Temporary Studio Layout/Treatment

Started by tedpenn on 11 February 2010. 0 replies.

Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 14052.

Hi, I'll try to hit all the requested points here... This may belong in the acoustics forum, but since my post involves layout too I'm posting here. Feel free to move it if appropriate. My Situation: Moving into a temporary space while remodeling/adding onto my basement studio. I'll post separately for the new studio build, but this post is regarding my temporary space. Please bear in mind that I'm not really looking to do any serious construction changes to this room, given its temporary nature. Small stuff is fine- replace a door, etc., but nothing major. That basically leaves me with layout and acoustical treatment options to tweak. Use: Mixing and Overdubs. I typically track in one of the larger tracking facilities in town, and then head to a B-room or my place to overdub and mix. Overdubs will happen either in the control room, or in an adjacent room, setup in a temporary fashion. The adjacent room has similar dimensions to the control room, but is about 1 foot smaller in both length and width. The adjacent room will also be used as an office (not simultaneously!). Why am I doing this??: I have to move everything out of my basement so that I can gut it and build the new studio. In the meantime, I need a place to continue working over the next 6 months to ?? until I can finish the new studio. Construction: 1960's Ranch house. Brick exterior walls. Drywall interior walls. Hardwood floors (just refinished). Garage below that is just used for storage (no cars). Attic above. Typical residential type construction for this area/age (hollow doors, no insulation in interior walls, etc.). Equipment: The Pro Tools rig, hard drives, interfaces, and any other noise-generating devices will live in a Sound Construction Isobox Flight Case . This isobox will be placed in a closet for further isolation. The Control 24 will be in a desk from Sound Construction which varies slightly from their stock desk. It will be closer to something like this one in a Carl Tatz room. I'm moving to an all-modular/mobile rack system, meaning that all gear will be housed in shock-mounted road cases, most likely somewhere between 12 and 16 spaces, so that they are useful as tables/workspaces as well. The idea is very similar to Nathaniel Kunkel's Studio Without Walls. I may use the rack lids for more table space. The idea for the mobile design is to make it as easy as possible to go from one location to another . I can bring gear to the tracking studio easily, overdub at a client's house, record in remote/out-of-town locations, and even do some live recording. Most of the time, however, the gear will live at home base. Electrical: The current panel is an overloaded 100 amp beauty. Eventually, the panel, meter base, and standpipe will be upgraded. The whole house pretty much needs to be rewired, but it's going to take a while. In the meantime, this room is one of the few with grounded outlets. Planning on some type of power conditioning and a UPS in the pro tools rack but need advice here. Do I need isolation transformers? What's the best thing I can do to ensure that this rig stays clean electrically when I take it to other locations? Isolation/Noise: Probably not much I can do here, given the temporary nature, but if you guys have any thoughts I'd love to hear them. The room is in my own house, and I'm a fair distance from neighbors. So, most of my concerns are about "outside getting in", rather than "inside getting out", so to speak. Although I do live in what is technically "airport overlay", I'm not in the approach/departure paths of the most commonly used runways. Occasionally I'll have some military helicopters fly over and give me a rumble, but it's rare. I'm planning on keeping the vent register as large as the current hole allows (or leaving the register off). While recording in this temporary setup, I'll be in a position to simply turn off the HVAC when necessary. The fridge is on the opposite side of the house. The furnace/air handler is below me in the garage. I'll just have to do the best I can with these- again, temporary room. Budget: I'd like to stay between $1-2k for the acoustic treatment if possible. I have no problem building traps etc. myself, but would rather buy off the shelf to save time. This budget become more flexible the more that these materials can be reused in the new studio. Drawings/Data:I am attaching a 2D jpeg rendered out of Sketchup. I'm a bit of a Sketchup novice, so bear with me. All interior wall dimensions are as precise as I could measure with a tape (so pretty darn precise). Equipment/furniture models are straight out of the Sketchup library, so trust those dimensions at your own risk. :) I ran a couple room mode projections, and it doesn't look quite as bad as I'd feared, but I'm not very experienced with interpreting that data. Current Plan (until you tell me to change it!): Something along these lines from GIK or similar. Would probably supplement with more/thicker traps. I'm willing to put treatment anywhere, so long as I can still get in/out of the room and work in there. Concerns:: Windows- I'm assuming I should just fill in the window behind the left monitor with 703, and hang a bass trap in front of it. I could put something with a little more mass in there to fill it, and make the seal airtight I suppose. The window on the right wall I'm not sure about. Maybe just some curtains to tame the daylight, but not sure if it's a huge concern acoustically, as I believe it's out of the first reflection zone. Closet- Sliding doors not shown in the diagram. Not sure what to do here to create symmetry. I suppose I can put an acoustic panel on the door etc. Also concerned about low-mid resonances developing in that closet (?). Layout- I'm assuming what I've got is the way to go. I'm oriented along the longer dimension and have tried to go with a layout that will allow for some symmetry along the side walls and in placement of my bass traps. Ok, I think that's it... What do you think? Ted
Image not preserved: TempStudio_TopView_700wide.jpg