New Studio, Downtown Los Angeles

Hi everyone…I’m hoping I cover all the bases for requested information. I’ve just signed a lease for a studio space in downtown Los Angeles. The space is more or less completely wide open. It’s about 860 sq feet, it’s on the 2nd floor of a large industrial/office building. (It’s in the fashion district so most of the other tenants are producing clothing) My hopes/expectations: The current space I’m in is much smaller: <400 sqft and has only a very small long drum room and larger control room. I’ve tolerated it and I can in fact work there. The most trying thing for me is that whenever I have something important, I tend to take it somewhere else. Oh yeah, it’s in the ghetto, the 2nd month I was there my girlfriend witnessed a murder outside. I guess I’m bringing all of the old issues up because in reality, even if the new space was parallel walls with acoustic treatments, the safety, size, and convenience (old space, no bathroom) will still be much more valuable to me than where I am at now. Ideally I would like to have a moderate sized control room, a larger than normal drum room, 2 iso booths and a small lounge/hallway. I used sketch up for the first time this morning and tried to create the layout. I really don’t know what I’m doing in that regard, but I think I did ok. I don’t know how to draw the rafters and other ceiling obstructions, but I can definitely describe them. If you look at the sketchup file, the surfaces around the room vary. The window is on the north side. The floor and ceiling as well as the big white pillars are made of concrete and they are 32” in diameter. There’s also a small slab in the north west corner made of concrete as the other side of that wall is a stairwell. The window is not one large piece of glass…it has many small pains in it. I’d love to be able to keep the outside light but I’m not sure how feasible that is. There is some outside noise coming in, so I think I would just close it off. It could be cool to frame off that cut out section for the window and the place 3 1x1 windows in that so that some light could still come through. The rest of the west wall and south wall are sheetrock.. The east wall is made of plywood (it was just added a few weeks ago by my landlord) As for sound isolation, I don’t think it will be too much of a problem. I only share one wall---the plywood one. It’s a lady that has some kind of knitting business and she agreed to rent the space knowing that I’d have a studio there. She said she used to work in a recording studio herself. The other two walls have a large hallway on the other side. The space above me is sewing and has women wearing ear plugs; the space bellow is a furniture storage space. I think that maybe an extra wall along the east wall (at least the north ½ of the building where I would like to but the live room) would help to minimize the leakage to that tenant. As far as how loud, it can definitely be loud. I do a fair amount of drums, and some of them hit hard, as well as guitars and bass. It’s almost all loud rock. It seems that most of the building is gone at night. If I ever had to do any REALLY loud stuff I could do it at night. As for mixing I try to keep it around 85-90db. I use JBL LSR28Ps…the older ones with the carbon fiber front but no automatic tuning controls. Heighth dimensions: As I said, I couldn’t figure out how to draw the rafters etc, so I’ll just try to describe them. The highest points of the building are 11’. There are large 1 FOOT X6” rafters going north to south on 35” centers. The 1’ dimension means that from the floor to the bottom of the rafters, it’s 10’ (there’s a total of 7 of them, the far west one is 1’ from the wall. There are also two sets of beams from east to west between the 2 sets of pillars. I made a small diagram with the measurements of them. The diagram shows the one across the center of the room. The one about the doorway is the same, except the section to the left of the yellow line doesn’t exist (well it probably exists on the other side of the wall, outside of my space) There is also one of these beams (just like the one above the doorway, going from the west center pillar to the northwest corner by the window. Aside from the rafters there are various pipes around the ceiling---some are conduit carrying electrical, some are for the sprinkler system. 2 of them are fairly low (8’ but I should be able to have those re-routed/moved around) The rest are above the 9’3” rafters. I’m really hoping not to have to build any new ceilings as they would block out the sprinkler system. I know that this leaves large parallel surfaces, but hopefully the large wooden rafters will help to keep some of that broken up. Budget: With the help of family and friends we should be able to do most if not all of the work ourselves…I’m sure I’ll be trading studio time with many of my clients that have specialized skills I need. I really have nowhere to base my materials costs on but I’m hoping to spend around $5,000…I think I could probably spend up to $10,000.

here's an idea with a large live room and a few isolation booths. also includes the lounge area. relocating the door will help. and using the ceiling with hangers between the ceiling joists and a false ceiling around 9 feet should give nice overall control and preserve floor and wall space for additional treatments. the one challenge will be the existing sheetrock walls and not creating a three leaf situation. same for the plywood wall on the bottom side.

I wouldn't build a control room like that. Why build a side wall like that which will focus reflections in a beam back to the mix position? You may think that isolation is not an issue. Your neighbors may think differently. Bass travels through the floors, which is a neighbor's ceiling if you are on the second floor. You are also in earthquake central, so you will have to build a room within a room, and then contract the appropriate structural engineering company to figure out how you can sway proof the walls without shorting them to the exterior structure.

the earthquake thought is a good one. since the walls are not structual and the intent (at this point) is not to add an actual ceiling, but the walls would be attached (via isolation clips or other isolating attachments), do you still think a structural engineer is needed? probably cannot hurt to ask one... CR - in the drawing they look like walls but in reality the rear inner sloping "wall" will be bass traps and absorbers so the angles actually help induce sound to enter at an off angle. according to the site owner, the sound isolation (outbound) won't be an issue since its an industrial park. the leasee next door used to work in a studio and is eager to have one nearby. even so my other concern is more for mechanical sounds from other tenants creeping in. since the studio owner is looking to record loud rock he feels the isolation needs are less of a concern to over all decent acoustics.

gullfo wrote:

the earthquake thought is a good one. since the walls are not structual and the intent (at this point) is not to add an actual ceiling, but the walls would be attached (via isolation clips or other isolating attachments), do you still think a structural engineer is needed? probably cannot hurt to ask one... CR - in the drawing they look like walls but in reality the rear inner sloping "wall" will be bass traps and absorbers so the angles actually help induce sound to enter at an off angle. according to the site owner, the sound isolation (outbound) won't be an issue since its an industrial park. the leasee next door used to work in a studio and is eager to have one nearby. even so my other concern is more for mechanical sounds from other tenants creeping in. since the studio owner is looking to record loud rock he feels the isolation needs are less of a concern to over all decent acoustics.

Ah. I have seen people try to build rooms based on articles and board sketches, not knowing that a designer is revealing some generalities and none of the specifics, which would negate the need for a designer/acoustician. As long as people know that there are hangers or whatever back there....

lowdbrent wrote:

You may think that isolation is not an issue. Your neighbors may think differently. Bass travels through the floors, which is a neighbor's ceiling if you are on the second floor.

Yes as glenn said, the sound issue with regard to the neighbors shouldn't be a great concern...I think I touched on that in my original post: "The space above me is sewing and has women wearing ear plugs; the space bellow is a furniture storage space. " Glenn and I have been discussing the walls between the iso booths and the live room. We have tossed around some different ideas; Most of my work doesn't require extreme isolation, because we're usually tracking one musician at a time. When I get bands that actually can play, I often track things live. In that case a little bleed isn't a huge concern (and I've often put guitar amps in the room w/ drums for more vibe) So having said that, my idea was a single wall with insulation and flex channeling saving the cost and time of a double wall double door setup. I've worked with it before and it seemed to perform well. Anyone else have ideas either way?