Studio Build in the Pacific Northwest

First, let me say that this site is a WEALTH of information, and I feel blessed to have found it! I’m still pouring over all of the builds and articles, and it will take me a long time to get through them all, I'm sure. I live about 60 miles from Seattle, WA, and I mostly play straight-ahead rock with local bands. My goal is to convert our detached shed into a usable project studio with a control room, live room, and an entry/storage area. The trick is, we want it to have a usable garage bay, in case I need to work on one of our vehicles (yes, I’m a Saturday mechanic), and a usable storage/utility area in the entry. I will mostly use this space to track instruments in addition to having band rehearsals (which will probably get pretty loud with acoustic drums, a bass rig, and a guitar rig). We live inside the city limits, but we are in a small, rural town. Our nearest neighbors are about 200’ from the shed. The existing building is essentially a pole-barn built on a concrete slab (on grade) with Creosote posts, covered on the sides and roof with corrugated steel sheeting. The rough dimensions are 29’ 8 3/4” x 19’ x 11’ 7 1/2” (8’ 1/2” to the bottom of the trusses). My grandfather, who has been a contractor for the last 50 years, is coming out in April to help us frame a new space inside the shed in addition to upgrading and running new electrical. I have never attempted a project of this scope before, so I'm attempting to keep it as straight-forward as possible and take it one step at a time. Here are for what I thought the rooms should look like. My question is simply: does this plan look like something that could be a workable layout for the given space? I avoided parallel walls in the control room while attempting to maximize space-usage in the rest of the shed. Link to my Shed Project page which contains more pictures and another plan idea. Thank you, so much, for your time! -Jer (short for 'Jeremiah' :) )

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

The trick is, we want it to have a usable garage bay, in case I need to work on one of our vehicles

The biggest issue with that will be how to get both of those huge doors with enough mass and seal on them to do a good job of isolating. Also, the inner-door is going to play havoc with your acoustic treatment: Assuming it will tilt, slide or roll up, it's going to take up a huge chunk of the ceiling and wall space that you need for treatment. I'm not sure how you would even go about dealing with that, but it would depend greatly on the type of door you use there. If you could figure a way to have swing doors that open outwards, that might be the solution, but then you have the usual problem of how to seal down the joint where the two doors meet in the middle.

and a usable storage/utility area in the entry.

Fine, but you have not completed the outer-leaf across the far side of that, where it fronts the CR and LR. Also, do you need that closet, in addition to the storage area? It seems to be taking up a lot of space in the LR, and right where you have the best visibility. Perhaps you could move it to where the door to the CR is, and move that door to the entry/storage side of the CR. That would solve another issue: right now, to get to / from the CR you have to go through the LR, which could be a problem if someone needs to get in or out of the CR in the middle of a session. It's better to have independent access doors for each room if possible, and in your case it is possible.

(which will probably get pretty loud with acoustic drums, a bass rig, and a guitar rig).

so isolation is important, obviously! Implying that you are going to have a headache figuring out how to seal those huge doors, and get enough mass on them... :)

Here are the drawings for what I thought the rooms should look like.

Right. That's one of the things you missed on the forum rules... :)

My question is simply: does this plan look like something that could be a workable layout for the given space?

It's a typical "corner control room" layout, so yes it can work, provided that it is designed carefully. There are several examples here on the forum of people who have built their rooms like that, and even a couple from John himself.

I avoided parallel walls in the control room

Actually, you don't need to do that! It's one of those many acoustic myths that refuse to die! Yes, it is true that parallel walls can produce flutter echo and can enhance certain room mode issues, but flutter echo can be dealt with fairly easily with treatment (which you need anyway, regardless of shape), and room modes cannot be eliminated by angling the walls: all you do is make it much harder to predict the response when you do that. It is dead easy to predict the modal response of a rectangular room, and therefore dead easy to adjust the dimensions to optimize the room ratio. But as soon as you angle the walls, or add extra walls (such as with a 7-sided room like yours, instead of a simple 6-sided room) you take all of that off the table, and you now need to resort to far more complex and expensive methods to predict room modal response: you now need FEM/FEA software, and an operator who knows how to set up the boundary conditions in the software for your room, and how to interpret the results. So I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't angle your walls, but rather that you should be aware of the issues involved in a non-rectangular room, and ensure that you deal with them in the design.

My grandfather, who has been a contractor for the last 50 years, is coming out in April to help us frame a new space inside the shed in addition to upgrading and running new electrical.

