50 m2 of dreams- the Estonian studio

Hi, everyone! Yet another lurker stepping out into the sun. I can't tell you how glad I am to finally have a reason to post :) This site is priceless indeed! I would be so happy if You could help me with some design issues. Here's the deal: INTRODUCTION: Well, I'm a producer/songwriter/artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. Been in the game for about 8 years now. Produced some albums, written/produced a lot of songs for my group and other artists. I've been in a fortunate position to use one of the premiere recording facilities in the country for the last 6 years for free! But Alas! - times change and it's time to move on. I've dreaming about my own studio for a few years now. I spent the last 9 months looking for the right place. Finally it's time to take action! I've teamed up with a friend of mine and we're starting a company. Don't have a name yet, sorry. WHERE WE ARE: We are at the stage of demolition and planning. We have a structural engineer (provided by the owner) working with us to make sure everything's safe. The owner is taking care of all permits and licences etc. OUR GOAL: To create a small (but professional) recording studio with good sounding rooms. A control room and a tracking room is enough for us. ABOUT THE BUILDING: The studio is located in the centre of the city in a commercial/light industrial/residential zone, about 50 m (164 ft) from a busy street.. It's pretty secluded though, so traffic noise is not an issue. We are renting this space from a construction company, which has a lot of unused real estate in the city. The owner pays for the demolition, electrical works and plumbing. Electricity, water and heat are included in the monthly fee. It's a bargain! The house has two storeys and was built sometime in the eighties. It's really solid. The place used to be a cafeteria and one can still smell the fat :) SPACE: We have about 50 square meters (164 sqf) at our disposal. The studio area is 4,5 m X 7.4 m (15 f x 24 f) [about 33 sqm (108 sqf)], the rest will be storage space, an office/kitchen area and two bathrooms. The rooms are on the ground floor with an empty (and cold) attic above it. FLOOR: Slab on grade, covered with ceramic tiles. WALLS: The main walls are thick [almost 1m (40”) in places] limestone. The rest are white brick walls. We are stripping all of them of old drywall right now. CEILING: The ceiling is ferroconcrete and is 3,1 meters high. It's supported by horizontal steel beams. There's a drywall ceiling (which we are tearing down) at 2,7 meters. We will leave the old framing there for now. HVAC: Well, there's obviously no working air exchange system there, so we must install a new one. Any help appreciated :) OTHER FACTS: The studio area has a semi-supporting (is there such a thing?) brick wall cutting the room in half, which the owner is going to knock down and put a support beam in the middle of the room. They are also going to remove all the old pips and the electric cabinet you see on some of the pictures. There is a window in the studio area, and we really want to "cinderblock" it, partly because of sequrity issues, partly because a soundproof window (yep, there's no such thing) will cost a lot. And its a large window. The ceiling has 2 fake ventilation pipes going up to the attic. We tested them-they don't work :) POWER: The house is connected to industrial power (380V). NEIGHBOURS (Potential Problem): There's a printing house in the same building with the printing press on the left and offices to the right side. I'm not worried about noise getting out- it's the noise coming in that worries me. There's two types of noise coming from the left side- one is a high pitched quiet humming (pretty rare) and there's also this low roar (pretty loud, in 15 second intervals, 4-5 times in a row)) wich also makes the walls vibrate a bit. It sounds like a compressor working or something. It's probably the press. We haven't done any measuring, but we were thinking about hiring an acoustics firm to take some measurements and maybe help us out a little. Don't know the about the cost, though. The studio area has no doors, so maybe things will improve a bit once we install proper doors. MUSIC: I'd say about 50% contemporary urban, 30% commercial rock music, 20% whatever we get our hands on :) OTHER WORK: Songwriting, arranging, voice-overs, jingles, cut-and paste mixing (for dance groups etc). We also might rent out the space for others to mix in, for example. LOUDNESS: I like to “crank it up” sometimes when I do my drum programming, so things get a little loud at times. SETUP: All we have at the moment is a top-notch PC, a pair of Yamaha HS80's, a largeYamaha keyboard (the one used for live gigs) and that's pretty much it :) I figured, we get the studio right first and worry about the gear later. I have a wish list, however and I can post it if it's of any importance. WHAT TO CONSIDER: The CR should fit at least 4 people (the bigger the better :)). The tracking room has to be big enough for a drum set, which will be pretty stationary. So any vocalist or instrumentalist has to have room to do their thing. BUDGET: About 5000$ on the construction and the materials. We have some connetions and can get some stuff cheaper (and some for free). CONSTRUCTION EXPERIENCE: We do have some experience and will be doing most of the work. We will only employ a construction worker to do the “tricky” stuff, heh. QUESTIONS: * Should we leave the old ceiling frames there, or take them down? As soon as we finalize the design, I will have A LOT of questions about construction and acoustics. I promise to use the search button, and I have Rod's book by my side. Ok, so I'm gonna attach a bunch of pictures and an .skp file of the empty rooms in the next post. After doing some MAJOR reading and looking at everybody else's designs I came up with a layout idea myself. Only i can't attach it, because I got a little carried away, downloading all of them fancy models and stuff (think Sims 2) and the file was eventually 16 Megs! I cut it down to 4 but it's still too large. I can send it to anyone who's interested. Let's do this!

