4 room basement studio, help please!

Hi everybody! I finally found a space for my new studio. I'm gonna share it with a company that (amongst other things) produces an online radio show. They are going to have their office on the ground floor, plus a radio studio in the basement. The place is nice and big, only downside is the ceiiling height (2,8 m) and the pillars (4 in the space that the studios are going in) and beams that run across the ceiling. Pillars and Beams are 30x30cm, the beams run vertical with the pillars. (The foto shows a view from the area marked as lounge towards the emergency exit in the upper left corner) The emergency exit needs to stay accessible, too. The areas marked as "Lounge" and "Storage" hold most of the water and heating pipes for the building, so I figured that it's gonna be way easier and more cost effective to keep the studio rooms in the other parts. Maybe the radio room could go there, but that would mean running ac ducts all the way there. I'm mostly doing vocal recording and mixing, but want to have the opportunity to do the occasional band recording in the future. The Control room should be pretty big, since it has to hold a big DDA AMR24 desk (3m!) and lots of outboard, and I often got clients in for mixing sessions. The Live Room should be at least 20m2 big. Also we're planing on the Radio room (about 20m2, to hold a DJ setup, a small edit workstation and a desk for interviews) and a small preproduction room that will hold a pro tools rig and loads of synths. There is no air conditioning so far, but the emergency exit goes straight to the roof over the office space, so it would be easy to run ducts up there. Apart from the layout, my main questions are: -do we need to float the floors? I don't want to lose too much ceiling height, and as long as i can monitor recording at low levels and there is no sound leakage to the upstairs floor, I should be fine. -what's the easiest (and cheapest!!!) way to install air conditioning and heating? I have been following this forum for years now, I think I get the basic idea on how to build the rooms, but I'm very busy at the moment, and construction is supposed to be done in 3 months time (I know it sounds crazy, but otherwise I have to miss out on this great opportunity) I'm willing to donate a fair amount of money and also use the phone service for further questions during construction, but I just couldn't come up with a design that really made sense on my own. I know I'm asking for a lot here, and I will keep doing my research and post new ideas. thanks in advance! Erik ps: is there any software like smart draw for mac osx? Right now I'm working in Photoshop, and that's not really going anywhere..

The floorplan didn't attach for some reason, here it goes...

Aloha and welcome to the forum EB, Say any chance you could resize your pics, please? Thanks :wink: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231

Please resize as necessary to keep graphics UNDER 800 pixels, preferably under 750, wide; otherwise it forces people to scroll sideways to read every line of text.

Aloha 8)

oops, they looked so much smaller in photoshop :D

:? I came up with this today...far from perfect, I'm sure this can be done better with less doors etc..but this should give a rough idea on what we need. I'll give it another try later tonight Erik

It's a big space Erik - how about something along these lines. cheers john

John, what can I say - you're the man!!! I really like the design the way it is, can't believe you came up with this so quick! My only questions at the moment are: -the control room design doesn't look like there will be a lot of room for slot resonators and the such, do you think it's possible to make this room really good sounding without much space around (and above!!) it for trapping? -do you think sound isolation is gonna be good enough without floating the floors (maybe just build a floated raiser for the drums)? thanks again, really appreciated!

Erik - if you use all the space available you can achieve enough areas for trapping - see pic. The drum riser is a good idea. If isolation is a concern floating just the radio rooms would be enough to isolate both studios. I placed the hallway where it is with a 1.5m width to help in studio to studio isolation. cheers john

here's a couple of small things I was thinking about: since the pillar to the right of the cr has to be sealed wit studs/drywall, it would be at least 50x50 cm (correct me if I'm wrong!) wouldn't it be better to have it between the cr wall and studio 2 , with a smaller door or something (couldn't really think of a good solution here) does the soundlock really make a difference? I wouldn't mind building it if it does..another idea would be to use the space as a small machine room for the power supplies/computer/pro tools, and have the entrance from the back of the control room. still blown away by this design, it's hard to think of ways to make it better :lol:

Hi everybody, just a little heads up: John worked out a different design since the meisures from the blueprint the landlord gave us were all wrong... We're still working on the radio/preproduction area, but the studio design is final. Still don't know what to do for HVAC, right now I'm looking into Aeron (www.aeron.de , german only..) ventilation systems , and maybe add a minisplit if it gets too hot in summer. (the basement itself is pretty cold throughout the whole year) Framing will start soon, guess I will move to the construction forum then :D Any thoughts are really appreciated, especially on the HVAC situation. cheers Erik

Hi everybody, Good news :D We started framing on Saturday, I put up a new thread on the construction forum. Here's a Sketchup of the latest design (right now it looks like the small control room on the right is not being build)