Basement Studio Ideas?

Hi, I've got a 10' x 24' area in my basement, about 7' from floor to joist, and I want to build a small studio in this space but I'm not sure about design. Pretty new to this. Does anyone have ideas for this kind of space? I would like to have a control room, live room and iso booth if possible but I think it will be tough given the space limitation. Control room and largish iso booth would work too as long as I can fit a drum set inside. :) Oh and there is a small window in the south wall, on one of the 10' walls, and the entrance to this space will be in the middle of the east wall, 24' side. I appreciate any ideas! Thanks, Trev

Aloha and welcome to the forum, Trev Any chance you could post a rough floorplan of your room with windows/doors & measurements? Aloha 8)

Hi and thanks! I tried using sketchup and I don't really know what I'm doing but here is what I was able to come up with using sketchup and mspaint. :) The window is 3' from the corner and is 3' w x 1.5' l and 5'7" from the floor. My plan is to go with 3' wide doors for the studio. Thanks again! Trev

morning, what are your requirements? What will you use the studio for? Had a quick muck around with the design. I put in a vocal booth, storage and a machine room. It's only a start. Obviously there is a door between control and studio. And access to the rest of basement/bathroom. it's to early and having trouble with doors :? Is your skp to scale?

control room flip, still with vox booth and storage.[/list]

Cool, yeah the door access in the middle might be a problem but that is definitely the type of design I'm after! The studio will be used mostly for recording rock/metal type music. The ability to isolate drums, bass and guitar for a "live" recording would be great! Could the vocal booth also be used for a guitar or bass amp? Would another vocal/iso booth make the main room too small? Yes the drawing is to scale. Out of curiosity how to you figure out the wall angles? Is there a calculation that is followed? Thanks, Trev

That last one is great, could you send me the skp? Thanks, Trev

ok, so I started learning how to use sketchup and I've created a mock up of my basement with a proposed layout of the studio space. I borrowed from lilith_envy's layout and tried adding more angles (seems like 12 is popular :)) to eliminate parallel walls. The vocal booths will also be used to isolate amps and the large storage room I was thinking could also be used for a vocal booth to provide for recording a 4 piece band simultaneously. I'm just not sure the dimensions are correct for good acoustics, especially with the control room. Is there a formula for calculating how it should be layed out? Or is there a calculation for determining what angles will create a brighter or darker room or is that all dependent on acoustic treatments? Bottom line I guess is it's important that the design allows the rooms to sound good acoustically. It's also important that sound is isolated as much as possible from entering or escaping the studio to/from the rest of the house and/or outside. Any comments or ideas how it could be better? Thanks! Trev

its a fairly tight space (9' on one dimension) so I'd think about turning the CR to get a better room ratio, or if you need more live space, I'd put the CR off to one side to allow easier load in/out to the live room so bands don't need to go through the CR... if storage is also needed, you could put a small closet in on the live room side rather than trying to squeeze it between walls. on the back of the CR you could use an inside-out wall with absorption and let bass flow into the furnace room.