5 months of Design, time to Build. Please feedback.

Hello all, To start let me just say, I've learned a lot from these forums! So thank you to everyone who contributes. Over the last 5 months I have been designing a multi-room, double wall, room-within-room architecture, home recording studio. I've had two previous implementations of a studio in different houses, but this is the first that attempts professionalism and more than just being a single all-in-one recording/mixing room. I understand that doors are the weak point and the vocal booth has a large number of them. Luckily all but one are for storage & sump pump access (rarely ever turns on). I did not float the floor because I understand minimal flanking will take place in a basement studio on top of a slab. $$$ I am looking to spend about $20,000 on this build including the Rooms, flooring, lighting, HVAC, electrial, in-wall cableing, etc. Labor is nearly free. (Blueprint - Recording Studio only) (Blueprint - Entire Basement) The 3D Renderings below are just a tiny bit out of date from the blueprints above. Designed in Punch! Still working on my Sketchup Skills.) (3D - Studio Top) (3D - Entire Basement) Can anyone offer feedback on my design? on angles, splaying, etc.? Thank you in advance for any comments or feedback :)

Please read the forum RULES (stickies) that can be found at this link: viewforum.php?f=17 Then make certain that this is reviewed: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3231 Please correct your initial post to conform with these rules and guidelines. Many here will not only NOT help while waiting in respect for owners and other better qualified persons to proceed, but will simply ignore these type of posts completely. You may want to immediately ask "what is it that I have missed". Most often it is as simple as including your geographical location in your profile. It might be that you have not included your budget! Trust me in that the more you know the better others can help you and that the answer to that question is in the forum rules linked page. But I will give you a hint...700 pixels wide... Until then, good luck,

xSpace wrote:

But I will give you a hint...700 pixels wide...

Corrected. I added a little more info too. Sorry for my newbness :)

Hi there "x00011011", and welcome! "x00011011"? Hard to pronounce! Or maybe that's a Hex 1B? A decimal 27? An Ascii ESC? You sure are a hard fellow to pin down! Mysterious handle... :) Anyway, two things stand out in your design: One is your budget: It seems to be missing a zero! :shock: For a studio, you should normally figure about the same cost per square foot as for actually building a house, using the average building rates for your area. US$ 20k for 1,800 square feet works out to about US$ 11 per square foot. Call a couple of local contractors in your area, and ask them what it costs per square foot to build a nice house: I reckon the figures you will hear will be a bit more than US$ 11 per square foot. You also say that the actual studio space is about 747 sq.ft, and that changes things a bit, but even then it is still only around US$ 25/sq.ft. Even assuming that most of the walls,windows, floors and doors are already in place, and that this is more of a renovation and refit than an actual build, your budget still seems rather on the low side for that amount of space. I'm not saying you can't do it: If you have a source of free labor, and access to big discounts n materials, and do all the design work yourself, you can save a lot of money. But you might want to re-consider your budget. The second point is the control room: It seems to be squashed up in a rather tight space, and is kind of "short and fat". In general, you want to have the speakers firing down the long axis of the room, not across the short axis. There is no space to properly soffit mount your speakers with that design, and there also seems to be no space for bass trapping, which you certainly will need since it is a small room. For example, at the left front corner, exactly where you should have either deep bass trapping or your speaker soffit, is the window to the vocal booth! You might want to consider re-arranging things to give yourself a bigger CR, that is oriented the "right" way.

I understand that doors are the weak point and the vocal booth has a large number of them.

Yup! And you seem to have at least NINE acoustic doors that you need! Figure a couple of hundred dollars each, and there goes ten percent of you budget, just on doors. Then you have four double-pane windows, which adds up to another large percentage.

I did not float the floor because I understand minimal flanking will take place in a basement studio on top of a slab.

True! You very likely do not need to float your floor, and the other issue is budget: floating that floor correctly would mist likely eat up your entire budget, or at best a very large chunk of it.

Rooms, flooring, lighting, HVAC, electrial, in-wall cableing,

HVAC will take up another 20% of your budget, at least. So, in general I'd suggest that you maybe try moving things around so that you get a better shape and size for your CR, with better positions of doors and windows so you can install the treatment that it will need, in the correct locations, and also re-think your budget. That's just me, though. Others might have different opinions... - Stuart -

Hi Soundman2020,

Soundman2020 wrote:

A decimal 27?

Bingo! My birthday. - The $20K is just for the three recording rooms (747 sq ft). - Labor is virtually free. My friends and I are performing 90% of the construction. - I get 10% off all building materials from Lowes. - I did and will continue to do all the design work myself (didn't learn about sketchup until recently, so I did it in Punch!). The Control Room... I know it's not ideal atm. If I flip the audio desk and re-skew the walls, there will be like <1.5' on either side of the desk for a walkway. I could make a <3' walkway but then the desk wouldn't be centered. See my dilema. Suggestions? Is soffit mounting the speakers better than having them on a shelf on the wall? I will have bass traps down the front corners, I will have to adjust the design (shrink the vocal booth window) to reflect that. *7*... double pane windows. If you have a double wall, both windows would be double pane, correct?? HVAC will definitely take up at least 20%... I need a new 2.5 ton Furnice and A/C system for the floor!

Is soffit mounting the speakers better than having them on a shelf on the wall?

Hell yes! That's like asking "Is eating grade-A prime fillet steak better than eating cow dung?" :)

I will have bass traps down the front corners, I will have to adjust the design (shrink the vocal booth window) to reflect that.

You can't have both soffit mount and bass traps in the front corners. One or the other. At best you can have hangers under the lower part of the soffit. That would help somewhat, but you still don't have enough bass trapping for that room.

double pane windows. If you have a double wall, both windows would be double pane, correct??

