General advice for an electronic music recording studio

Hi all, this is a great resource to have found. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer. After having made my solo electronic music in basements and lofts and all manner of sonically unsatisfying environments for 10+ years, I'm finally looking forward to building my own studio. It will be a stand-alone building attached to the main house through a breezeway. I guess all I really need is a control room since it's just me (and a friend or two) and the computer and nearfields. (I mix on Genelec 1030A's paired with a hafler powered sub.) I know pretty much nothing about acoustics and studio design, except that I know when a room sounds good or bad. Where do I start? I'm overwhelmed with what a large amount of research must go into this. I'd love to look at a bunch of generic studio designs and see what the basic idea is. Honestly, if someone could say, "here's a design for a good stand-alone room for mixing" I'd probably just run with it instead of trying to experiment and make all sorts of mistakes inventing something on my own. Thanks for any help at all! - canton becker http://www.ontology.com/canton/music PS: If you use samples in your music, feel free to drop by http://www.sampleswap.org -- the forum and sample library I've setup that lets musicians exchange high quality audio snippets for free. It's been running for 7+ years and has 10,000 members.

Aloha and welcome to the forum, canton! :D 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 Also, since you are in the process of planning the construction of a studio, this forum contains a wealth of information that will help you, along with many knowledgeable members who can offer you advice with your project. Before you post any questions, please take a few moments to follow these steps - keep in mind that any print in bold type means we need you to pay attention - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Thanks! :wink: Here's a couple of good places to start for ideas: SAE Website: http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html (be sure to click on the acoustics, absorbers, construction tabs at left, and tabs that appear at the top of the pages) Wall Units - http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm Recording Studio Design Forum Reference Area: http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2125 More Useful Links: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1168 Looking forward to your build! Aloha 8)

Say, any chance you could resize your pix down to about 600 pixels wide, please? This will eliminate us having to scroll back and forth in order to read your post. Thanks! :wink:

what picture? :-D

kendale wrote:

Aloha and welcome to the forum, canton! :D ... Looking forward to your build! Aloha 8)

Thanks, Kendale! I'm looking through the links you already posted, and the printer is running at 100%. Thanks already for this help. What I think I'm having trouble finding is example plans for single room electronic music mixing / production environments. There's a ton of great information out there for two and three room designs, but thankfully I won't have have a recording booth etc.

Aloha Canton, A couple of questions: - How big a room do you need for your stuff & the type of work you do? - Got any pics of your current setup? (600 pixels wide) Depending on the your space requirements, you could possibly focus in on control room designs; then incorporate your setup while keeping in mind the acoustic principles that affect control room environments (early reflections bouncing off your equipment and the like.) Here's a couple of pics for some ideas. :wink: Aloha 8)

Aloha, Here's a few more. :wink: Aloha 8)