Large analog studio in Oslo, 8 track, design help request.

Hi guys, this is my first posting, so please forgive any procedural errors! I will be building a large studio this spring and would be grateful if someone could point me in the right direction for some design ideas. I am more than willing to pay for help, but in the first instance I just want to look at a few options and get a little closer to a firm design before I start. A few details: I am an accomplished builder and designer of bars, restaurants and stores, can pretty much build anything, but have not built a studio yet. I am a musician/singer-songwriter with several releases and am used to being in studios, although am not totally au fait with acoustic principles. This is a non profit project, I want to build a studio for bands to come in and record for a nominal or no fee. I want to build a cool environment and keep a bunch of analogue equipment alive, as well as providing a training ground for sound engineers. I have an 8 track, 1" Telefunken M10 tape machine, a couple of Tore Seem consoles, a bunch of funky 60's compressors, preamps, mics, etc. Eventually I guess I will upgrade to a 24 track, 2" machine and larger consoles, but I really want to start small and take my lumps, half the fun is the build and the learning process! The studio is a raw space, concrete walls, floor and ceiling, all very thick (about two foot). The height is 11 foot, length 72 foot and width 36 foot. I can build pretty much any configuration I like, but having read through very many posts here, I am having trouble finding a comparable space, most seem to be quite small. What I would like to include is: A large, comfortable control room A large live room One largish iso booth for vocals Some storage space and maybe a little room for repairs, etc. Not so worried about a drum booth, have no problems with leakage, but if someone thinks it's essential, I will listen! So I guess my first question is: can anyone point me in the direction of some comparable projects so I can start scribbling? all the very best, jan

Hi Jan. Welcome! Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :)

The studio is a raw space, concrete walls, floor and ceiling, all very thick (about two foot). The height is 11 foot, length 72 foot and width 36 foot.

That's excellent! Sounds like the perfect place for building a studio. Lucky you! :)

So I guess my first question is: can anyone point me in the direction of some comparable projects so I can start scribbling?

take a look at the gallery of places John has designed and built over the years, that you can find here: viewforum.php?f=11 http://www.johnlsayers.com/ http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm There are some pretty big places there, many of them similar to what you are trying to do.

I am more than willing to pay for help, but in the first instance I just want to look at a few options and get a little closer to a firm design before I start.

I would suggest that you should probably contact John directly, and see if he is able to take on your project. E-mail him, or PM him. He might not be able to: he's a busy guy! There are others who might be able to help, but try contacting John first: He's the best!

I am an accomplished builder and designer of bars, restaurants and stores, can pretty much build anything, but have not built a studio yet.

Excellent! But there are a few things that are different about building a studio, so you'll need to re-learn some of that... Things that you normally do and work fine for those places might not work so fine for a studio, and there are new techniques that you'll need to learn, probably, as well as a new set of things that you need to pay careful attention to. But with that experience, and that space, you seem to be in a great position for this project. - Stuart -

Thanks for the long reply, Stuart, really appreciate it! I am starting to get a fair idea of a setup...having talked to a bunch of seasoned sound engineers. You can go crazy listening to too many voices, but I'm starting to sort the wheat from the chaff. Here's some of what I've learned: you can go overboard on soundproofing: many build way over spec, so I will work with people who have built and soundproofed many places and heed their advice. Acoustic design may not be the exact science certain people assert. I want a live sounding space, so I will build my outer shell first and work on dampening and acoustic treatment in stages, fixing as I go along. I will build a large, comfortable control room, with a large window to the live room and an adjoining vocal booth with a shared window to the control room. Everyone will have eye contact. At the end of the live room I will build a drum room and a another isolated room for whatever: guitars, choirs, etc. I will leave the ceiling fairly untreated and install clouds that can be moved around quickly, depending on the wishes of the band in there. I will start otu with my monitor speakers on columns and only install soffit mountings if I feel an acute need. I hope to solve the parallel wall challenge with large wall mounted, hinged dampening plates, which will double as storage for guitars, etc And I will take a bunch of pictures and share the process! all the very best, Jan

You can go crazy listening to too many voices, but I'm starting to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Ain't that the truth!! There are an awful lot of "opinions" going around on how acoustics works, and how studios should be designed... unfortunately, not too many of them are valid!

