New house with big attic -- ready to design studio

Hello audio gurus, I'm happy to have found this forum! I have just moved into a new house and I'm keen to convert the attic into a recording studio with a small control room to record my daughters, friends and me. Music styles range from pop vocals to electric blues to hard-rock fusion (see my web site to hear if interested). We do not play loud at all for rock musicians. I have a set of V-Drums. I would like to set those up with live cymbals and maybe, rarely, a live snare -- though probably just a real HH and Ride. I'm more concerned about keeping noise out than in. The attic is up three stories and the roof is not insulated. The most notable noise is the sound of my neighbor's air conditioner. That house is only about ten feet away from mine. There is also some street noise, though it's not too bad. Now and again a jet passes overhead for a landing, but it's not often and I don't think I'll be able to seal that out. The house is 112 years old. It's pretty solid, and the roof is new -- only five years old. The attic floor is hard wood with some patches of vinyl over it. I'm not sure if I need or should cover it. My last studio was pretty dead. I'd really like to get a more live space with the best possible acoustics for vocals, cymbals and guitars (both acoustic and electric) that I can. I like natural reverb. Not sure if the space is quite big enough or not. Also not sure how to decide on optimal dimensions given the slanted roof and not knowing if or where to put side walls. A steep stairway comes up into the room. My thought would be to wall that off along with the external windows. That'd leave a little waiting room area should my daughters start giving music lessons up there. It'd also solve much of the street noise problem. The other (south) side of the attic faces yards, which are quieter. I don't mind if the control room has a deader sound, just as long as I can get a fairly good mix in there. I've built bass, mid and high traps before, which worked pretty well in the past. I really don't care how small the control room is just as long as it's big enough for a mixing console, computer and has enough space to get a decent mix. Not sure how to decide on dimensions. I'm looking for general thoughts on how to decide on best acoustical space, slanting walls, sound insulation, etc. I'm just starting so this is my starting place. I can spend around $25,000 on construction. I will need to vent the roof and hope to add a sky light in the control room for sanity preservation. I will need to install better electric wiring. I intend to use contractors. I'd like to keep the air conditioning as simple as possible, even if it means turning the units off during recording takes. There will need to be A/C though. It'll be very hot up there in summer. Here's what it looks like. None of the furniture, closets or shelving up there needs to stay. I'm new to Sketch UP, but I've attached a first attempt at using it. This shows existing space. Floor dimensions are 41' 9 3/8" L x 21' 3" W x 10' 11.5" H So do you think I can get a decent acoustical space in this area? If I *really* had to, I could locate the control room downstairs, but it'd be SO much better to have it on the same floor. I'm not even sure how to start. I don't know if I should add side walls. Seems like I should and they don't have to be parallel. I can do anything I want with the walls to avoid parallel surfaces. I assume I'll also have to treat the center of the ceiling somehow, with bass, mid and high traps. I was thinking of using track lighting, but I'm open to suggestion. I will need to bring in an electrician. Will isolate at least a couple of the grounds. Any and all suggestions at this early design phase are most welcome. Thanks! --Nick

Hi Nick, and Welcome! :)

to record my daughters, friends and me. Music styles range from pop vocals to electric blues to hard-rock fusion

OK, s this is a hobby studio, not a commercial place, right? You won't have paying customers up there, and you won't be producing the next Pink Floyd group, right? :) The reason I ask is that building a commercial facility is a bit different. A whole other set of laws...

We do not play loud at all for rock musicians.

How loud is "not loud"? I mean in objective terms, decibels, measured with a sound level meter. That's important. Also important is "How quite do you need to be?". That's both a legal issue (local noise regulations) and a family/neighbor issue: How much can your family stand before the pull the plug on you, and how much can your neighbors stand before the start throwing eggs at you each time you open the front door? That also needs to be measured in objective decibels. The difference between those two numbers, is how much isolation you need, and that will define what type of construction you need.

I'm more concerned about keeping noise out than in.

It's pretty much the same: 50 dB of isolation going out is also 50 dB of isolation going in. OK, so you need to isolate air conditioners, street noise, and aircraft. Once again, you should get your sound level meter out and measure how loud they are, and at what frequency (check the spectrum on your DAW). But what about other things? Wind, rain, thunder, phones, radio, TV, toilets flushing, people walking, talking, lawnmowers, dogs, cats, water in pipes, doors opening and closing etc. etc. Lots of things around your place and nearby that could be an issue.

My last studio was pretty dead.

Dead is not nice. Dead is unpleasant. This place can certainly be done better than "dead"!

I'd really like to get a more live space with the best possible acoustics for vocals, cymbals and guitars (both acoustic and electric) that I can. I like natural reverb.

It can be live, but sorry, you wont' be getting much natural reverb out of it: it's way too small for that. Small rooms actually don't even have a statistical reverberant field in the lower half of the spectrum: all they have is modes (standing waves), and I doubt that you want those!. The room is probably long enough, but neither wide enough nor tall enough. You need a large room to get reverb. But your room can still be live.

Not sure if the space is quite big enough or not.

If that's what you got, then that's what you got! It's not ideal, but if there are no alternatives, then you do your best and accept the limitations.

