One Big Room

A bit off topic... Unless I'm mistaken about your identity, I think I went to elementary school with your son in Oakland. We weren't extremely close but he did have me over to the house once or twice and your home studio was the first 'studio' I ever laid eyes upon. I was probably 6...I still have a faint memory of what it looked like and how it felt to be around a bunch of cool-looking keyboards. It was my first peek into this world and it left a huge impression on me. Anyway, I write and produce music for a living and I'm planning a studio build...came across this thread because I'm looking for one-room ideas. Looks like you're going a different direction now but I'll be curious to see what you come up with. Cheers!

Yes, Ehren. Sorry to answer so late. Haven't checked in for quite a while. Hope you're doing well. I think you can message me.

Okay. Humor me. I still want to build a single-room studio. I have the land and am working on design. I got a chance to buy a steel building for cheap. In the U.S. it’s called a Model S Quonset Hut. It’s 30X50X17 high. Once I figure out the isolation materials it'll be something like 23,000 cubic feet. The most famous steel building studio was in Nashville and was called “The Quonset Hut”. It was Columbia Records Studios. This will not be a commercial studio, but primarily for me to record my keyboards, both acoustic and electronic, the occasional small chamber music group, and a few instrumental overdubs. Every once in a while, I’ll let in my friends for small concerts. I need to keep out some intermittent light traffic noise from a street about 150 yards away. I wonder if anyone has experience with steel buildings or just some thoughts. For example, is the steel building one leaf by itself? If I spray insulation on the inside, is that one leaf? Is it even possible to achieve the required Mass-Space-Mass? In thinking about the one-room concept, I drew a simple floor plan using the Quonset Hut dimensions. I need the storage areas, so thought that putting a Reflection Free Zone between them might work. I hope this is enough information to get an idea or two. Thanks very much.

This isn't the actual building, but it's a Model S Quonset Hut slightly smaller than the one I'm looking at with the same straight walls and dome roof. The actual building has wider and deeper ridges.

Talking to myself again. I did find these, which are very helpful: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22566&hilit=steel viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21798&p=148181&hilit=Quonset#p148181 viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20919&hilit=Quonset I've tracked down all the posts with "Quonset" and "Steel building", I can find, and some of it is very helpful, particularly one post that said "Studio building is 80% design and 20% building." So far, everything for my studio is in my head and on paper. The other great quote is from "The Studio Builder's Handbook" by Owsinski and Moody: "Priorities, not perfection." First priority in my case is to build a room I can afford. In this era of tariffs and crazy building material prices, that is a big job. Thus, the idea of a Quonset Hut which I can get cheaper than any other material. It doesn't provide mass, but aesthetically, I can see it fitting well on the property. Perhaps the dome ceiling is a bad idea. I've heard that said many times in the forum without concrete examples, but I'm willing to accept it. All I can say about my experience is that I recorded a number of beautiful-sounding tracks in a church with a domed ceiling. It was the same church where my garage band held forth for years. True, in all the studios I've been lucky enough to make records in, including Criteria, The Record Plant, The Power Station, Electric Lady, Capitol, on and on, there were no domed ceilings. Point taken. Just thinking out loud. Will let you know when I've made some conclusions. Thanks.

the concave roof will not be good acoustically - however since (depending on your isolation requirements) will likely be building some structural bits in there, you could change that, perhaps even creatively like alternating angled ceiling segments to fix acoustics in live and make it something interesting, and proportional wide for the CR. any ideas on how you would sub-divide a 30' x 50' building (1500ft2)? CR/main live room (A studio)? smaller CR+ISO (B studio)? post-prod rooms (C & D rooms), kitchen/bathroom? storage, load in-out staging area?