Great! You'll need someone like that if you have never done this before! But you should warn your grandfather that building a studio is nothing at all like what he is used to, and he'll have to modify many of the techniques and methods that he's been using for the last 50 years, since they don't work for studios. Same tools, same materials, but different methods, and different things to take into account. For example, air-tight seals absolutely critical to studios, but not needed at all in normal house/office/shop/school construction. Decoupling is something that he's probably never done before, or at least not to the extreme extent it is needed for studios. Electrical is completely differentm since you cannot cut any holes in the drywall for mounting switch boxes, outlet boxes, lights, etc. Everything has to be done inside the room, using surface-mount techniques and materials, and you can have only one single wall penetration to bring in your main electrical cable from the outside world. Even that penetration is done differently than he would expect. Doors and windows are also done differently, since you need perfect seals on all sides of everything, and not just one seal: you need several seals on each door (at least two full perimeter seals), etc. HVAC is another big issue, and I don't even see any provision for that in your plans. It is probably the single most overlooked aspect of home studio building, yet also the most critical, for several reasons. Many people think they don't even need HVAC for their studio at all, and then argue strenuously when they get the explanation as to why it is a basic necessity, as much as lights or a floor. some plan to just open the doors and hope that air will somehow magically percolate through the studio, and even more magically cool and dehumidify it :shock: :? :roll: So hopefully your grandfather has some experience with HVAC, and we can fill him in on the differences between normal HVAC installation and studio HVAC installation, which is rather different. One other point on this: you mention "frame a new space inside the shed", but you don't mention sealing and beefing-up the existing shed before you even get to that. That corrugated metal is not much use by itself for your outer leaf. That's going to need dealing with before you can even think about the inner-leaf. Anyway, to answer your original question: Yes, your basic plan is along the lines of being workable, but it will need lots of refining in order to get it to the point where it actually WILL work, particularly in the issue of the doors. - Stuart -

Thank you, so much, for your response! I'm sorry I missed a few of those rules :oops: I'll got back and rework my overview and make sure I embed the pictures instead of linking to them. You mentioned "beefing up" the existing steel shell of the existing structure. By that, do you mean getting rid of the metal sheeting and completely reworking the outside of the building? I DO want to build this correctly, but currently, out budget is around $5,000, and that wouldn't go very far to redo the outside of the shed. I think I need to dial-back my scope and focus on the outer "walls" (the metal sheeting) and the inner walls that we'll be framing in, and worry about the interior design of the studio later. I appreciate your patience, and thanks for debunking some of the myths I had regarding studio building.

After a lengthy discussion with my grandfather last night, and an email exchange this morning, we have decided that building a studio correctly is outside of my current budget. I don't want to skimp on studio design, especially after pouring through the various designs and builds on this forum. So, for now, I will simply have to be content to upgrade our detached shed but forgo my original intention of isolating a rock band :) I just wanted to say that this forum is fantastic! Stuart, I sincerely appreciate your thought-provoking questions and for telling me how it is. It saved me from having my budget balloon out of control or having a less-than-ideal studio space. I made a donation to this forum as a thank you for your time and energy. For now, I will continue to lurk this awesome forum and build my knowledge until our budget allows me to build a great studio. Hopefully, that day is only a few years down the road, but until then . . . Thank you, so much!

You mentioned "beefing up" the existing steel shell of the existing structure. By that, do you mean getting rid of the metal sheeting and completely reworking the outside of the building?

Not really, no. That would be rather extreme... and rather expensive. You can beef up inside the existing structure, simply by adding a layer of mass to the metal, between the existing studs/posts. Eg, plywood, OSB, drywall, etc.

After a lengthy discussion with my grandfather last night, and an email exchange this morning, we have decided that building a studio correctly is outside of my current budget. I don't want to skimp on studio design, especially after pouring through the various designs and builds on this forum. So, for now, I will simply have to be content to upgrade our detached shed but forgo my original intention of isolating a rock band

Probably a smart move! And you still can have a great studio in there, within your budget, and just from minimal construction and good treatment. If you take a look at the forum, you'll see examples of studios done on all sorts of budgets, from really major projects with five zeroes on the end of the budget, right down to folks who spent just a few hundred dollars. There's a lot you can do with 5 grand! Just not a fully-isolated rock band Abbey Road style place... :) But that 5 grand can still go a long, long way, if you redefine your goals. For example, plan on just ONE room, instead of two, make it a simple rectangle with a good ratio, no windows, only one door, a good layout, and good treatment. I'm betting you can do that for around 5 grand. :)

For now, I will continue to lurk this awesome forum and build my knowledge until our budget allows me to build a great studio. Hopefully, that day is only a few years down the road, but until then . . .

Ahh, but there's the alternative: "Build as you go"! Plan the whole thing now, but start by building only one part of it now with the 5 grand you have, then build then next part after you save up some more, then the next part. Etc. For example, build your control room now (but with a simpler design), then add the live room later. You can still use the empty space in the meantime as a sort of "live room" that doesn't sound too good, then turn it into a proper live room when the time comes. That would be my plan, in your shoes... :)

Stuart, I sincerely appreciate your thought-provoking questions and for telling me how it is. It saved me from having my budget balloon out of control or having a less-than-ideal studio space.