Ok, so here's the skp of the empty rooms, and the layout idea I came up with (which is probably crap). :D Oh, and my name is Kaido, by the way! Thanks!

maybe flip the wall dividing the live room and the "waste of space" section :-) this would give you a smaller room near the front of the CR for vox or other isolation and a larger live room. or if you don't need a large isolation space, put a small booth in the corner and open up the entire live room.

Thank you so much for your input, Glenn! You actually gave me an idea that could be worth pursuing. I think I'm gonna go for the "big" live room. I have a few people looking for a rehearsal space for their band. I can rent it out, when I'm not recording! As for the vocals- is it okay to just isolate the singer with gobos, instead of building a booth? It would save me money and not waste the little space I have. Also I don't think I can afford sliding glass doors (if that's what you had on your plan). Plus I read that isolation-wise they're not the best choice anyway. Let me know what you think of this plan. One thing has changed- instead of a steel bar, they're gonna leave a section of the old wall to support the ceiling beam. It's in the updated .skp file. I'm gonna take some new photos tomorrow and post 'em up. Thanks! :D Kaido

hello Kaido I agree with gullfo, the 2 rooms you drew were too similar in size and shape. I'd make a smaller booth and a larger room. If it were me I'd keep a vocal booth with full isolation between all rooms, but it doesn't have to be very big. Looks like a nice space you have there. You will get some isolation with gobos, but at the end of the day if you are looking to isolate your vocalist you will need a vocal booth. Gobos reduce sound somewhat, but with a rock band the vocals will still appear in the drum overheads, and everything will appear in the vocal mic (large diaphragm condensers are sensitive... lots of bleed, though you can play with the null points to increase isolation). Don't forget you can also isolate someone in the control room as well....

Thanks, jwl! I'm sorry for not being specific enough. We won't be tracking the whole band at the same time. 80 percent of the time we'll be working with programmed drums and midi. Most of the bands I've recorded so far have done 1 instrument at the time, especially the inexperienced ones. With bigger projects we'll rent a bigger facility. The vocals will be done separately too. Equipment wise, we won't have enough to record a full band simultaneuously anyway. So, taking all of the above into account- will this layout be ok? *Can the live room be used to record vocals, without building the booth and with gobos surrounding the vocalist to dampen the sound? *Any suggestions for the shape of the live room? *Would it be possible to flip the CR 90 degrees, thus creating a big CR (and build a small booth in the corner somewhere)? Or would the pole in the middle of the room create an acoustic problem? (just an idea) Thank you again!

you can always add the isobooth later if you find your patronage changes from programmed to live drums. maybe build it bigger to make a drum booth and keep the vox in the gobos or in the CR... the big live room though will be nice. the sliders aren't the best for isolation and maybe more expensive so just sub in a pair of doors with glass windows in them.

Greetings, comrades! A quick update: I cannot post any pictures, because the demolition has been SLOOOOOW. So me and my partner are gonna go in tomorrow and start breakin sh*t :D I'll post some pictures as soon as I have something to show. New questions: *Does the 12 degree angle minimum apply to the ceiling also? *What would be the ideal angle for the CR ceiling, considering the dimensions? Also can anybody answer some of the other questions in my previous posts? Thanks!

you could flip the CR if that works but then you have that door in front of the console... the slope on ceiling could be less than 12 degrees if you don't have the space. chances are its a false ceiling acting as treatment anyways so its reflection and absorption characteristics are up to you. so if 6 degrees works that just make the ceiling slightly less reflective in the front section and more absorbative in the back section (relative to your console).

Hello again, folks! It's been a minute since my last post, as things were not moving along. But, we're back in business, so to speak and are planning to start the construction phase of this project next week! Here is the final design of the place. Please be so kind to comment and stop me from doing stupid things :) This is obviously without any treatment, just the walls and ceiling. I don't have any new photos yet, but I'll take some next week. The questions will come in my next post. Thanks! Kaido

Here's the first question: Is it reasonable to build the front half of the control room with standard silicate bricks as shown on the picture? The rest would be metal framing and gypsum boards. Will it create any problems? The main reason is the availability of the bricks and the cheap price. My father would lay the bricks as he is very skilled at that. We want to do it this week. Once I get the green light, I should probably move to the construction forum :) Thanks!

you can do this but realistically the shape of the CR is defined to guide the sound and provide treatment which using the block will make a bit harder - but it looks like you're still planning to use a false ceiling so maybe this will work well enough.

Just an observation, but is there really any point to the window? From the "sweetspot", your not gonna see much more than wall, so why not save the money and iso issues associated in putting in a window, and go with a closed circuit tv setup? Also that way, if you use the LR as a rehursal space, it gives you a bit more privacy in the CR. Oz

Thank you for your input, guys! The TV idea is great, Oz! One can never have too many LCD screens in the studio :) Gullfo, by a false ceiling do you mean a soft ceiling, acting as treatment? Does that mean I have to build the real ceiling 2,8m high and then add the angled false ceiling (hangers + plastic +cloth)? Oh, and were gonna go the old school way (wood framing and gypsum boards) :) Can't wait to start building! Kaido *EDIT* Found some info and updated my question :)

Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

thumbs up. gotta have a 32" LCD though for it to count ;-)