Basement studio layout help

Hi - First of all, I would like to say thank you to John and to all of the great contributors to this forum. I have gotten a wealth of information here and genuinely appreciate it. This is my first post here now that I just bought a house that will accomodate what I hope will be a nice studio. A little about myself - I've had studios set up in two previous rental homes as well as one commercial space. I just bought a house that I intend on being in for a while so I would like to build a studio that will put a smile on my face each time I work in it. I'm hoping to be ready to begin construction in a couple of weeks. I've already received about 800 square feet of MLV and my maple engineered flooring arrived today. I have some basic ideas about the layout which are labeled in the attached drawing, but I would very much like to get the opinions of the fine folks here before I go and put any walls up. I typically record local rock bands so I plan on soundproofing as much as possible, but I'm hoping that since it's below grade that the major issue will be stopping transmission through the ceiling (as well as through the control room walls). The basement walls are cinder block. The wall in the drawing between the control room and workshop will be rebuilt and soundproofed. The ceiling joists run up and down relative to the drawing. The doors shown are not there now - just my idea of where they will go. The same goes for the control room walls. There is a column at the corner where the propsed control room wall by the hallway meets the the wall bordering the live room. The floor is mostly covered with asbestos tiles and I have already purchased Mannington maple engineered flooring for the control room and live room. If space permits, I'm considering partitioning a vocal booth in the live room. Due to the space, I plan on using near field monitors with the hopes of surround eventually. However, I do have a pair of Tannoy M1000s that I would love to incorporate into this room, but they are almost certainly too large to make work (40.5" H x 28.4" W x 17" D) so they will most likely remain in storage unless I can convince my fiance that they'd be nicer in our living room. Also worth noting, my future father-in-law is a contractor and he will be helping with the construction which is a very big plus. I also made some 3D renderings of the studio here Don't mind the giant floating Tannoys! So, any and all opinions would be very much appreciated and thanks again for a great forum. -Larry

Have you decide what treatments will go in these rooms??? Is this just the raw space before treatment...Or the space as you intend to use it. Obviously if I take your 3d Drawings as "law" you will have a ton of audio problems. but if these are merely the areas to be used then I await your placement of treatments in the diagrams.....

Welcome to the forum, Larry! :)

Studio Dweller wrote:

I'm hoping to be ready to begin construction in a couple of weeks.

Seriously -- you want to plan at least couple of weeks of just absorbing as much information as possible on this (and other) forums before you put your first two pieces of lumber together. Really. Back in January, I thought I was only a couple of weeks away when I started my thread here, but I didn't pull my permits until August. It takes time to plan everything. Trust me -- you do not want to wing this or rush into the construction phase. Your project is 90% planning and 10% building.

I've already received about 800 square feet of MLV . . .

Clearly you missed this thread (and others). Do a search for "MLV" and you'll find that the product has been pretty universally dissed here. You can achieve better isolation with cheaper materials. MLV is a waste of money. I hope for your sake you can return it for a full or nearly full refund... :roll: Start here (if you haven't already) and learn all you can about proper isolation techniques, among many other important things. And by all means, don't miss my "Permits, Codes, Licenses -- and WHY YOU SHOULD CARE!" thread. --Keith :mrgreen:

giles117 wrote:

Have you decide what treatments will go in these rooms??? Is this just the raw space before treatment...Or the space as you intend to use it. Obviously if I take your 3d Drawings as "law" you will have a ton of audio problems. but if these are merely the areas to be used then I await your placement of treatments in the diagrams.....

Bryan, Thank you for replying, Bryan. The 3D renderings are certainly not "law" and are just a view of the idea I had for a layout. I was hoping to get suggestions on both the layout and what treatments to use and where to put them given the space I have to work with. Again, thanks for your time and help. -Larry

sharward wrote:

Welcome to the forum, Larry! :)

Studio Dweller wrote:

I'm hoping to be ready to begin construction in a couple of weeks.

Seriously -- you want to plan at least couple of weeks of just absorbing as much information as possible on this (and other) forums before you put your first two pieces of lumber together. Really. Back in January, I thought I was only a couple of weeks away when I started my thread here, but I didn't pull my permits until August. It takes time to plan everything. Trust me -- you do not want to wing this or rush into the construction phase. Your project is 90% planning and 10% building.

I've already received about 800 square feet of MLV . . .

Clearly you missed this thread (and others). Do a search for "MLV" and you'll find that the product has been pretty universally dissed here. You can achieve better isolation with cheaper materials. MLV is a waste of money. I hope for your sake you can return it for a full or nearly full refund... :roll: Start here (if you haven't already) and learn all you can about proper isolation techniques, among many other important things. And by all means, don't miss my "Permits, Codes, Licenses -- and WHY YOU SHOULD CARE!" thread. --Keith :mrgreen:

Keith, Thanks for your reply. I do realize I am pushing the timeframe quite a bit and that realistically, I won't be putting up any walls in two weeks, although I would love to as I have clients waiting. I've been trying to read as much as I can here and apparently I missed the thread about MLV not being so useful. I am pretty much married to the six rolls I have short of paying a bundle to ship it back. I could probably sell it on ebay if need be. I'm more inclined to use it since it's already here. I will read those threads though. There is one important thing I realized that I left out of my original post. I would prefer to try to keep the construction geared so when it comes time to sell our house in 10 years or so, the rooms can be converted back to a more sellable space and I don't mind if the control room and live room remain as two rooms. Thanks again for the reply. -Larry

Well search the forum for afloor plan of a control room that is near the size of your space. That is a good place to start. :) I can give you direction if you give me control room dimensions here.

giles117 wrote:

Well search the forum for afloor plan of a control room that is near the size of your space. That is a good place to start. :) I can give you direction if you give me control room dimensions here.