Thanks, Glenn. Appreciated! I've left the drawing simple because I'm not close to final choice on building materials. Either the Quonset Hut as kind of a raincoat with double leaf framing inside, or a concrete brick building (still pricing.) I'm not very fast with the drawing program. I have put pretty much everything down with pencil and draft paper. "the concave roof will not be good acoustically - however since (depending on your isolation requirements) will likely be building some structural bits in there, you could change that, perhaps even creatively like alternating angled ceiling segments to fix acoustics in live and make it something interesting, and proportional wide for the CR." This photo of my previous piano recording room shows what we did pretty successfully with a domed roof. It's a little small for what I want now and is 3 hours away. Thus the new building. I made some big mistakes in the listening room with the last studio by believing architects and not consulting studio designers, but the recording area worked well. "any ideas on how you would sub-divide a 30' x 50' building (1500ft2)? CR/main live room (A studio)? smaller CR+ISO (B studio)? post-prod rooms (C & D rooms), kitchen/bathroom? storage, load in-out staging area?" The simple drawing is really the design I have at the moment. It's a contol/listening area with storage on either side, opening to a large practice/recording/teaching room. That's what I want until convinced or advised otherwise. The building is 20 feet from the house so I don't need a bathroom. Trying to save money. I have doors, loading slab, and furnishings on my pencil draft, but am waiting to put that in a Sketchup file until I know where the listening area and control room will be. I'm not too familiar with procedure on the forum. Should I be re-posting drawings that I already posted so people don't have to go back 8 replies? I've had complaints from moderators about starting a new post so I've kept all thoughts in this one. Good? Thanks.

generally speaking the rounded concave surface will cause a focal point of acoustic energy which may or may not be conducive to your desired room acoustics. i don't know what the construction of the piano room with the $30K piano in it is, but i suspect it's not simply some hard dome room like the hut your considering :wink: so regardless of the shell you buy/build - a control room by it's name requires "control" of the acoustics - room ratios, treatments, equipment, etc. so that will take some planning and i'm pretty confident that a concave ceiling in the CR will not be a good choice. who knows? a concave ceiling in the live room space may turn out to be perfect. and if it's not, you can fix it later by doing things, e.g. hanging poly-cylindrical waveguides along with absorptive clouds to shape it and retain liveness. ultimately the acoustics in the live room should be tested and adjusted for your desired purposes. it's also an option to build in adjustable treatments to increase/decrease liveness, diffusion, as well as moveable treatments like gobos etc to accommodate different use such as live performance recordings with all the players in the same room :yahoo:

Thanks for hanging with me, Glenn. Here's a photo of the old studio before it was completely finished and landscaped. The bin is where the piano room was built. It was very well isolated and the sound was controllable. I think I overspent on insulation/isolation, so am trying to avoid that with the new building. I sprayed the inside of the steel with urethane foam to seal it. Then put as much cellulose foam as I could, then left a 6" airspace and built a 2X6 frame completely isolated from the floor and ceiling with Corning 703 between the studs and 2 layers of dry wall. I then filled the cavities with blown-in insulation. You couldn't hear an outside sound in that room. Yes, I have plenty of Gobos and absorptive panels from the old studio to mess around in the recording/performing/teaching room. What I really want to figure out is whether it's possible to build the 2-leaf structure inside the new Quonset Hut without spending as much as I did before. I'll get back to the drawing program if that helps. I'm going to avoid trying to keep any curvilinear surface as you suggest. Hanging that much drywall, etc. from a faked curve surface will be too expensive and difficult anyway. Just an architectural dream that I'll jettison. The question is: Do I have to isolate both walls of the 2-leaf structure from the outside of the steel building to avoid a 3-leaf system? Thanks.

i think if the structure is (from outside in): steel shell (presumed thin), wood or steel frame filled with spray-in closed cell foam insulation, drywall mass, air gap, inner framing filled with insulation (tbd), drywall mass. should work. ideally if the exterior mass could be added to the outer shell and then fill that framing with insulation (tbd - but not sprayed), that would be more effective.

