Quick simple questions

Hi Here are my quick questions for the new studio we're about to build in my basement. The available space I have is 12' and 5" by 20' and 7" (628cm X 380cm), So here we go: 1-In a rectangle room is it always better to place the monitors facing the furthest wall or is ti ok the place them facing the closest wall? Is a back wall of 12' and 5" far enough? 2-What is the best shape for a control room? Is it with the side walls spreading further away from monitors? 3-With the available space I have, is it better to forget the idea of having an isolation booth and just record everything in the control room? 4-How small can a control room be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound? 5-How small can a drum booth be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound? 6-How small can a vocal booth be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound? Thanks for your help Andre

I'm no expert but: That's about the size I have available, and having spent many hours here and on Gearslutz, having read Rod Gervais' book and worked in many studios from pro to awful, have decided: 1) Firing along the long wall. You don't want the reflections from the back wall to arrive too soon. 2) Yes, but if the splay is less than 1 metre in 10 it's not worth the waste of space. In a small room you'll need to find where the early reflections are and put absorption there. 3) I'm with Rod Gervais and Ethan Winer and will be doing a single room. 4, 5, 6) the bigger the better.

Thanks

The available space I have is 12' and 5" by 20' and 7" (628cm X 380cm),

That's only two of the three dimensions that we need to know, to figure out if the space has good modal response or not.

1-In a rectangle room is it always better to place the monitors facing the furthest wall or is ti ok the place them facing the closest wall? Is a back wall of 12' and 5" far enough?

If the room is big enough, then it is OK to have the speakers facing across the room, but for most home studios that isn't the case. In general, you should have at least 10 feet between your head and the rear wall to be able to do that, which implies that the room needs to be at least 16 feet in that direction (front to back).

2-What is the best shape for a control room? Is it with the side walls spreading further away from monitors?

Best for what? There are several different room design philosophies or concepts, and each of them includes a set of specifications. One of those philosophies is "RFZ" (for "Reflection Free Zone", where the walls are angled and treated specifically to prevent any reflections from arriving at the sound engineer's ears, until at least 20ms has passed after the arrival of the direct sound, and at a level of at least 20 dB below the direct sound. (Some specs relax that to 15ms and 10db down for smaller rooms.) To build a true RFZ room, you must soffit mount your speakers and angle the front wall and ceiling to achieve that. But you can also build a good room with a simple rectangular shape, if you design it and treat it correctly. If you do go with an RFZ design, then the actual angle for splaying the walls is different for each room, and depends on many factors. You often see people quote "6° per side or 12° total", or some other fixed number, but in reality that isn't really correct for RFZ. 12° is the minimum total difference in angles that you need to get rid of flutter echo (6° per wall), but that has nothing at all to do with RFZ design, and flutter echo can be dealt with in other ways. RFZ rooms normally need much larger angles.

4-How small can a control room be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound?

ITU specifications call for a floor area of 20-60m2 for stereo rooms, or 30-70 m2 for multichannel rooms (5.1, 7.1, etc.). EBU specs sort of agree: Minimum of 40m2 for a reference listening room, or 30m2 for a high-quality control room. However, that does NOT mean that you cannot build a good room with smaller dimensions! Many people here on the forum have built great rooms in much smaller spaces. John has even built studios inside shipping containers.

5-How small can a drum booth be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound?

There's no real minimum for that, but you do need plenty of space for drums to sound good: High ceilings are good in a drum room too.

6-How small can a vocal booth be and still sound good? Or is it just that the bigger it is, the better it will sound?

The same as for a drum booth, there is no real minimum size, but bigger is better. At the very lest it should be big enough that there is good modal support for the lowest voice frequencies that you'll be recording.

3-With the available space I have, is it better to forget the idea of having an isolation booth and just record everything in the control room?

For that size space, it would probably be better to go with just one room, unless you REALLY need to isolate something very loud in order to track it clearly. - Stuart -