Small studio in Italy

Hello all! I'm an italian musician who just loves the world of recording studios and everything that comes with it. This forum is really a god-send for me. A few years ago I started a small project studio of my own in my basement. The whole thing began to grow more than i expected, and now i find myself in need of a properly built studio. And here comes the tricky part. In my country recording business is not very popular, so the help I can get is very little, and designing it by myself could really screw things up. Right now i am (sonically speaking) limited because of the room itself. My goal is to obtain a complete small studio, with a control room, an iso booth (for drums/guitar/bass/etc) and a vocal booth. I really hope for some usefull input! dimensions of the room are: length 7,6 meters width 5,1 meters height 2,2 meters (the SketchUp file is built with most precise measurements) The whole room is made of concrete and is almost totally under the ground, a very convenient placement that rids me of the problem of external sound-proofing. I had bands play in this room till 3am, neighbors never came to complain. The floor is a simple floating parquet, while the ceiling has been covered with 4cm of high density rockwool and plasterwork. At this time, the walls are all unpainted concrete (exept for a small brick area), covered with those egg-packaging-things (sorry, i really don't know the term in english), but i plan on tearing them down asap. The problem in this room, is a round corner that makes the sound act really strange and creates unwanted echoes. I have no idea how to solve this. Overall, this room sounds really muddy, so i need to 'flat it'. Also, concrete loves to vibrate, so playing a loud bass guitar gives you this 'earthquake' feeling. I have included in the SketchUp file a rough model of my mixing desk, placed where it actually is right now. Looking to other projects on this forum, I tried to make one myself, but it does not satify me at all. Any suggestion for an optimal layout is more than welcome. I have no problem building new walls and my budget is more than enough to do pretty much anything. Thank you very much for your attention and please let me know if I forgot any important detail. Alex

Hay fellow italian studio-freak! I'm sure John can come up with a much better plan, but I wanted to give it a shot (if you never try, you never know...) I'm sure the biggest limit in that space is the very low ceilling. I don't know if leaving the room walls connected with the perimeter is a big issue since you only need to isolate them from each other and not from the rest of the house Anyway....

A few questions: - do you think that the round corner will not be a problem? - could you post the sketchup file? thank you very much for your feedback! Alex

A lot of stuff was missing in that plan, a made some mods You can use the round corner for trapping. If you want some natural light you can put second windows in front of the ones you already have, on the internal walls, up against the ceilling PS how did you add the SKP file?

Alberto - you are a dream mate - at last someone who can help thanks :D cheers john

belairstudio wrote:

PS how did you add the SKP file?

the same way i posted the jpg file, adding it as an attachment (and keeping it under 500KB). Alex ps: Hi John, thanks for the visit!

John Sayers wrote:

Alberto - you are a dream mate - at last someone who can help thanks :D cheers john

Thnaks John, I owe you a lot..I hope I didn't do too many mistakes Do you think he needs to decouple the rooms from the basement to isolate them better from each other?

it's the design factor I was commenting on - construction can sort out the rest ;) I've been posting similar designs for ages yet no one has picked up on them like you did then. thanks.' cheers john