How to make a garage useful?

Hello to everybody. I have been following this fantastic forum for some time, and got inspired by it. And the time has come for me to submit my first post. First of all, I am from Croatia (near Zagreb) and I intend to build a small studio on a very tight budget. Any advices or guidelines would be much appreciated. OVERVIEW The space I can work with (a garage, ground floor, not attached to other buildings) has the following internal measurements: L 630cm, W 310cm, H 218cm. The walls are made of hollow concrete blocks (approx 22cm thick), and both the floor and the ceiling are made of concrete. There is a window on one of the walls (W 182cm, H 143cm) which has double-glazed glass. The top of the window is 24cm below the ceiling. The door (W 85cm, H 200cm) can be placed anywhere on a shorter wall, as this wall is yet to be built. One option, that I would like to keep open for the future, budget permitted, is to make an extension of the space through one of the longer walls is. However, this will be out of the question for a while. As this is such a small space, the heating will be done with hydronic central heating (one or two radiators) . Air-conditioning will be needed during summers. PURPOSE The studio will be used for recording and mixing (maybe mastering as well, in the future), and I am going for 'vintage sound' as much as I can (some vintage mics, Neve pre-amps, Hammond organ, Rhodes piano, etc.). LOUDNESS Good sound-proofing is preferred here in order to 'protect' my neighbours (other houses around me), as well as to stop outside noise coming in, as the property is next to a main road. The space needs to be divided to control room and a recording room (for vocals, guitars, drums, etc.). The Leslie cabinet would normally be kept in the control room and would be moved to the recording room only when needed for recording. EQUIPMENT The control room will, for now, be based around Yamaha 02R (hoping for this to grow into something bigger in the future). The rest of the equipment would be: ADAM S2.5 and Avantone Mix Cubes speakers, 1 to 2 computer monitors, 2 outboard racks (10U each), Hammond C3, Rhodes Stage 73, and a couple of extra keyboards. Not sure id dimensions of the equipment would help, but here they are anyway: Yamaha 02r – 66 (W) x 22(H) x 68(D) cm Hammond c3 – 98(H) x 124(w)x74(D) cm Leslie 122 - 102 (H) x 72 (W) x 40 (D) cm Rhodes Stage 73 – 88 (H) x 114 (W) x 57 (D) cm Adam S2.5A – 45 (H) x 28 (W) x 30 (D) cm (each) Master keyboard AKAI MX73 - 11 (H) x 15 (W) x 35 (D) cm

welcome! have you done any acoustic measurements to determine what your existing isolation is and what type of noise you are getting from the nearby traffic?

gullfo, thank you very much for your reply and the plan. I really appreciate it. So far, I have not done any acoustic measurements. I am starting from the scratch (i.e. there is no existing isolation, besides the material that was used for the walls (rendering, hollow concrete blocks and facade) and the floor (concrete)). My main concern regarding noise coming from the outside are car engines and exhausts, and trucks (I am not that much worried about horns). The garage is approx. 25-35 meters away form the uphill road. Please note that I would like to build two rooms (Control and Recording) in this space. Any advise on how to do soundproofing and acoustic treatment would be much appreciated.

you could take the design shown and flip the CR part to face a (fairly small) isolation room. another option then would be to put the CR facing the top so the rooms are "side-by-side".

Thanks again gullfo. In the meantime I was also studying this: http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 9e7d325754 Would you suggest that this design could be adopted for my space, although the space is slightly smaller and it has an external window? A wall between the two rooms would also hold have an internal window (for visual contact with recording musicians and singers). Also, do you think that a timber entrance door can be insulated adequately for this purpose? Many thanks

it should be possible - best bet - resize it to fit your space and see if it might work and what mods might be needed.

Thanks a lot gullfo. Considering the position of the external window, I will change the plan so that everything is in mirror (image uploaded). Can I please ask a few further questions? 1. What would be the best way to treat the window (as it will be behind my back now)? I was thinking about timber shutters that could be open (for some daylight) and closed as needed. 2. Would it be better to rotate the control room so that the window would be in front of me (between the speakers) instead of behind me? 3. I would expect that placing speakers into soffits would make the whole wall vibrating. Is that something that needs to be considered and carefully planned, or am I exaggerating?

the window in the CR - you could put in a set of very heavy drapes to cover it during mix down. or have some absorbers as "shutters" or slide over to cover as needed. however, you could flip the design to face the other way and have the window in front of you. the speakers should be decoupled from the soffit - foam/rubber inside the speaker box to keep it in place and yet separate, or a separate frame to support the speaker box - depends on the size of the monitors. plus the walls and air cavities in the soffit will have a lot of absorption to dampen it.