Also not sure how to decide on optimal dimensions given the slanted roof and not knowing if or where to put side walls.

If you want isolation then you will need side walls. That's a given. The question is: "where?". I'd put them as far apart as you reasonably can, and still have usable height under them. It makes no sense to put them so far out that you only get 6" of wall! Probably 2 or 3 feet is as low as you'd want to go. That said, it looks like you have a brick chimney or something on one side, so that pretty much limits your possible wall positions. I'd take that as the starting point. For such a strange shaped room, there is no easy way to calculate the modal response: its not a rectangle, or even close to a rectangle, so you can't use the usual room mode calculators. You could hire a FEM/FEA specialist, and get him to do the analysis, but that would be overkill. I'd just go with whatever seems reasonable, avoiding obvious pitfalls (like making the length twice the width, for example), and aim for as much total room volume as you can get.

It'd also solve much of the street noise problem.

Perhaps, but it would not solve any of the other issues I mentioned (thunder, wind, jets, etc.), and it would do noting at all for structure-borne noise (water, doors, footfalls, etc.).

I don't mind if the control room has a deader sound,

Actually, there are guidelines on what a control room should sound like, in terms of frequency response, RT-60 times for each octave, NR curves, and things like that. It's not a good idea to have a dead CR, but it's also not good for the reverb times to be longer than those of the LR, for example. They need to be balanced. The idea is to build the room so that the overall response is flat to within about +/- 10 dB across as much of the spectrum as your speakers can handle, and that the modes are controlled to give you an RT-60 time per octave within the recommended range, and a bit shorter than the time for the LR. This is "just" a hobby studio, but you should still aim to get it as good as you can, within reason. It makes no sense to invest all that money and end up with an inferior room!

I really don't care how small the control room is just as long as it's big enough for a mixing console, computer and has enough space to get a decent mix. Not sure how to decide on dimensions.

ITU, EBU, SMPTE and others all recommend a volume of around 1400 cubic feet for critical listening rooms (some more, some less, but around there). That might be possible in your space, but tight. However, you also don't need to go overboard trying to get there! Many of the home studios you see here don't make it to that size, and John has even built a great studio in a shipping container! So it is possible to build a great CR in a small space. The problem is that the smaller it gets, the harder it is to do, and the more expensive it becomes...

I'm looking for general thoughts on how to decide on best acoustical space, slanting walls,

There are some general rules of thumb, guidelines, numbers, geometry that you should apply to your room, as they are known to work and follow solid scientific principles. You won't find any hype on this forum about "perfect" ratios and "golden" numbers and "magic" materials: there are no such things, in reality. Everything you get here is based on the science of acoustics, and is backed up by solid research and experience. Some of the world's leading studio designers are members here, and post every now and then (including John himself, of course!). So there's no better place to go for sound advise (excuse the pun!) on studio design and construction. You might find conflicting "recommendations" in other places, but unless they are accompanied by solid tests data and recommendations by reputable people, then you can safely ignore them. For example, you won't see anyone here telling you to put carpet on your walls or egg-crates on your ceiling! :shock: :?: :)

sound insulation

That's the real starting point. Everything depends on putting a real number to that. Once you know that you need XX decibels of isolation, then you can look that up in some of the research studies, such as IR-761, which have literally hundreds of types of laboratory tested wall, floor and ceiling construction examples, and find one that meets your isolation needs, your budget, and your available space: Then you build it. Guessing is a mistake (although lots of people still try!). It's far better to get a simple sound level meter, do some real measurements, check the possibilities, and built what is know to work. So that should be your first order of business: get a sound level meter (if you don't already have one), and do some tests. When you have the meter, we can walk you through what you need to do to come up with the number.

I can spend around $25,000 on construction.

Sounds realistic.

I will need to vent the roof and hope to add a sky light in the control room for sanity preservation.

I noticed the existing roof vent (or what looks like one in the photos). That can probably stay, but roof vents are a problem if you need high levels of isolation. The other problem with high levels of isolation is structure. You will probably need to get a structural engineer involved, since isolation requires mass- Lots of it. The more isolation you need, the more mass you need. So that might create structural issues for the house: the existing floors/walls might not be able to handle it, and might need beefing up. Hopefully it will turn out that you don't need too much isolation, and won't need to beef up the rest of the house, but you still need the structural engineer to tell you how much extra weight your floor can take, and if it is structurally safe to do what you plan.

I will need to install better electric wiring.

The electrical system is very, very important in studios, and often overlooked. Not important because you need power, but important because it cannot be done the normal way that electricians want to do it, as that would severely affect your isolation and acoustics. Studio electrics is a whole different ball game. There are several threads here on the forum about how to do it right, but it's something that you do need to take into account. For example, there can be NO penetration of the room walls, so everything MUST be surface-mounted. The one single penetration that brings power into the room needs special attention, and cannot just be shoved through the wall. Grounding must be start-grounding. Etc. The other issue that is often overlooked in home studio design, is HVAC. You need it. You cannot avoid it. Your rooms will be totally sealed, air-tight, and surrounded by acres of acoustic/thermal insulation. So you need to cool it, feed fresh air in, and take stale air out, but you have to do so in such a way that it does not compromise your isolation or your acoustics.

