50 x 25 x 13.5 space... extremely low budget need help asap

basically i've had a few questions lately i just can't seem to get answers for... i was wondering why people have been telling me to use the larger room as a control room? i always thought that large rooms sound better in recordings... i also asked for advice on my treatment, saying that i was planning on making mostly membrane absorbers, maybe hangers for the ceiling, and maybe some polycylindrical diffusors if i can get access to the right woodworking tools... i basicallly planned to follow the suggestions of ethan winer of building the three different types of his membrane absorbers (low,low mid and high frequency) and just alternate them to balance the amt of absorption across the freq. spectrum. just things like that... thanks, joe

Well I heard the same thing as well. till i built a small room and used it to track drums. I ended up with a nice open sound. (small for me is 12' x 10') But then I was comparing what i built to what was built in the 70's during the days of confusion (lots of difusion, rectangles spaces, etc...) I am talking of 1 large room in particular. I can't sepak of ethans membrane absorbers. Never built one. I understand how they work, but the issue i have with them is if the room is a rectangle and they are still placed flat on the wall where is the angle to deflect the sound. My only problem with how many people I see seem to apply them. Other than that I see no reason why not to build them. just angle them accordingly IMO. Ethan of course is the guru on his design. Personally i love the Slat Resonators. Easy to build, the math aint that deep and sound wonderful. Both of my rooms incorprate Resonators and absorbtion. my ceilings are full on abosrption as well. The hnagers sound great for you as you have a much higher ceiling than I Bryan Giles

so we're about to start treatment... question before i screw everything up... with thte hangers, could we hang them with toggle bolts into the plaster ceiling? the room above is cement so there really aren't any joists to attach them to... we need to get this done quickly so building a wooden frame to hang them on... we'd rather not do that, but if it's necessary we will... suggestions? (oh also, with all the hangers i'm assuming that mostly the rest of the room will only need treatment designed to handle lower frequencies, that the hangers would kill most of the high frequency activity in the room???)

Could you ruff a pic of the hanger location with respect to the room and other treatments you are adding. I am having a ruff one visualizing what you are doing. :) Also, Your plaster ceiling... There are no studs that the plaster slats were mounted on before they layed the plaster? or did they just plaster directly to the concrete ceiling? Not sure Plaster will hold a toggle bolt. Are you going to run the bolt into the concrete? I see no reason to not do it so long as you dont go THROUGH the concrete to the other side (creating of curse a sound transmissable HOLE. The Hanger will absorb any vibrations traveling through the bolt. Bryan Giles

Lonesome_Leo wrote:

...is there anything that we can do better...

An alternalte layout for the space....adding a splayed wall design to the control room and move the iso vocal booth to the far end.

so we have the window installed and some treatment built... i'll get pictures soon, things are just too hectic, but i have another quick question... our window does great in the isolation department and there's realatively no glare.... at night. during the day you can not see from the tracking room into the control room the glare is so bad.... is there any type of coating we can use to reduce glare? or should we just buy some curtains to reduce the amount of daylight entering the room? thanks a ton you superheroes.

I'm getting a very late start on this thread, but I'd like to add a general comment. I'm VERY glad to see that Lonesome Leo and his boys are fans of a very large tracking room. I am always amazed when others suggest giving a large portion of the available space to the control room??? Personally, I could work with a closet for a control room, the live room is where the music happens. Maybe if you are one of those "1 man bands" that does 90% of your work behind a computer keyboard in the control room and rarely record live instruments; but even then, why do you need so much space in the control room? I record acoustic instruments almost exclusively and I am constantly amazed when I walk into a mid to upper level studio and find a live room that looks more like a vocal booth. The largest possible live room, with the best possible natural acoustics, is more important than any control room, if you spend any time recording actual instruments. Maybe if you spend most of your time mixing music recorded elsewhere, you might want a huge control room for for your clients and their "entourage." But any studio that does tracking as a regular part of their work might be better off with as much space as possible dedicated to the live room and use what's left over for a control room. I guess it comes down to your opinion of what side of the glass has the "important" activity taking place: the knob twiddling or the playing of instruments? Sorry for rambling, but this has been one of my most frustrating issues whenever I have to work in a studio (instead of on location).

Yeah u R right lex, who cares if the mix sucks after you have spent countless wonderful hours of tracking. Although u are right about a teeny weeny tracking room, but a closet for a control room. too small = bad sounding in my book. :) And when mix time comes and the BAND wants to be in the CR during the mix, guess that cant happen cuz of the matchbox CR. LOL Not starting a fight with you, but balance is the best thing to do. A decent sized control room and ADEQUATE tracking rooms. Of course here in D-town all the big studio have large CR's and Large tracking Rooms. They didnt compromise on wither end. Just my 2 pennies and a half. Bryan Giles

Yeah u R right lex, who cares if the mix sucks after you have spent countless wonderful hours of tracking ?? Its a lot easier to get a good/great mix in a small, well treated control room than it is to capture decent instrument sounds in a fuzzy closet. Not even a contest. but a closet for a control room. too small = bad sounding in my book. OK, I was exaggerating about a closet sized control room, but if you have to choose between one or the other, the tracking room gets the square footage. And when mix time comes and the BAND wants to be in the CR during the mix, guess that cant happen cuz of the matchbox CR. YES! Unless the Beatles reunite, I don't want any band in the control room for the mix. That's what a producer is for. but balance is the best thing to do of course! my point was that it was crazy for anyone to build a massive control room and leave a little box for the live room, as I see all too often. IF (IF!) you have to choose one or the other, the live room gets the space. But if you have the money and the space, of course you would provide a comfortable space for the control room. all the big studio have large CR's and Large tracking Rooms just as a point of reference, everyone's "favorite studio", #[removed] - the ratio between the control room and the live room was originally around TEN to one (2,500sf +/- to 250sf +/-) It has been remodelled a few times since then, but that was the approximate ratio when many of our favorite records were made there - and they managed to squeeze the band and the producer in their for playback, if you recall.