Starting Up Project Studio

Hi Everyone, Me and a friend are in the early stages of setting up a project studio business. We are hoping to combine gear we currently have to form a basis for a recording studio. We are looking into renting studio space in Manchester (UK) city center to start everything up. We've worked out that our budget will probably only stretch to a room that is roughly 25 sq metres (360 sq ft.) max. We were thinking maybe a 6x4m or 7x3.5m may be good to look for, but were looking for some advice on people's experience with limited space and what dimensions have worked for others. We were even looking into the possibilities of separating the room we get with a temporary wall (DIY job that we would do) to create a small control room - possible 2mx4m with the desk and monitors along the 2m wall. We don't know whether the extra cost would make it worth doing this and we also don't know how we would lay the room out effectively if we didn't have the separate control room. We have a drum kit and a electric piano which we would like to have housed in our studio, and be able to have the space to record small bands. We're ambitious so want to fit a lot into a small budget/space but we're really hopeful we can make something work. Any advice would be great! Thanks, Dave

Hey Dave, with 25 sqm I would generally advise against splitting the room. If anything, a small booth would be adequate for this size. To get more people willing to help you, you must honor the founder of this forum by reading the stickies ... Show some respect! Cheers!

Hi! Thanks for the reply. Sorry, I didn't mean to show disrespect at all, I'm obviously just at too early of a stage of the process to post specific details so should probably post back here when I have more info about the room we end up getting. However, as finding a suitable room is important, and we want to find the best space possible, what would you advise we look for dimension wise with our budget? If we could somehow stretch to c.320 sq ft. would it still be pointless building a separate control room? We are primarily wanting to record bands, so we want to have enough space for drums, maybe up to 3 standing musicians/vocalists and the small electric keyboard. The keyboard is about 1.7x1m and the drums would probably need 2x2m. What we will do is once we have found the space we will put together a detailed design map ourselves to re-post here which will hopefully be able to tick the boxes, and will ask your expert opinions on that! Thanks, Dave

Hi Dave. I was referring to the missing location, which is now in your profile! ;-) I think this is the most basic way of showing respect by having read the rules ... Anyway, with 30 - 40 sq meter room separation would be possible of course. The question is, what you wanna achieve. The space you need to have the musicians in a room is one thing, the sound you get from it something entirely different! Don't imagine, you will get your favorite drum sound in. 15sq m room, as no reverb can get you the sound of a good recording room with lively acoustics. The size of your whole studio dictates that it will be a mixing room with a small tracking room. Both of those will have to have a very short reverb time, to get good recordings and proper mixing. If you know that, you can start looking for good dimensions of a room to rent. Things to look for: - Dimensions in order to get two rooms with a good ration of length, width and height - good room height (at least 2.5m, more is better) - isolation/neighbors ... But actually, this is kind of impossible. Only if you know exactly what you want and can show a room and what you want to make of it (exactly), anybody could help you. For this it is important to get into studio acoustics, read one or two books about it and from there your plans will eventually evolve. If you are not willing to spend this time, you won't have a good studio, unless you can pay for someone to design it for you. I don't want to sound harsh, but that is what I had to learn as well. I started off with just wanting to do a little improvement, but that is just not how building a studio works. I could still learn a lot more in acoustics, as it is an endless subject, but now I feel quite comfortable to design, with a few questions asked here.

That's strange, I actually read that before my first post and set it so not sure why it didn't initially show! Thanks a lot for your quick replies - really helpful to our thought processes. We've decided to be wiser with our budget and not try too much too soon. We thought we would just try and get a nice 25m2 space to set up a nice mixing space/control room and then have initially a £500 budget or so for acoustic treatment and do location recording rather than having our own live room. We will then look at moving into a bigger space after a year of business or so, and having a 25m2 control room would give us some space for a couple of musicians to record in the room anyway, just not full bands. I will post pictures and dimensions of the room (fingers crossed we manage to find somewhere with good dimensions!) when we eventually find a place and also post my plans for acoustic improvements with the little budget I will have to get opinions and advise! Thanks, Dave EDIT: In fact, we just viewed a place that offers rooms that we could afford with dimensions - H:2.5m W:4m L:4.3m - this is based in a big mill and the room is soundproofed and we basically have free reign over customising the room, we just can't make structural changes and it has to be returned to how it was when we started renting it when we leave. There is however a biggish window down the length wall that I presume would need some work acoustically. What do you think about the potential of this kind of room for a mixing studio?

Well, that room is almost a square. The height is ok, but the dimensions are not good. But please! Get yourself a good book about acoustics (Rod Gervais is a good one for a start), learn the basics and come back here, once you have. You have to choices: 1) you wanna be quick and start working. Then you won't get much from this forum, because nobody has the time to make all your decisions - and even if someone did, you won't know what information is relevant to provide. 2) you wanna get somewhere with your studio? Then you have the take the time and a step back first. Learn what it is all about, choose a place and design something to show us, we can help you with. Anything in between is a waste of your time and money. Depending on your ability to learn stuff like that, this will take some time! And don't get me wrong: option 1 is a valid one, because you can easily get lost in building your studio. However, the work you put into learning will also be beneficial, once you realize, you will NOT get, what you were after with the first place.