And thank you for your sincerity! Sometimes when we point out the shortcomings of an initial plan, we get some nasty stuff in response, or no response at all, so it is very, very refreshing to see your response! :yahoo: So if you still want to give it a go, then I'm up for helping you figure out a control room you can do for around 5 grand! :) - Stuart -

Thanks for your response and for your patience while I slog through this :) My dilemma is that my grandfather has been planning to come to our place for the past several months, so the framing project is going to happen in April regardless. It's interesting that you should mention making my design simpler . . . I have been entertaining the idea of simply focusing on creating a large room-within-a-room inside the existing structure and then designing the control room in the corner (with a much simpler design). I was thinking of building it with single walls for the time-being, then I can beef them up and convert them to double-walls later when I have the time and budget (who knows when that will be? :) ). I'll attach an updated, simplified plan in the next several days as I have time. Regarding ratios, through my research it appears good ratios for a room are based on this ratio: 1 x 1.12 x 1.23 with the ceiling being the largest ratio. Am I on the right track here?

Soundman2020 wrote:

And thank you for your sincerity! Sometimes when we point out the shortcomings of an initial plan, we get some nasty stuff in response, or no response at all, so it is very, very refreshing to see your response! :yahoo:

BTW, I find it interesting when people have this response to constructive criticism. I didn't post my plans and questions so people could pat me on the back and tell me how awesome the are :mrgreen: (ahem). I want people who do it for a living to tell me like it is. I simply wanted realistic expectations. Based on your feedback, and given my time and budget constraints, I found it was unrealistic to expect to have a good studio with great isolation in time for this April. I need to scale-back and focus on one phase at a time. Right now, I can afford and plan for only the single-walled inner "building".

I was thinking of building it with single walls for the time-being, then I can beef them up and convert them to double-walls later when I have the time and budget

That would basically give you a three-leaf design, which is usually not a good thing, but give the cost and complication of trying to beef up the metal, it might not be a bad option. The issue is this: a three-leaf wall will always give you worse low frequency isolation than the equivalent two-leaf wall, all other factors being equal. The reason is sort of complex, and I can explain it if you are interested, but it's just one of those many things that is not at all intuitive about acoustics. You simply assume: "If one leaf is OK, and two leaves is good, then three must be better!" But in reality it doesn't work like that: 3 leaves is worse for low frequencies. OK, having said that, it can still be an option if you have no choice. That probably applies to you. So you can build your room as a two-leaf structure, then compensate for the poorer performance by using larger air gaps and more mass. Simple! :) I would also suggest that you cold try building it in such a way that you can easily modify it later. For example, design in "break points" in the framing, so you can easily cut into the wall later to add the huge doors in the positions where you will need them, without needing to tear down the entire wall and re-build it! So put the door header and side frames in now, ready for the future doors, then fill in the "doorway gap" with more framing that you can simple cut out in the future when you get to that point. The same applies to your storage/ entry area: build in break points and door framing now, then just cover them in drywall. Then when you have the money, carefully cut out that drywall to reveal the already-complete door framing, slap in the doors, build the extra farming to complete the storage room, and bingo! You are done! If you work smart, design it all in advance but only build what you can afford right now, then you can save money both now and later, and also save time, simplify, etc.

I'll attach an updated, simplified plan in the next several days as I have time.

Looking forward to seeing that!

Regarding ratios, through my research it appears good ratios for a room are based on this ratio: 1 x 1.12 x 1.23 with the ceiling being the largest ratio. Am I on the right track here?

The room height is always the first "1", at the front of the equation. width comes next, then length. So a room with an 8 foot ceiling and the ratio you mention, would be 8 feet high, 8' 11-1/2" wide, and 9'-10" long. But that's not the best ratio. It's a good one, but is only one of many. The best ration is Sepmeyer's first ratio, which is 1 : 1.14 : 1.39. There's a bunch of good ones, and you can check how yours pan out, by using one of the good room.mode calculators, such as these two: http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm http://amroc.andymel.eu/ As long as you are inside the Bolt area, you should be fine, and if Bob Golds' calculator shows a good smooth Bonello diagram and passes all three BBC tests and shows a ratio in the top ten, then you are doing great! There's a really good list of the best modes over at StudioTips forum, but they seem to be offline right now. But keep trying: http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.php?t=684 - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

So a room with an 8 foot ceiling and the ratio you mention, would be 8 feet high, 8' 11-1/2" wide, and 9'-10" long. But that's not the best ratio. It's a good one, but is only one of many. The best ration is Sepmeyer's first ratio, which is 1 : 1.14 : 1.39. There's a bunch of good ones, and you can check how yours pan out, by using one of the good room.mode calculators, such as these two: http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm http://amroc.andymel.eu/ As long as you are inside the Bolt area, you should be fine, and if Bob Golds' calculator shows a good smooth Bonello diagram and passes all three BBC tests and shows a ratio in the top ten, then you are doing great! There's a really good list of the best modes over at StudioTips forum, but they seem to be offline right now. But keep trying: http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.php?t=684 - Stuart -

Excellent! Sounds like I have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks :lol: I will dig into those resources you suggested and come up with a rough draft of the plans as soon as I can.

I haven't had a chance to go through the calculations using Bob Gold's calculator, or any of the other resources, but I finished another draft of the plans. We're locked into 8' ceilings, so the dimensions I got for the CR were: 96" x 109 7/16" x 133 7/16" or 8' x 9' 1 7/16" x 11' 1 7/16". More to come soon . . .