Building a new studio in an old hardware store.

Greetings. Long time reader, first time poster. I run a recording studio here in South Central Minnesota as part of a marketing company as well. We built it very fast in the beginning and have the opportunity to build a new one, hopefully capitalizing on a few design flaws we made the first time. We were renting the space and have purchased 2 buildings to move our companies to, one being the recording studio. I'm usually in the playground myself doing radio ads, sound for video, and jingles. Occasionally I do get bands and hiphop artists to record but it seems they're all broke around these parts. I need a comfortable control room as I have a lot of clients visiting and when a 5 piece band is in I need room for everyone (one thing we lack now) as well as a booth and live room, lobby, and bathroom (handicap accessible). The "canvas" I've been given is honestly laid out stupid in my opinion but I guess if someone can build a studio out of a shipping crate we can definitely make this work. Room details: I apologize for the 3rd grader drawing but I basically just took some of John's designs from his Variplans and flipped them and moved them around in photoshop to see what kind of layout I could come up with. We demoed the place recently and measured it all out. If you crossed the middle of the building dead center you would get 21 ft. 2 in. From the front of the building to the back is 49 ft 3 in. The floor in this place is hardwood and not in the best of shape. Used to be an old bar back before the hardware store and some water damage has definitely been evident by some bowing and rising in areas. The contractor has suggested "floating" a new floor on top of the existing floor, not sure how I feel about that exactly. Ceiling is about 10 ft 6 in. The front door (lower left on layout) comes up 2 or 3 steps from the street so from the actual front windows to where the door is we're looking at 7 ft. 7 & 1/2 in. This is where I'm looking to do a lobby area. Upper right of the layout is a stairway to the basement which will just be storage for the moment but it comes into the room 4 ft. and is 10 ft 1 in. Bathroom will be right next to it (at least it's plumbed for it at the moment). Lower right of the layout is ground level load in for bands at the back door. This is really the only ideal layout I can think of to make sure everything fits with a decent size control room and making things "practical" for what I'm given. If anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears and open to another design. Not exactly sure on the budget, my boss knows all of that info, however we are approved for a construction loan and it's gonna be a place I'll be working in for years to come, so it's gotta be right and functional and he's assured me he'll get me what I need. I can supply pics of the actual place as well as soon as I get up there to snap a few. Thanks in advance, big fan of the forum and some of these studios are mind blowing! Hoping I can make this one just as good as the ones I see on here! Thanks again.

Forgot to mention, there's no real limitations on how loud it can be. The building sits with a bus inspection company on one side (top part of the layout) and it's an open grass and patio to the municipal bar and off sale on the other side (bottom part of layout). I did get lucky to have beer 3 steps away from the studio, especially in the winter!

I think that you might regret having the isolation booth located behind the engineer. That's a fairly awkward location. Right now you'll also have the lobby and a recording space directly next to each other and separated only by a single wall. That seems likely to get noise onto recordings. Are you planning on doing doubled walls with an air gap? The width of that is going to impact how much room you have in some of your traffic flow patterns. Be very careful with floating a floor. It's a frequent suggestion but is often unnecessary and can even result in problems you wouldn't otherwise have had. Is there a particular reason it's felt necessary in your case? You may not be worried about volume levels coming out of your studio, but what about those going in? You mentioned a bus inspection station very near. To my mind that sounds like you're going to have low frequency rumble close to your studio, which you'll need to be careful to isolate for. That front door in the bottom left definitely sets the stage for what's got to happen next. I totally see how you'll want a lobby, but as shown it's looking awfully narrow, though I grant I'm having trouble with getting a good picture of the unshown dimensions. What if you keep the lobby where it is, but orient the control room facing upward on the picture instead of towards the side? Move towards a side view control room rather than a front view control room. That's a little bit awkward, but I kind of like them, and I'd guarantee that it's better than having to look backwards. I'd also ditch the angle at the back, as it's making things a bit awkward and it's not going to be that hard to get good absorption in on a flat backed control room. This would accomplish a couple of things. First you could extend your control room all the way across the width of your design. Second (and pretty important) The traffic flow coming through the control room would all be able to pass along the space in front of the sofa instead of further forward beside the mixing position. I really don't think you're going to want people carrying a drum set so close to your mix station as currently shown. Your priorities would then impact the placement of the iso room. How big do you want that lobby? The bigger, the tougher to get in a reasonable iso booth. The specifics of the spacing can be altered by sliding the control room to the left or right. I'd definitely want to be able to see the rest of the band while I was in the iso room so I'd get the iso room and the live room over together on the right side of the control room.

Hey Johnnie, I appreciate your reply and you raise some good points. I do plan on doing the double walls with an air gap between them, I apologize for the kiddish drawing and not showing that but I do plan on having it constructed in that manner. I agree with you also that the vocal/iso booth is in an odd place. I think I would much rather have that either on the opposite wall (no bus company) or off the live room as well. It also makes a lot of sense to me not to have people dragging equipment through the area of the engineer to an iso which is making me think to revisit and revise to your suggestion of a side entry control room, either facing the "north" or "south" of the layout. If I would face the "south" with the bass traps on the side where the bus inspection company is think they would serve a dual purpose? Maybe I'll try and draw out another finger painting layout, haha. Ahh, I wish I knew sketchup. On the floating floor topic I'm honestly against the idea. In the pic from the back door to the front you can kind of see an outline of the old bar that was in there some 30 or 40 years ago. There was quite a bit of water damage and you can kind of see where the wood is rising in some places. The floor is far from level. So the contractor suggested floating the floors rather than repairing the existing floor which is what I was told. Not so sure how you can exactly make a non-level floor completely level by building another floor on top of an unlevel floor but I'm no contractor. The lobby doesn't have to be huge in my opinion. It may have a small desk area somewhere in it but it's basically gonna just be a seating area to hang out in for coffee or tv. I wish I knew the dimensions to give but I honestly don't know at the moment. I thought I've read in another thread somewhere on the forum that the control rooms should be symmetrical of course and the longer and wider the better. Higher ceilings being better as well. Can't remember the "minimum" dimensions off the top of my head but I know I have it written down somewhere. So with the space I have to work with I'm trying to fit the control room in at those minimum dimensions when it will be the room mostly used. I will do bands from time to time but most of my business is production for radio and TV at the moment. Now that I say that there will be 20 bands that need demos, haha. Again, I appreciate the feedback Johnnie, I'll see if I can get another layout done, hopefully a little better than this last one. If you come up with any other ideas or comments after seeing the pictures please let me know. -Nate