The only control room walls that are in place now are the rear (bordering the workshop) and the right (bottom of drawing). The right wall is cinder block now. The left wall and front wall will be built - it's an open space right now. The left wall really can't be more than 11 feet from the right wall without making what will be the hallway too narrow. I'd like to get an opinion on how far the front wall should be from the rear wall of the control room while still leaving enough space for a vocal booth. Do room ratios apply in a space this small? Basically, how would you divide the room if you had this space to work with? Again, thanks very much for your time and help. -Larry

Steve and John can answer these room ratio issues I never bothered to learn them.... This is what I know. My Room is 11x13 and sounds GREAT!!!!! :) Now if you are after just a vocal booth to the right of the Control room I'd leave 8' from the east wall to the control room wall. you can then put a window to view that northern section of the studio and section it to be a Drum room or similar. So you;d be looking at a control room roughly about 11x14.

Glad to hear that your similarly proportioned room sounds great. How high is your ceiling? I wish mine was higher, but it was hard enough to find a house that had even a seven foot ceiling around here. Is there anywhere I can see your control room layout? Going with the 11 x 14 dimensions (which is very much what I had in mind), what type of treatments would you recommend? I plan on going with a maple hardwood floor (engineered since it's below grade) and there will be a large leather couch at the rear of the control room. Thanks again, -Larry

Larry - what walls are fixed in your plan and are there any poles? cheers john

John Sayers wrote:

Larry - what walls are fixed in your plan and are there any poles? cheers john

Hi John - I revised the drawing. The green walls are fixed and the orange circles represent the two poles. Thank you for your help! -Larry

Click on my www link at the bottom of my post and it will lead you to the plan I built my control room by.

Maybe something like this - trying to get better visuals etc. cheers john

AS USUAL John is the Man......

I wonder if he'll have the same problem that Ozzy did with his "all rooms must have direct access to the stairs" fire safety regulation thing. Even if his municipality doesn't require it, I think it's an excellent point and it should probably be incorporated into all basement layouts going forward. Safety trumps coolness! 8) Of course, in this particular design, if indeed a sliding glass door is used between control room and booth as John drew it, then an occupant of the booth does have two pathways to the hallway, so that might be good enough... :roll: I guess we'll see what happens when the plans get turned into the bureaucrats, eh? ;-) --Keith :mrgreen:

Wow, John. Thank you very much. That really is getting the most out of the space. I have to take a look and see if I'll be able to adjust that wall by the furnace, but if so, I like the layout very much and I really do like the way the booth and the main live room go together. I'm going to lay this out in my software and see how my gear fits and post my results. Again, my sincerest thanks for taking the time to work on this. It's very much appreciated. -Larry

the other option for basement studios (like I'm planning on building after I spend a few more months reading up here and everywhere else... :-) is to have proper "egress" windows. most homes have "wood" staircases so having at least one or more windows sized to allow people to escape (generally 24" high x 32" wide and < 60" off the floor) will be a good idea... in my case, this means digging down and replacing 2 windows and adding 2 more on the front of the house. another benefit - light and air... just watch the drainage...

I've been away for a bit - lots of hot projects in our new home that needed taking care of which have diverted my attention from the studio build. John - I was wondering if you did your layout of my studio in SketchUp and if so, could you post the file? I very much like your layout, but I need to make a slight adjustment. The wall by the furnace room can't be angled due the position of the furnace and water heater. Obvioulsy I will need to find another way to maintain a reasonable width for the hallway so I'd like see if can adjust the control room slightly to accommodate that. I'm certainly open to any other suggestions you might have. Thanks so much again for the help! -Larry

Maybe like this - half yours, half mine :)

John Sayers wrote:

Maybe like this - half yours, half mine :)

You're fast, John! That's going in the right direction, but I think the control room is starting to get smaller than I'd like it to be. Is there anyway you can drop in a couple of dimensions so I can get an idea of the space? One thing we can eliminate which should help is the door to the workshop. The workshop area is accessible through the laundry room. You walk through laundry and under the stairs into the workshop so no door is needed which would allow for the hallway wall to be closer to the stairs. I think as long as the hallway is at least the width of the doorway, that should be all that's needed. If possible, I like the idea of having the couch more or less inline with the monitors like it was in your first layout. We're definitely on the track track though. Thanks again! -Larry

Hi - It's sbeen a while, but I've reworked the floor plan a couple of times to accomodate my space requirements, but I'm basically going with a variation of Jonh's first layout. I decided that the water heater definitely needed to be moved in order to make this work (it was originally in the way). That's already been done and we got the place framed out in two days this week. I have photos of the build here which may give you a better idea of the space: http://www.cellardweller.com/studiobuild Once we started laying it out on the floor, there were a couple of things that needed adjusting from the drawing, but this drawing is very close to what we have framed. I would like to get some general ideas for how I should go about treating the walls and ceiling. I plan on putting in a maple hardwood floor throughout (Mannington-engineered). I also do not intend to soffit-mount my monitors due to space limitations. Again, my ceiling height is limited to 7 feet and I have some duct work that hangs below the studs in live room. Thanks to everyone here for the help and to John for such a great site and resource. It's really appreciated! -Larry

your link you have doesn't seem to work

jammin dad wrote:

your link you have doesn't seem to work

Sorry about that - one too many letters. It's fixed now: http://www.cellardweller.com/studiobuild