A brand new studio from scratch

Hello, I have just bought a house with a construction, that had been made in the garden,by the original owner, primarly for building a recording studio. That place never ended up as a studio,but it is still as it was, made with reinforced concrete. I thought about building my new studio in that place, of course, and tried to imagine a way to organize space inside that building.(u can have a look at the file attached, where u can see concrete walls showed by large black lines). The first challenge will be to put the electricity system inside,and then ask the electrician to organize all this,the way it should be in a real recording studio.I really don't want to put some outlets there and there, i would prefer to get a "state of the art" lightning system, while an electric system adapted to such an audio equipment place, as air conditioners,or electric isolation, in respect of electronic audio equipments. I know this can look like a big project, but as the building has nothing inside, but only concrete, i think that is the right occasion to make thing as it should be, right? So before anything, before attempting any construction, i need to decide which room will get wich kind of equipment.Or will purpose for each room, right? I tried to put some ideas on the pic that i put online,maybe u can tell me ur feeling about that? I know that everything depends on the space available for each rooms, and maybe some of u will think about others possibilities.I must admit that i am not an expert in acoustic rules, so maybe some of u would help in that way?[/i][/list][/url]

Welcome to the forum; so ALL of those heavy black lines are ALREADY in place concrete walls? This should be an interesting challenge for John's amazing talent for visualization :? Steve

Hello knightfly, The black lines do show the existing construction, made with reinforced concrete. Actually, i began to work on a Sketchup 3D environment from that 2D, thus i will post it asap... The room where i put "Control Room" has got more height than the other rooms, i have to measure it exactly.That is the reason why i chose it for the future control room.Or it may be good for "live room" also...? Indeed i accept all suggestions about the way it should be organized. I also know that room dimensions should decide which kind of use, i mean for ex.recording vocal and drums each need specified dimensions, right? I am really curious about new suggestions, so advices are welcome ! Anyway i won't start any work before finding the more optimized solution, as i wouldn't want to change my mind later !!

Here's my first reaction to that space. That post studio needs to be separate from the rest of the facility. cheers john

Are the walls in the middle of the building re-enforced concrete or concrete blocks (that could be removed? It looks to me that the two horizontal walls could be load bearing but the others probably aren't and could be removed. That would give you a lot more design options. len

Yes Len - that would open it up wouldn't it. cheers john

And it would allow you to get rid of all of those rectangular rooms and 90 corners! len

Whaou!! Thank u John Sayers for ur suggestion! Indeed i never thought about dividing the big room before. Actually, i primarly didn't think about that possibility, because i had the idea to keep the big space inside that long room, for live sessions, i mean trying to get acoustic environment for acoustic recordings. In the same time, the room that u dedicate to drum booth indeed has got 13' height, instead of 10' for the other rooms.So maybe is it better for acoustic recording, as drum? In other terms, is it better to dedicate big lenghts rooms (here 32,8'), or instead higher heights rooms(13'),to acoustic recording?(as drum recording, but also any recording that we can experiment natural reverb with?) The same question can be asked for the control room...Anyway, between these few possibilities, i really don't know and trust in ur reaction! Well..About the angles...len-morgan, u're surely right about that aspect of the dimensions of my studio.But the thing is that everything showed on the plan is made with reinforced concrete.So i have to build angles on it, as John gave an example with his modified plan. After having decided which purpose for each room, i sure will have to manage the space acoutiscally speaking, that will be the most interesting part, according to me. I am also about to post some pics that i took today in the building, so that everyone can figure it out more easily... For now, i also attach a modified plan of it, cause i realized some dimensions minor errors with it, as i went to measure it all again today more precisely.

:shock: :roll:

I'm going to stop this thread - if you can't get the original plan and dimensions correct DONT waste our time. this is also a lesson to others - please note. I'm deleting the poster as well.

Ok - I've settled down :D Nightmusic - you've re-registered so now let's continue. I'm not apologising, I'm making a point to you and to all forum members. PLEASE get your info correct before you ask us to help otherwise it just wastes our time and we become reluctant to offer further assistance. Cheers john

John, I totally agree.Anyway, thank for your understanding. I hope that this thread will help a lot of members, by sharing the experience i will have, when beginning works in that studio. I think i will try to make a diary in this forum when i'll start the project. Now i am looking forward to going ahead, with i hope some of your advices! Cheers

Aloha and welcome to the forum, Nightmusic! Congrats on your studio build! Any chance you could 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.

You'll probably get more of a response by doing so and this will really come in handy two or three posts down the road. It's also part of the forum guidelines: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Thanks! :wink: Looking forward to your build! Aloha 8)

Thank u Kendale for ur welcome! I updated my profile with my location, sorry i had forgotten it... Thanks for the link, i am reading all this.. Now, i am also going deep inside acoustic advices, i have read most of all the John Sayers' articles, it is very interesting for me, and i am very excited by beginning works!

Bad day in paradise John? :oops:

No - just fed up with going to the trouble of working out a design and then drawing it up only to find I was wastin my time - I'm sure you understand ;) Paradise is clear blue sky and 25C BTW - how's CHCH?? :D :D cheers john

13degrees, cold and overcast - bring back any memories!! only another 180 like this till 1st November!! JG

Yeah - I remember the ponds in centenial park icing over ;) Nighmusic - those two thinner walls called monitors linking the main vertical walls with the center box. - are they reinforced concrete also?? cheers joh n

here's a couple of ideas. cheers john

john, Ur two suggestions are pretty good idea, adding an extra corridor, dividing the area in two different part. But as i have said earlier, what i called monitors are corners, placed higher(that's why i called them 'monitors'), made with reinforced concrete too. So no connection possible at the end of that corridor and the control room on the left... Wereas, ur suggestion inspired me some ideas, that i tried to put on this drawing.I kept the first of ur two suggestions in mind, so that the control room has access to the live room, drum booth, and vocal room all around it. At least, that is the only way for the control room engineer, to have view over the live room, wich is important when recording live sessions have to be made. 1)One pb is that the control room entrance is exactly where the isolation part should be done, if i trust ur drawing. 2)Is that space large enough for a good control room, from acoustic point of view? Isn't the other studio room better for goos mixe's, while 'post production' need less space?

Here it is...

again

Sorry it doesnt seem to go thru..

Well it's a tradeoff between visuals and space. The second drawing has a bigger control room, but a smaller live room. The first has good visuals, and you could still enter via the booth and avoid the monitor box thingo. The control room isn't as big as it would be in the larger room (your original room) but there's no visual or even decent fast access to the main live room from there. It's really up to you. There's no reason why version 1 control room can't sound OK. cheers john

Ok i didn't noticed in the first drawing, that i could enter to the control room by the booth, good trick.Better solution i think! About the ideal room dimensions, i thought that it had to be long enough, depending on the lowest frequency that we wanted to hear in the place.Isn't that important when mixing? N.B.: i don't know why but my last drawing doesn't want to go thru...