I intend to use contractors.

Good, but you'll have to watch them like a hawk! Building a studio is nothing at all like building a house, office or shop. Same materials, same tools, but very different techniques. They CANNOT do things that they are accustomed to doing every day, and they MUST do things that they never bother doing in ordinary building work. Try to find a contractor who has built studios before, if you can.

I'd like to keep the air conditioning as simple as possible, even if it means turning the units off during recording takes.

That really isn't an option, for many reasons. Perhaps the biggest one is humidity. Musical instruments, some types of microphone, and some equipment are all sensitive to changes in humidity. If you don't keep it fairly constant, the tuning and sounds change. A properly designed HVAC system will keep the humidity fairly constant. A "turn-it-on-and-off-and-open-the-door" kludge will not. If your concern is budget, then your best bet is probably a couple of small mini-split systems, one for each room. They aren't that expensive, and some models available today are really quite. You can probably leave the running all the time that the studio is in use, especially in the CR. Or you could build an exchange chamber, and solve the noise problem completely. There are options, and the system does not need to be overly complicated, but the common through-the-window type air conditioner is not the answer.

So do you think I can get a decent acoustical space in this area?

Probably, yes. With limitations. But if the main purpose is hobby recordings of family and friends, then it should be plenty good enough for that, if done right. But you shouldn't expect that you'll be able to successfully master the next album for Justin Bieber, Rihanna or Shakira in there! :)

I'm not even sure how to start.

Start with the sound level meter, and that will lead to your isolation plan. That, in turn, will suggest room layouts and dimensions. Then use the common guidelines for geometry, treatment, electrical, HVAC, ... it all starts falling into place.

I don't know if I should add side walls.

If you want isolation, you have no choice. If you want two rooms (LR and CR) then you have no choice. The existing structure will not give you enough isolation to be able to do that.

Seems like I should and they don't have to be parallel. I can do anything I want with the walls to avoid parallel surfaces.

Either parallel or non-parallel is fine. There are only a few very specific reasons for splaying walls, and if you don't have any of those reasons, then you don't need to. The two big ones are flutter echo (which can be treated in other ways anyway), and creating an RFZ design for your control room (RFZ="Reflection Free Zone"). Non-parallel walls also make things easier for the live room, but once again they aren't necessary. You can still build a great live room with a purely rectangular shape, if you design it right and treat it right. So angling and splaying are optional.

I assume I'll also have to treat the center of the ceiling somehow, with bass, mid and high traps.

Bass traps are better in the corners, for two reasons: 1) All room modes terminate in corners, and 2) you get a free 12 dB or 18 dB boost in effectiveness, due to the adjacent 2 or 3 surfaces. Mid and high treatment goes in the places where it is needed, and of the type that is needed. There are methods for figuring all that out.

I was thinking of using track lighting,

Track lighting is a great idea for studios. It is surface mounted, and gives you great flexibility. And if it is incandescent or some types of halogen, then it can be dimmed, which is nice.

I will need to bring in an electrician. Will isolate at least a couple of the grounds.

Bad idea! Your electrical code probably does not permit isolating grounds in any case (major safety hazard), and most likely also does not permit separate grounds. So, what you do need to do is to install a star grounding system, make sure that your existing house ground is in good condition (and improve it if not), then tie in to that properly, and also ensure that your neutral bus is properly bridged to ground in your main distribution panel. There are other recommendations for electrical and signal cabling (such as running one high and the other low, never parallel, always cross at right angles, etc.) but those can wait until you get the basic plan in order. And, of course, the things I already mentioned: no penetration of the walls, everything surface mounted with raceways, conduit or ducts, etc.

Any and all suggestions at this early design phase are most welcome.

Hopefully the above will get you started! :) - Stuart -

That's a lot to digest. I will get to work and get back to you when I have some reasonable answers and questions. Thank you so much Stuart. I really appreciate it. -- Nick

Hi Stuart, Finally got db meter. Looks like background noise is mostly around 51 db. I left it on for an hour and it peaked at 76 db. So that's the noise up there that I need to block. It seems jets only go over in the morning, which is not when I'd be recording. We'd be recording afternoons and early evenings. I think I'm ready to start designing, but if you have any suggestions on basic wall thickness, etc., I'd be most appreciative. I'm most baffled by how to design rooms that will have A/C that doesn't introduce noise at an affordable price. I do want to do a good job. I plan to be here for a very long time. Want to do it right. We are amateurs, but some of our previous recordings have gotten a lot of mostly college air and web-cast play around the world. I don't want the quality of the recordings to be the limiting factor -- at the least, I don't want to be overly limited by the space. I'm anxious, but need to take my time and do it right this time. You understand. Not a pro, but I want to be even better than they are given all the limitations and obstacles we amateurs face. After all, "amateur" derives from the French amāre to love. We do this because we LOVE it. It matters. It's not about money. It's FAR more important than money. It's my raison d'etre. :-) Thanks again for taking your valuable time to help me with this. --Nick