own such as drums against a click/sample drum track and then bass, guitar and vocals seperately etc.

Exactly. But when you are tracking drums (for example), you want to make sure that what you are hearing in the CR is just the sound coming from the speakers, NOT the sound of the drums themselves coming through the wall or window. In your CR you only want to hear what comes out of the speakers, nothing else. You also don't want sound from those very same speakers bleeding back into the mics in the LR, nor the sound of you stirring your coffee, chatting on the phone, or the sounds of noisy equipment... The idea of isolation is just that: Keep all the sounds only in the place where they originate, and not let them through to any other place. Mics seem to have a habit if seeking out the most annoying distant sound in the entire building, and amplifying it by 200 decibels.... I think Murphy is on the design team of all mic manufacturers, and makes a special effort to ensure that all mics can pick up the sound of a pen tapping on the table in the CR MUCH better than it picks up the subtle nuances of that once-in-a-lifetime perfect voice take.... :) And if you have the vocal booth right there, then you might well want to use it together with the LR, tracking from both at the same time. So you do need good isolation between rooms as well. Take a look at the designs on this forum: You'll see that practically all of them use full 2-leaf MSM walls for ALL of the construction, both in between rooms and also to the outside world. There's a reason for that. ..

...then maybe fit screens in the corners to cut out the parallel connection between the walls,

I think you misunderstood what Javier was saying. "Screens in the corner" won't do it. If you want to kill flutter echo the way he mentioned, then you need to angle the actual inner walls themselves. And corners are for bass trapping, not for "screens".

With regards to the plane noise, there are restrictions on planes ...

Well, that's good news I guess! But you still need to get some real numbers regarding just how loud they are, and how quite you need to make them. Without that, it's just a guessing game.

the C-17 just gives us a low level rumble

... which just happens to be the hardest sound of all to block! :) The lower the frequency is, the harder it is to isolate. A low rumble is much harder to kill than a loud squeal.... Once again, you need numbers. Get a sound level meter, and actually measure the levels of those planes C-weighting, slow response. Measure on several different days, at different times, with different wind conditions. Keep notes. If you can get a spectrum analyzer for the job, even better! Then measure what level you need to record at. Wait for a really quite time late at night, when you can't hear anything around, and measure that. That's what you are aiming for in the studio, even with the biggest, heaviest play flying too low over your place, with the wind blowing the wrong way. Subtract "B" from "A". That's how much isolation you need. Compare that with the estimated numbers for your planned construction method to see if you are going overkill, underkill, or just right. Anything but the above is just guessing, and will cost you money.

...then add plasterboard to the interal surface of the roof

Don't do that until you check with a structural engineer! Yeah, you SHOULD beef up that outer leaf, for sure, but there is the issue of weight. You might be putting too much stress on the roof structure by adding a few hundred pounds of mass. The roof might not be able to take the extra load, without modification. Only a structural engineer can tell you for sure.

you'll notice that the block section is now seperated from the external walls.

Much better!

I have my first 2 loads of concrete blocks arriving tomorrow

Whoa!!! Slow down there a bit! You don't even have a plan yet, and you already have building materials arriving? That doesn't sound like a good idea. You need to get your ENTIRE plan in place first, including all doors, windows, HVAC, electrical etc. Not to mention the actual layouts for your rooms. For example, what ratio is your CR based on? Which way will the speakers fire? How will you deal with symmetry? What are you going to do about the issue of first reflections, which looks to be a big problem with your current layout, no matter which way you orient the CR.... And where are you going to put the bass trapping in your CR, since the door is occupying the place where it should go? Etc. Etc. Etc. Then, you need your structural engineer to check over your plans and make sure that you actually can do what you are planning to do, without it all falling down on your head one day... There are about a zillion and forty seven things that you need to do before you should even think of laying your first block. I think you've done about six or seven of them so far, leaving only about a zillion and forty to go.... :) - Stuart -

Mate, You need to make DOUBLE walls for everything! You didnt update that into your revised design. If you are thinking "double walls? wtf? " Its very simple. just think of a room by a rectangle. Now take each rectangle and arrange them like you want. Then,you will notice that there are two walls separating each room. Got it? Thats a double wall (MSM) design. Note that NONE of the walls can touch each other... Each rectangle is independent from the others And I think it will be worth considering my advice to splay your walls a little. At least on the live room since you can leave some concrete exposed for a "bigger" live room sound. And like Stuart said, slow down there!!! You don't even have a clue on how your design its gonna end like and you're already buying material !!

