Studio Build In London | John Sayers’ Recording Studio Design Forum archive

Hi Andy,

The reason for this is we don't have any neighbours below or to the side which we hope will bring the cost down.

It will bring costs down. But it will also bring the isolation down, severely. Isolation a room is an "all or nothing" proposition. You cannot do only some sides of the room: you have to do all six sides to the same level of isolation, as well as the doors, windows, HVAC, and electrical systems, and any other perforations. The reason is simple: sound is like water. Once it gets out, then it is out and spills all over, "splashing" around in unexpected ways. So only isolating one or two walls on the sides where you have neighbors, is not possible: sound exiting from all the other sides of the room will, without question, still be audible on the side you treated.

The height is 3.2.mts so we have room to build a false ceiling with appropriate sound proofing.

I'm not sure I understand: Why do you need to build a false ceiling if you have such excellent height? Most folks here would die to have 3.2 m of height available to them, and would do everything possible to preserve every last cm possible. Why do you want to reduce that with a false ceiling? And why does ceiling height dictate the need for isolation.

Both studios should be adequately sound proofed but it doesn't matter if there is a little bleed.

In order to design successfully, you need to put real numbers on that. "Adequate" and "little" cannot be plugged into the equations that determine what type of wall you will need to build. You need to do some testing with sound level meter, to determine two things: "How loud are you?", and "How quiet do you need to be?". Having real-world measurements, in terms of decibels, is the starting point for any design. Guesswork and subjective terminology is not a lot of use in designing studios.

The main focus is really on the treatment within both rooms. We want to have great mix rooms!

Then you also need great isolation! :) You cannot mix well in a noisy environment. It needs to be isolated well enough that you can hear the subtle details in your mix without them being hidden behind other noises that are bleeding in from the outside world. So before you think about treatment, you need to ensure that your isolation plan is in place. The isolation will, in turn, have a large effect on the treatment you need.

We have decided to set the room up so we can fit in a sofa and table toward the back of the room for when clients come to listen to projects. Is this a good idea?

Yes! A sofa at the back is almost always part of any pro control room. Many rooms even have the sofa raised up on a small riser of some sort (and the riser has to be designed correctly, of course, to ensure that it does not turn into a resonant cavity that damages the room acoustics....).

Will the sound benefit from having a much deeper than wider set up?

Yes! Preferably, the speakers should always fire down the long axis of the room, not the short axis. There are many reasons for this, and the basic answer is always "yes". Unless there is some major problem with doing that, layout out your control room with the speakers aiming down the longest dimension.

Ideally we want the room to be more than adequate for a mixing situation. Would a vocal booth in one corner cause too many problems in this respect? What is the best solution for a vocal booth in this room?

You don't really have enough room to fit a properly isolated vocal booth into that live room. It is already small, so it might be better to just set up acoustical spaces within it as needed, using movable gobos.

We want the studio to have daylight coming into the rooms so we have been considering glass sliding doors?

Sliding glass doors are an option, yes. If you look at John's designs, you'll see that he often uses them. However, they are expensive. You need two sets, back-to-back, with a few inches of air gap between them, and they must be of a type that is suitable, acoustically, with thick laminate glass and multiple heavy seals. Those things will cost you a couple of thousand dollars, each. Your rough sketch seems to show three sets of doors, so there goes US$ 12,000, give or a take a few thousand. If you can afford that, then great, but if not then you might want to re-think that. Putting some glass in a pair of normal hinged acoustic doors can be done much cheaper. Cheaper still is doing fixed (non-operable) windows. Once again, your numbers (amount of isolation needed, in decibels) and your budget will determine what can and cannot be done.

In music room 1 we have the option to build the speakers into a custom built wall or have them on speaker stands. We own DynAudio BM15s so which do you recommend? Which is better?

By "music room #1" it looks like you are referring to the control room? The place where you will actually do the mixing (and tracking)? Soffit mount the speakers, for sure! Absolutely. No doubt about that. You probably have the budget to do that right (provided that you don't blow it all on sliding glass windows! :) ), and the benefits vastly outweigh the cost. If there is one really good thing you can do to improve a room, it is to get the speakers off the stands and soffit mount them properly. But note the "properly". There are a handful of correct ways of doing that, and about one million and ninety four ways of doing it wrong. The entire room needs to be designed with soffit mounting in mind (also called "flush mounting"), and the geometry has to be laid out correctly for that. But the benefits are well worthwhile: Much better bass response, tight, clean, accurate stereo imaging, broad and well defined sound stage. Etc. If you can, then do it.

DynAudio BM15

Easy to soffit mount (as they are not rear or side ported), and they have the bass roll-off control that you need to correct the EQ due to soffit mounting them. - Stuart -