OK, went with the side control room design. Any thoughts on this layout? Seems to be the most practical for the situation in my opinion. From the load-in door into the live room everything is now in a central place with the iso booth and live room. Most foot traffic will now occur away from the mix position which I really like. The lobby looks to be a decent size, maybe too much space, but the way the control room sits in the area kind of dictates the lobby, especially with the front door coming into play. I'm becoming more and more a fan of this layout but if anyone is into tweaking a few things I'm all for it. A few questions I have. In the back right corner of the Control Room. The bathroom the way it sits right now will be eating into the bass trap in the rear of the control room. Will this have a negative effect on how much absorption will occur in the back? I could always do some more treatment if it's necessary in the space behind the control room. Right now the only plans are for storage in that area, but if need be I can also do additional treatment. Should I double wall the iso room in the live room or is there a better place for the iso/vocal booth? It's very common that I do scratch vocal tracks in the control room when recording bands but if a guitar amp was in the iso while tracking drums I can see where a single wall could be a problem. I'm not opposed to doing a double wall with an air gap for the iso but I'm afraid of that eating up a lot of space in the live room. In any case, my ears are open to suggestions and advice. Much appreciated! Thanks friends!

That's looking better already. I do have a couple of suggestions though (and some questions) First, if you turn the control room 180, I think you can get the narrow end into the area that currently looks like it's lost space. The bass trap that sticks out to the sides behind the front soffits isn't strictly necessary and it's costing you some space that I think you'll want. You can deal with the bass absorption by using John's bass hangar soffit design. You'd also be able to avoid that little cut out in the upper right of the ctrl room picture. Second the slightly different angled walls aren't really necessary and also lose a little space. As long as you've got a reasonable air gap (4 inches or more) you'll be ok with a consistent angle. (the amount of gap / mass you want will depend on the frequencies you need to isolate... I'm still thinking about that bus rumble :horse: ) You're correct though, in your recalling that you'd generally want your control room symmetrical (particularly around the listening position) and that in general higher ceilings are going to be better than lower. Third, it looks to me like you've got paired sliding glass doors. If they are standard patio doors, then you're hurting your isolation. If memory serves you'll only hit something like 42ish db with those in place. (how much are looking for?) If you buy real acoustic sliding doors, you're adding a lot of expense. Have you thought about just doing a regular pair of studio doors, and then using windows for your sight lines? Fourth, is there any way to move the bathroom over to the lobby or is that placement non-negotiable? It seems like it'd be awfully nice to put the bathroom over in the lobby space, and to put your iso booth where the bathroom currently is. (assuming the control room is turned around too so you can set up a sight line to the new iso placement.) To answer your question though, yes, you'd want to double wall the isolation booth if you want to get good isolation there.

Thanks for the reply Johnnie. I'm not 100% sure we can run the plumbing over to there....honestly I'd like to though. Now you understand why I said the building was laid out wierd in my opinion, lol. I guess it's alright for a hardware store :). If it is possible it frees things up big time. We do have some doors left over from the previous studio, probably 5 of them that I think we'll put to use on this project rather than the sliding glass....especially if the booth will be in the place of the previous bathroom. Could be possible to do a window into the booth and a window to the live room and done. Thanks for the insight, greatly appreciated. I'm gonna find out how hard it will be to move the bathroom and I'll draw up another plan. Thanks again!

So here's the layout I came up with. Keep in mind between the iso and the live room it will be another wall with a gap. Also windows from the control room to the iso and live room. The live room will also be a "room in a room" design. I have a meeting with the contractor tomorrow so I'm gonna find out if this is possible with moving the bathroom to the other side.

That's definitely looking a lot more clean. I'm not sure on the current sight lines from the iso room to the control room (is that angle for a window?) but you'd definitely have good site lines from musicians between the two spaces, and if you have to pick one or the other, I'd always side with the musicians being able to see each other.... course I'm primarily a musician so I'm probably biased. :) The one other suggestion I'd have would be for the entry way. Right now the traffic flow there is a little awkward because it runs directly into a wall. That will tend to give new clients a "closed" feeling as their first impression on entering the studio and the spacing there might be tight for a large bass drum to turn the corner. If I recall correctly, you have some stairs there, so you can't just turn the door into the lobby from the existing walls, but what if you extend the entry way all the way to the control room wall. Right now the wall is on an angle, so you'd need to be sure to straighten out early enough that it doesn't get to narrow for smooth traffic flow. Then make a new door that opens directly into the lobby from what would now serve as a landing... i.e. the door is facing up instead of facing to the right (hope that's clear). The goal being to make a landing that feels generous and open (and might serve as a staging point for equipment being carried in) and the first real impression of the studio would be into the open space of the lobby instead of into the wall.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention... Don't forget that you'll want to double the wall between the control room and the lobby!