Mirage Studio Build

Greetings everyone, from a previous lurker! I am about to embark on a studio build adventure. To that end, I started researching all that I could and quickly found this site to be a definitive reference for most aspects of such a project. I have been spending a couple of months absorbing all the information I can (that I did not already know), and quickly decided to buy Rod's book to add to the knowledge pile. Quick facts about myself: I currently have a two-room studio in the lower half of our split level home. This was a great opportunity to find out first-hand how NOT to do it, and why. About $5,000 in education - not a bad deal, really, compared to current tuitions. Of course, this was not a serious build, and was definitely before the bulk of my research. I am a network engineer-turned-regional manager for a major corporation. I also have some project manager experience in my past. All of these things will come in handy in this project. I am NOT a builder in any sense of the word. My wife and I actually did do a hands-on construction of a house a while back. While the house turned out fine (with professional help along the way), it reinforced some words I live by - find out what you are good at, and do it. Find out what you are not good at, and don't do it anymore if you can possibly help it. I spent many a year in my teens and twenties as a musician, out on the road and in the studio. I left the business planning to come back and build a small studio to create in and enjoy in my retirement. At a recent point in time, I asked myself why I was waiting for that! So, here are some facts I know you like to have posted: 1. New construction, ground-up. This will be an addition to a new (existing) home we are buying. 2. Area is residential/commercial mix. Have not yet checked into zoning yet, but the house across the street is also a major collectibles/antiques storefront operation. On my to-do list. 3. Neighbors are not close. The property is actually about 3 lots, on a corner. Not a busy street at all (no cars for hours on end). The nearest home is 150+ feet away. 4. The type of music recorded is really quite varied, but I tend to gravitate toward the quieter end of the scale - acoustic, orchestrated via virtual instruments, vocal group, Christian, etc. 5. Based on 3 and 4 I would say I am interested in good performance all-around, but I put inter-room isolation ahead of concerns outside of the structure. 6. I have found I prefer things a little on the dead side rather than the live side, adding acoustical properties electronically. 7. My current situation suffers greatly from cancellation on the low end. I have a sweet spot of about 1 cubic foot in which to stick my head. I have vowed that will not happen again. 8. I plan to complete the structure without any huge preconceived notions about room treatment, but with the knowledge a certain amount will be needed. It seems to make sense to do the best possible room build, but build with options that will allow the necessary treatment after construction is complete. Then test, treat, repeat as necessary. 9. Not much space is needed in the control room for racks of gear. I'm pretty happy with the current equipment setup - Protools LE, 003R audio IO, Control 24 desk, ALP-5 monitors, Samson subwoofer (long story on why I needed that). I have a rack mount, water-cooled PC that is near dead quiet. I don't use a lot of outboard hardware, preferring to mix in the box. I find that modern plugins can do the job if you put the right touch on them, and refuse to invest thousands in outboard hardware just because some people expect to see it. Yes, I will buy some good pres and some better A/D, but the building comes first. 10. Because I mix in the box, I like to have a lot of screen real estate. I currently use 4 monitors, two above and one to each side of the C24. This has been a bit of a design problem, because of the the potential to block both the window and the monitors. But it should be less of an issue with a larger room. 11. Again, I am not a builder, so I intend to contract the work out. We are currently speaking with several to find the right one. I understand fully the caveats Rod points out in his book regarding this arrangement. In my professional life, I work with them all the time. Left unwatched, they can devastate your project in short order. Trust, but verify. 12. Current budget for the construction falls into the $50k to $60k range. Somebody tell me now if this is unrealistic, but I should be able to make that work. The intent is to construct within current income/budget (which is actually not too limiting), so as not to immediately be dependent on client acquisition to recover costs. Initially, this will be for my own enjoyment, and not-for-hire. my long-range plan is to build up reputation and client base thru gratis (and near gratis) work over several years if necessary, to create a viable business that can provide income on down the road. Using this methodology represents a fairly low-risk approach. Sketchup/Design Notes 13. I chose to start with a design concept that has been presented in this forum many times. I have seen many variations on the theme, but the basic idea seemed like a good place to start. Lots of interesting angles that are pleasing to the eye and quite functional from an acoustical perspective. 14, As shown in the drawing, the space will be 24 by 30 foot, on concrete slab. The attached house is not on slab, thus the step up at the door leading to the house. 15. The sketchup file uses many layers so you can turn parts on or turn off for visibility. 16. The walls are intended to be 2 layers of 5/8" sheetrock. Walls to be properly insulated, but not shown. 17. HVAC is not shown. I understand this is a huge part of the design, but I just haven't gotten there yet. Assume it will be a new system, not connected to the house at all. I am (re)reading Rod's chapter on this feverishly as we speak. 17. The framing (or any other) layer is not intended to reflect actual construction techniques. (told you I wasn't a builder :lol: ) But I do want to be able to use it as a tool to explain basic concepts to the contractors who get that deer-in-the-headlights look when it comes to acoustical architecture. So, that's the current state of affairs. I would like to hear any comments, and will field any questions. I anticipate this will take a while, but my goal is to finish in a year. So with that in mind, the design needs to start coming into focus pretty soon. I consider the folks who frequent this forum to be among the best and brightest (and the most helpful I have ever seen), which is why I am laying it out here for all to see.