you can go overboard on soundproofing: many build way over spec,

Very true. There are a few examples right here on the forum. Some people think they need a lot more isolation than they actually do, and end up doing very unnecessary (and very expensive) things like floating their floors, adding way too many layers of drywall to their walls, buying "magical" materials that apparently defy the laws of physics, etc. That's why you'll often see reminders here to newcomers, to actually measure two things using a real sound level meter: how loud they are, and how quiet they need to be. That defines how much isolation they really need, which in turn defines a set of materials and techniques that can be used to get there: It isn't rocket science, but some people seem to think it is. Or just prefer to "guess" at what they need. There's mountains of scientific data on how much isolation you get from hundreds of different types of construction, so it is simply a matter of looking at your numbers and choosing something that fits. But as you say, many folks think they can wing it, and "know better than the scientists", so they love coming up with exotic new ways of isolating, that end up not working... Actually, the word "soundproof" itself is a misnomer, and seldom used by acousticians: There is no such thing as "sound proof". Just varying degrees of isolation. Any sound that is sufficiently loud will easily penetrate any conceivable barrier that man could build...

Acoustic design may not be the exact science certain people assert.

Well, I'll agree that it might not be an "exact" science, and there is no such thing as a "perfect" room anywhere, but the science of acoustics is in pretty darn good shape today! Maybe 50 years it wasn't that way, but troday it sure is. It IS a science, and there really are many very well understood principles, equations, methods, materials and techniques, that have been amply studied and reported on over the decades. So there certainly is a very solid base for the theory of studio design. Trouble is, those folks who don't want to spend the time to actually learn it often seem to be the most vocal, shouting the loudest that no such science exists... to their own detriment. If only they knew... :)

I want a live sounding space, so I will build my outer shell first and work on dampening and acoustic treatment in stages, fixing as I go along.

Well, I hate to say this, but that would probably be a mistake: Isolation is one of those parts of acoustics that actually is well understood, and building only the outer shell ("outer leaf" in acoustic parlance) , without also building the corresponding inner-leaf, is not a recipe for success. They need to be designed together, to work in harmony as a system. You can have a live sounding space, for sure, but it should be designed to be live, not eventually become live by accident. Yes, you sure can take that approach, and try to get there by successive approximation, trial-and-error, hit and miss, but why re-invent the wheel? Why waste all that time and money when proper design can get you nine tenths of the way there on the first try, and all you need to do then is to tweak that last ten percent? Basic treatment is also pretty well understood today, and the room really an be designed, from the start, to be as live as you want. Or as dead as you want. But there are also some recognized relationships between rooms in a facility that you should take into account, such as ensuring that the RT-60 response of the control room is much shorter than that of the live room... if not, you'll never be able to hear the reverb tails that you are trying to mix! Simple things like that can make or break a studio. And they are very scientific. Another example is the set of specs for frequency response and time-domain response that is needed in control rooms: that doesn't happen by accident. The control room needs to be designed to produce that perfect neutral sound that is so necessary. Without a neutral control room, mixes simply do not translate well, so the chances of the studio succeeding are not very high. In other words, there is an awful lot that the science of acoustics can contribute to making your place successful. Ignoring that is perhaps not a good idea. It may not be an exact science, but it sure can help a huge amount. It is probably no more exact than the science of medicine, but it's still a great idea to listen to what medical science has to say about living long, healthy lives!

I will build a large, comfortable control room, with a large window to the live room and an adjoining vocal booth with a shared window to the control room. Everyone will have eye contact.

Very smart. Sight lines are more important than most engineers realize... until they don't have them! When I design a studio, that's one of the priorities. Acoustics is important, of course, but so are many other aspects that need to be considered in studio design, such as sight lines, workflow, traffic patterns, comfort, and even mood. A great sounding studio with perfect sight lines, but that looks ugly and is poorly ventilated is probably worse than one with not so great acoustics but an excellent "vibe", good lighting, and really comfy to work in. Everything counts when designing a studio. Even the way that doors open and close.

I will leave the ceiling fairly untreated and install clouds that can be moved around quickly, depending on the wishes of the band in there.