Thanks, Glenn. Makes sense. Will keep this thread going as I build since some were interested in the one room concept. Won’t start building until later in the Spring so I have lots of time to plan. I think I should lay out the usage of this room: This will be a multi-use studio for composing, teaching, recording, and tiny concerts. -Most of the recording time will be me as engineer recording solo piano, hand percussion, accordion, and Hammond Organ with Leslie speaker as well as plugins and electronic keyboards.. -Depending on the market, I’ll also offer solo piano recording to people who need a short demo or even a record. I have 2 pianos: a Yamaha S6, and a Mason and Hamlin 904 Concert Grand. I’d be surprised if this happened more than a few times a year. -At times I may record small chamber music groups, duos, trios, maybe a quintet, also just a few times a year. Given that I won't be recording drums in the middle of the night, I need to isolate to keep noise out more than I do to keep noise in. I have plenty of absorbing panels from my previous studio, and can build what else I need. I did a little decibel level test and most noise was around 55 dB with occasional bursts of motorcycles at 80 dB. I don’t intend to buy much equipment, since I have Schoeps, Earthworks, Neumann, AudioTechnica, and Shure mics with Grace, UA 2-610, and Focusrite preamps and an RME Multiface convertor with a powerful Windows 10 computer. My initial desire is to have an open studio with no control room, but almost everyone seems to think I need an isolated control room. Since probably more than 95% of the studio usage is just me running back and forth between the console desk and the instruments, it seems unnecessary. However, I’m open to the idea. I would only be monitoring live with the occasional other musician using the room, but for well over 95% it'll just be me. If some great engineer moves to town, who knows.... I’ll do my drawings on paper and pencil because I see no point in trying to learn a really complicated drawing program for one project. Thanks!

Here's the first pencil sketch of proposed studio. If it's illegible, please let me know and I'll re-do. The drawing programs are too obtuse for me. Thanks. Meeting with builder this afternoon to see feasibility of using Quonset Hut, but this drawing uses concrete blocks filled with sand.

coolio!

Coolio won't be recording here, but THANKS, Glenn! I'll get to some more detailed drawings soon. Just met with my builder/contractor and got a lot of ideas, including separate concrete foundation for external shell and internal. Question: If I do that, will I need as much mass/isolation on the interior structure? Assuming that I need to keep out mainly mid-range stuff from traffic. I'm also going to see what poured concrete walls cost as opposed to blocks. Thanks for all the help. Any criticisms or suggestions appreciated.

if you can separate the slabs (which requires a strong commitment on the design) that will help - room to room and if possible from the exterior wall. less structural transfer.

Thanks, Glenn. Putting that in the plans. Trying to determine now whether a poured concrete wall is cheaper than concrete blocks. Is there a reason to avoid poured concrete? Thanks.

not really, properly constructed walls made from poured concrete are pretty much the most massive of outer layers. the challenge becomes what about all the holes in it? (doors, windows, and that big one called a roof).

Moving along on material pricing list and have a good quote for concrete brick walls 12 feet high filled with cement. Questions: 1. Is there a best material to use for a roof? I like the looks of steel, but don't know if that's extra noisy. 2. How much space should I leave between the concrete brick outer wall and the inner woodframed wall? That will be on a separate concrete slab. Thanks! 3. The "Listening" area will have a ceiling 12' high. The tracking/concert area will be open to the rafters. I will figure out how to draw this, but if you can envision it, would I have to double insulate the open roof above the listening area (the rafters) as well as the 12" ceiling in that area? Could I get away with building a wall over the listening area up to the rafters and dbl. insulating that? I think this is hard to envision, so rather than have you guess what I mean I'll try and get a drawing done.

How much space should I leave between the concrete brick outer wall and the inner woodframed wall?

I don't know if you are aware of Gregwor's Transmission Loss calculator but if you haven't already used it, I urge you to do so. It will give you a solid, theoretical guide to what the gap between inner & outer leaves should be for various materials. Best wishes, John. https://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21770

Thanks, John. Much appreciated.