New studio construction from scratch

Hi, First of all, i want to say thanks for a <B>great</B> site! I'm a string player living in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill triangle in central North Carolina. Been playing for 44 years, and obsessed with music all my life. It's been a lifelong dream to have my own music and recording studio, and we're in a position to make that happen now. I play a variety of bowed and plucked strings, as well as some modest keyboards and flutes/whistles. Tracking those, and vocals, is a primary requirement. I also play in a bunch of different ensembles, including a progressive folk/bluegrass band (all acoustic, no drums), an alt country/americana group (electric and acoustic guitars, pedal steel, electric bass, drums, mando & fiddle), electric progressive rock and jam bands, and classical music (duos, trios & quartets mostly). Being able to rehearse and record all of these projects is another primary requirement. I plan to run the studio as a business when i retire sometime within the next 10 years, and want to be able to offer a variety of services, so flexibility is important too. We're not talking about anything excessively loud. The rock stuff can get fairly loud, but no Marshall stacks cranked to 11. We are in an older residential neighborhood with large (2+ acre) lots, and my nearest neighbor is more than 200 feet away. We are also near an airport, so there is occasional plane noise when the flight paths happen to be nearby. One other consideration is that within the next 10 years, a highway will be built about 3/4 mile away, and there will be construction noise. Sound isolation is important, then, both for inside noise leaking out and especially outside leaking in. A couple months ago, i discovered John's site and have been visiting here regularly ever since, quietly learning. Also been visiting other sites, and have read a few books (Cooper's "Building a Recording Studio", the F. Alton Everest budget studio from scratch book, and a couple of Philip Newell's books). My thoughts are to have 3 main rooms: A larger performance room to be used for practices and recording, a small isolation booth that is large enough to hold a modest drum kit and has good visibility to the performance room, and a comfortably-sized control room. Add to this a bathroom, storage areas that could double as amplifier booths, and a foyer area with some chairs where folks can chill. My wife would like there to be an upstairs area we can use for storage, and that would also provide some space for possible amplifier isolation. Between a full time job as a software engineer, practice and performance schedules, and family life, time is precious, and though i'm handy, i can't handle building the shell myself, so we're going to contract that. The studio buildout inside i'll do myself with the help of friends, and it can be phased over time. My budget is around $50,000 for the shell, including electrical service and minimal wiring, rough plumbing, and rough HVAC. I'm budgeting around $25,000 over the next several years to finish off the interior and upgrade the HVAC (proper ductwork, mainly). Here's a link to a proposed floor plan draft for a roughly 27'x34' building, around 900 square feet on the first floor: http://www.catsawayproductions.com/images/FloorPlan750.jpg. No sound treatments are shown. Construction is slab on grade with 2x6 exterior framing handling all the loading with 24" floor trusses to support the second half-story. This gives completely open space that can be subdivided without worrying about load bearing walls. Interior walls will be floated, floors independently floated, and first story is 12' high to provide room for shell-within-a-shell construction. Upstairs half-story is an attic room with kneewalls, built inside a 10 on 12 pitched roof. The problem is, we're about $10,000 or so over budget on the shell :-( Is there a better layout than what i've drawn that could be squeezed into a little smaller space, say perhaps 800 square feet? Or if we decide to extend our budget and build 900 square feet, is there a better way to allocate the space?

Miner, I am doing about the same thing myself, same circumstances allthough only one story. I like your plan. Here is my rendition, you may like as well. I opted for a 28 x 33.5 ft building with 10 ft perimeter walls and freespanned trusses. The inside walls are 9 ft with each room having its own ceiling. Right now my a/c is to be in a small room above the break room where the lower walls are only 8 ft, so there is an attic space that is walled in and insulated for the air handler. You could potentially modify it a little for your use. Tom

Hi Tom, Thanks for the reply! I didn't mean to post and run there, but the last few days have been really hectic and i'm just getting time to finally respond.

tmix wrote:

Miner, I am doing about the same thing myself, same circumstances allthough only one story. I like your plan.

Thanks! It's gone through many iterations. Many :)

tmix wrote:

Here is my rendition, you may like as well. I opted for a 28 x 33.5 ft building with 10 ft perimeter walls and freespanned trusses. The inside walls are 9 ft with each room having its own ceiling. Right now my a/c is to be in a small room above the break room where the lower walls are only 8 ft, so there is an attic space that is walled in and insulated for the air handler. You could potentially modify it a little for your use. Tom

That L-shaped live room is very interesting. Do you think you would use gobos to isolate the drums? What kind of music do you play/record? I found the topic for your studio and read through it. Your first plan looks almost exactly like my first plan did. A couple of the books suggested that it was a good idea to be able to get to the control room without having to go through the live room, and vice versa, and that seemed like a good idea... Good idea about the A/C. I'm planning to do the same sort of thing, and will put it above the bathroom, where the ceiling will also be 8' high. I'm still thinking i'll need an isolation booth / studio B that's big enough to hold a modest drum kit to be able to record an acoustic ensemble with drums without having the drums bleed all over the acoustic mics. The control room approach is real interesting though and i'm going to rework my plan a little. Also wondering if it might be more efficient to tuck the bathroom under the stairs? Have you seen that Left Bank Studio design that John did? It sure looks nice! Not much bigger than the spaces we are considering. Have you begun construction yet?

Miner wrote:

Hi Tom, That L-shaped live room is very interesting. Do you think you would use gobos to isolate the drums? What kind of music do you play/record?

Yes Gobos, that is what I was lamely trying to draw behind the kit. I record mainly acoustic oriented Celtic / Folk/ Jazz and Country.

Miner wrote:

I'm still thinking i'll need an isolation booth / studio B that's big enough to hold a modest drum kit to be able to record an acoustic ensemble with drums without having the drums bleed all over the acoustic mics. The control room approach is real interesting though and i'm going to rework my plan a little. Also wondering if it might be more efficient to tuck the bathroom under the stairs?

Tha is what I was attempting with the iso booth. Since I drew this plan it has gone another transformation but I am not sure it is final enough to show yet. A little more tweaking is in order.

Miner wrote:

Have you begun construction yet?

Not yet! I am still waiting on the Local officials to approve me to build. I am going to follow your building as well! Tom

Hi Tom,

tmix wrote:

Yes Gobos, that is what I was lamely trying to draw behind the kit. I record mainly acoustic oriented Celtic / Folk/ Jazz and Country.

Sounds like we have similar interests in the types of music we'd like to record.

tmix wrote:

Tha is what I was attempting with the iso booth. Since I drew this plan it has gone another transformation but I am not sure it is final enough to show yet. A little more tweaking is in order.

I don't know why i was thinking your iso booth was smaller. It's actually a bit larger than the one in my current draft. 7'-6" to 8' might be a little cozy for drums, though. I'm actually thinking about making mine just a tad wider than its current 8' to 9' to give a little more room for miking. Got some other tweaking to do on mine too. Thinking it might be possible to squeeze the length down a couple feet by swapping the bath and stairs (and changing the bath layout). Those darned stairs just take up so much space :-)

tmix wrote:

I am still waiting on the Local officials to approve me to build. I am going to follow your building as well!

I'm still staggering over sticker shock from the quotes from the two contractors we've talked to :-( Good luck with your approvals!