Not a garage studio design - comments and advice please!

First post but I can take the sh*t 'cos I've been around a bit (quite a lot actually!) This forum is magic 'cos I'd never have got as far as I have without it so heads up thanks to everyone whose contributed to it. To the point at hand ... I'm breaking out on my own (I'm a musician and sound engineer) and I need somewhere to work. There's nowhere in the house suitable (I'm working out of a 9' x 5' box room at the moment and it's bloody hopeless!) and we don't have a garage so this isn't a garage studio design (but it could be, it could be!) :D I'm going to (planning permission allowing) build at the bottom of the garden but there are some restrictions ... The building cannot be more than 30 sq.m (320 sq.ft) in area and it cannot be more than 4m (13') high. Any bigger and I'd have to deal with UK Building Regs and that really is better avoided! In any case the plot won't stand for anything bigger. Our plot backs on to open fields. The building will be over 8m (26') from the house and 10m (32') from the nearest neighbours house. Noise needs to be kept right down obviously especially as I tend to work into the early hours of the morning. My neighbours are pretty tolerant but the wife works on the night shift and she's gonna be closest! I mainly work with acoustic music (folk, jazz etc.) and record live or in session all over the country. I need good mixing facilities coupled to a small studio for my own recordings and overdubs preferably with a reasonable vocal booth. I also must have storage space for my PA kit and somewhere to put a PC and filing cabinet for the business side of things. A pretty tall order in the space available but the attached plans are what I've come up with. I'd very much appreciate any comments or suggestions Sorry the dims are all metric, some wazzock took us into Europe and now we're not allowed to use good old feet and inches on planning applications :x The building is about 25'8" long, 12'5" wide and 11'0" to the ridge. The control room measures 7'4" wide at the front wall and 9'6 at the back wall by 10'8" long (measured to the inside of the inner insulation). The ceiling is 7' 4.5" high at the end walls and 8'7" high in the middle of the room. The unconventional placement of the mixer is deliberate. My desk, gear rack and DAW have to be portable so either side of a central kneehole desk is 21" wide adjustable shelving to take the kit in its flight cases. The studio is very small (7'3x10'8 at the big end!) I know but it's physically big enough for my needs. I don't need to get a five piece band in the place and it's mainly going to be used for recording backing instrumentals and backing vocals to add to material recorded elsewhere. However, I really would prefer to have two small rooms rather than one bigger one unless the expert opinion is that it won't fly acoustically I'm not sure whether to make the back wall of the control room behind the sofa as a slot resonator or whether to cover it in cloth. And advice on the best treatment for the walls in the studio would be very much appreciated. I want it to be natural sounding ie; neither too dead nor too lively (and it don't take Einstein to figure that the untreated reverb time in a room that small is going to be pretty crap!) I haven't included a floating floor in the design. I don't think I need it :?: in my location given that I will rarely if ever be recording drum kits or the like in the studio (for the very rare occasions I might do so I can always rent studio space not too far away). Edit: Damn! I forgot to mention that I've got a very limited budget of about £2,500. I can just about do it as designed by picking up second hand materials (I know where I can get the concrete blocks for next to nothing provided I don't mind chipping all the old mortar of 'em for example) TIA Bru

Bru - that looks really nice - my only suggestions would be: - make the sliding doors parallel thus slightly increasing the studio size. - any chance of using the ceiling height above the office as storage allowing for a larger booth? cheers john

Wow. This is the first design Ive seen similar to mine. Check this thread... http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= Notice where Im told that using pitched roof as the outer leaf needs to be "unvented" to be a leaf. Although it sounds like I have more isolation needs, you should definitly consider my 14 pages of hell. For what your saying about acoustic musoc and little drums, dont float the floor. But, you might want to consider Keith Sharwards thread,,,, http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= Hes cutting and repouring isolated slab. I bowed out of the float race about that time. And I plan to do lots of drums. I will have flanking, but it was time to say when for me. According to your budget, I think and I mean THINK a floated floor is out of your range. Remember, the slab should be fine for sound going outside, its the flanking. Cutting and pouring gives you more ceiling height back. A floated 4" concrete slab, which was what I was looking at, wont be a cost/performance asset until walls are like 5 layers thick. (At least according to discoveries by Dan Fitzpatrick,a few months ago) http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= Well good luck and Ill be watchin....

Thanks John, that's really encouraging :D Yup, making the walls between the studio and the control room parallel makes sense I guess. Shouldn't be a problem given the intended use But the ceiling space over the office is already allocated 'cos that's where the HVAC will go! There isn't much height available anyway and some of the gear I need to store is heavy (PA cabs etc.). I guess I need to look at alternatives 'cos that booth really is a bit on the small side innit! Cheers Bru

mikeklooster wrote:

Wow. This is the first design Ive seen similar to mine. Check this thread... http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= Notice where Im told that using pitched roof as the outer leaf needs to be "unvented" to be a leaf. Although it sounds like I have more isolation needs, you should definitly consider my 14 pages of hell. ....

Thanks for the link Mike, I'd not come across that thread in all my reading (don't think anybody could read everything on here in one lifetime!) Yup, I'm onto that point. Although the roof space will need to be vented (to prevent rot) I plan to place baffled vents in the end walls (not designed 'em yet but I know in my head roughly what I'm going to do)

mikeklooster wrote:

According to your budget, I think and I mean THINK a floated floor is out of your range. Remember, the slab should be fine for sound going outside, its the flanking. ....

I'm sure it is! :? Flanking I can live with. On a cost benefit analysis I don't think it would be worth spending the money on floating the floor even if I could afford it 'cos 90% of the time there's only going to be me working in the building. Cheers Bru

Baffled Vents. I dont believe anyones said that before. But it sounds so logical Ill bet you Im the idiot who missed this and read countless engineer babble for months instead. Ill be interested in what Steve will sayon this. Also, theres this... I feelin so good about this, I dont think many solutions will out preform this one. I asked in my last response on my thread, if I should vent the "attic: with this unit. Sharward said no that he thinks it shpould be done seperatly. I added the question what if I had a mechanical valve on attic duct? Or seperate, like he says. This leads back to your baffled vents, but should we add a small remote controlled, or maybe thermostat or humidity reading device(forgot the name). So I present the idea of Baffled, Mechanical, Programmable vents. Lets see where that sits with everyone.

Why do you need the vocal booth? Would you be doing an overdub in the studio and a vocal at the same time? If not, the bigger studio space could also be used as the vocal booth. It would sound better than that little closet booth. 2 cents worth.... =bassman

well bassman, as for the vocal booth. think of it more like an entryway room, a sound lock for door ways, a keyboard room( Im a keyboard playing producer engineer and Ive got alot of old keyboards) and for when I'm recording a full band I can iso an amp or singer or whatever. Then when I want it to be more like a big room I can leave doors open. Ive found when sound has to go around a corner to a room mic it sounds roomier sometimes. I am thinking of devising a way to switch iso booth to a reflective room for room micing drums, leaving it fairly dead mostly. Its not as small as it seems as well, its like 10ft long and 10 wide at its longest points. But I understand your logic, Ive thought about it alot. I got 4 free heavy solid doors with realy strong hinges, so its not really a budget factor. As for this silenced vent thing. I really hope to see that go further. Im curious to see ideas on that, but my gut tells me mechanical venting is easier, and possibly more efficient. A silencer on every vent or a silencer on 1 intake and 1 exhaust. And you can put these where you want..what do you think?