I guess you are talking about the live room? I'm all for variable acoustics in live rooms, and there are many good ways of accomplishing that, but movable clouds does not seem practical, and a mostly untreated ceiling is a really bad idea. The floor pretty much has to be hard, solid and acoustically reflective in a good live room, so the entire ceiling needs at least basic treatment, just to deal with flutter echo and basic modal issues. Clouds can be used to enhance that basic treatment in places, sure, but it makes no sense to leave the entire ceiling untreated (or large parts of it). In addition to clouds, I would consider movable hanging baffles: your rooms has the potential to be high enough for that. Making the clouds movable might be a challenge: Are you planning to motorize them? I might not do much for the vibe of your live room to have a guy running around with a ladder, unhooking chains and shifting heavy structures right above the musicians and their expensive equipment... Just sayin'...

I will start otu with my monitor speakers on columns and only install soffit mountings if I feel an acute need.

Actually, there are major good reasons why soffits exist: they totally remove many of the major artifacts that plague rooms without them: SBIR, comb filtering and other forms of phase cancellation, early reflections, and a whole bunch of other things just are not there with properly designed soffit mounts. And that's without even considering the biggest benefit of all: correcting the power imbalance and eliminating baffle step compensation: That alone has a major effect on tightening up the bass, and cleaning up the low end response in general. There's a world of difference between speakers mounted on stands, and the same speakers properly mounted in soffits. Having said that, not all speakers are suitable for soffit mounting, so it would help to know what specific ones you are using (brand and model). Rear-ported and side-ported designs are pretty much out of the question, as are some highly rounded shapes, but practically all others can be mounted in soffits, very successfully. So I would rethink that.

I hope to solve the parallel wall challenge with large wall mounted, hinged dampening plates,

What "parallel wall challenge"? There is no such thing! :) In the live room, parallel walls are only a problem for one reason: flutter echo. That's the ONLY reason why you would need to splay walls, normally. (Control rooms are different, and need splayed walls for different reasons). But flutter echo is not much of a "challenge" anyway, and can be easily dealt with by using suitable application of absorption in the correct places. I'm not really sure about what you mean by "hinged damping plates", but I guess you are talking about some type of wooden panel with thick absorption on one side, hinged to the wall somewhat like a door, so it can be moved to change the room acoustics. Perhaps someone you spoke to saw those somewhere, and did not understand what they are really meant for: the purpose is not to "fight the parallel wall challenge", but rather simply to change the acoustics of the room, making some parts more live and others more dead. It's the same basic concept as a gobo, but hinged to the wall and much larger, so it affects the room response more globally, not locally. They are sometimes designed as diffusers on one side and absorbers on the other, so the effect of swinging them from one side to the other can be pretty dramatic. But they are not there for dealing with parallel walls. So whoever told you that you need "hinged damping plates" was unfortunately not well versed in acoustics, and seems to have gotten confused about the purpose or variable room acoustic devices. The term "hinged damping plates" doesn't even exist in the world of acoustics, and apparently not any other world, either: A google search for that terms comes up with ZERO hits! That's a first for me: Never seen Google come up empty. (Of course, as soon as the Google bots scan the forum again, it will then appear, but right now it is coming up blank.)

And I will take a bunch of pictures and share the process!

Cool! I'm looking forward to that. It might be a good idea to post your plans here too, in case anyone spots something that can be improved. You'd be surprised how many builders have posted photos after they already did something, only to have several people then point out that what they did was a mistake, and needs to be taken down and redone. The smart builders actually do that, and end up with successful studios. The not so smart ones shut up and never post again... We never know how "successful" their builds are, but we can guess! So please do post your plans and photos, and whatever other information you think might help. There's quite a few people here that can be extra pairs of eyes on your build, helping you to improve it. Maybe you could start by posting some pics of the empty space as it stands right now. That would be interesting. - Stuart -

