phoneticsound recording studio - New Location, New Design

Hi! First of all I want to congratulate you all for creating/keeping this wonderful forum! This is my first post but I have been reading it a bunch in the last few weeks and am very impressed by the community here. right on. Major Goals - to create a fairly flat (within small-room limitations) control room, and a fairly bright and lively, yet very disperse live room (will consider dual-mode devices to deaden it, but this is not essential). I hope to create an "Illusive" live room that sounds much bigger than it is, as much as possible. So far I am just in the design process - I have not touched the rooms with a hammer or screwdriver yet. I have been doing a fair bit of research and I have a paper sketch almost finished of my own ideas of roughly what I want to do. I was hoping to have it Sketchup'd but learning sketchup is taking a little longer. Usage: My clients include everyone from singer/songwriters to punk rock bands to rappers, but I have access to a few other rooms here in Edmonton, and lately I've been recording drums at a couple of studios. Powersound is one of them (www.powersoundstudios.com, www.myspace.com/powersoundstudios) and they built a beautiful live room a year ago. Basically, I don't need to rely on my room for recording drums, but if there was a possibility I COULD get a good drum sound in it, I might be tempted to try:) Sources to be recorded: Vocals, Guitars (electric and acoustic), percussion, other acoustic instruments, and vocals!! oh and possibly also some vocals! I'm not very loud very often - So I'd rather spend money on sounding GOOD rather than being absolutely quiet. The house IS a duplex though, so I'll probably just work out with the neighbors when the best hours to record loud guitar amps are, and do it then. My wife and daughter are wonderfully tolerable. By Loud, I mean, 4x12 guitar cabs, etc. most of the time it's vocals/acoustic guitar, etc. Budget - I'd like to complete this around end of summer, or early fall, and funding it as I go, I'm looking to spend between $1000-2,000, but I do have access to some things that should hopefully help me keep the costs down (a friend with a mill, etc). I'll include some photos, my sketchup 2d, so the rooms can be visualized. feel free to let me know if I've left anything out! Explanations: the larger room is the control room, there is an electrical panel on the biggest exterior wall. Hopefully the photos will be clear! ...hmm it won't accept any of my live room pics, perhaps i've exceeded the max attach count? will be back again soon! Thankyou in advance for any feedback... Jeff

could you post with dimensions? meanwhile you could consider something like this (on a slightly smaller scale)

gullfo - that design is pretty crazy! I don't plan on needing any iso-booths, and was going to use the large room to double as the "lounge/sitting" area as well as the control room, so that comings and goings will not interupt the recording. I'm at work right now, but I'll try to remember the dimensions: the large room is 26' 1.5" by about 12' wide, and the ceiling changes from just under 8' (by the entrance) to just over 7'. the smaller room has the higher ceiling all the way, but is about 17' by 11'. I'll Post my sketchup file here as well - it should be close to exact, but I forgot to add wall thickness and then when i added the walls the one shared wall no longer lines up... I'll probably have to just start from scratch but I haven't had time yet - anyway here is the current sketchup - which is exact other than the aforementioned issue.

I should also mention that we have a long-term rental agreement at this place (we don't own it)- so that slightly limits what I can/want to do - I'm not obssessed with being able to carry out everything if we move down the road, but I don't plan on building soffits for the speakers. The existing walls I'd like to keep. I AM willing to build slat resonators, corner traps, as much diffusion in the live room as I can afford, and whatever else I need to do to make it look nice as well. I'm planning on getting some LED spot lighting, so that should help with ambiance! One last note - I have 4 3' by 6' by 8" thick acoustic absorption panels (fiberglass/burlap/wood frame) that I can use - perhaps 2 behind the control seat (and just off the wall to maximize bass absorption), and a couple as an option to deaden the live room if need be?

if you can add a door on the side wall between the CR and live room, you could just add some slat resonators around to break up echos and give some broadband treatment to the space. isolation by beefing up between joists and studs with 5/8" drywall and mounting new ceiling on resilient channel.

hi Glenn! thankyou first of all for your design idea. I was initially planning to use the smaller space for the live room - and combine the big room into a control room / lounge. The control area would face towards the live room, so the the room would be wide more than deep. I've heard the odd comment against this - are deep/narrow rooms always better than wide/shallow rooms (control rooms)? I'm now starting to lean towards using the big room for the live room, as I believe it will be easier to get a good live, dispersed sound from the bigger room (obviously), and since the control room will be much more dampened, size shouldn't be as much of an issue. I was curious as to why the second door was needed - as opposed to just leaving the slats to go through that space? Am I far off to think that in rooms this small I'm also going to need some dedicated bass trapping as well as the broadband treatment? Also - i'm not sure if I understand this:

isolation by beefing up between joists and studs with 5/8" drywall and mounting new ceiling on resilient channel.

can you explain, or diagram? thankyou! jeff

hmm. my comments on the pictures didn't get through: the bottom pic is on the back corner of the small room, against the wall between the two rooms. The first pic is with the camera standing in the corner that is shown in the second pic - straight across the room from the door.

the door would be a window door so you can see into the live room.... the drywall "beef" would be to add a layer of drywall between the ceiling joists so it contacts the upper floor. this adds mass. then the new ceiling would be hung using RC-1/RC-2 to isolate the new ceiling from the existing framing. you'll definitely need some bass trapping probably in all the corners of the CR and live room. a cloud over the mix position, maybe something in the live room as well.