Incidently, I don't know if any of you have found this yet, but there's a nice free rendering program out there called Kerkythea that can make your Sketchup file look amazing. It has excellent integration with Sketchup, adding a couple of buttons to the toolbar. The attached picture is just a quick-and-dirty, with no enhancements. With a little effort, you can also add photorealistic materials that it look amazingly real. http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/

hi mate i love your overall layout i like the fact you can see the whole studio from the mix position, My only point to raise , and forgive me if i speak out of line , cos im still learining , but where you have glass to the booths to the right and left of the mix position , is this giong to give you reflective probs when you position oyur monitors? im wondering if you need to be soft and absorbant where you currently have glass? all the best steve

i think the design looks really good and to Steve's point you just need to be sure the reflections off the doors are trapped so you don't get a significant volume of reflections from behind or within the booths. if you decide to add 5.1 to the mix, you will also want to consider that maybe single glass doors would reduce the target from the back speakers and still provide enough visibility into each of the side booths as well as increasing the isolation values (although not necessarily making it less expensive since good 50 STC doors can be several thousands of dollars each...) put plenty of bass trapping in the CR and the drum room. as far as commercial - think ADA compliance in your design - do the stairs meet the criteria? sliding doors need flush mounting with the floor and narrow guide tracks (Rod has some good references in the construction forum threads like the MeowMix thread).

Gullfo, thanks for taking the time to look. I appreciate it a lot. Ahh yes, that ADA requirement is easy to forget. The other outside door should be configurable to meet the entrance requirement, would it not? I'll look into it, and check the Meowmix thread also. The extensive glass a concern of mine as well, but I do like the visual enhancements it provides. If you pan around, you see that it is in fact possible for the artists even to get visual cues completely through the control room. I have angled the walls to try and minimize the primary sound reflection issues, and I do plan on treatment on the control room walls to help with this. But that's a lot of glass eating up treatable wall space. Sound comes before visual, so If I can't make it play out right in my mind I may drop back to single doors. Not related to the glass really, but on the subject of treatment I do plan on putting some hangars in the rear corner of the control room, behind the chairs. I really don't want anything much coming back out of there. Hard to say exactly how much will be needed, but feel something has to be back there, even without testing. A fair assumption?

yes. bass trapping will be important as well as overall balance. the glass shouldn't be a problem with the sliders but you just have to weigh the options between the view, future use, isolation, and costs etc.

