Basement studio build / blank canvas

[JohnWatkins]

Hi Guys, I've been thinking about how to layout this space since we moved in a year ago. I'm ready now actually start doing it, so I thought I would seek some creative input from others. Sorry if this is long-winded, but I'm trying to follow the guidelines as well as I can.

The goal is to have the space function equally well for recording (almost always by myself or with one other person), live rehearsal (that is usually recorded), and as a lounge space. I want to be able to have my keyboards, guitars, and electronic drums close to my mixing desk for when I work by myself, or when I'm playing guitar and running sound/recording in a rehearsal situation. For that reason, I don't think the dedicated control room is the best solution for me. I think a common room with an isolation booth big enough for acoustic drums and a couple of guitar amps will be the best way to go. For the lounge component, there will a bar, a TV, a couch; the usual stuff. I just want to be able to have the game on while we jam, or send the kids down there to watch a movie once in a while.

It seems obvious where to put the drum room based on obstacles, but I'm struggling with how to layout the rest. Perfect symmetry at the listening position is not a strict requirement for me. I'd like to get close, but I'm willing to compromise in that area. I know a lot of members will feel there is no point proceeding without that, but I've never had it in 30 years of doing this and I'm happy with my recordings. It's more important to me to not have my bandmates on the other side of a glass window when we're just jamming and tipping a few pints for fun.

In terms of loudness, I'll have regularly have full bands down there, but no high school punk bands. Full volume, but pro musicians. Nobody will be trying to sleep when this happens and the neighbors are too far away to hear. Outside noise is not really a concern. We live in the woods and airplane noise isn't a problem.

The walls of the space are poured foundation. The windows are all 24x36 and are above ground (english basement). The ceilings are exposed. 8' to the floorboards above, 86" to the bottom of the joists. There is a lot of electrical and plumbing running through the right half as you're looking at the drawing, because it's a sprawling ranch and the basement is only under 1/3 of the house. The rest of the house extends from the bottom edge of the drawing and the bedrooms are about 40' from that wall.

If it helps, the area will house one acoustic drum set, one electronic drum set, two keyboard racks, a 6' x 3' mixing desk, two rack sidecars, wedge monitors, and about ten guitar amps.

The budget is whatever it is within reason. I would guess we'll be in the 20-30k range all in. I'll be doing all of the work myself.

I have put in a rough idea of where I would place the drum room, but I'm open to suggestion. I also have my desk and some of the furniture in CAD, but I didn't want to confuse the issue by randomly dropping them in there. My question is, if this was your space and you had my goals, how would you do it?

THanks in advance for any and all suggestions!

John

music_room.jpg

[Soundman2020]

Hi there John, and Welcome!

I'm ready now actually start doing it

Excellent! You have a nice size space there.

The goal is to have the space function equally well for recording (almost always by myself or with one other person), live rehearsal (that is usually recorded), and as a lounge space.

Based on what you say later in your post, accurate mixing is off the cards, so this will just have to be a rehearsal and tracking space and a lounge, with a large isolation booth. So no quality mixing, and no mastering either. It sounds like you also don't need isolation... but... nothing ever happens in your house while you are tracking? Phones don't ring? people don't walk, talk, open/close doors, flush the toilet, run water, vacuum, watch TV? No cars arrive or leave? No sounds at all that could trash your recordings? No thunder / rain / wind? If none of that is of any concern at all for your tracking sessions, then it seems that the only construction you'll need to do is the iso booth: the rest will all be treatment.

but I'm struggling with how to layout the rest.

It's basically a live room / tracking room with no need for accurate mixing, so there's no need to worry too much about a specific layout. If that were my room, I'd probably make one area a bit more "live" and another area a bit more "dead", to give me options for tracking different instruments in different situations, and maybe even have some variable acoustic devices in there, for more drastic changes. I'd have a couple of gobos on wheels too, to be able to get a bit of separation between instruments that are being tracked together. So I'd suggest that the overall goal should be to decide on an overall goal for the acoustics (in terms of decay, spectrum, etc.), then decide which area should be more "dead" and which should be more "live", then design the individual treatment devices with that in mind.

