planning a studio for electronic music production

Howdy! First of all, this resource is amazing and your dedication to build an extremely usable knowledge base is nothing less than admirable, cheers mates! For few months already I've been immersed into planning of an upcoming studio, located in the city of Riga (Latvia, EU). Most of the time has been spent learning, raising funds and checking for available options. The time is getting tight as the winter is approaching, so I have to make some important decisions in order to proceed with the construction works. Being an all-electronic producer I'm striving just for a decent monitoring. Although I'm not pretending to the status of sound engineer, my sonic requirements are quite high. I may easily use live recorded sequences without much editing while spending many hours on tuning a tiny tick/click until it fits the mix precisely the way I feel it should. I also tend to go low with the bass, in fact handling sub-bass is what bothers me first of all. Since I'm sometimes working with singers and recording some percussions, I'm also considering building a vocal booth or using an extra dead corner for the purpose. LAYOUT The dimensions of the whole available space are 9.6x6x2.8 M (that's 31.5x19.7x9.2 FT), however I'm going to divide it into 2 rooms. The studio room would be notably bigger and the other room would serve as storage and bedroom. As you can see in the photos, the walls are all bare brick except for one largely consisting of windows (as much as I love the beauty of industrial landscape, I reckon dealing with those will be a tricky affair). Deciding on space division is a top priority at this time. My intent is to split room roughly as depicted in the figure below. While trying to consider an optimal aspect ratio, I've came up with possible size of 7x6 M (23x19.7 FT) but judging by Room Mode Calculator, 7.8x6 M (25.6x19.7 FT) or 8x6 M (26.2x19.7 FT) would be way better choice. Positioning workspace is also confusing due to the windows.

• Which way should I position workspace -- facing windows or one of the sidewalls?
• What size would you recommend for the studio room?
• What would be the best angle for building the wall?
• Where should the doors be located?
• Does it matter what gypsum boards I'm using for building the wall if insulation panels will be applied later on anyway?
• Is it worth the hassle to build a vocal booth or is it possible to get acceptable quality recordings anyhow?

INSULATION What I'd really like to avoid is building extra walls. Idea of (re)movable panels seems very appealing to me, so I decided to design appropriate panels and basstraps using fiberglass while leaving floor and ceiling untreated. However, none of known materials of the kind can be found in Latvia. I've dug some interesting Isover stuff though: KVL-M and Cleantec -- those two seem to be acceptable substitutes for building absorptive panels and basstraps (please confirm:) Here are descriptions of above mentioned products: http://www.isover.fi/en/Product%20page/ ... ctID=18334 http://www.isover.fi/en/Product%20page/ ... ctID=18332 And here are the respective absorption charts: The density of both materials is 50kg/m3.

• Can I get away by using just these two products?
• A rough estimate: how many panels and what size would be needed then? Same question goes for basstraps..
• Where would you place them if you were me?:)

ELECTRICITY There is no electricity yet, I have to do all the installation including setting up a meter. Here I'm going to have a temporary connection first. I've bought a second hand meter which seems pretty old, I presume it doesn't make a sensible difference? Been going thru enormous amount of information on the subject so I'm kinda scared now.. All I need is a stable grounded circuit but where to draw the line?

• Is it really necessary to pay so much attention to the electricity installation as long as I'm using quality wires, outlets and switches?
• Should I better be using fluerescent lamps or rather a "regular" bulbs for lighting?

EXTRAS Few more things I'm concerned about.. There's a minor highway outside and the noise is well audible during daytime, so perhaps I'll mostly be working in nights thus also avoiding possible differences with neighbour offices. Then, a massive block of radiators is located right down below the windows, while a kind of ventilation pipe is entering the room at the ceiling level.

• Should I remove the radiators? And if I can't, what would be the best treatment for those?
• Ventilation should definitely be removed and the hole closed, right? It's such a leak after all.
• It reminds me of other holes I've seen hanging around.. should shut 'em all?
• I'd like to treat all the windows and the doors somehow but only if there are some simple options, anyone?

Words can't describe how thankful I'm already for the opportunity to post here alone:) Dying for the enlightenment on the whole matter. Peace. <<<zee

Hi Zee :) Well work out the electrics etc later but the KVL-M is what you want. here's a sketchup drawing of your space to scale. This is what I'd do if it were mine. ;) cheers john

re! Been mostly offline for the last week, what a hectic time, so responding just now. At first, thanks for inspiring sketch -- looks really nice and gives me some ideas on the subject! However, I can't go for this very layout due to number of reasons (mostly financial, ofcourse). Also, I'd still like to clear up few things..

• Are those walls in your sketch all meant to be made of KVL-M?
• Why is KVL-M prefered to Cleantec?
• And which of the two would better suit for building the basstraps?

Quite some of my original questions also remain unanswered but well, those are not most important.. Looking forward to further assistance;) <<<zee

..have to buy insulation soon and just wondering, why should I give preference to KVL-M? Wouldn't Cleantec be better fitting for basstraps? Maybe I should use both materials, each targeted at different frequency range? Also, does angle of extra walls considerably matters? T H X

zee - check out this site - spend some time looking at the different constructions - Torus Studio is a good starting point as it shows how to build the walls between control room and studio. http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm cheers john

Err, sorry but what I do need is a "control room" only -- an environment providing proper monitoring of own production, as stated in my original post 8) Been reading thru site a lot during past months as well and figuring out a thing or two but mostly I can just make a guess what's where.. Well, learn with practice I guess -- will buy both materials and check 'em out :oops: ===zee