Feedback on Studio Layout - comments welcome!

Hi all Must have clocked up about 2 months of reading on this site now .. loads of great advise and guidance... really amazing. Thought I'd submit my studio plans for your considered opinions .. but first a bit of background and info: The property I've found is a solid brick built farm workshop, overall inner dimesions are approx 75'x19'. It is one of two units that form an L shape - this one being the long part of the L. The adjoining unit is only used for storage so no great issues for isolation and my unit is the furthest from the farm house etc so some noise leakage is accpetable. With the space I've got I'm quite lucky in that - in all honesty - its probably bigger than I need - but its cheap to rent and will give me the flexibility to grow and develop in future years. I've got enough space for a reasonable sized tracking room, with adjoining control room, a second smaller project studio, a large lounge/chillout/listening room and reception space to greet clients in. There is also kitchen and bathroom facilities which are already in place, that are just off the main building (see pic). The overall room ratios seem ok: .... Tracking - 1, 1.15, 1.54 Control - 1, 1.3, 1.5 Project Studio - 1, 1.12, 1.5 Lounge - 1, 1.2, 1.3 .... but I cant help feeling that given the overall space I've got, I'm not making good enough use of it - esp in terms of the tracking room. My restrictions are: 1) The loudest room needs to be as far away from the adjoining unit as possible 2) The Kitchen access is not movable 3) I believe that I need a corridor to link both external exits due to the length of the building for fire regs (would love to block off door at top end, but not sure I will be allowed!). 4) The front wall of the building (left wall on pic) has the two entrances, a window and 14' wide roller shutter so is by far the weakest wall for iso - so think that the corridor on the left side is the best idea (Shutter will be locked, boxed off internally and not used). 5) The main corridor needs security (push button) doors to prevent any wandering public from accessing all parts of studio whilst I'm locked away doing my 'thang'.(!) 6) I need access to the elect mains consumer unit, so it cant be 'behind' a studio wall. So - I've ended up with a T shaped corridor joining the exits and kitchen, meaning I have created two distinct studio areas. I have a lot of (wasted) space for reception - although with some rework on design this could be reduced to incorporate the project studio - then the lounge could be downsized and the control room could move into that area too - giving the option to substantially increase the tracking room to take the whole north end of the studio. The problem that would then create is that the control room would be the other side of the corridor to the tracking room, because of the kitchen access. So I guess my questions regarding layout are: a) has anyone ever seen or had a control room that far away from the tracking room? b) If so, is it really a workable option? c) Is there an ideal overall size for a tracking room? Or is more about the ratios than anything else. d) Is it workable having a door on the back wall of a studio room? Am worried about how that would affect acoustics, by getting in the way of rear absorbers/traps etc. But am finding that I may have to esp with project studio. In terms of my goals - I am a PC based composer/producer, but am setting up the studio to be able to handle recording 4-5 piece bands, small vocal ensembles, maybe kids choir etc aswell as full DAW/elec music/remixing/post production, voice overs etc. I want a good live sound so dont really want to comprimise on tracking room space if I dont have to. I do have good room height - the roof peaks at 4.8m, but will I prob build to 3m as the roof is lightweight and rather poor for isolation. Most sessions will be office hours with a few expections going up to about 10pm. The roof will definitely need some beefing up. (see cross section in pic). Construction wise - it will be room within room. 4x2, framing, filled with 60kg/m3 mineral wool, and faced with double plasterboard layers (walls and ceiling), caulk, caulk and more caulk. My external walls are 9" solid brick (N,E,S) and 9" brick/block with insulated cavity (W). My floor is slab on grade, and having read Rods book think I will just build straight onto this - maybe put my sole plates on neoprene strip to aid iso - but not sure yet. I dont think it is in scope to or worth floating the floor in the control or tracking rooms, but to beef them up for LFTL I thought about a 3" isolated wooden frame deck, with cavities filled with sand, topped off with ply, then laminate flooring. Any views on this? I've got a budget of £20k for the build, will be doing the framing and plasterboard myself - contractors will do HVAC and electrics. So - any thoughts? Feedback would be great. Its a big ol' project - your help would be much appreciated. Let me know if you need more info. Cheers Dave

Dave - I'd reverse the control rooms and use the sloping ceiling - ceilings should be angled as well as walls. If you reverse the control rooms the ceiling will slope upwards away from the speakers. cheers john

Hi John Many thanks for your reply. I was going to use a cloud etc to 'shape' the ceiling as such.. if I actually built a sloping ceiling would that negate the need for the cloud? Or at least mean that a less substantial one is required? Am I right in thinking that ceiling slope should be around 12 degrees? And sloping up towards the back of the room? So I guess by reversing the control rooms the slope would follow the roof line? Cheers Dave

That's right Dave - remember the ceiling is a wall also so angling it helps as much as angling your other walls. cheers john

by following the roof line you'll get the angled ceiling which you could then take advantage of the overhead space to put in some additional trapping over a false ceiling. it might be a better layout to have the 2 control rooms centered and then reduce the length of the corridor to add that extra 3-4' into the live room, and conceptually you could build your lounge/listening area into an acoustic space for tracking as well.

Glenn, What a great idea - thanks very much for going to the trouble of doing the sketchup for me. Looks great. Was already on the case re: trapping above ceiling, but am intrigued by the idea of lounge/tracking idea - potentially giving me two full studio set ups rather than one, and one for just post-production. Thats some great cre8ive thinking! Would love to extend the main tracking room by shortening the corridor but I think I need the corridor for fire regs - but can easily double check - I guess as long as the outside door is still accessible and not just blocked off then It could be used as an exit for one half of the building. This plan has really got me thinking - thanks so much. You're a star! :D :D Cheers Dave

Glenn/John Sorry - just another quickie that sprung to mind ... In the sketchup file I can see clearly the double frame walls bewteen control ond tracking rooms, but the control room walls that form the central 'corridor' are only single frame - do you think that this will be suffient isolation between control rooms? Obviously the width of the corridor will help - but if you think single frame is ok - then that saves me a load of cost based on what I had spec'd originally! :shock: Would I be right to say that these contol room outer walls (if single frame) would be better built with RC1 on the outer leaf? Will leave it there before I encroach on the construction forum! Thanks again Glenn. Dave. :D

it depends on your requirements, to be safe - I'd put in the double walls and think about putting in air locks on the corridors and the back door so you could use that central space as an additional isolation room. it would be nice to eliminate the corridors but I think you need them to get people moving around without walking though the CR to get into different spaces.