Can I make a decent post production studio out of this room?

I have the opportunity to lease a commercial space for the purpose of converting it into an ADR booth and editing room for post production. My clients will probably be low budget indie film makers. The estimated the cost of gear so far might be around $10k, but I also have to factor in construction, AC, etc. Budget is $15k max. Here's a diagram of the space (the ceiling is about 9'.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/79340367@N ... 392616083/ I am getting an acoustics guy to come in and check the room out next week. I understand I will need to be able to get 2 actors comfortably into the booth. I am hoping I can make the booth big enough for ADR and foley, while leaving enough space for a stereo or 5.1 system. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

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

The estimated the cost of gear so far might be around $10k, but I also have to factor in construction, AC, etc. Budget is $15k max.

Maybe I misunderstood, but that would only leave 5k for isolating and treating the room? That isn't realistic. Or maybe you meant 10k for gear PLUS 15 k for the isolation and treatment? That's a bit better, but HVAC alone could eat up a third of that, if you plan to do serious Foley work in there.

I understand I will need to be able to get 2 actors comfortably into the booth. I am hoping I can make the booth big enough for ADR and foley,

For ADR that would work fine, but not for Foley. Foley is an entire different ball game, requiring extremely high levels of isolation, and plenty of floor space for the various pits. You need at least 8 or 10 pits for a good Foley stage, and each of them needs to be several square feet, plus space to move around in. I don't see Foley work as being on the cards with that small budget and that small space. There also seems to be something wrong with the diagram: the room is 12 feet wide, but it looks like the side of the booth isolation wall that faces the control room does not go all the way across. There's a 3 foot door and a 5 foot window, but what about the rest? Also, the numbers don't seem to add up too well, if you want extreme isolation: the overall room is 13 feet wide, and the interior of the booth is shown as 12 feet wide. That only leaves 6" on each side for isolation. Perhaps not enough. Assuming that the existing walls are solid concrete, then leaving a gap of a few inches followed by 2x4 framing then several layers of plywood and/or drywall for the inner leaf, is going to go over 6". You could just squeeze it in with a 1" gap plus a single layer of 3/4" plywood plus two layers of 5/8" drywall, but that might not give you the extreme isolation down to very low frequencies that you need for a Foley stage. Good enough for ADR, though. There's also the issue of the Control Room itself. The room is shown as 19' 9" long, and the booth as 7' deep. Assuming 9" for the isolation wall, that makes the CR 12 feet long. And also 12 feet wide! :shock: :shock: :!: Major modals issue with that. That HAS to be fixed to make the room usable. And even worse, the listening position is smack in the geometric center of the room, which is the worst possible location in any room, acoustically: it is the location of all of the first order modal nulls and second order modal peaks, across the entire audio spectrum. So that needs fixing too. Finally, there's the issue of the 5.1 layout: that isn't a 5.1 layout! According to the ITU, this is the correct layout for 5.1: The EBU agrees: So do the AES, Dolby, Genelec, the Recording Academy, and most others. So I would suggest correcting that problem too. - Stuart -

Thanks for your response and the information. I have updated to my profile to show my location. Also, I will hopefully not be making a huge amount of noise. I don't like mixing at high volumes and won't be recordings bands. I don't think there will be a problem with neighbors as there is a storefront church in the building that regularly plays loud music and it is not a problem. I will be scheduling my use of this studio around that. One thing I would like to add is that I would want the booth to be able to be used for recording musicians as well, like singers, guitarists, etc. If it is not realistic to do Foley in this space, that is okay. I am not that familiar with 5.1 and will probably hold off on installing a 5.1 system at this time. Assuming I am going to have a stereo setup for now, is there a way I can still use the 12' x 12' space for the control room? And maybe I will position myself against the wall opposite the entrance door (so the ADR booth is to my right?)

I have updated to my profile to show my location.

:thu:

Also, I will hopefully not be making a huge amount of noise. I don't like mixing at high volumes and won't be recordings bands.

OK, but it would be good to put a real-world number on that, in terms of decibels. That's pretty much the starting point for isolation: you need to know how loud you are, and how quite you need to be in terms of decibels.

One thing I would like to add is that I would want the booth to be able to be used for recording musicians as well, like singers, guitarists, etc. If it is not realistic to do Foley in this space, that is okay.

