John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

So –

After over a year of talking over beers, crazy ideas, better ideas, refining of those ideas, writing them down, getting help from the chamber of commerce, finding a space, finding funding, finding a lawyer, an accountant, and producing over a cubic meter of paper...

It's going to happen!

Here's the lowdown.
There are three of us – a sound engineer (me), a live sound tech/drummer, and another drummer/public security engineer. We had the idea to create a sort of "music haven" for all the musicians of our dear city of Tours in central France (pop 300k or so). There is a vibrant music community here, but not too many places for folks to rehearse, record, and express themselves in general. So we got to work making it happen.

The site we will begin building in December (yes, it will be cold until we isolate the roof) is a nice sized – 400m2, or 4 300sq. ft. – hanger which shall be transformed into a "music city". Three fully equipped rehearsal studios (equipped meaning drums, two guitar amps, bass head and cab, PA, mics...) of about 20m2 for two of them and 15m2 for the other. A smaller piano room, and an even smaller iso booth which can be used for practicing trumpet, tuba, bagpipes, or isolating a guitar amp. All these will be housed at the front side of the building, near the reception and our...

...Bar! A full service (meaning beer and peanuts) bar will be built as well. I think the most time in planning was spent arguing which studios to make smaller to fit in the bar...

At the back of the building taking up nearly half of the hanger is our recording/performance space. This part is divided into two halves – live room on one side and lounge, control room and machine room. The live room while not huge (a bit less than 70m2, 750sq.ft) will double as a performance hall for live music, dance as well as workshops. We've also struck an agreement with two local music schools so they will be using the space for their classes on occasion as well. The isolation was of the utmost importance since we plan on having people use the rehearsal rooms and others record at the same time.

If you're having trouble visualizing the whole thing...





I've attached a hi-res PDF as well...

We should be well under way by December, and the Grand Opening is planned for June, but anything can happen.


More pics and tales from the battlefield to come.

A photo of the actual state of things...

So...

No more pictures yet, but a bit of information.


As for the gear, our CR will have a 36 channel Audient console (which I got to play around with today!) with Adam S4V-A monitors soffit mounted in a quite dead acoustical setting.

While I'm sure many readers are more fond of a more live approach, I'm very familiar with dead CR acoustics, and don't feel like changing now. The floor is hardwood to avoid the feeling of an anechoic chamber, but nonetheless, quite dead.

The 65m2 live room and the three larger rehearsal studios (which have stage boxes for rec as well) have hardwood floors.

The other studios are not large enough to provide too many options insomuch as "real" acoustic control is concerned, but we are going to try to offer a rather neutral environment.

I should mention that I'm no acoustic engineer, but I can describe well enough what I'm looking for in terms of sound, and our designers have been very helpful. I'll try to describe the construction details as best I can.

The floors of the three larger rehearsal studios, the live room and the control room will be floating slabs of 12cm concrete on 10cm KIP springs and 10cm rockwool. The finishing will be a layer of fibrous under flooring, 19mm chipboard and 29mm oak hardwood.

The outside containment walls are 20cm Stepoc (hollow concrete to be filled with poured cement) with rockwool and 15mm plasterboard glued to the inside.

The entire roof (except spaces in the office and lounge where we wish to keep natural daylight) will be covered from the inside with 75mm rockwool and 15mm hydro plasterboard. The outer ceilings of the studio rooms (rehearsal studios A, B and C) as well as the live room and CR, will be supported by the Stepoc walls. The support beams will be 225x75mm wood nearly touching the roof filled with 200mm fiberglass with a layer of MDF on the bottom side.

The inner acoustic/isolation walls will be made of double 13mm plasterboard sandwich with 5kg/m2 deadsheet in the middle hung on the outside of 48mm steel rails (we don't use 2x4's in Europe) filled with 45mm fiberglass and a deadsheet/PU foam on the inner (room) side with a cloth covering. Acoustic panels of 75mm rockwool on 6mm ply will be hung between the outer shell walls and the inner acoustic walls.

There are a few studios here in France with the same composition (two designed by our architects) that sound very good, so I'm assuming we can expect the same for our construction.

My biggest concern is isolation between the different rooms, but I've been told by our studio designer, that there should be sufficient isolation – both between the studios inside, and to the exterior.

More updates to come.... Lucas