New house, help with basement studio

First of all, a little background: I have been recording my own music for years, and have worked with quite a few bands on their own projects. For the last 4 years I have been working out of a 9X12 basement, and now I am moving to a house, and the wife has agreed to let me take over part of the bottom floor for a studio. I will mainly be recording my own music, although I will be recording some rock bands as well. Type of music: Lots of different types, but I will be doing rock music, so as much isolation as possible would be great. What I want/need: With the space I have, my guess is that I will be better off with as big of a control room as possible (big enough to have a jazz quartet if possible). I need at least one isolation room big enough for someone with an acoustic guitar, and if it is big enough for a drum kit that is even better, although not a requirement. A second isolation area for a guitar amp would be ideal, although again not a requirement. Limitations of the space: -The ceiling height is about 7'6 throughout most of the space, except where the air ducts for the upper floor are located. They go down to about 6'8. Fortunately, there are no open vents in the areas I have allocated to use the studio. I have already accepted the fact that I am going to have to use RC for the ceiling, and that the isolation between the lower and upper floors will be limited because of that. My wife is understanding, however, and is fine with hearing noise upstairs as long as it is reduced as much as possible -At least one of the hallway walls is structural, and the other one may be as well (I can't tell because it is fully finished, and since we don't own the house yet, I can't just start ripping out drywall to check) My Limitations: I am somewhat handy, but have never done any construction before. I have built a few bookshelves, and have some tools, but this is all new to me. Wherever possible I will be pulling in help from wherever I can. I am friends with a manager at a lumber yard, so I should be able to find people to help me out. Budget: I will have around $4-5,000 to start, and can put more into it over time. What I need here: I am looking for ideas for the design based on the space I have to work with. Notes on the drawing: - It is as close to scale as I can get it. I took measurements during the house inspection, and we won't be seeing the space again until we move in. The only thing that I had to guess on was the location of the doorways for the rooms, but those will be torn out, so I am not sure that it matters if they are slightly off. I also did not put in the locations of the closets in each of the rooms, as those will be ripped out for sure. - The water shutoff valve and the electrical panel are inside, so I will need to be able to access those. - the areas in blue are the areas that I am NOT going to be using. I will, however, need to have a door to get to there from the studio. Any help you guys or gals can give me is appreciated!

I just realized that I said the control room had to be big enough for a band, but what I meant was that I need enough space for a band, not that it had to be the same space as the control room. I am certainly willing to go with a smaller control room and an additional room for the musicians, but i was just thinking that it would be easier on everyone in such a small space to have one large room with everything and one or two iso booths, rather than several small rooms.

Here is what I am thinking of doing right now. This would require knocking out a few feet of the laundry room, but I believe that is doable - if not than it means a smaller iso booth. The green lines indicate acoustic treatment. I would appreciate any comments about what can be improved, or if I am on the right track.

...will be helping out two folks at once, since this is very similar to the situation I'm starting on. Thanks

OK, knowing that I will have to leave significant access to the electrical panel, here is the current idea on how to go. It also includes a location for a mini-split AC unit to the outside and Ventilation ducts running to a heat exchange unit in the laundry room. Storage is also added with the access to the electrical panel. I would really like some feedback on this, so let me know what you all think.

That's really clever -- you have something like the "service corridor" I described earlier, yet it doesn't rob you of nearly as much square footage. 8) You might also be able to use that closet for a little bit of storage... Mics and stuff, perhaps? As long as you can easily walk around them... :roll: ...I'd definitely plan on having a battery-operated backup light in there. I assume those are sliding glass doors that separate the live room from the control room. It's a good thing you have that exterior door to/from the live room. Otherwise it would be a death trap if there were a fire in the control room -- a problem that came up once before in a basement studio design that was rejected by the building department of a city in the U.K. if memory serves. Assuming you get a blessing from John and/or others, I would suggest taking the drawing down to your building department to see if they see any issues with it. If they don't, then you can make more detailed plans for the permit application. :) --Keith :mrgreen:

After looking at my original design, I realized that the control room only had one entrance/exit, and that wouldn't be safe if there was a fire. I also realized that if someone wanted to go to the bathroom, they would have to go through the live room. The new plan allows for people to go in and out of the control room while someone is recording in the live room. As for storage in the electrical closet, I am thinking that if the area is 3'6 wide, that gives me enough space to put up a few shelves on one side of the wall to store misc. stuff. I was also thinking that I might be able to run some cables for the computer to this area, and stick the computer in there, right behind the wall. This would get rid of any noise problems. I think it might be worth the inconvenience of having to walk back around to the computer if it means a silent control room. I am assuming that I will need a battery powered backup light in all of the rooms, considering that there are no windows, and I will definitely be putting one in the electrical closet. We are moving this Sunday, and my plan is to give my wife a month of working on the stuff in the house she wants to change. After that, it's time to start working on the studio!

Well, now that we have moved into the house, I have seen a problem with my plan. The hallway is not very wide, and I realized that if the studio is built like the previous design, there would be no way to move large furniture in or out of the living room - this poses a problem, as we have a large couch, and are planning to get another one next year. It also means that I can't store my piano in the living room during construction, as there would be no way to get it into the studio - the hallway is too narrow to make the turn (see the lighter red in the picture). I think the only way this is going to work out logistically is to add doors leading to the hall from the drum room (also in red on the new picture), which I didn't want to do, but now I don't think I have a choice.

Welcome back -- I hope your move went well. 8) So, your living room is in the basement? :? Got photos? --Keith :mrgreen:

The house was designed with a mother-in-law unit as the lower floor. The upper living room will be the "formal" living room, while the lower floor will be the "fun" living room, with the TV, Stereo, wet bar, comfortable furniture, etc. It will be great once the studio is finished, because when I am taking 4 hours to record guitar overdubs for a band, the rest of the band members can be in the other room hanging out and watching TV. I don't have photo's yet (plus the space is filled with boxes and furniture as we work on refinishing the wood floors on the upper level), but that should change in a week or two as things get put in their proper rooms.

Sounds like a great house! :-) I remember looking at a bi-level home similar to that in this area a couple of years before we bought our first home. It had a set-up very similar to that. --Keith :mrgreen:

Here is my new plan, which takes several things into account: 1 - we need to be able to get bigger furniture through the studio to the living room 2 - this room will be used socially from time to time, so having a longer control room allows us to have a few more people in there before it starts to feel crowded. I can always pull the couch out when I need a little more room for a band to rock out in there 3 - It uses less space for access to the electrical panel I would really like any suggestions on this, or solutions similar to this. Mainly it will be used to record myself, so my preference is to have as large a control room as possible with a booth big enough to hold a drum kit - This design seems to do that. I have added a box in the upper left corner that shows what size my previous studio was - this room had a full drum kit, 2 guitar amps, keyboard, mixing desk, and storage all set up 100% of the time, not to mention all of the guitars and other instruments in the room - I had no additional storage! My current design gives me a control room almost twice the size, and I don't even need to keep my drums in there. It is going to feel huge, even though it really is not very big at all.

Here is a more sophisticated looking version of what I am thinking of. This does change the design of the door into the living area, which should give me better sight lines and a little more room.