Planning a New Studio Build

Hello everyone, I've been pointed over here from Gearslutz and have been learning a bunch. Thanks everyone for this resource. I am in the very beginning phase of planning construction for a small studio (still a year or two off in the making). I figured I might as well start learning now so by the time I am ready to start I will have a decent design. So that being said, here is my first design in sketchup. All of the rooms are using Loudens best room ratio. Is it important to follow room ratios? There are so many different ratios online it makes me wonder... Right now I have a live room, a control room, an iso room, and a little hallway. Another hallway could be built on the other side for quicker access between all rooms. There are windows so ideally everyone could communicate with each other in all rooms at once. **All of the measurements are approximate, I wanted to just get the rough idea together** The dimensions for the large room are: height:18 length:34.2 width:25.2 the two small rooms are: height:10 length:19 width:14 Please let me know if I'm heading in the right direction, any feedback will be greatly appreciated! Thanks. -Ari

Hi, A few questions for you. Is this going to be a new construction build or are you going to find a pre existing building? Do you have a budget? How are you planning to use it? What sort of projects, etc. Do you already have a location? I like the size, you could fit my entire studio building inside the live room. Specific questions and a whole lot of detail will get you advice. It will also help focus your design. Steve

Thanks Steve, sorry for the lack of specifics. :shock: It will be new construction, my friend is buying land right now in the mountains. Regarding the budget: I honestly have no clue what to expect price wise, and am trying to see what a realistic budget would be. I'm hoping I can build the following plan with somewhere around $20,000-$35,000. I'm going to use double wall construction and plan to pour separate concrete slab foundations for each room as recommended in Rod Gervais' Build it Like the Pros. I plan on mainly using the live room to track full bands, and the occasional vocalist/overdub. Ideally I will track all genres, but will likely start with some reggae, funk, rock, hiphop (as i already know bands/artists of these genres) and whatever else comes my way. The idea is to have the iso room so if a group wants we can put there vocalist in there to record a live vocal instead of a scratch track then overdub the final. Also, it gives an option to put amp(s)/ guitarists or bassists in there to minimize bleed. The control room is pretty straightforward, and so is the hallway. I'm not sure if the live room is overkill as far as the size, but I want to be able to get good room ambience. Thanks again for the response, I didn't realize how much my description was lacking! Please let me know if any more information would be helpful.

Hi Ari, and Welcome to the forum! :)

(still a year or two off in the making).

Excellent! That's the best time to find this forum. Gives you plenty of time to plan things properly and understand the principles of acoustics, before you start building. We get a lot of people coming here, saying things like "I start building tomorrow, and I'm going to carpet the walls and put egg crates on the ceiling because that's the best way to do it"... :) So you are being very wise in starting to plan years in advance of the build.

Is it important to follow room ratios?

To a certain extent, yes. But there is no need to go overboard. Room ratios are only one aspect of design, and all they tell you is that your room modes will be distributed evenly across the low end of the spectrum, which is the most important. As long as you stay away from the bad ratios and get close to one of the good ratios, you'll be fine. Despite what you read on some web sites, there is no such thing as a "perfect" ratio, or a "golden" ratio. There are only a whole bunch of bad ratios, and a small set of good ratios. Also, ratios are more important for the control room, and less important for the live room. The control room needs to be designed for neutral acoustics, in both the frequency domain and the time domain. There are a handful of recommendations and specs for control rooms, from organizations such as ITU, EBU, Dolby, and others, and they are pretty similar overall. As long as you get close to their recommendations in your design, you'll be fine.

Please let me know if I'm heading in the right direction, any feedback will be greatly appreciated!

Perhaps it would be better if you were to provide the details of the actual space that you have available. Maybe the total dimensions (length, width, height) of the interior of the building, plus some photos, so we can see what you are dealing with, and help you decide on a good layout.

It will be new construction, my friend is buying land right now in the mountains.

Ahhh! OK, so this is a "greenfield" project, from the ground up, with nothing exiting at all? That makes it a LOT easier to design.

I honestly have no clue what to expect price wise, and am trying to see what a realistic budget would be.

Building a studio costs about the same as building an upscale house. So call around contractors in your area and ask for their flat rate per square foot for building a quality home in your area. The cost for your studio will be a bit higher, so add 20% to that to get a rough ball-park figure.

I'm hoping I can build the following plan with somewhere around $20,000-$35,000.

That seems to be very much on the low side. I'm not sure what contractors charge in your area, but I very much doubt that they will do it for US$ 23 per square foot. (You show roughly 1500 square feet, and a max budget of US$ 35k). I would suspect that you'd need a budget of at least four times that. Or reduce the size of the facility to one quarter of what you show.

I'm going to use double wall construction and plan to pour separate concrete slab foundations for each room as recommended in Rod Gervais' Build it Like the Pros.

For separate slabs, add something extra to the budget: That will increase isolation, yes, but it also increases the complexity of the build, and thus the cost. Same thing applies to 16 foot ceilings: it can be done, but increases the cost. So the question is: Do you need that much isolation? You can reduce costs by simplifying the construction, and a large part of that depends on the actual number of decibels of isolation that you need. If you can relax your requirements in that area, then you can reduce the overall cost. So maybe your first order of business should be to determine how much isolation you need, in real objective terms (decibels), not just in subjective terms. - Stuart -

Thanks for the response Stuart! Yeah, we are starting from the ground up, not modifying an existing structure. I don't have pictures of the land as it is currently awaiting counteroffer.. :? I am definitely considering starting with just the live and control room and branching out after with the iso room and the hallway if we can't afford them all at once. I also neglected to mention that we are quite handy with construction and have a friend with a tractor who will help us dig out the foundations. So we will be doing almost if not all the labor ourselves with the help of friends. I'm sure that will cut a substantial cost although it will take longer.. Thanks for the response on ratios. I'll go with what I have for now, maybe lower the roof if we have to for cost. I need to look more into the amount of isolation in terms of decibels I will need. Time to do more research, thanks for giving me directions to look into. -Ari