Small Studio needs helps ! Please give your opinions !

Hi everybody, I'm a noob here and I'm gonna move our band's studio to a new place. This place has 2 rooms with dimensions shown in the attached picture http://jan02.imgshare.us/rptqvd.jpg Is my designed layout gonna works? We mostly recorded our band music (Metal style) and some other kinds of music (Hiphop, Country, maybe...) The control room is poorly a cube (we dont have any choice) so I try to make it non-paralelled by using differents absorbers' textures on the walls with lots of bass traps in corners and in the cloud upon the mix area. This is a room in a old French villa with solid 25cm walls so I think good isolation may come from blocking the doors and window. We're gonna record drums and some acoustic instruments so I splitted the control room into 2 areas. One is carpeted and the other is covered by wood floor. The present kitchen will be splitted into a vox booth and a smaller kitchen The overal floor will be lifted on neoprene and wood-grid filled with rockwool about 10cm over the cement floor. The vox booth's double doors are glass-typed so no windows is needed. The exact positions of absorbers and diffusors will be determined when I observe the room with a RTA meter. Currently we have 2 pairs of NS-10Ms made in Japan so we're gonna add a sub. Please give your opinions on this layout !!! Thanks for reading !! Sorry for my bad English !!!

No response ! :( Would any experts here mind help a 17years-old kid like me?

Aloha DJ, Welcome to the forum. :D Before we begin, could you please:

Edit your profile to include your location. This is very important, because this is a worldwide resource, and as such, material costs and availability vary widely. For example, masonry is cheaper than gypsum in some parts of the globe, whereas it's the exact opposite in other regions.

Thanks! :wink: Here's a few useful places to visit: Forum Guidelines: http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Reference: http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2125 I've also attached your layout to make it easier to respond to your questions. Aloha 8)

Aloha, Here's a couple of thoughts at first glance: - Parallel walls - try to avoid by using side wall absorbers perhaps? http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm - Control room door to vox booth – Looks a little tight...is there enough access for door/corner trap in the way? Perhaps a sliding glass door instead or entry through kitchen? - Is it possible to raise the cloud over mix position closer to ceiling (say about 7.6cm - 10cm from ceiling and angled front low/rear higher?) - the room may be too short for diffusors - larger corner traps/side absorbers? - Is there enough room for the drums and mix position? (Besides the fact that they're loud...it may make it difficult to make critical mic/sound adjustments) - Is it possible to move drums into vox/kitchen space and record acoustic guitars out in the control room or overdub them from the vox booth after the drums are done? Hope this gives you a few ideas to start with. Aloha 8)

Thank you kendale ! You're so nice ! :D There're some problems I cant solve: This house is a small villa with 25cm solid brick wall, so it'll hard to dig another hole for the booth's door. The sliding doors option is a great idea but will it isolate enough leakage from the control room? The cloud is unfortunate fixed, we cant move it higher or angle it :( With your knowledge and experiment, can you help me on the sizes of absorbers and diffusors, traps..? Or may be some standard - good effective sizes of them? The vox booth is way too small to put the drums in. Note that the control room with 25cm wall offers better isolation than the vox booth, and if we treat the vox booth to make it isolate better then there'll be not enough space for drums ! :( I like to record drums and acoustic instruments in a more live room than a dead booth to get a more breathing feel. And most of the time we track only 1 instrument at a time so maybe isolations between instruments are not nessesary. Eager to hear from you ! Thanks so much ! :D

Aloha, Got any pics of your rooms that you could post? Aloha 8)

Sorry, can u show me how to post pics here? Thanx ! :D

DJ - your greatest problem is the Cube you have as all dimensions are 4m. Here's a suggestion the break it up, treat the room and keep it bright for recording. cheers john

Oh, so nice! Thanks a lot, I'll save more to afford your design, Mr. Sayers ! I'll post some photos of my room later.