Nope! That would be a 4-leaf system, and would give you really lousy isolation in the low end (drums, bass, etc.) you only ever want two leaves in an isolation wall. Never one, never three, never four. Two and only two.

I know it's not ideal atm. If I flip the audio desk and re-skew the walls, there will be like <1.5' on either side of the desk for a walkway. I could make a <3' walkway but then the desk wouldn't be centered. See my dilema. Suggestions?

Move the CR to the bottom left, close to where it says "Audio Storage", and re-arrange the LR and vocal both around it, including the area that is currently the CR. It will give you much better layout, and better sight lines too! The only drawback would be that you'd have to go through the LR to get to the CR, but IMHO that would still be way better than having a small, cramped CR with poor geometry and acoustics. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Is soffit mounting the speakers better than having them on a shelf on the wall?

Hell yes! That's like asking "Is eating grade-A prime fillet steak better than eating cow dung?" :)

uhuhu.. duuuung, uhuhu. :)

I will have bass traps down the front corners, I will have to adjust the design (shrink the vocal booth window) to reflect that.

You can't have both soffit mount and bass traps in the front corners.

Now, why couldn't it be done? Filling the whole cavity behind the soffit with wool, as you would do using the super-chunk method, would make it a nice bass absorber. sure the extended bafel from the mounted speaker should be heavy (think) so basically you'll add a thick filter in front of that super-chunk making it a real *low-end* absorber. why not?

Soundman2020 wrote:

Move the CR to the bottom left, close to where it says "Audio Storage", and re-arrange the LR and vocal both around it, including the area that is currently the CR. It will give you much better layout, and better sight lines too! The only drawback would be that you'd have to go through the LR to get to the CR, but IMHO that would still be way better than having a small, cramped CR with poor geometry and acoustics. - Stuart -

What do you think of this radical re-design? I think the CR is a better shape, proportions, etc.; but I hate how much sq. ft. was lost in the process...

Yep, there sure is a lot of space wasted like that! I see two options: 1) Rotate the CR 90° anti-clockwise, so that the rear wall is up against the iso booth... 2) Rotate the CR 90° clockwise, and move it down to the bottom left, where it says "Drums Acoustic" and "green screen"... In both cases, it will free up lots of space to re-arrange the LR, I think. Another option might be to rotate it 180°, and move it over to the top left, where it says "v-drums electric"... - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Another option might be to rotate it 180°, and move it over to the top left, where it says "v-drums electric"...

There is a steel column holding up an I-Beam, which just got covered up by the wall. It is on the front wall of the CR, directly above the window. So I'm not sure this third option, is very much of an option. But I will tinker with the first two ideas of yours tonight. In both cases, I may have to put the door on the side though, forcing entry to the CR from the LR...

Here is another redesign. I smash the width (from the perspective of the audio desk) of the Control Room down, so proportionally it is now equal. The width (at widest part) is about the same as the depth. In order to keep a window to the Vocal Booth and have room for bass trapping, I needed to push the CR way south. This stole sq. footage from the Live Room, but enlarged the Vocal Booth at the same time. I know Control Rooms are NOT supposed to be wider than they are deep. But is it OK if the rough dimensions are close to equal?

Ok, I hated losing so much cumulative studio space. Here is another variation that hopefully satisfies: - the Control Room deeper than wide issue. - enough room for corner bass trapping (despite cutting into one of them with windows). - No need for walkway around desk; remedied with hallway through vocal booth. Have you seen a good page on this site showing how to build a soffet for the speakers? I have not found one yet... What do you think about the two doors on the top side of the vocal booth? Adequate, or would you move the top one to the other end of the hallway?

Would appreciate any feedback I can get. I'm still plugging away at this design to the best of my ability. I believe I addressed a lot of issues in this latest version.

Ahhh! Now THAT is making more sense to me! Better! It makes your LR rather long and thin: you might consider splitting that in two? Would that be useful for you? Also, have you tried a version flipping your CR around 180°, and making it a bit bigger? But overall I think that's an improvement on where you were. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Ahhh! Now THAT is making more sense to me! Better! It makes your LR rather long and thin: you might consider splitting that in two?

Stuart, I appreciate your advice. I believe this design solves additional issues. CR walls are splayed 12 degrees (6 each). Rough ceiling space to construct in for Control Room is 8'6". If I use 2x6's, then final ceiling height at max will be ~7'10". If I use a suspended drywall grid, the final ceiling height will be ~8'2". What do you think about using a suspended ceiling grid? I was told that they can be resilient with a rubber piece between the suspension wires, and that it can hold double drywall. My understanding is that the ceiling also needs to be spayed 12 degrees. 12 degrees over a 14' span comes out to be about a 3 foot difference between the highest and lowest points of the ceiling. That's pretty low, but I read that you can just "partially" splay the ceiling. I visualize that this may be implemented by having the ceiling behind the desk at 5'2" and aggressively slope up to 8'2" over a shorter (6 foot?) span. Then it can continue full height for the other half of the CR's length. Also added sliding glass doors and a 4th room for the acoustic drums to keep the bass TL out of the CR. I'm thinking some may flank around/above the Live Room though. Ever hear of anyone creating a kind of mineral fiber gasket just around the doors between the rooms?

Over the last several months, my studio design has evolved a lot and I'm 75% done with wall framing. I also learned and redrafted the studio in Sketchup. A couple uncertainties still at this point are: 1) confidence is a ceiling solution of double drywall on isolation mounted cold rolled channel grid. Example products: http://www.kineticsnoise.com/arch/icw/index.aspx http://www.pac-intl.com/rsic1-si.html 2) The purpose of the rectangle cavity under the speaker in the soffits of Sayer's components.skp. Here are snap-snots from my latest sketchups...

and a few more...