Quote: Acoustic design may not be the exact science certain people assert. Well, I'll agree that it might not be an "exact" science, and there is no such thing as a "perfect" room anywhere, but the science of acoustics is in pretty darn good shape today! Maybe 50 years it wasn't that way, but troday it sure is. It IS a science, and there really are many very well understood principles, equations, methods, materials and techniques, that have been amply studied and reported on over the decades. So there certainly is a very solid base for the theory of studio design. Trouble is, those folks who don't want to spend the time to actually learn it often seem to be the most vocal, shouting the loudest that no such science exists... to their own detriment. If only they knew... Maybe I should moderate myself a little here: having built many restaurants I am always concerned with the acoustics, but I have always built with in existing spaces which all have different properties. No matter what measures I take, the end result is never quite what we were shooting for, but that is because aesthetics are more important: how the place looks is more important than how it sounds, so I have to compromise. In a studio the sound is obviously more important than looks, but on the other hand I want to spend my time in a warm and comfortable environment, so I am willing to take a few chances with the build to include some of the spaces' original charm. I agree that acoustics is a pretty exact science if you can form your environment as you wish, but in this case some of the random elements I am including will throw a spanner into the equations. As ass-backwards as that sounds, I don't want to sacrifice entirely the randomness of the space, I hope it will provide soul and not discordance. It strikes me that many of my favorite studios (Sun/Stax/Columbia, etc) had a uniqueness that came from their weird original space. Quote: I want a live sounding space, so I will build my outer shell first and work on dampening and acoustic treatment in stages, fixing as I go along. Well, I hate to say this, but that would probably be a mistake: Isolation is one of those parts of acoustics that actually is well understood, and building only the outer shell ("outer leaf" in acoustic parlance) , without also building the corresponding inner-leaf, is not a recipe for success. They need to be designed together, to work in harmony as a system. I take your point and will follow it. You can have a live sounding space, for sure, but it should be designed to be live, not eventually become live by accident. Yes, you sure can take that approach, and try to get there by successive approximation, trial-and-error, hit and miss, but why re-invent the wheel? Why waste all that time and money when proper design can get you nine tenths of the way there on the first try, and all you need to do then is to tweak that last ten percent? Basic treatment is also pretty well understood today, and the room really an be designed, from the start, to be as live as you want. Or as dead as you want. But there are also some recognized relationships between rooms in a facility that you should take into account, such as ensuring that the RT-60 response of the control room is much shorter than that of the live room... if not, you'll never be able to hear the reverb tails that you are trying to mix! Simple things like that can make or break a studio. And they are very scientific. Another example is the set of specs for frequency response and time-domain response that is needed in control rooms: that doesn't happen by accident. The control room needs to be designed to produce that perfect neutral sound that is so necessary. Without a neutral control room, mixes simply do not translate well, so the chances of the studio succeeding are not very high. In other words, there is an awful lot that the science of acoustics can contribute to making your place successful. Ignoring that is perhaps not a good idea. It may not be an exact science, but it sure can help a huge amount. It is probably no more exact than the science of medicine, but it's still a great idea to listen to what medical science has to say about living long, healthy lives! Agreed. Quote: I will build a large, comfortable control room, with a large window to the live room and an adjoining vocal booth with a shared window to the control room. Everyone will have eye contact. Very smart. Sight lines are more important than most engineers realize... until they don't have them! When I design a studio, that's one of the priorities. Acoustics is important, of course, but so are many other aspects that need to be considered in studio design, such as sight lines, workflow, traffic patterns, comfort, and even mood. A great sounding studio with perfect sight lines, but that looks ugly and is poorly ventilated is probably worse than one with not so great acoustics but an excellent "vibe", good lighting, and really comfy to work in. Everything counts when designing a studio. Even the way that doors open and close. Quote: I will leave the ceiling fairly untreated and install clouds that can be moved around quickly, depending on the wishes of the band in there. I guess you are talking about the live room? I'm all for variable acoustics in live rooms, and there are many good ways of accomplishing that, but movable clouds does not seem practical, and a mostly untreated ceiling is a really bad idea. The floor pretty much has to be hard, solid and acoustically reflective in a good live room, so the entire ceiling needs at least basic treatment, just to deal with flutter echo and basic modal issues. Clouds can be used to enhance that basic treatment in places, sure, but it makes no sense to leave the entire ceiling untreated (or large parts of