My coming studio build: Envisage Audio

Hey everyone, my name is Aaron Smith. I recently bought my first home, a beautiful 2,600 square foot home in a fairly secluded area of Bothell, WA. I searched the housing market for over a year before finally finding this place, and I am tremendously blessed to have been the buyer who won out on this property. It's both spacious enough to live comfortably (and grow in with a future family, kids, etc), while also having space downstairs for…my project studio! Control room, small tracking room, and a lounge. I don't intend to ever record drums at home (I freelance out of Fastback Studios in north Seattle with all my clients, which has a great drum room), so this space only needs to be able to accommodate mixing, tracking/reamping guitars and bass, vocals, and perhaps occasionally acoustic guitars or something (if a dry sound is suitable for the music). Also, I work with a lot of metal bands, so typically everything I need to record can be done in a project studio setting with good pres, conversion, etc. As for annoying the neighbors, it's pretty much just forest out the back of the house, and I don't have any neighbors very close by, so I don't foresee outbound sound being much of a problem. Most of the noise will be coming from the tracking room (4x12 guitar cabs blaring from time to time), which is partially under ground, and on the back side of the house adjacent to the forest! I've spent a bunch of time measuring the downstairs area of the house, and I've been able to draw up several images with SketchUp, which basically show the downstairs as it exists now, and what I envision it looking like after construction. This of course it all open to criticism, as I want to do this as correctly as possible, with minimal or no regrets after the fact. I don't have blueprints to the house (it was bank owned), but I've e-mailed the county to see if they have them on record. Hopefully I will be able to determine where all load bearing walls are without having to rip down any drywall just to learn. We'll see how that goes, as I haven't heard back from the county yet ;) I guess next I'll post the images I've prepared. I've tried to be as detailed as I can without being too overwhelming all at once! Also, FYI, this is a concrete slab foundation I'll be building on. I've read up on these boards quite a bit about floating floors in my basic situation, and it sounds like it's probably not something I'll bother doing. Also, being that the ceiling in the control room is only about 8 feet, I'd rather not sacrifice any more height than I have to! I might build a false ceiling just an inch or two down from the existing ceiling, to block some sound transmission from the kitchen/dining room above to the control room, and vice versa, but that idea is of course open to criticism as well. If there is information I have neglected in these images that would be helpful to any of you in trying to begin to offer me your feedback, I am happy to offer more as necessary. There are just so many aspects to building a studio, that it is simply too overwhelming to try to encapsulate every detail in just one post! All that said, I guess the main questions I first want to discuss with those smarter than myself are something like this: 1. Acoustically speaking, are there any obvious problems with my control room design? My proposed dimensions of course are flexible, so long as it can all be contained inside the existing house. I'm not so much looking for advice on treatment here, but more my dimensions as they relate to room ratios and such. Also, the idea of building a disconnected room-inside-a-room, as the pictures show roughly. The precise angle values and length of new walls does not have to be exactly as shown of course. Also, these drawings haven't accounted for the space that drywall will take up (on the inside of the control room, for example). 2. I believe I have some kind of air ducting running down the middle of the existing basement on the ceiling, which hangs down lower then the space on either side. I don't think there's any way to know exactly what's in this space right now, short of tearing away drywall off of it to see. Hopefully the blueprints will make this easier to determine. Interestingly enough, there are no vents directly above this area on the upper floor above, so it's possible it is not a duct, but otherwise I don't know why the builders would have even included it! If there is a duct in there that I can't remove, but useless hollow space around it, should I consider filling that area with insulation to discourage it from resonating? Also, in the interest of right/left symmetry in the control room, my tentative plan would be to build a similar structure on the left side of ceiling, which you can see in the cross section image I drew up. If I do this, I also assume it would be best to fill this space with insulation, rather than leaving it hollow? Also, I should mention my budget... I'd like to do this all for no more than $5k if possible. A good friend of mine is a licensed electrician, so for all wiring, I will only need to pay for supplies (including some beer and food, haha). We're going to run a sub-panel off my existing power panel, and the studio will have it's own dedicated, separated circuits for audio and lighting. For framing and other basic drywalling, etc, one of my room mates did residential construction for years, so he's going to be helping me with all of those things. If all goes right, it's really just going to be the cost of supplies and various components that I'll need to worry about, which should dramatically help keep costs own. I'm sure there are a million more things that will come to mind, but I'll just leave this post as it is now, so I don't overwhelm anyone (myself included, haha). There is a ton of information on these boards, so I feel like a lot of my basic construction questions can be answered by simply searching and reading, and I'll do my absolute best to not ask questions that have already been adequately answered in the past! Thanks everyone.

Hi Aaron, and welcome to the forum! :) Sounds like a nice place you have there, with good possibilities.

so I don't foresee outbound sound being much of a problem.

What about inbound? Wind, rain, hail, thunder, aircraft flying over, household noises such as doors opening and closing, people walking, talking, phones ringing, radio, TV, etc....

this is a concrete slab foundation I'll be building on.

Excellent!

I've read up on these boards quite a bit about floating floors in my basic situation, and it sounds like it's probably not something I'll bother doing.

Right. And you certainly don't need it anyway, from what you say.

I might build a false ceiling just an inch or two down from the existing ceiling, to block some sound transmission from the kitchen/dining room above to the control room, and vice versa, but that idea is of course open to criticism as well.

The idea is fine, but you'd have to take out the existing ceiling first to make that work. Otherwise you'd have a three-leaf ceiling in your room, which is a bad idea, generally.

Acoustically speaking, are there any obvious problems with my control room design?

I'm wondering about that "point" front end of the room, and why it is done like that. And also, why those specific angles. You seem to be splaying your side walls by about 11°, which is more than you need for flutter echo, but not enough for RFZ, so it would be useful to know what the intention is with that. It seems to be wasting a lot of space. So do the slightly angled sections of the front wall. What is the reason for doing that? A simple flat front wall would be better, both acoustically and visually. You could probably even put in a window to the tracking room, if you improve those angles.

Also, the idea of building a disconnected room-inside-a-room, as the pictures show roughly.

Right! That's the way to do it.

2. I believe I have some kind of air ducting running down the middle of the existing basement on the ceiling, which hangs down lower then the space on either side. I don't think there's any way to know exactly what's in this space right now, short of tearing away drywall off of it to see.

That's probably the right thing to do anyway! You will have to do that if you want to do the isolation ceiling you mentioned above, and you'll have to do that to gain access to the HVAC in any case, so you can hook your silencer boxes into that and ventilate your rooms properly.

If there is a duct in there that I can't remove, but useless hollow space around it, should I consider filling that area with insulation to discourage it from resonating?

Yes! All empty cavities around the room should have damping in them, in the form of acoustically useful insulation, such as fiberglass or mineral wool.

Also, in the interest of right/left symmetry in the control room, my tentative plan would be to build a similar structure on the left side of ceiling,

Right. That would be the best idea. You need to build soffits around both of them, of course: the HVAC duct itself, and the fake one on the left. In fact, you could probably use that "fake" one for bass trapping, or silencers, or some such.

A good friend of mine is a licensed electrician, so for all wiring,

Great! Tell him that it is critical to do a star grounding system for your studio, and also that all the electrical boxes and wiring must be surface-mounted inside the inner-leaf of your studio, with only one single penetration: In other words, he cannot knock ANY holes at all in your inner-leaf drywall, like he normally would: that has to remain as a single unbroken surface, around the complete room.

There is a ton of information on these boards, so I feel like a lot of my basic construction questions can be answered by simply searching and reading,

:thu: If you have any photo of the actual space, then that would help! - Stuart -