Future use is an interesting point, and one we have talked about. I am not naive enough to think moving again is not a possibility. But to me, the studio is important enough that it should be built proper. There are compromises that can be made that would make it easier to convert into basic living space. If those compromises can be implemented without significant impact to the performance, I'm good. But other than that, I have two choices: tell the future prospective buyer the space is what it is, or tell them I will gut/modify the space as part of the sale and consider that a back-end cost to the studio. Speaking of cost, one of the prospective contractors gave me a back-of-napkin estimate of around 50-60 thousand for the construction. That was pretty close to my uneducated guess, and within budget, barely. I need to get the roof/ceiling plan solidified. My only thoughts at this point are concerns regarding parallel surfaces and building in a way that can be treated. I went with 10 ft height thinking I would have a little space I could treat with some angular construction after the fact, or absorption techniques. But I really haven't got a good plan yet. Any thoughts?

nice drawing!!!!!!!! I like the design. How do you paint the color into the Wall in the sketchup ? I use the house builder to build the frame but dont know how to mount the drywall layer into the frame and paint it. Thanks!

with the 10ft ceiling you could hang clouds down a couple of feet and angle them to get a balance between reflections and absorption. the overhead space could also get some anging traps to add to the overall bass absorption in the space. "reuse" pitch done correctly: your CR could be a "home theater", the vox booth a "wine cellar", and the live room a "family room" with "decorator treatments"... 8)

chrisliao wrote:

nice drawing!!!!!!!! I like the design. How do you paint the color into the Wall in the sketchup ? I use the house builder to build the frame but dont know how to mount the drywall layer into the frame and paint it. Thanks!

Well, I don't pretend to be real proficient at Sketchup, but... What I did was to lay in the Framing (after the slab), then drew a rectangle on the face of the frame wall in question and used the push/pull tool to extend by the width of the drywall. Then it's just a matter of selecting the paint tool to add the color to that surface.

"reuse" pitch done correctly: your CR could be a "home theater", the vox booth a "wine cellar", and the live room a "family room" with "decorator treatments"...

Glenn, you shoulda been a car salesman :lol: Hopefully, the only reason to move after this is because I've outgrown the studio :D I'm kinda leaning toward the angled trap concept, because I'm afraid clouds alone aren't gonna get the job done in the lower freqs. I don't have any experience to back that up; just looking at typical cloud construction specs versus room mode calculation. Update on the financials - The banks says I'm not crazy, so it looks like we are seriously gonna do this if the rough estimates are anywhere near reality. Woo hoo!

defintely use the back corner for trapping but a common approach is to put an angled false ceiling up with the bass trapping and then depending on how the traps are configured, use reflector or perforated panels or slats to preserve the liveness and increase the angles further, and/or soffits for additional trapping and duct runs.

Update: Change of plans. Someone put a contract on the property we were looking at before we did. Arrrgh! But sometimes things have an interesting way of working out. Another property became available, and it is going to be much more suitable in the long run. The great part about the new one is it has a 1600 sq ft building in place already. It looks like a great starting point for the studio, as opposed to building from scratch. 40' by 41' by about 25', six inch slab. Front and back walls are 1/4" I-beam, side walls are C-channel. What I'm thinking is to basically build a version of the previous design inside the building, not attached in any way to the metal outside structure. My concern is vibration/ringing/etc of the steel and tin walls. The nice part about the space is more space! I can add the things the other design was missing or at least was dependent on the existing house for, like bathroom, lobby/reception, lounge area. One concession to the better half was to put steel trusses across the top to create an upper floor so to speak (pending a look from a structural engineer), for storage and an apartment/visitor's suite type of thing. It will not be required to be isolated, just needs to be there. I figure I can leverage this concept to get additional isolation between me and the outside world. Speaking of which, the outside world is not really a huge issue. There are no neighbors even remotely close to the structure, as this is out in the boonies. It's even 50 yards or so from the property's house, and has its own electrical feed/meter. Apparently the former owner before the existing had a business operating out of there, but I'm not sure exactly what the nature of it was. Based on size, he could have been working on locomotive engines :lol: . No questions at this point other than this: Am I right in assuming I should not attach to the outside shell of this building, or are my concerns unwarranted? A few snapshots below, and I will be posting a modified design in the near future. Edit: picture descriptions don't seem to work, so here's the lowdown: manip_100_0589.JPG - front of building, with reference human :-) manip_100_0574.jpg - from front doors, looking toward back manip_100_0576.JPG - near back corner, looking toward front manip_100_0577.JPG - roof trusses manip_100_0590.JPG - inside wall detail, typical manip_100_0592.JPG - outside left of building

nice space! check out John's Oasis studio which would look like a nice fit.