Building a concrete bunker isn't going to help as much as you may think. Overhead planes produce airborne sound and that will be a direct hit on the roof and, depending on how this sound propagates, the slab below your feet via the earth.

Thanks for your help guys... Getting to the first point about the strength of the roof. Roof is supported by steel girders which come up from the floor and then run off to the center of the garage to make the apex, the girders are 4" x 2" thick box steel made up of two sections that are bolted together in the middle and there are four of these running down the garage. Just one of these girders are more than capable of holding 1 ton on their own so I doubt that there is going to be a problem with beefing up the roof. I've bought the concrete blocks now because they're going to be used anyway regardless of which final design I eventually go for, all I'm doing is buying ahead some of the essential stuff whilst I have the money for it and eventually whatever design I have in mind it can then be all thrown together. The biggest issue I see me having right now is going to be the planes that come over, I'm on the lookout for a db meter so that I can measure the sound levels around here and then of course decide what needs to be done and then weigh up the cost of it all, luckily the C-17 doesn't come over that often so not much low level rumble to worry about. I'm still looking into the double wall issue as well as the angles of the walls etc and of course will change my design to accomodate this, I've already decided to change it around IE: everything that was to be on the left of the garage will now be on the right and visa versa. The door of the garage will also be moved from being next to the window to now being in the far left corner with the freezer being moved to the far right under the window. This is the good thing about sectional garages, you can have things just where you want them.

Ok, I've been looking more at the sound aspect and what sort of noises I'm getting into my garage. I didn't go out and buy a proper db meter, just for test purposes I've set up my mic (Behringer XM8500 50Hz - 15kHz) through the pc along with some software I downloaded off the net. First of all I did some tests as jets were coming in and noted the base line levels and then noted what the levels were at different frequencies as planes were coming in to land. I've obviously got some more testing to do which I shall do tonight when it's much quieter. The graphs pictured here are of a jet taking off. Now before anyone says it, I know that this test I've done isn't the best way to go about it although it does give some indication as to the amount of noise I've got coming through. My mic was setup on a stand in the middle of the garage pointing at the roof. It's interesting to see that although the spec of my mic is only as low as 50Hz it's still somehow showing readings as low as 40Hz, are frequencies below this going to matter? I've only shown the lower end readings since it already been said here that the lower frequencies are the hardest to get rid of. Briefly looking at the results I should imagine my biggest problem would be to keep the noise levels contained rather than whats going on in the outside world, or am I completely wrong? Average DB: 16.07 (Through a range of 20Hz - 20kHz) @ 40Hz: 4.21 @ 80Hz: 18.94 @ 100Hz: 19.39 I then did another test, the first picture you see is the base line test to show the amount of ambient noise on a normal day, the dark blue line is the peak measurement, all 6 pictures are from the plane passing over as it took off.

Just to update everyone on what's happening so far. I've re-done the plan that I previously posted and this one seems a more viable solution as to how it'll be laid out as you can see in the picture below. For starters the roof will be lined internally with 3/4 inch plywood and all of the seems/joined will be filled with caulk/filler etc. Between the sheets of ply I shall place insulation which should approximately work out as being a 4 inch gap. I know it's been mentioned here before about the strength of the roof but trust me, it's plenty strong enough. The block work as shown in the picture will then have a 4 inch gap between itself and the external wall as well as all of the other walls, again filled with insulation. The external wall will probably be rendered on the ouside to seal it all in instead of using loads of caulk etc. Although on the diagram it shows that all of the walls in all of the three rooms are square to each other I aim to correct this by installing wooden framing which will again be covered in 3/4 inch ply so they will be nice solid walls/partitions, sorry I didn't show it here. The internal ceilings of all rooms will be lined in 3/4 ply with a layer of insulation above, as these will follow the profile of the garage roof then they'll be off at an angle in relation to the floor. I intend to have the ceilings in all three rooms independant to each other, not connected to either of the other rooms or the garage roof in any way. I've decided to use 8' x 4' 3/4 inch ply instead of plasterboard as it's cheaper for me to get as my neighbour works in demolition and these things just get thrown away or disposed of by some other means and by the time I get them they usually work out to about £1-£2 each which really isn't a bad price to pay. I've wondered what I should do about the floor, should I leave it as it is and cover it with underlay and carpet or should I cover it in wood? Maybe someone here could give me some pointers on what I've proposed to do so far, maybe I have missed something, I don't know. Thanks in advance

Just to update everyone on what's happening so far.

