Build studio inside a colourbond shed

Hi Everyone, I am new to this forum but loving it. Im in a small country town in NSW Australia. I have just had a colourbond shed built in my backyard. Its 7m x 12m x 2.7m high to the eaves. The front half has 2 roller doors and will be used to store 2 cars. The back half gets to become a studio :D The size left for the studio is 7m x 5.5m x 2.7m high (3.6m high at the peak of the roof). I want to try to make it as sound proof as possible so it can be used as a bit of a rehearsal space as well. Any ideas on how i should divide up the space between control room and recording / rehearsal room. Thanks in advance for any input :D Pete

You could consider making it one space. If you build a room in room out of that space as a single room, you could get a decent sounding space, where one really likes to record a drum set and use the room sound. However you divide the space up in two rooms, you will take that nice sounding tracking room away and end up with one, where you rather aim for a dry sound and post precess it. So, I guess this should be the first question you ask yourself: How important is a separate mixing room for your purpose? If it is rather small, it will not be decent sounding for mixing purposes, but still take away from the quality of the recording space. If you use approximately half of the space for a tracking room and the other half for the tracking/rehearsing room, you will end up with a decent recording room and a decent (but dry sounding) tracking room. Ask yourself, how you will probably use the room(s) the most! Maybe a one room solution turns out to be the best thing. Or you might sell your wife's car and use more of the space! :mrgreen:

Hey thanks for the reply FriFlo. I was hoping to have a separate mixing room so i can record acoustic guitar and vocals and stuff without getting pc noise and other noises in the background of the take. I also spend a lot of time tweeking mixes and so on so a nice sounding decent mixing room is kind of important to me. Do you think i would be able to get a good sounding control room out of it as well as a tracking room big enough to track drums even though they would be dry and post process them? I have made a scale model on sketchup of my shed space to the mm i will upload it when i get home if that helps. Im struggling to divide the room up as im not sure how small i can make each room without feeling too cramped lol

Here is a sketch up file of the space i have to build the studio. I have measured it to the mm and put in steel framework of the shed and how far it sticks out from a plasterboard / gyprock layer that i already have. I have put timbers around the inside which is where i was planning to start the outside frame of the studio giving me a 150mm air gap on the sides and about 100mm air gap along the back wall. I was expecting to spend around $10,000 on materials and do all the construction myself. but i am realising now it may blow out to a larger amount. Thanks for any advice :D

$10.000 sounds about realistic for the materials. If you do it all by yourself, your have to calculate a long building time, depending on your level of experience. For some parts you will definitively need help from friends. Unfortunately, I am not the right person to quickly draw a room separation for you due to my lack of experience. I did not have the room to do any fancy layouts. I can however with certainty tell you, that a single room of those dimensions will result in a satisfactory room sound (e.g. recoding drums). But it entirely depends on the sound you are after. Of course you can do a small recording booth (with dry sound) and decent sounding mixing room, or the other way around (although I would not recommend this)! But if you want to capture some ambience from the room, only the full size will give you satisfactory results. I am telling this without any knowledge of how important that is to you! But however I roughly divide that room, either the tracking room or the mixing room end up very small or the dimensions are bad for room modes. I guess, a small vocal booth and a small storage/PC-Room will work out well with the mixing room still having good proportions. The PC noise can easily be reduced to a minimum nowadays. Just let an experienced DAW builder build it and use SSDs only and you won't hear a thing from the PC. That should not worry you and it is way cheaper to build a new PC than building the studio!

I also spend a lot of time tweeking mixes and so on so a nice sounding decent mixing room is kind of important to me.

I would go with a one room solution or a big mixing room with small booth and storage. Everything that needs a bigger room to sound can be recorded directly in the main room then. Not that it will be perfect, since the requirements to a tracking room are different to those of a mixing room! But with the space you have, you will have to make some compromises. I have a 20 square meter mixing room and a 15 square meter tracking room with narrow ceiling (2,37m). My tracking room is only as a bonus to be able to record something with listening to it on the main speakers. It is mainly a work space for my piano teaching. I would certainly go somewhere else to seriously record drums.

Now I'm keen to take the plunge and build a studio. ... So here's the plan; I have a 6m x 3m x 2.4m/2.7m (pent roof) colourbond steel shed. ... to opt for good (as is possible within a reasonably low budget) acoustic treatment.

Now I'm keen to take the plunge and build a studio. ... So here's the plan; I have a 6m x 3m x 2.4m/2.7m (pent roof) colourbond steel shed. ... to opt for good (as is possible within a reasonably low budget) acoustic treatment.

Hi "shooldvv4". Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :) Also, please start your own thread about your build: where you are posting right now is on the thread of someone else, about their build. - Stuart -