it). In addition to clouds, I would consider movable hanging baffles: your rooms has the potential to be high enough for that. This was some advice i got from a very seasoned musician (you all know who he is) who missed the possibility to reconfigure the live end/dead end characteristics of a studio quickly and asked if rapidly movable baffles could be a solution. I will let you know how I get on. The ceiling per today is very thick concrete, covered with a thick layer of earth and soil ( a park), so I will have to check its' soundproofing effect before I know how to proceed. Making the clouds movable might be a challenge: Are you planning to motorize them? I might not do much for the vibe of your live room to have a guy running around with a ladder, unhooking chains and shifting heavy structures right above the musicians and their expensive equipment... Just sayin'... Quote: I will start otu with my monitor speakers on columns and only install soffit mountings if I feel an acute need. Actually, there are major good reasons why soffits exist: they totally remove many of the major artifacts that plague rooms without them: SBIR, comb filtering and other forms of phase cancellation, early reflections, and a whole bunch of other things just are not there with properly designed soffit mounts. And that's without even considering the biggest benefit of all: correcting the power imbalance and eliminating baffle step compensation: That alone has a major effect on tightening up the bass, and cleaning up the low end response in general. There's a world of difference between speakers mounted on stands, and the same speakers properly mounted in soffits. Having said that, not all speakers are suitable for soffit mounting, so it would help to know what specific ones you are using (brand and model). Rear-ported and side-ported designs are pretty much out of the question, as are some highly rounded shapes, but practically all others can be mounted in soffits, very successfully. So I would rethink that. NS10s, Auratones, Fostex, not sure about the big speakers yet. The reason I'm not entirely sold on the soffit solution is that I frequently use a very good studio that has the column solution and sounds like a million bucks. But I take your point. Quote: I hope to solve the parallel wall challenge with large wall mounted, hinged dampening plates, What "parallel wall challenge"? There is no such thing! In the live room, parallel walls are only a problem for one reason: flutter echo. That's the ONLY reason why you would need to splay walls, normally. (Control rooms are different, and need splayed walls for different reasons). But flutter echo is not much of a "challenge" anyway, and can be easily dealt with by using suitable application of absorption in the correct places. I'm not really sure about what you mean by "hinged damping plates", but I guess you are talking about some type of wooden panel with thick absorption on one side, hinged to the wall somewhat like a door, so it can be moved to change the room acoustics. Perhaps someone you spoke to saw those somewhere, and did not understand what they are really meant for: the purpose is not to "fight the parallel wall challenge", but rather simply to change the acoustics of the room, making some parts more live and others more dead. It's the same basic concept as a gobo, but hinged to the wall and much larger, so it affects the room response more globally, not locally. They are sometimes designed as diffusers on one side and absorbers on the other, so the effect of swinging them from one side to the other can be pretty dramatic. But they are not there for dealing with parallel walls. So whoever told you that you need "hinged damping plates" was unfortunately not well versed in acoustics, and seems to have gotten confused about the purpose or variable room acoustic devices. The term "hinged damping plates" doesn't even exist in the world of acoustics, and apparently not any other world, either: A google search for that terms comes up with ZERO hits! That's a first for me: Never seen Google come up empty. (Of course, as soon as the Google bots scan the forum again, it will then appear, but right now it is coming up blank.) Yes, this is a personal solution that will be part of the experiment. I have built large gobos for one of my places out of thin ply, routed with thin slits to copy fifties sound baffles, and backed with absorbers. Because my space has two long (70 foot) parallel sides, I figure I could splay one side with these baffles, and hinge them I'm place, doubling as storage space for my all too large guitar collection. This way i get nice aesthetics, a tidy studio and the possibility to change the acoustics rapidly. Should be interesting! Quote: And I will take a bunch of pictures and share the process! Cool! I'm looking forward to that. It might be a good idea to post your plans here too, in case anyone spots something that can be improved. You'd be surprised how many builders have posted photos after they already did something, only to have several people then point out that what they did was a mistake, and needs to be taken down and redone. The smart builders actually do that, and end up with successful studios. The not so smart ones shut up and never post again... We never know how "successful" their builds are, but we can guess! So please do post your plans and photos, and whatever other information you think might help. There's quite a few people here that can be extra pairs of eyes on your build, helping you to improve it. Maybe you could start by posting some pics of the empty space as it stands right now. That would be interesting. Thanks for your time, interest and all the good points...I have taken them to heart! And I will start taking pictures. - Stuart -