Studio Design Phase in Mexico

Hi Guys, Great forum and info!! :D im now taking the big step to build my studio and would love some advice for this noob. Thank you very much! :) Location: Queretaro City, Qro. Mexico Goals: Having a professional looking and sounding recording studio (control room + studio) able to record music and media productions in a comfortable way. Overview: I’ve been following this forum for quite some time and I love it :D, really good and interesting information. I decided it was the right time to start my own studio (I’m a music student and apple technician) I have bought several books about the subject: Acoustic Design for the Home Studio, Building a Recording Studio by Cooper and Rod’s one. Have read them all :D Now I’m in the design phase of the process. I’ve been having trouble making a layout that actually convinces me 100%. Room details: Attached is the dimension plan of the room I seek to convert into my studio :). It is mainly a 3380mm by 9300mm with 2620mm height, and a smaller part with aprox. 1270mm by 3000mm with 2530mm height. There are two big windows and a smaller one, all running up into the ceiling. All the walls and ceiling are made of concrete bricks with the exterior side having cement to do the flattening and in the inside plaster. All the floor is concrete covered with tile but i think ill covered it with laminate later in the process. I’m guessing I really don’t need to float the floor, down stairs is a storage room. About the walls I don’t know if its convenient to double them in the control room for the sake of room size :S. (I recently bought a custom desk 2.2m by 1.1m for my console :D) But I would appreciate as much isolation as possible. As I said before I just need a control room and 1 studio. The loud factor: I have measured with C weighting just next to the neighbor's wall 60db while playing drums real hard. This measurement was made when the room had a third large window in the middle, all windows have float glass. I’m planning to follow strict work hours for the real loud recordings and mix at a fair 80db average. At the time I don’t have the SPL meter to do the measurement in A weighting :(. Budget: I’m about to get a loan for approximately $15,000 us. Questions: I’ve been trying to define a layout without luck so far, I need a control room able to fit my 2.2m x 1.1m desk. Any advice or suggestions? I’ll keep working on ideas for the layout, so far I had one where the control room was in the far back of the big room with a 4.94 length trying to follow M.M. Louden’s 1:1.3:1.9 ratio aprox. by having a 3380m by 2620m by 4940mm room. But you would have to enter the studio to get to the control room :S Thanks for your help again :D

"But you would have to enter the studio to get to the control room" I would rather do that then go into the control room to get to the tracking room. Have you considered converting one of the window areas into a door? One thing I have seen folks do here is to place a glass door in front of and centered on the control room monitoring position. It not only gives you a visual connection to the tracking room but gives you access to the control room after the tracking room. Just a few thoughts. Good luck, Brien

thanks for the response,

Have you considered converting one of the window areas into a door?

I have thought about that but it would be expensive and somehow unpractical because this is a second floor (sorry, my mistake for not mentioning that). And because of the room size I don't know if it would be convenient to put a centered door between control and tracking room for the means of moving things in an out (drums). Last night I worked on a layout rough-draft, please let me know what you guys think about it. thanks again :D

Perhaps you could look at going sideways like this http://johnlsayers.com/Pages/Castle.htm

would something like this work in my room to go sideways?

so far i've been trying to adapt this design to my room but I appear to get almost square rooms, don't know if this is good for the acoustics :S

I meant like this - as per the castle design.

and if you take the small studio in 3D .skp file and paste it into your building and fiddel with it a bit you get this.

Thank you very very very much John!!!! I love the small studio adaptation :D I'll go for it and start getting quotes for the materials. Thank you very much again!

That's what I was talking about ;)

So far I'm sticking to the small studio design adaptation ;) Now I'm thinking about how to permanently plug my windows. I have researched some posts and came up with this idea. The window frame has 79mm of space for the plug so I think of using 2 5/8" gypsum boards + 1" mineral wool, this leaves a nice space between the insulation and glass. About sealing correctly I thought of leaving the outer board slightly bigger than the frame and then seal the surrounding with a non hardening caulk. Do you think this will work correctly? Any suggestions, critics, comments? :P Thanks :D

or using 15mm mdf instead of drywall, I've heard its more dense than 5/8" gypsum board?

anyone? please :D

how to permanently plug my windows

Brickwall them my friend ;)

ok i'll go for that :D thanks!

Hey, Lumisoto--I just finished a studio in San Miguel de Allende! I'll have photos in a week or so--right now, everything is covered in cables, boxes and moving stuff. Give me a call some time (wait a week as this week is insane, both cars in the shop, moving into a new house, etc). My cel is 044-[removed]. Mi Español es mejore que antes, pero todavia sucks. ;) Doug

Great! Nice to know we're not alone building studios in mexico hehe! Im eager to see that photos :D. Where did you buy your insulation/materials? I've been having some trouble finding some materials :S

Hi guys, So far i've been having some trouble finding the insulation for the studio. Here I can only find mineral wool of 2" thick max in 6pcf almost $30us a 2'x4' piece. I just find an OC dealer near my work place, they recommend me the batts in a bag product (R15 3"1/2 thick) which I guess is great because ill use 1"1/2 x 3"1/2 studs, it appears that they do not have the 700 series :( here. What do you think? does this type of insulation work for cloth panels and slat resonators, ceilings, etc?

Any kind of insulation works for damping or acoustic treatment. If you only find 2" thick, well then you'll need more panels to put to fill the cavities. As long as is dense enough (40kg/m3) you'll be safe. Denser fiberglass does actually improve its ratings but not worth the extra cash in my opinion

so the r15 batt 3"1/2 thick should work fine? :o

here are some charts of the acoustic properties of the batts vs the 700 series seems pretty close to me

just went with my OC dealer and they have a fiberboard of 2.8lb/ft^3 (44kg/m^3) in 1"1/2 and 2" thick, I'm thinking of combining both boards to completely fill the cavities of the 1"1/2 x 3"1/2 studs. :D What do you think guys? Any suggestions or comments?

Hola--I thought I posted this yesterday but can't find it now. My walls are brick covered plaster and the floors are pulido, but the room was designed so beautifully that whatever natural verb exists is lovely. Soon, though, I will be adding 4" bass traps from GIK in the corners. I did find a source in QTO for OC panels, but they were only 2" so I'd have to use twice as many to achieve the same effect, and they were at least 30% more than had I bought them in the states and their customer service sucked. Other than that... ;)

I know, they're pretty expensive here :S I'm calculating about 20,000 pesos worth of insulation :S

Well...I ordered 10 4" GIK bass traps for about $62 US each. Freight to Laredo was about $140, and then a guy in SMA who runs a service is bringing them down for around $150. And that's for a 700 sf studio. You might check out the GIK website (gikacoustics.com, I think) and talk to Frank, see what he recommends for your space--might save you some pesos! if you do, please tell him Doug Robinson sent you. Maybe we can get together some day, here or there--I just spent a few days there getting my car repaired, and I go occasionally for Costco, movies, etc. Doug