Hello-looking at new spaces-gonna have some questions

Hello Recording Studio Design Folks. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Eric Ambel. I'm a guitarist and I've been producing records since the late '80's. I live in the East Village and have a recording studio in Williamsburg Brooklyn with my partner Tim Hatfield. It stared out as a temporary place but we've been working in our current basement location for 8 years. I guess you would call it a 'production studio'. Our studio is what I would call a 'no control room plus' setup. We have a main room that is 25' x 21 with 10' ceilings. We have expanded over the years and have a finished booth with a sliding glass door that is 16' x 9'. We also have a 16' x 10' storage area that has speaker and mic lines. (all 10" ceilings with concrete beams) The main room has our console, speakers, tape machines, outboard gear, computer rigs, drum kit, guitar ISO box, bass ISO box. The booth has a spinet piano, a Hammond A-100 and Leslie and more guitar amps. Lots of smaller low wattage amps. We have treatments in our room from Real Traps (their early rigid bass traps in the rear corners) We also have a bunch of the Decware QRD Diffusors (16 2' x 2' units mounted on 4 2' x 8' 1/2" sheets of plywood in the rear of our room behind the drums) We have 5 ATS 2' x 4' 4" 703 panels (3 behind our monitors and one each on the side wall reflection points. When we moved in their was carpet over the concrete floor (which still remains) There is also a lot of fabric covered 1" rigid fiberglass on the concrete ceiling in between the concrete beams. This is our second location that used the 'no control room' type setup. We accidentally ended up working in a 'no control room' type place a while back and really enjoyed the work flow with almost everyone in the same room. Seems that less than 15% of time in the studio is spent cutting drums. I'd rather spend a little time with headphones on than a lot of time in a little room:). Most of our clients are 'roots rock/country rock/folk rock bands or singer songwriters in that americana style. I played guitar with Steve Earle & the Dukes since '00 and I also have a band w Dan Baird from the Georgia Satellites called the Yayhoos. Our usual work days at the studio are from 11 am till about 8pm. We have very little stuff that is 'built in' to the room. We have wanted to move for a long time and now it looks like we are going to be able to. We are currently looking for a new place. We've got a line on a couple spots. We are focusing on single story buildings with at least 12' of clear ceiling height. We hope to end up with 1,200 to 1,500 sq feet for our studio, storage and a little office/B room. We will be sharing the new spot with a non music buisness. We have really enjoyed working in the 'one room plus' style and we will be looking to set up our new place that way also but since our new place wont be an inherited practice room we hope to use a lot of what we have learned to make the new place even more comfortable and better sounding. I must apologize for my longwinded introduction. I hope I am playing by the rules. I got Rod's book and I was blown away by how straightforward it is. I have enjoyed reading a lot of the threads I've really really been wrestling with Sketchup. The drawing of my current spot is really bad but I hope it can sort of illustrate the 'flow' of our current place. I'm going to have a few questions about construction and design as I'm looking at these buildings. Probably more 'Construction' questions for starts so I'm posting my 'hello' here in the construction forum Thanks in advance. thanks, Eric Ambel hope my sketchup file shows up.

Hello, After reading Rod's book and the "Floating a Floor is probably not right for you" thread I did some searching on cosmetic floor to no avail. Could someone point me to the info on a cosmetic floor? thanks

by cosmetic floor I'm guessing you mean to put in a layer of hardwood or something similar. as long as the cosmetic floor is solid you shouldn't have much a problem with resonances, membrane panel effects, etc... also consider stained, polished concrete. you can get a large variety of patterns, colors, and its extremely rugged... :-) also, in the future studio, consider a drum booth which opens up significantly so you have options to either contain the sound or use the room...

thanks Glenn. the floor all depends on what I see in some of these buildings. I do hope to be able to hide some cabling under the floor. In the one mention I found here of a "cosmetic floor" battens were mentioned. but I guess raising the floor any amount (even 2x4's on their side) would open the door to 'resonances'? Polished and/or stained concrete can look pretty nice. I'll have look into the possibility of digging out some channels for the cabling? I do hope to have one of the booths in the new place that would be large enough (180 sq ft or so) to house the drum kit if we wanted to move it in there.

I'm familiar with cable floors - i.e.: raised floors with access panels in them so the floor becomes essentialy a large cable tray - but no - you do not want this. you missed a point in the book however - If your need is instaling cable below the floor - and NOT isolation in the deck itself - then a built up deck filled with sand is just what the doctor ordered. As long (of course) as you are building over a slab on grade - or over a deck that has been certified to carry the load by a structural engineer. Use multiple decks with the same air-space (between them) as the walls - and stay with the room in a room style of construction. I hope that helped. Rod

Thanks Rod. built up deck filled w sand sounds good. I'll keep that in mind as I'm looking at the buildings. E

Probably sucking eggs, but just to make sure: do not use the sand from your back yard (unless you live in the desert). Don't want your beautiful cosmetic floor to slowly rot away, do we? 8)