At some point, you should probably do a REW test, to get an idea of how the space is behaving right now, so you'll know what types of devices to make, and where to put them, to control any major issues.

Perfect symmetry at the listening position is not a strict requirement for me. I'd like to get close, but I'm willing to compromise in that area.

That's why I'm discarding mixing entirely, and taking out of the equation for the recommendations. If you don't need an accurate mixing environment, then you can just set up a desk anywhere with some speakers behind it, and that will be all you need, or even mix on headphones and check the mix on speakers.

I know a lot of members will feel there is no point proceeding without that,

Well, I wouldn't say there's no point in doing that: Just no point in making it a priority. Since the room has to be many things, it cannot be a control room at all. Normally when people want a single-room studio, it is designed basically as a control room and then adapted to have the other instruments in it too, but in your case you don't want that, so you have more potions open to you. Since mixing isn't a priority, that gives you much greater freedom in the acoustics of the room. It no longer has to be neutral, or have carefully controlled decay times, or carefully controlled frequency response. It can be a proper live room, limited only by the way you want it to sound, but not limited by the way a control room has to sound in order to be usable. That's one good thing about not needing it to be usable as an accurate mixing environment: it opens up the possibilities for it to be a very flexible live room and tracking room.

In terms of loudness, I'll have regularly have full bands down there, but no high school punk bands. Full volume, but pro musicians.

OK, but that's all subjective: you need to put that in terms of objective decibels.

The ceilings are exposed. 8' to the floorboards above, 86" to the bottom of the joists.

Ouch! That doesn't give you much scope at all! 7'2" to the joists? You aren't going to want to hear this, but that pretty much rules out the possibility of having an isolated booth for drums. The ceiling in there is going to take up at least 6", no matter which way you do it, and perhaps eve more, depending on the necessary treatment. So it would be too low for comfort, and way, way, WAY too low to be able to mic the drum kit successfully: your overheads would be just a couple of inches below the ceiling, and suffering from major comb filtering, reflections, and a general dead "crushed" sound. It probably would not be worthwhile going to all that expense to produce a drum booth where drums sound lousy. Drums need lots of space and high ceilings to sound good.

I also have my desk and some of the furniture in CAD,

Instead of doing it in a 2D CAD drawing, it would be much better to put it in a 3D SketchUp model. That's what most of us use here on the forum.

The location of the booth is probably the most logical, if you really did want to still have it, and are absolutely convinced that you don't need accurate mixing. On the other hand, if you change your mind about that, the that would be a good location for a control room, and it might be possible to fit in something usable within the restrictions of the joist height.

My question is, if this was your space and you had my goals, how would you do it?

Open ended questions like that come across sort of like asking someone to design your place for you! Maybe that's not your intention at all, but that sort of is the way it comes across. The way the forum is conceived is that people who wnat to design a new studio can take a look at several similar situations that other forum members have already dealt with, borrow some ideas from them that make sense for you, then come up with a basic design and layout, and post that for comments. Other forum members can then look at that, comment on it, offer suggestions on how to improve it, etc., and you can update it with their input, and post a new version.

It would also help a lot if you were to post a few photos of the space right now, including some general views in all directions, and some close-ups of the problematic areas, such as doors, windows, stairs, and the ducts, plumbing and wiring that you mentioned. That would give us a much better feel for the place.


- Stuart -

[JohnWatkins]

Stuart, thank you for the thorough response. My tentative plan in terms of live/dead areas is to have the drum/iso room be very dead and then common room be a somewhat live end / dead end design with the desk at the dead end and some diffusion in the live end.

I thought I would get the outer barrier walls built and then run REW tests before committing to a design for the inner leaf walls. That way if I needed a slat wall or hanging bass trap setup for a particular set of frequencies, I'd have an opportunity to build to that.

