Proposed Studio layout

[Narasimha]

Hello,

As a post retirement plan, I plan to build a sound recording Studio on the terrace of my house. The sketch is attached.

The objective of the Studio is to record Indian classical music renditions of students and upcoming artists. Indian classical music is much different from the way Western music is played. Normally Indian classical music rendition consists of a vocalist or a instrumentalist (flute/pipe organ/veena etc) accompanied by Violin and a percussionist. Vocal will be supported by a drone to help the vocalist as reference pitch.

Due to the higher sound level of percussion instruments, we would like to put them in a separate booth which is indicated in the sketch.

Before this, I worked with Radio broadcasting Stations (All India Radio - public service broadcaster) as engineer both in sound recording and transmission systems. Of course, their Studios were big and no way compared with the one I am planning to build within my limited resources!

Request your valuable suggestion.

Regards,

[Soundman2020]

Hi Narasimha, and welcome to the forum!

A couple of comments about your layout:

First, the control room is not shaped properly. Control rooms must be symmetrical, so that your left ear hears exactly the same acoustics as your right ear. If not, then the stereo mix will not sound well balanced when played in other locations, outside the studio. So I would suggest that you change the shape to make it symmetrical, with the left half of the studio being a mirror-image of the right half, and the mix position being on the center-line, with the speakers spaced equally either side of that, and also located and angled at the correct locations.

Also, for small studios it is much better to have the speakers pointing along the longest axis of the room, not across the short axis. So you should probably change that too.

Next, your isolation plan is not going to get you much isolation, and perhaps that is OK for your situation, but it could be much better. Right now you are showing single-leaf construction, which is not going to give you much more than about30 to 35 dB isolation, unless you spend a huge amount of money on making the walls extremely massive. On the other hand, it is quite possible to get isolation a hundred times better at a much more reasonable price, if you do the studio properly, with two-leaf construction. It all depends on how much isolation you need.

Third, you seem to be showing that some of your walls are built partly as wall and partly as gobo! Or maybe it's just a mistake in the key: according to the key, a dark red line means a gobo, but there are dark red lines in the walls between the control room (CR) and main studio (sometimes called the "Live Room" or LR), and also between the LR isolation booths. Gobos are not meant for that, and won't do much at all to provide usable isolation. If those really are gobos, then I'd suggest changing them to proper windows, correctly installed in the isolation walls.

The "sound lock" is probably not needed here; if those really are gobos in the walls, then there is no isolation anyway, so the sound lock would not be doing anything.

I'd also suggest adding a door directly from the CR to the LR, for easy access when setting up mics and instruments.

There's no isolation at all between the two percussion isolation booths: Is that supposed to be like that?

So I'd pay attention to those points above.


- Stuart -

[Narasimha]

Dear Mr.Stuart,

Thanks for your valuable comments. I shall rework this and revert back to you.

Regards,

Narasimha

A couple of comments about your layout:

First, the control room is not shaped properly. Control rooms must be symmetrical, so that your left ear hears exactly the same acoustics as your right ear. If not, then the stereo mix will not sound well balanced when played in other locations, outside the studio. So I would suggest that you change the shape to make it symmetrical, with the left half of the studio being a mirror-image of the right half, and the mix position being on the center-line, with the speakers spaced equally either side of that, and also located and angled at the correct locations.

Also, for small studios it is much better to have the speakers pointing along the longest axis of the room, not across the short axis. So you should probably change that too.

Next, your isolation plan is not going to get you much isolation, and perhaps that is OK for your situation, but it could be much better. Right now you are showing single-leaf construction, which is not going to give you much more than about30 to 35 dB isolation, unless you spend a huge amount of money on making the walls extremely massive. On the other hand, it is quite possible to get isolation a hundred times better at a much more reasonable price, if you do the studio properly, with two-leaf construction. It all depends on how much isolation you need.

Third, you seem to be showing that some of your walls are built partly as wall and partly as gobo! Or maybe it's just a mistake in the key: according to the key, a dark red line means a gobo, but there are dark red lines in the walls between the control room (CR) and main studio (sometimes called the "Live Room" or LR), and also between the LR isolation booths. Gobos are not meant for that, and won't do much at all to provide usable isolation. If those really are gobos, then I'd suggest changing them to proper windows, correctly installed in the isolation walls.

The "sound lock" is probably not needed here; if those really are gobos in the walls, then there is no isolation anyway, so the sound lock would not be doing anything.

I'd also suggest adding a door directly from the CR to the LR, for easy access when setting up mics and instruments.

There's no isolation at all between the two percussion isolation booths: Is that supposed to be like that?

So I'd pay attention to those points above.


- Stuart -