Stickhouse studio

Ok, here we go finally. This is my initial floorplan idea for my new studio. I'm open to any and all ideas. It's going to be a freestanding structure that isn't built yet, so the dimensions are flexible to a degree (just have to be able to fit in between the trees on the lot somewhere...). The relative sizes of the spaces are pretty close to what I'd like. Obviously, I'm not planning to cut drums in the booth. Mostly vocals and acoustic instruments, and guitar amps. I don't know about the ceiling/roof pitch. Anything but a standard flat ceiling... I want this room to sound good for mixing. I was thinking about something that peaked in the control room with a long slope to the front of the building (the bottom of the plan), or just a single slope from back down to the front. As we discussed a couple weeks ago, I'm in the Cheap/Good camp, but at the same time, I'm going to be struggling to do my piling up work in a third bedroom in the house, so this can't take forever. I'll be hiring guys to draw the plans for the permits, so I'd like to get mine pretty detailed eventually. Is that bathroom big enough for a shower? I have a million more questions and issues to go through, but I guess a floorplan is a good place to start. Once we get that roughed in a little better, we can move to the construction forum. :D Dimensions are in Feet. I'm learning this software as I go, so, I couldn't figure out how to to make it do Feet and Inches, only decimal feet. Thanks, brian

That's cool Brian - well done :D :wink: the only suggestion I'd make would be to square off the rear wall in the control room like you did the front. I'd make the front wall a slot resonator like this. cheers john

Yeah, I wondered about that square backwall, but had seen something recently that made me think it was less of an issue. What's your theory for that? I'm assuming that the fact that they're parallel (the front and back wall) isn't an issue because they're both absorptive? And those corner traps... those are insulation filled with fabric fronts right? And what about treating the Tracking Room? For vocals and acoustic guitar... so not totally dead, but I don't really want to hear the room in the recordings. Thanks for the insight, brian

Brian - the slot resonator across the front wall will help break up the parallels - yes the corner traps are as you described. For you studio I'd use a combination of slots and HF treatment. The slots will absorb the low-mids -(a typical problem in a room that size) whilst still keeping the highs active thus avoiding that "DEAD" room sound you get when it's all high end absorption. What's the ceiling height in the room?? Take a look at the booth at Left Bank - it has ceiling hangers as well as the slots - there is lottsa glass too. I've recorded drums in there and they sound great. (not live but very tight and even) cheers john

BTW - you could soffit your speakers in this setup :) cheers john

Ceiling height is still up for grabs. I'm thinking of doing something like a long slope from the front of the building (where the door in is) to the back, so that the ceiling is pretty high in the control room. I'm not at sure if that's practical at this early stage. So, hopefully the Tracking Room will be around 8', with a slope up towared the Control room. However, I haven't really thought about how to deal with HVAC in this set up... but if I end up going with the Split Systems I'm hearing about, this ceiling wouldn't be a problem. I'm doing to some rough outside elevations today... I'll post them later to get your feeback.

John Sayers wrote:

BTW - you could soffit your speakers in this setup :) cheers john

Yeah, I think I'm going to wait on that. I'm not loving my 1031s right now, and do enough mixing that I need a couple of different speakers to check translation, so I don't want to commit to soffits now. Maybe later when I can get some bigger monitors with some real low end, I might like them in the wall. And, I'm going to have to trim costs where I can, so the extra labor that soffits requires is a downside now. Hopefully, through this process I'll learn enough carpentry that I can build them in myself when the time comes.

I'd consider a scissor truss design for your ceiling. Like this cheers john

That's cool.... Part of what's making me think about a long slope, is that I'm going to be building this studio into a hillside. So, the back, where the Control Room is, will be partly in the hill, so those windows will be sort of high from inside. I though it'd be cool for the roof slope to sort of follow the slope of the hill, giving myself a nice high ceiling in the Control Room. One of my questions for the contractors is whether or not I'll be incurring a lot of cost by building this sort of open high celing with such a long span.

So, here's what I was thinking, without knowing at all what construction of this sort of thing is like. thanks, b