In terms of mixing accuracy, I know that you feel strongly about certain aspects based on reading your advice to others, but I'm confident that if I do my best with what I have, I'll be able to create good mixes. I have been mixing in poor environments my whole adult life and I know the pitfalls. My goal is not to make a perfect mixing environment, but rather to simply reduce the number of trips out to the car to get a mix done to my liking.

In terms of the ceiling height in the drum room, I was thinking I might do the ceiling tight to the joists with a cloud underneath. I would then decouple the walls and ceiling in the common room where I don't have the concern of comb filtering overheads. Or, perhaps skip the second leaf in there and trade some bleed through for more absorption and clearance. These are the points where I could use some practical advice.

I'm not concerned with cars pulling up outside or flushing toilets. It's not a commercial operation where someone is paying me by the hour. If I have to re-do a take because a toilet flushed, it's not a big deal.

Thanks again for your help. I'll try to post some pics of the space.

[JohnWatkins]

I should add that I would love to have a symmetrical layout, at least from the desk back to my ears, but I just don't see how to get it done around all these windows and doors.

Also, I should have mentioned that there is a great room on the first floor with very high ceiling and really great sound. I plan on hiding a patch panel in that room for acoustic guitars, vocals, etc. It sounds really great in there, but any setup of drums etc. would have to be broken down same day to preserve the domestic tranquility.

[JohnWatkins]

Here are the requested pics. I hope you can make things out. Excuse the mess. It's become a catchall.

This is the view looking from the left side of the drawing to the right.

basement1.jpg

This is the opposite view.

basement2.jpg

[JohnWatkins]

So, after a little more thinking and some revisions, here is my current plan. Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions. I'd like to have a bit less of an angle on both of the walls that face the common space, but I've got that pole to contend with and I worry about larger equipment having clearance to get in and out of the rooms.

Thanks in advance for any help.

floorplan-2.jpg

[JohnWatkins]

Forgot to mention, the windows to the right of the listening position are above ear level, so I will be able to add absorption at the first reflection point.

[JohnWatkins]

Here's another variation that expands the CR a little, but with the same length to width ratio. This one falls outside the bolt area because obviously I can't vary the ceiling height, but the Bonello actually looks better for this one. Thoughts?

floorplan3.jpg

[Soundman2020]

common room be a somewhat live end / dead end design with the desk at the dead end and some diffusion in the live end.

LEDE design (Live-End, Dead-End) was a concept from the 1970's about studio design, that is no longer used. It was found to unpleasant to work in LEDE rooms for long periods, and the results weren't that good anyway. Unfortunately, the term found it's way into many books back then, and sort of got adopted by common mythological processes, so it is still circulating as though it was the best things since sliced bread, when in reality almost no professional studios are built as pure LEDE designs any more, and haven't been in many years.

Extensions to LEDE, and modifications of LEDE, is where we are today with concepts such as RFZ, design, CID design, NER design, and other similar 21st century acoustical design philosophies. Rooms based on these concepts work much better than the old LEDE rooms, so it would probably be better if you were to use one of those as the basis for your studio.

I thought I would get the outer barrier walls built and then run REW tests before committing to a design for the inner leaf walls.

Actually, there's no such thing as a "barrier wall". Isolation is accomplished by having a two-leaf wall. The "outer-leaf" and the "inner-leaf". It is not that the outer leaf provides some isolation and the inner-leaf provides some more: very far from it! In reality, both leaves act together as a resonant system to provide the isolation. It's a case of "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts": You cannot simply add up the isolation of the two individual walls and think that this will give you the total isolation: that won't even be close. With this type of construction ("room in a room"), the two leaves do not act individually, as separate entities: rather, they act together, as a combined system. This is very much like the suspension system in your car: it consists of the wheel, the spring, the shock absorber, and the chassis. These parts also do not act individually, but as a system. If you take away the shock absorber, you no longer have a suspension system. If you take away the spring, you no longer have a suspension system. All of the components need to be there in order to work. If you have only a shock absorber but no spring, then you don't have a partial suspension system that sort of suspends... You have nothing. You can't test that to see how well it works, then try to extrapolate from that to see how it might work when you put the spring in, because the spring is necessary for the suspension system to work. Ditto for the shock, wheel, and chassis. It only works when all parts are in place.

