First post...one room concept

I have a home mix room at the moment- it was a temporary solution after I left my old room and is only 9'x18'. I have found a building now that is available- out on a farm. It is aprox 18'x40' and I am keen on the idea of keeping it as one big room with the feel of a vibey lounge- partly because it is a rented space that I dont want to spend money on permanant changes and partly cos I love that whole organic vibe on sessions. There is the added bonus of the performance area being a really cool area for artists to chill during mixing and preproduction sessions. SO- how to make the 1 room solution work? I am happy to have movable dividers (I like the idea of making these out of straw bales that can be stacked up and aranged into loads of different uses) and some big stage curtains to be pulled across between the spaces... good idea or not? Thanks for any help or ideas guys. P.S. my console is 8' x 4' and then there are 4 bays of outboard, a hammond, a little neve sidecar (10ch) to be accomodated along with at least two sofas!

Really? Noone has any thoughts on the control room/tracking room combo?

do you have a floor plan of the space? how tall are the ceilings? what kind of isolation requirements do you have? basically the info found in the "read me before posting stickie" :-)

Hi Glenn, Well I dont have a floor plan as such- it's 18'x40'. thats it! The walls are 8' sloping to a central max hight of about 14', running lengthways,(the max height is a guess) I am dont have the building yet so am short on info but I want to figure how to use it before taking a lease! Any ideas? I will add all the info as I get it.

mybe something like this works?

Wow- thats really cool- although more than I think I would want to do... the mixing space is of the most importance to me, although that would be a sweet studio I would rather have fewer, biger spaces I think... thats why I like the idea of the 1 room thing! I'm going to gaze at this design all night and convince myself that it's do-able though!!

Here are two options of what I am looking to build for myself in the future... Dimensions are 6x9m2. Good luck, Dirk

you could also build a single wall to create a CR and booth and still have a nice size live room.

I recently started a thread about an "all in one" room ( http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9125 ) and received a similar response...........suggested plans for breaking the area up into live room, booth and control room. While I genuinely appreciate Glenn taking the time to read the question and reply, I have to wonder whether anyone who either wants or NEEDS to step outside of the accepted "box" of studio design is wasting their time even bothering to ask for help here. 8)

Ausrock wrote:

I recently started a thread about an "all in one" room ( http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9125 ) and received a similar response...........suggested plans for breaking the area up into live room, booth and control room. While I genuinely appreciate Glenn taking the time to read the question and reply, I have to wonder whether anyone who either wants or NEEDS to step outside of the accepted "box" of studio design is wasting their time even bothering to ask for help here. 8)

I've found quite a similar response on other forums too. I think the thing is that people always want to get as much as possible into the space. I want to get as much space as possible into my environment! If I was building a commercial room I would do something along the lines of Glenns design but I would also be looking at a much bigger space. I guess what I really want is advice from folks who have used single room solutions succesfully... I was more open to splitting the space up but I am more and more set on the single room with a (maybe prefab) booth or two.

I've been thinking about this evening and have come to the conclusion that I will stick to my direction, make some extensions to increase the height of my gobos when necessary, these can then be rolled around to create an almost symetrical control/mix area or booth as required, or as a screen around drums, amps, etc. 8)

I like the one-room design, though admittedly if I had more space (not to mention budget) I'd add a vocal booth at the very least. When it comes to recording rock bands, putting all the instruments in the same room allows one to use room mics, which is a HUGE plus from my point of view. I think given your space, more than one room makes sense. But that's just an opinion. You could definitely make one large room that sounds good. My room is much smaller than yours (12x20), but my current design looks something like this:

On paper splitting up a room in several smaller rooms might look nice, but in reality the acoustics suffer and it becomes claustrophic pretty quickly IMHO. I work in a relatively small room and my next, bigger room will also be a one room design, with the possibility to put a guitar amp in the storage room. Preferably a space with enough ceiling height and daylight. Nothing beats a nice big room where a band can really jam in and where the acoustics can develop. A not so small advantage is that you don't have all these widely space roommodes, so you don't need to start to basstrap the space to get some even low-end. Greetings, Dirk

These are the reply's I'd hoped to start to get :lol: :D

Ausrock wrote:

While I genuinely appreciate Glenn taking the time to read the question and reply, I have to wonder whether anyone who either wants or NEEDS to step outside of the accepted "box" of studio design is wasting their time even bothering to ask for help here. 8)

nothing wrong with a single room design. i use one as do many other folks here. its just that once you get to a fairly large space it does seem odd to try to make do with a single room when you have the option to get a number of good sounding rooms out of it but as a minimum, if you can get a good sized CR and live room out out of the space, my preference would be to do it. if really you want to go with a single live/CR room, there are a number of examples on the site which you could likely scale to fit your needs.

gullfo wrote:

nothing wrong with a single room design. i use one as do many other folks here. its just that once you get to a fairly large space it does seem odd to try to make do with a single room when you have the option to get a number of good sounding rooms out of it but as a minimum, if you can get a good sized CR and live room out out of the space, my preference would be to do it. if really you want to go with a single live/CR room, there are a number of examples on the site which you could likely scale to fit your needs.

Glenn, The point is, that for whatever reasons, seperate rooms are not and may never be necessarily an option for some people, hence both my and Mrphil's threads. Chris 8)

i understand :-) i use a single room as do many others... just my opinion that if you have enough space, then creating rooms with good modal characteristics can be desirable over simply trying to leave the space open... otoh, if you leave the space open you can add walls and such later if your method of operation changes... i would go with your layout #2 as it seems to be the most open on the mix side. if you need machine storage then you're probably limited to #1 unless you can use isocabinets under or near your console.