Another small studio in Finland...

Hello crew! After FINALLY getting a place for our studio we have alredy completed the other side of our studio and now it's time to finish the build. I've been drawing for a long time and have one design that really feels good. I just need your expert oppinions on the final design. Heres a little background... We found a place for our studio last winter at the basement of a commercial building located at an idustrial area of Helsinki. It's a war time shelter complitely under ground with thick concrete walls(30-50cm thick) and three rooms. We built the first room last winter while the other side was used as a storage space so we basically had one room to track and mix in. I designed the room as control room, and it sounds very nice. Now we have emptied the other side and are ready to start building. But along the way I decided that the room we were now using would be the tracking room and the CR would be built on the empty space. So now I've been drawing a new control room and a small booth. The reason I wanted to build a new CR is because there's more room for a (full) band in the room that's already built and the other side is big enough for a small CR. About the drawings: There's a "chicken shack" closet far left next to the CR and booth occupying about 5-6m2 of the space pretty much rendering it useless. It houses a war time AC unit and some other stuff. We'll have wool and sheet rock covering it. An AC pipe runs through the whole space(you can see it at the bottom of the drawing) from the "chicken shack" to the studio. I will cut this and run all the cables inside of it. There's also a concrete pole you can see on the bottom picture that restricts the design a little. I'm sure I left some important info out but I'm in a hurry just now and I appologize for that. So please ask, comment, suggest or whatever as long as you do. I've never seen a CR shaped like this one so just wanted some reassurance... Thanks -Tomi-

Tomi, The CR in the new room is a BAD IDEA. Stick with the studio4 -- You can use the other rooms as booths or something like that. sorry. Cheers, John

That's what I've been thinking myself, I just didn't want to believe it... :oops: Anyways here's a new design. I think we go with this one.

Much better! But I'd suggest that you can make your drum room much bigger than that. Generally, small drum rooms don't sound good. - Stuart -

Very true! Would there be problems if you didn't build any new walls? The original layout shows a lot of potential for a drum room. You may need to put a better door on the kitchen area. ;) - John

I guess we could make it with no new walls, just some heavy doors between the CR and studio... hmmm.... :? We've only been able to record drums and other very loud instruments after 5pm(after office huors, excluding weekends) since there is some leakage from the current studio room to upstairs. I'm not sure we can get enough isolation to be able to track drums during daytime... I don't know yet how much leakage there would be from the new studio room but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I really do like the idea of no walls and keeping the tracking space as big as possible(i know the small room-syndrome) and will try and make it work like that. The only thing with having no walls is that there wouldn't be any access from CR out if someone needs to, say, use the bathroom or go to kitchen or.... And also our fridge(it will find its place next to the "kitchen" between the pole and wall) makes some noise so tracking acoustic instruments in the same room is not ideal unless maybe using gobos or something like that to isolate it a little. We start building next week so there's still time to turn my head around many times... :wink:

Tommi, haha. Well, don't let this twist you up too much. It's all about compromises & priorities. My recommendation would be to look into the isolation required/needed to enable you to work during daylight hours. If this studio is currently doing well and producing income, then your client base will most likely grow and you will need to expand. It's basically an economic issue, but I would put my money in the isolation if I was planning to stay there. - My two cents worth on that issue. ;) Tell us about the current construction - materials etc.. that make up the structure of your building. Maybe there is some way have more isolation to/from upstairs. Cheers, John

Thanks, Here's a couple of pictures with the problem points of the construction regarding isolation. The first picture is the whole basement floor layout just so you can see what we got. All the walls are 30-50cm reinforced concrete and the ceiling is probably at least 50cm thick, also concrete. This picture shows the whole basement floor which is complitely under ground. The building is 3,5 stories high since the first floor is half way below ground. The second is the control room. This is not really an issue since we'll be moving the drums etc. to the other room but I'll share it anyways... :lol: There's a huge steel slab appr.80cm x 80cm x 3cm covering some kind of a hole in the wall. I have no idea how big the hole is but I know it goes through the wall to the stair case on the other side. There the whole has been covered with cement blocks and plaster. I've played some music really loud in the CR and went to the stair case and put my ear against the wall and there is a spot where you can hear the music through the wall. As I said, I don't think this will be an issue once we move the instruments. The third picture shows the new tracking room. There is a radiator with water pipes running from somewhere in the building to this room and I think this is a problem. The pipes are the only thing connecting the studio space to the rest of the building. I've covered the pipes and the radiator in the picture but I've highlighted the place where the radiator is and where the pipes run. I probably need to leave some gaps around the radiator to keep the air and heat flowing. What's your input here? How should I do it? There are some air vents from the "kitchen" to the stairs but these will be complitely covered since there's an indipendent air intake from outside to the new tracking room. I guess that's it for now. :roll: Hopefully we'll be laying down the floor tomorrow so we get something done...

Tomi, For a substantial improvement in isolation you will need to decouple the walls and ceiling in the new TR. Some isolation products similar to these http://www.mason-industries.com/masonind/private/hanger/hanger_main.cfm are needed. You will need to decouple the radiator pipes where they enter and exit the structure. Testing should be done to identify specific problems areas, ie; flanking paths and ceiling transmission - even if it is as unscientific as your control room tests. ;) - use a contact mic on the pipes upstairs while playing drums, contact mic on floor & then walls... simultaneous recording with test mic in TR and test mic upstairs in target room... will all help to identify exactly what needs to be addressed. Cheers, John

I know I need to decouple all the surfaces BUT the space is so small it really isn't an option :roll: . The ceiling height is only 2.2m, so all I can do is add some damping and diffusion for acoustics control. Once I get the CR doors I will do some testing and see where the sound leaks outside.

build an inside out ceiling - you will loose the 70mm for the frames and `16mm for the drywall. total 86mm.