need to build Mix room in Garage... available space: 13x16

Hi everyone, great forum! I've spent the last few days reading up on as much as I could pertaining to a small mix room. I'm a working drummer/producer/AE , I have a commercial room that I work in as a day gig when not on the road, but with the addition of a new baby girl this last March, I really need to be able to do some work at home. We've just bought a new condo here in sunny so. cal (Carlsbad CA. ) and I have a two car garage that the wife has agreed to give up for my "man space" . I need to keep a section free for storage, and access to the washer dryer. that leaves me a 13x16 ft square to work with. The rub is that there is a roll up garage door that will bring approximately 5 ft of the ceiling height down to 7 ft. The rest will be 9ft if I don't build in a lid. Some more details: I don't have to have any ISO, I won't be tracking there ( with the exception of an occasional vocal or perc overdub in the CR) I don't have to worry about bugging the neighbors either , I'll be mixing at sane volumes. I'd like to set it up for surround as well, with the emphasis being on stereo work( music) I don't know that soffit mounting of the monitors will be necessary , but I'm open to suggestions... Monitors: right now Dyn bm6a's and Ns10's. probably move to ADAM p11's in a surround config with a sub, MAYBE S3A's. I'll ditch the dyns. I havent found a mac drawing program that I can use as yet, but I'll try and scan a hand sketch. I'd like to basically use the existing side wall, and build the other 3, using the exsisting ceiling as is , just treating it. The floor will be hard wood, and there will be a love seat sized sofa. in the back corner of the room I shoud be left with a little area that COULD be a very small vocal booth, but I think I'll opt for a little storage closet. i'd like to make the back wall a combo bass trap and ceiling to floor bookshelf to do double duty as diffusion and a groovy place to kick back and read. oh, and I'll need to be able to mount a vid monitor on the front wall as well for mix to pix. sketch to come soon hopefully...

First I think having a square room is very bad from an acoustic perspective, I'd rethink the shape, 13x13 sounds very bad (not to mention unlucky :twisted: )

The rub is that there is a roll up garage door that will bring approximately 5 ft of the ceiling height down to 7 ft.

Does this mean that you'll be building into the space under the garage door when it's opened? If that's the case then what use is the garage door to you? Just keep it closed and build right up to it, losing no headroom at all (low ceilings are a pita)

cajonezzz, this is a similar situation to the one i am in. it sounds like you are trying to retain function of the garage door, leaving about a 5 ft corridor alongside your studio. is that right? one thing to consider, since you are going "under" the rails, is the thickness not only of the ceiling beneath the garage door rails but also the thickness of any interior ceiling absorption (for acoustical purposes) you'll be using. that can take away several inches. hopefully your garage door rails are high enough that your headroom won't be a problem. although i guess if your desk faces the garage door, then headroom on that side won't be as much of an issue. if you are interested, you can check out my much messier garage pix elsewhere on the forum. i'm going for iso though, since i want to drum in there. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3876 in my case (just to compare notes, no suggestion implied), i've decided to cut the rails and block (read: virtually destroy) the roll up door. but i've got a side door to the outside that i can access the garage thru. my wife wasn't too excited about that but i cried, so she gave in. :twisted: er, i mean, i angrily demanded my "man space." (new baby coming as well!!) good luck, and congrats on the new kid :) dan

rick, yeah, there will be a 5 ft corridor. I'll keep that for a workbench and my bike stuff ( do a lot of mtn biking ) I also really like to just hang out there "man land" I can't modify the door, I'm going to be able to build the lid in at that overlap of the door to about 7 ft. I think I can make it work, well, HAVE to make it work for the time being. This whole plan first started with the idea of just putting up some gobo's and rolling the PT rig in to mix at home, but then it started snowballing into a "mix room" . I've got a bud that does some heavy hitting as a mixer in his LA home with the same set up, so I know at the very least the room can be "learned" , although I'd really like to make it as accurate as possible. I could make it a little deeper, like 15ft, and perhaps a little more narrow.... but I just assumed that as large as possible would be best- counting on treatment do make up for the square room. I could be wrong there... I've got about 16 of the Mini traps in the mothership studio I work at, and they did wonders in our 22x19 CR, I'm assuming that using some built in trapping and perhaps building or purchasing some for the garage room will get her done. The main thing I want to figure out is whether or not I should design in the angled walls or just treat the holy *&^$% out of the room. I still haven't had a chance to post a sketch..... maybe tonite. congrats on your baby man! I'm enjoying the Mr. Mom experience SO much. Kinda hard to get stuff done.. but way fun .

Ok, here's a rough idea of the set up for the room. I'll include pics of the empty garage as well. I haven't included any plans for angled walls, and I'm definitely thinking of NOT doing soffits.... I'll use stands instead. The tricky part is going to be building a lid below the roll up garage door that I need to keep fully functional. I think that would make the bottom of the ceiling at mix position about 7 ft. It would then angle up to the beam the crosses the room ceiling ( going from 7ft to about 8ft. In order to buy a couple more feet in back, i decided to have the door to the garage open right into the the room, that gives me a total interior dimension of about 13x16. Here's a link to the pics of the garage- http://homepage.mac.com/craigzarkos/PhotoAlbum21.html Here's a pretty cheesy diagram that I would love to have some input on!

oops, here it is: and btw, the construction of the exsisting garage wall is basic california 2x4 studs/ insulation and sheetrock. floor is concrete, I'll put a hard wood floor down