The same with your isolation system: if you only have one leaf erected, then you don't have an isolation system: you have nothing. It won't work until you have the inner-leaf in place as well, along with the insulation in the air cavity: only then will you have a complete isolation system, and be able to test it.

Going from a single-leaf system to a two-leaf system moves you from one set of acoustic equations to an entirely different set of acoustic equations: they are very different systems with very different properties, and you cannot use one to predict the other.

That way if I needed a slat wall or hanging bass trap setup for a particular set of frequencies, I'd have an opportunity to build to that.

You seem to be making the very common mistake of confusing isolation with treatment: they are two very different aspects acoustics, and use very different materials and methods. Isolation is about reducing the amount of sound that gets into and out of your studio, and involves large, thick, massive, heavy, rigid, stiff, building materials, while treatment is all about dealing with the sound moving around inside your room, and involves mostly light, softy, fluffy, porous, materials. Isolation is not treatment, and treatment is not isolation. Your two-leaf walls are isolation ALONE. Your slot walls and bass traps are treatment ALONE. Neither affects the other.

Yes, you can incorporate treatment devices into the same walls that are also part of an isolation system, but that's a different matter entirely. You FIRST have to complete the entire 2-leaf isolation system, THEN you can decide what treatment needs adding to the inner-leaf.

In terms of mixing accuracy, I know that you feel strongly about certain aspects based on reading your advice to others, but I'm confident that if I do my best with what I have, I'll be able to create good mixes.

Good luck with that! I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, but rather a humorous attempt to say that what you expect is not what will happen in reality. You say that you have been mixing in lousy acoustic conditions forever, and you have learned to live with that, but since you've never had a place with great acoustics or great isolation, you don't really know what you are missing! Once you start working in a studio that has vastly better acoustics than what you are used to, you will very quickly start noticing things in your mixes that you never heard before, and you WILL want to fix them... and you'll also want to have even better acoustics, because you'll sense that there is still more in there that can be fixed, but you can't quite make it out....

I have been mixing in poor environments my whole adult life and I know the pitfalls. My goal is not to make a perfect mixing environment, but rather to simply reduce the number of trips out to the car to get a mix done to my liking.

Let me put it this way: why do you want to do that at all? Since you have the opportunity to do this right, and completely eliminate those multiple trips out to your car, why not do it?

In essence, you are here saying: "I know you guys really like prime fillet mignon with a spectacular cream of mushroom sauce and a fine Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, but really, I think three-day old dry hamburger and a stale coke is MUCH better for me!" ... The first time you try the steak, you'll NEVER want to go back to moldy burgers and flat coke...

OK, so I understand what you are really saying: "I don't have enough money to eat steak every day". Neither do I. But I sure don't want to eat at McDonalds every day either! And there are cheaper alternatives than eating steak every day, that are still way better than eating McDonalds every day, while still being delicious and nutritious.

Put back in studio construction terms: You are concerned about the extra cost of having a great room, but in reality if you can afford to do what you are proposing in your drawings, then you most certainly can afford to have a very, very good, room, even if it isn't exceptional. It can at least be prime beef BBQ every day, instead of junk food.

In terms of the ceiling height in the drum room, I was thinking I might do the ceiling tight to the joists with a cloud underneath.

I thought that isolation of the drums was the most important issue? What you are proposing provides no isolation for the drums... A ceiling "tight to the joists" does not isolate: rather, it provides a direct flanking path for the sound f the drums to get into the house structure itself, and therefor into every other room... The cloud below will help a bit with the acoustics inside the room, but it won't do a thing for isolation.

Here's an experiment you can try: Get someone to play your drums loudly for you, while you are standing a few feet away. Now take off your jersey and hold it out at arms length between your head and the drums. Hear the difference? That's roughly how much difference the cloud will make to isolating your drums...

I would then decouple the walls and ceiling in the common room where I don't have the concern of comb filtering overheads.