Fro recording musicians like those, that booth will be just fine. The problem with Foley is that you are recording very quite sounds (paper rustling, walking in sand, water splashing, leather creaking, etc.), and that then has to be massively amplified to fit into the soundtrack. So all the tiny background noises that you couldn't even hear when you recorded, are now also massively amplified and very noticeable. Noises like the air coming out the HVAC registers, or the guy phone ringing next door, or the engineer in the control room talking to someone, or wind, rain, thunder, places flying over, and a million other noises that you just don't notice normally, as they are so quiet. But when you amplify them hugely, they stick out like a sore thumb. That's why Foley studios need extreme isolation: to block out all of that. But if you are just recording singers and guitars at normal levels, then you don't need such high isolation.

I am not that familiar with 5.1 and will probably hold off on installing a 5.1 system at this time.

OK; but if you think you might do 5.1 at some point in the future, then the control room should be designed for that right now! There are substantial differences in designing a room for plain old stereo, and for 5.1. Stereo will still sound great in a 5.1 room, but 5.1 won't necessarily sound good in a room that was designed only for stereo. So even if you won't be putting in the 5.1 system yet, it is still a really good idea to make sure the room is ready for it when the time comes. Retrofitting a stereo room for 5.1 is expensive.... Doing it from the start costs practically nothing extra...

Assuming I am going to have a stereo setup for now, is there a way I can still use the 12' x 12' space for the control room?

No, not really. The issue is the room itself, not what type of sound system you put in it. All rooms have "modal" resonant frequencies, which are frequencies that the room itself wants to resonate at, so whenever an instrument happens to play a note that is at the same frequency as a room resonance, then the room "sings along" with that note, but not with the notes on either side. Obviously that's bad, since the room is adding intensity to some notes but not to others. These "modes" are purely due to the dimensions of the room, and occur for all waves that fit in exactly between two walls. So the idea with room design is to choose a set of dimensions (length, width, height) that give you the most even possible spread of modes. If two of the dimensions of a room are the same, then the modes for both of those dimensions will line up perfectly, and the problem is twice as bad at those frequencies. So in your case with a width and length of 12 feet, you will have double modes at 47 Hz, 84 Hz, 141 Hz, 168 Hz, etc. And since I assume that your ceiling is probably 8 feet high, there is also a direct relationship there: every second harmonic of modes in the width and length will perfectly line up with every third harmonic of the height (2x12=24, 3x8=24). So that's a really bad shape for a control room. The only shape worse than a square, is a cube. This is also not something that acoustic treatment can fix, since it is cause by the dimensions of the room itself. The modes will always be there, no matter how you treat the room. There are some things you can do to help a bit, but there is no way to "eliminate" modes, except with a bulldozer!!! :) If there is no room at all, then there are no modes.... So I would suggest changing the dimensions of the room a bit, to one of the known good "room ratios", and use that.

And maybe I will position myself against the wall opposite the entrance door (so the ADR booth is to my right?)

That won't make any real difference to the room acoustics, and will just make it harder to see what is going on in the booth: you'd end up with a sore neck, from turning your head to look to the side, hundreds of times each day... Keep the basic layout that you have, facing the booth with the desk on the center line of the room, but just change the room dimensions to something better, acoustically. - Stuart -

Thanks. So maybe something like this? Keeping the same dimensions except for the booth (studio in the diagram) which will be about half as deep, to match the dimensions of the room I am working with.

Right. Something like that would work. - Stuart -

I got the studio designer in there and we've made up plans for the room. It looks like we'll be able to get 2 people in the booth and 3 people in the control room (including me.) A small but still usable setup, hopefully. These plans are what he suggests for me.

These plans are what he suggests for me.

I guess you didn't see my response to your last post, where I mentioned that a square room is the worst possible shape (apart from a cube). That model shows the room being 13'1" long, and even though it doesn't show the width directly, by subtracting the width of the booth from the total width, you get 13'. That room will have major modal resonance issues at 43 Hz, 86 Hz, 130 Hz, and all harmonics thereof. The room ratio: 1 : 1.62 : 1.63 (assuming an 8' ceiling), and that fails two of the three critical BBC tests for a studio. I'm also wondering why the speakers are show as sitting on top of the desk (instead of where they should be, on stands behind the desk), when that is widely known to be the cause of comb filtering, early-early arrival, and other reflection issues an artifacts. It would also be good to see the planned treatment for the rear wall, since that is critical, as well as the ceiling. There doesn't seem to be enough absorption in there as shown; that room needs 366 sabins, theoretically, but it's not clear that there is enough treated surface area to get there. So those would be my thoughts. - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart. It is possible I may be able to use the entire space for the control room, and use an adjacent room for the booth, which would be much better! The speakers will be on stands too. If this works out I'll be coming up with new plans soon!