Ahhh HA! now THAT looks more like a plan! Proper decoupled MSM walls all around. Much better:

the roof will be lined internally with 3/4 inch plywood

Any particular reason why you want to use plywood? What you need is mass, and the cheapest way to get mass in most places in the world is with drywall (plaster board, gypsum board, sheetock: all the same). Pywood will work, but kg for kg it will probably work out rather more expensive than the same mass of drywall.

Between the sheets of ply I shall place insulation

Between WHAT sheets of ply? I guess you mean that you already have some plywood up there as the roof deck, on top of the trusses? Is that what you are talking about?

The block work as shown in the picture will then have a 4 inch gap between itself and the external wall as well as all of the other walls, again filled with insulation. The external wall will probably be rendered on the ouside to seal it all in instead of using loads of caulk etc.

Excellent!

Although on the diagram it shows that all of the walls in all of the three rooms are square to each other I aim to correct this by installing wooden framing which will again be covered in 3/4 inch ply so they will be nice solid walls/partitions,

Whoa!!!! If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you are going to build the "square to each other" frames, put drywall on that, then build ANOTHER frame and put plywood on that? Is that the idea? If so, that will make a 3-leaf or 4-leaf system. Bad idea. 3 and 4 leaf will REDUCE your low frequency isolation.

The internal ceilings of all rooms will be lined in 3/4 ply with a layer of insulation above, as these will follow the profile of the garage roof then they'll be off at an angle in relation to the floor. I intend to have the ceilings in all three rooms independant to each other, not connected to either of the other rooms or the garage roof in any way.

Sounds good to me!

I've decided to use 8' x 4' 3/4 inch ply instead of plasterboard as it's cheaper for me to get as my neighbour works in demolition and these things just get thrown away or disposed of by some other means and by the time I get them they usually work out to about £1-£2 each which really isn't a bad price to pay.

Ahhh! OK, I guess that answers my question above! I wish I could get ply at that price....!

I've wondered what I should do about the floor, should I leave it as it is and cover it with underlay and carpet or should I cover it in wood?

It's a concrete slab on grade, right? Just leave it as is. Look around the forum for some ideas on how people have treated concrete in some amazing creative and really beautiful ways. Or if you don't like the look of that, then just put laminate flooring right on top of the concrete. Carpet is a bad idea, as it is selective, and absorbs mostly highs, not lows. Better wait until the end to see if you need more absorption on your room, and if so you can spread around some throw rugs to help. - Stuart -

So this is my conundrum. "It's fine to use a slab as the the only leaf (floor)" But not fine to use a slab wall as the only leaf??? Some of these guys are talking 15-30cm in thicknes on the walls. Is it purely the grade underneath the slab floor that allows it to be used exclusively?

Thanks for the reply Stuart... Glad that you approve of the new design, I guess I must be finally getting it right. My aim has always been to write songs and get them recorded in the best way that I can and I've always been content with just a bunch of equipment "thrown" together in a corner somewhere and have never worried about outside sounds/noises etc. This studio build has been my first ever attempt of finally doing it the right way without knowing too much about it, am I so lucky I found this place, I've learnt so much in the last 2 weeks or so. Anyway, getting back to it. With regards to the roof, I was originally going to go with plasterboard but then realised that my neighbour could supply me with ply at a much cheaper price and so have decided to go with that instead. What I meant by "Between the sheets of ply" I actually meant between the sheets of ply and the main garage roof which funnily enough turns out that as it's held up by the 4 inch girders that It gives me the 4 inch of space that I need to fill with insulation. What I meant about the ply framing for walls (you mentioned 3 & 4 leaf), I guess was I was actually trying to say is that I shall attempt to break up the corners and the side walls with framing that's either hung on the walls or positioned in the corners, I'm hoping that this would be the correct way to go about it? Building the concrete blocks off at an angle is not an option. Yes the concrete floor is solid straight onto the ground, I did wonder about putting laminate flooring down and have seen it done on other builds on this site but I did worry about it being a reflective surface, I do like laminate flooring though but as you say it's something that can be decided towards the end of the build. The electrics and cabling are pretty straight forward for me as I already have a background in electrics and electroincs, I shall at some point work out how the air con is going to be installed but again with this design it shouldn't create too many problems.