But that isn't what you are showing in your latest drawings! You are showing only partial isolation of the live room, and of course in acoustics, partial isolation is the same as no isolation at all. It's the same as the "fish tank" analogy: you are showing that you want to build an aquarium, but you only want to have glass on two sides of the frame, and leave the other two sides open... how well will that aquarium hold water?? That's the exact same situation you re showing in your current design...

Or, perhaps skip the second leaf in there and trade some bleed through for more absorption and clearance.

If you skip the second leaf, you do not "trade some bleed through...". Rather, you trash your isolation completely.

A single leaf wall is governed by the equations of physics known as "Mass Law", which say basically a single leaf wall is a very, very lousy isolator, especially for low frequencies, and especially for loud sounds. On the other hand, a two-leaf wall is governed by an entirely different set of equations, including the ones called "MSM resonance law", which is a whole different ball game. There is no relationship between the two sets of equations: you cannot derive the MSM equations from Mass Law, because they describe two entirely different principles of physics. A single-leaf wall works in one way, and gives you lousy isolation, while a two-leaf wall works in an entirely different way, and gives you much, much better isolation.

Here are the basic equations for both cases, so you can see the difference. Mass law:

TL(dB)= 20log(M) + 20log(f) -47.2

M is the surface density of the wall, and
f is the center frequency of the third-octave measurement band

There's a simplified empirical version of Mass Law, which goes like this:

TL = 14.5 log M + 23 dB (where: M = Surface Density in lb/ft2 )

For MSM walls, you need to start by figuring out the resonant frequency, from:

F = (1/2pi) * SQRT (Rho * c^2) [(m1 + m2)]^.5 / [(m1 x m2 x d)]^.5

Which gives you the point of minimum isolation, then apply a curve of 18 dB/octave up to the coincidence dip, then a curve of 6 dB per octave beyond that.

It's an entirely different thing.

These are the points where I could use some practical advice.

If you want good isolation for any of your rooms, then it has to be done either as an extremely massive single leaf, or as much less massive 2-leaf MSM system. There are no other options, unfortunately. No magic materials, or esoteric methods... Your only options are one-leaf, and two-leaf. One leaf is lousy (unless it is very massive), and two-leaf is much better, but more expensive. I wish there were better news I could tell you, but sadly there isn't.

I'm not concerned with cars pulling up outside or flushing toilets. It's not a commercial operation where someone is paying me by the hour. If I have to re-do a take because a toilet flushed, it's not a big deal.

OK, then you probably can live with less isolation than a high-end studio would need, so as long as you are OK with that, and don't mind the lousy isolation if a single leaf, and you do realize that there's nothing you can do about it apart from building a second leaf to complete the MSM system, then that's OK. If your music won't be disturbing others, and you don't mind them disturbing you, then lower isolation goals are reasonable.

Thanks again for your help. I'll try to post some pics of the space.

That's actaully a very nice looking space, with some god possibilities!

Here are the requested pics. I hope you can make things out. Excuse the mess. It's become a catchall

Mess? What mess?!?!? That's not a mess... If you want to see a REAL mess, take a look in my shed.... .)

So, after a little more thinking and some revisions, here is my current plan.

It's looking MUCH better! A great improvement.

What I would suggest is turning the orientation of your control room around 180°, so it faces the drum booth. There are several reasons for that: some practical some acoustical. Mostly, it gives you sight lines all ways around you, so you can easily see into (and be seen from) the drum booth and the live room. And acoustically, the room should never get narrower towards the back; it should only ever get wider, or stay the same. You'd have much better acoustics like that.

I would also definitely make the CR more rectangular and symmetrical: there are ways of doing that without the pole being too much of an issue. From the photos, it looks like you might even be able to move that pole. Call in a structural engineer to take a look at that, and tell you how / where it could be moved. It's not such a big deal as it sounds. I've done that for home studios before, and as long as you follow the instructions of the structural engineer, it can work out great. It's worth looking into.

Apart from that, it looks fine.

- Stuart -