Basement Studio - Plan Starting

Greetings everyone! I have been checking this site out for a week or so and it certainly looks incredibly helpful. Hopefully I can gain some wisdom from those pros here. I am about to embark on turning my basement into a studio. I will be recording bands here as well as personal recording. I would ideally like a control room, at least one isolation/vocal booth, and a large enough live room for a whole band to play in. The area in the diagram is roughly about half of my basement (I want to save half for storage). The walls and floors are concrete except for the West wall which isn't actually there yet. The door on the West wall is where the stairs lead up to the living area. Ceilings are 10' high. In the file that I inserted, the woman standing there is in the North/East corner (the East wall is the long one at 38'). The black circles are steel poles. The area North of the northern most poles I would like for the control room and iso booth because there is no plumbing in the joists above that area. I have a plan in mind that I will be posting once I get another night or two under my belt using Sketchup.

Here is a very basic Sketch of my initial thoughts Sketch-Up seems pretty hard to use at first so it is a very rough example.

I'm no expert, I'm just learning this stuff myself but I think your control room should be symetrical. You should find a place to make the control room a rectangle. Good luck!

Actually it is worse than just no symmetry in the control room...most of the other rooms are near square in footprint. I do not have the want to re write why non symmetry in a control room or square rooms are negative acoustic environments, these things are covered in many many posts here and books that we all own in this respect. So please continue to read up on these things and place your build on hold for a few more weeks until you have a better conceptualization of what it is you are trying to implement...and why :) The mind you save....may be your own :)

I think you guys are misunderstanding me. The reason that these rooms appear square is because if I were to do the proper dimensions myself after working with Sketch-Up for 20 minutes, it would take forever. They are only there to give an idea of my initial thoughts on a design, not to implicate that they are the dimensions I am proposing. I simply have absolutely no Sketch-Up skills at this point. I am aware that "squareness" is a bad thing. Other than that,I would be better off leaving the exact dimensions to the pros. :roll:

I understand perfectly. You have no concept of what it is you are attempting...you assume doing an acoustical environment has nothing to do with building a structure...like many before you , you are in want of a pretty picture, that one of a few might give to you in respect to a design, but you have no interest in putting the effort in to kind of getting a better feel for what it is you are really trying to achieve. BTW, my nickname around here is "dude-you-should-lighten-up" It's not gonna happen:) "They are only there to give an idea of my initial thoughts on a design," Sketchup delivers what you can perceive in your head based on the information available in that same head....but your head has to have the correct information in order to produce something that can be an acceptable model/design, anything outside of that is a guess...which you already admitted to :) If you really want to help your case...real live pictures help far more than a sketchup drawing that really yields no information other than poor information and poor preparation for one of the most difficult things you may ever do, and pay for, in your life. You think child birth....I think, that might be close, without the local epidural. Welcome!!!:)

To offer encouragement.... You have a great starting point. With the rough dimensions available you have the potential of building a great studio. It won't be easy, fast, or cheap to realize it though. We would love to help you craft this into a great space! Make it easy on us. Ask very specific questions.

Well, first off.... How the hell do you get the shapes and stuff into Sketch-Up that I see on this site? Do you have to have more than the basic program to get things like the little "desks" and such? Per my rough basement layouts... I know squareness is a bad thing. I was merely giving rough dimensions and rough layouts of where I was interested in putting the main rooms. The reason that I have the live room where it is is because the electrical and plumbing is above that area and I would prefer a drop ceiling over that area. The area above the CR and Isos is free to drywall. That is the reason for the general placement. The wall on the West side is as far as I want to go with the recording area (there is a lot of room West of it but it is reserved for my pool table, the bathroom, and HVAC). If I wanted to leave the floor concrete and do something similar to AudioGrotto's build, what do I do to the point where the walls meet the floor? Caulk?

Yes use caulking. I understand the frustration with sketch up, I would be in the same boat, but luckily my wife loves that stuff. You don't have to use sketch up. Do it on paper then scan it in if that is easier. It's the message not the media :) Take a bunch of pictures! Sketch up does look a whole lot prettier though! Steve

what do I do to the point where the walls meet the floor? Caulk?

Exactly. The best method is three beads of caulk under the sole plate (one down the middle, one close to each edge) then another bead under each layer of drywall as it goes up. Why so many seals? You need both leaves to be totally airtight. If you just caulk once, and there is a gap or break in that bead, then you have no seal. Two beads is better insurance, but you still might have a couple of gaps close to each other. Three is better still. Five or more might seem like overkill, but caulk is cheap. Regarding SketchUp: there are libraries of "things" available on-line, like furniture, musical instruments, etc. You can download them and add them to your design. But beware! many of the are BIG, in terms of very detailed geometry that clutter up your design and slow down the response. There are also some pretty good tutorials for SketchUp available on-line. It really isn't hard to use, once you get your hear around a few strange ways of doing things, and it turns out to be pretty powerful once you get the hang of it! - Stuart -

you could use neoprene under the walls to decouple and seal... here's one idea on layout