Before you get too far, do you really need that 'vocal booth'? The dimensions of it are almost square (only 1/2" off from a perfectly square room in two of the drawings), which will be problematic - and its small size will bring up the problem peaks and nulls right into crucial frequency ranges. I'd also worry about that long-and-skinny live room, more than twice as long as it is wide, sounding a bit "tunnel-like". Would it maybe work to have two rooms, with the dividing wall between "live" and "control room" running horizontally across the picture, instead of vertically, so that you have two better-proportioned rectangles? If you tend to record things "one at a time", you may not need a "booth", and you could always put the vocalist in the control room if you're tracking vocals "live" while instrumentalists are playing in the other room (or just have them do a "scratch vocal" with a dynamic mic and overdub the "final" vocal later, a common practice).

Some interesting points there chrisrnps. To be honest I did look at this option first time around but when I thought about having a vocal booth I came away from it. Yes you are right about laying down tracks one at a time and this is the way that I currently do things and then go back and perfect things later on. The trouble is though, isn't it the prefered option to have a completely dead room for vocals and then a different room accoustically for a room with drums and then for the control room? Just wondering how we'd go about it accoustically putting a singer into a room that's been setup for things such as drums etc...

lilith_envy wrote:

So this is my conundrum. "It's fine to use a slab as the the only leaf (floor)" But not fine to use a slab wall as the only leaf??? Some of these guys are talking 15-30cm in thicknes on the walls. Is it purely the grade underneath the slab floor that allows it to be used exclusively?

The earth is a great damping device for the slab Lilith, as you are thinking, especially if it has been prepared properly for an acoustic room, but can be pretty darn good if poured on dirt fill. It's like an extension of your floor thickness plus a high degree of damping.

oK, so I've decided to go along with what chrisrnps has said (my original idea) and go with just a control room and live room. I've tried to make the control a suitable size that is big enough to work in and yet allow enough room for anything else that might need to be placed in there further down the line. This new plan has also allowed for the easier fitting of the air con since the ducting can now be passed to both rooms down the middle of the roof line. In the live room I intend to put a drum kit in the far right as well as an upright piano somewhere else which has just been offered to me by a good friend of mine, not sure yet if vocals will be recorded in the control room or live room. Another question which some of you might be able to help me with. Above where my garage doors are is a wooden apex as you can see in the picture below. Now should I fill the space inside it with insulation or just brick it in, bearing in mind that the garage doors themselves will be staying where they are and rendered with about 2 inches of concrete on the outside. Thanks in advance...

steptoe wrote:

The trouble is though, isn't it the prefered option to have a completely dead room for vocals and then a different room accoustically for a room with drums and then for the control room? Just wondering how we'd go about it accoustically putting a singer into a room that's been setup for things such as drums etc...

Not always. You could always go 'old school'! :mrgreen: You can make some portable "gobo" panels if you need a temporary perimeter around a vocalist, drum kit, amp, or instrument, which can (partially) reduce "bleed" between one sound source and another, the sound source and room ambience / reflections, etc. In the photo above, gobos are located behind the mic and in a semicircle behind Mr. Sinatra, which happen roughly correspond to the 'lobes' of a cardioid mic pickup pattern. Some gobo panels could be made pretty inexpensively, and if you design them to be absorptive on one side (fiberglass or rockwool) and reflective on the other (plywood or other surface), would let you play around with 'controlled' room ambience, first reflections off the 'reflective' side of the panels, etc. on amps, acoustic instruments, drums, etc. by experimenting with placing, adding, and removing panels around sound sources when you record. IMHO you've got more to gain from one bigger, better-proportioned live room than with a square vocal booth plus really long, skinny live room (neither of which would sound as good).

chrisrnps wrote:

IMHO you've got more to gain from one bigger, better-proportioned live room than with a square vocal booth plus really long, skinny live room (neither of which would sound as good).

LOL, I like old skool. So what you're saying then is that the new design is much better, do you think that the size of the live room would be more appropriate now? I also use less concrete blocks with the new design too which of course means I also save a couple of quid to spend elsewhere 8)