oh migod, i've found my home

hello all, click around long enough and you'll find your way home. i'm a newbie here, but i can already tell i'm gonna be here a lot. what a great site! i'm currently making music in the second studio I've built, the first was in my garage, the current was built from the ground up using intuition and luck. it's about 625 sq feet, 400 feet of which is control room and 225 is live room. i decided to put most of the space in the control room because that's where the majority of my work takes place. the reason for this, the first of what will likely be many, post, is: my girlfriend and i are going to build our Dreamhouse here in los angeles. this will allow me to build a still better studio. i'll use my experience from designing the other two and hopefully some of your input. i'm a composer for film and t.v., mostly advertising, and a drummer by trade. i also record other people when i'm not involved in my own projects. i do about half programmed music and half live people. the new studio will be about 750 sq feet and i can do what ever i want with it, of course keeping in mind that budget is a consideration, as it is for every one everywhere. i have autocad, (can't use it yet), just downloaded smartdraw based on a post here, i've been reading a book by the studio bauton guys. i'm just kind of stuck at a creative impasse. i really don't know how to get on with the process. so, i'm asking for advice. what would you guys do? what proportions live to control room? should i put the grand piano in it's own booth? you can't track piano and drums in the same room at the same time...should the vocal booth be next to the drum room or at the oposite end, for more separation? i'm considering putting a 3 foot deep closet along the wall of the live room on the side that abutts the neighbors, do help with sound proofing, semi romm in room. is this a good use of space? what would you guys do with 750 or so square feet? how high should the roof be? sloed or flat? do you recommend any books? has anyone done a room this size recently? thanks so much in advance, your new friend, jono

Jono, welcome to the board - if you've not already done so, click on the John Sayers Productions logo at the top right of the screen; it opens up to several links, all of which have very useful info including lots of pics and plans for studios our members have built or are in the process of building. The SAE site (recording manual) has not only tons of info on all things studio, but a page of a few basic plans from commercial size to single room. The page entitle "wall units" shows ways to treat a small to medium size room. This entire site is moderated by only four people; John, Thomas Barefoot, Myself, and Aaron - as such, and considering that this is basically a free site, (the donation button at the top tends to get ignored most of the time) there isn't enough time to always educate members from scratch; that's why we have so much info available just for looking. Please feel free to look around enough to at least get a general idea of what you need in a studio, download a demo of Smartdraw (most of our members use it, I don't) from their site at smartdraw.com, and try your hand at a beginning floor plan. Be sure and allow enough wall thickness for good isolation, 8-12" if you want near total iso between rooms or between you and the outside. In the Construction forum, click on the announcement near the top titled REFERENCE AREA - there's a lot of info there on what works and what doesn't for sound isolation, etc. Sometimes John gets enough free time to tackle something as vague as your question, but he works better with a known size/shape of space. If you're building from scratch, be sure and make the space intended for your studio larger than you think you'll need - things like machine rooms to quiet computers/tape decks, thicker than normal walls, high ceilings for better acoustics in live rooms, space in ceilings for bass trapping, heavy floated floors for maximum isolation, etc, all eat up more room than we ever plan for. If your space will be part of a basement, plan to dig 2-3 feet deeper than normal so you'll have the extra headroom for floated floors and traps in ceilings, sloped ceilings, HVAC ducting... I hope this gives you a general idea of how to "get the juices flowing" - but only you can decide which parts are important to your particular situation, and none of us has enough time to draw half a dozen different 750 square foot studios for you to pick from. We do this on our own time in addition to our own projects, so about the best we can do is advise when something won't work, or when something else would work better. So please check the sources I listed above, and be sure to click on the UPDATE buttons on each studio in the Recording Studios Under Construction link - there are more pix and commentary on each of those pages as well. Then, download a demo copy of Smartdraw and try your hand at it - you'll get plenty of critique on your efforts (everybody's a critic :roll: ) Good luck, and welcome... Steve

Hey Steve, thanks for the heads up. i'm in the middle of exploring all of the goodies on this site. very educational. the juices are flowing freely now. one question has come to mind...when putting splayed walls in a studio, is it preferable, more common, more economically wise... to kill additional space and put the splayed walls in the interior, or to try to make the walls of the structure non parallel. an odd shaped building will set off alarms at the building dept. and design review board here in woodland hills, but i'm not very excited about wasting my precious space if i don't have to. does anybody have any thoughts? jono

Three quick comments: Read and learn as much as you can. Good, as in ouststanding for what can be done, studio construction is 90% planning and 10% building. Secondly, do the first as much as possible before starting your home. You have a blank slate right now. Certain things like structural posts can be moved somewhat in the planning stage. The best way to achieve LF isolation is mass, as in concrete. This is also quite ecomical if being done from the start. Third, the building department is not your enemy, assuming that you are not violating any zoning bylaws. The reson they exist is to assure safety. If you work witht hem closley, they can actually be an asset in knowing what has been done in similar situations and give useful suggestions. Enjoy! Andre ps: Welcome to the forum.