I have been droooling over the Oasis build for some time now. Absolutely gorgeous, and extremely functional to boot. :) Mine is a nice space, although it is now more space than I can afford to complete all in one pass. After sharpening my spreadsheet, the plan going forward looks like this: Phase 1. Complete studio in 900 of the existing 1600 sq. ft. space, using construction techniques necessary to do Phase 3. Phase 2. Finish out 320 sq. ft. in front area for office, reception area, lounge, bathrooms, etc. Probably semi-finish remaing sq. ft. for whatever. Phase 3. Build upstairs loft for visitor suite (bedroom/bath/sitting room) and remaining upstairs for storage. You notice which item is first on the list. :wink: The phases will probably equate to year 1, year 3, and year 5, if my financial situation remains as it is. But things have a way of changing, so it's hard to say. All I know is phase 1 is being financed and is (almost) ready when I am. It's been pointed out to me that even 900 sq ft with $50-60K still seems optimistic when looked at from a per sq. ft. perspective. But a couple of things worth considering: no equipment needed, as it already exists in the present (but woefully inadequate) studio space. The only cost will be construction. Also, the slab is existing, which will save a considerable amount. The other thing is while material prices on the gulf coast are average, the labor can be had fairly reasonable. So we will see. Bottom line is the build will happen. It's just a matter of wants vs needs vs must-haves at this point. I have been revising the sketchup design to accomodate the additional sq. ft. as the original was based on 30x24, not 30x30. I will post it when it's a little further along, but the picture shows a preview. For reference, the wall between the live room and the control room is centered in the 30x30 space.

Here's an updated design to reflect the change in space. Notes: 1. Areas adjacent to the studio are for future use, as is the area above. Storage, Entrance area, reception, etc. 2. Treatments not shown except for the planned Hangers in back of the Control Room, and only shown for illustrative purposes (that layout is not "designed" :lol: ). Plenty more to do, but I thought I would float what I had out there for comment.

One more pic, and the Sketchup file.

Nice drawings Brian! Quick question... the rear wall of the control room (where the hangers are) is that a 'false' wall?

Right. The object in front of the hangers is intended to be a cloth surface, actual construction TBD.

Nice drawings Brian!

Thanks! I work better if I can visuallize things. Sketchup is great for that, and I figure the more I use it, the better I'll get at it. Still makes me pull my hair out occasionally....

curious, why not use all the space within the larger framed area?

Multiple reasons, actually. 1. Financial is one - I'm trying to stay within budget and the extra sq. footage would definitely jack up the materials and labor. 2. The extra space in the front is actually tagged for the future possibility of a reception/lounge/office area. 3. The extra space on the side is a compromise with the boss for some of her stuff. :roll: Gotta work with what ya got...

Brian, You definitely have a sweet situation there! Good layout. The only thing that may drive you a little nuts is running back and forth through the other rooms to get to the main room, but you generally have that whenever you have a separate control room. Since I work a LOT unassisted I built my mix position inside the the main room with all the peripheral iso booths ringing the mix position. You will be VERY glad to have a restroom as will your wife! No more traipsing through the house with stinky smelly musician sorts while your wife is hiding somewhere or trying to sleep. Also storage.... you never have enough! If you want your place to remain neat you have to have a place to store stuff. And if it is acoustic instruments, you will want it climate controlled to a large degree. I look forward to your build! I just finished mine ( about 900 sq/ft) for about $40K doing it mostly myself, so your estimates are very doable. Tom

stinky smelly musician sorts

Hey! I resemble that remark... :lol: :lol: One thing I plan to do is put my midi controller keyboard as a slide-out affair in that desk/table behind the mix position. That will pretty much put all I need for personal recording at my fingertips within the control room, helping with the running-thru-the-rooms syndrome. It'll just have to be dealt with while recording others. Frankly, I need the exercise. :lol: Glad to hear your numbers. And one thing I won't have that you did (judging from your photos) is the slab pour. That will definitely help some.

Yeah As I remember that slab cost me around 4K.