Bought a building...

OK. I've bought a building for investment purposes but also to get my studio out of the attic. The kids need another bedroom. The building is a historic 3-story brick storefront-type place on a main street/shopping area. There are apartments and a store in the main building. There is a concrete block garage added to the back of the building where I plan to put in the studio. The space is oddly shaped but I think I can make it work. Its not big enought to build the ultimate studio for what I would like but I don't think I'll be there for 20 years either. Hence the budget won't be huge for renovating. Whatever is built here must be also usable for another tenant in the future once I've left so making a bunch of oddly shaped booths and full-floating construction is not really going to happen. BUT... I make a living mixing and producing albums, audio for film, scoring, foley, you name it... I need to build at least one room that is floated so I can have a quiet space to do stuff like foley and also to record drums at 3am without bothering the neighbors. Secondly, I want to be able to do two sessions at one time. I am currently turning down work that could be accomplished with a second engineer and another room. I don't like turning down work. :oops: So, in the following plans, there are two main rooms, the one at top would be floated and be the primary recording room. The bottom one would be the control room and not floated. I monitor pretty low and am not too concerned about noise transmission from there. The little narrow space at lower left would be basically an office/storage space that could double as a booth in a pinch. The ceiling there is 15' and I would like to make a loft-like storage area and bass trap above the office. I really want good bass response, no really freeckin' awsome bass response! Its the one area that is sooo difficult to get right without a decent sized room. I'm hoping that putting up a bass trap above the office area could give me that. We'll see. This is just a basic floorplan layout. Treatments would have to be thought through and added inside these walls (soffits, slats, hanger up in ceiling etc...). Any and all feedback is desired... Please let me know what you like and hate about it.... Thanks, Ashley

Open floor plan w/dimensions

Tripped-out 3D view. Been using SketchUp on the Mac. You can get it for PC as well. Absolutely the most fun you can have on two feet... BTW, the roof is sloped up from right to left 10'-~14'.

maybe like this? cheers john

Thanks, John. That could definitely work. I was guessing I might have to splay the walls a bit further as you have done. One question, can I do surround work in there? That's one of my needs at this point, doing more film work. I've been making a model of the ITU-R spec so I can place it in the design to see but haven't done it yet. Thanks for the input. Could I make the wall behind the soffits go all the way to the corner? That way, when I leave the space and remove the soffits, the room would be as large as possible for another tenant. Does the soffit wall itself, define the dimension of the room acoustically? -ashley

This is what a true 5:1 setup would be like in that room - problem with the pole :) Yes you can take away the wall behind the soffit. cheers john

Yea, the pole. Hmm... I think I could get the pole moved at least a couple feet. It is supporting a beam that runs the width of the upper roof. Removing would be expensive, but a couple feet over would help a lot. The surround plan you have there wasn't an ITU-R setup. I'd want to be standard so I could do film mixing there. Here's a new floor plan with a smaller speaker distance (6 feet to listen pos) so it would fit in the space and still give me room for the keyboard station. The 3D view shows the high ceilings that I would use for major bass trapping. I've also considered putting a 15 foot long bass trap above the office area behind the control room. that would yeild a 35' dimension long ways. Would that really help the bass a lot? Are the speakers too close for a good surround setup? Right now I'm about 5' from my speakers and that's about as close as I want to be. I'm trying to leave that back wall as open to the hallways as posible since it most likely will have a bathroom entrance there. thoughts? -ashley

The surround plan you have there wasn't an ITU-R setup.

No it's th alayout suggested by the US engineers recently and is a layout I agree with. The rear speakers are at 135 degrees instead of 110. I'd move the pole.:) cheers john