As so many on this forum, I've been lurking for quite a while. Now I'm at the point where trying to get a studio 'built' becomes relevant, and I'm having to start asking questions myself...
I hope I'm doing this post right, please tell me if something's missing, your help will be most appreciated, so anything I can do back to make it easier is good
We're located in Belgium, much in the country-side. I'm in the process of setting up a website, you can visit it at http://www.characterstudios.be. The house the studio is located in is stand-alone, is more than 15 meters away from the very quiet road, built in 1998. On the backside of the house, there's a large garden (> 1 acre) with the looks of a park - it was my mother's hobby, and we're keeping it well maintained (it's a major attraction for the studio!).
Over the last 20 years, I have been growing the gear collection, lots of vintage recording gear and synths, and we're now at a point where many other people become interested in using the studio - mainly due to the gear, the location & garden, guest rooms, atmosphere, etc.
The main use-case for the studio will be post-production, mixing, and we want to be able to record the odd instrument and/or vocal, but not necessarily a whole band at once (don't really have the space for that - until the day I convert the large attic, but that's out of scope for this project).
In regards to sound-levels: As we're in the country-side at a really quiet road, there is zero worry about sound escaping the building. That said, the building is all brick/concrete, was built to spec for my mother to ensure it was as quiet as possible.
As the building is brick & concrete throughout, there is barely any leakage from the other areas of the house. Daily activities in the house don't leak into the studio.
So from a mixing/production room perspective, I'm not too worried about sound coming in, although I do want to build a small booth for recording the odd instrument/vocal etc.
I have been working in the room for a while, but have recently purchased a new console, and with all the re-wiring etc. that needs to happen anyway, I felt it's the time to really look at what can be done to improve the environment, mainly acoustically. Until now, the only acoustic treatment are GIK corner-bass traps in each corner, a cloud of 3x GIK 244 panels above the current mixing position, and GIK 242 and 244 panels placed strategically throughout the room. That helps quite a bit with reducing echo, but the room's frequency response is still rather uneven - and I can tell that without measuring...
Now to some details about the room (see also the floor-plan and Sketchup file attached to this post)
* The room is where the studio must be located, it's the only choice, so I'll have to work with what's there.
* The room is on the ground-floor.
* The ceiling height is 2.6m.
* The room has an odd-shape, it's basically 3x rectangles stuck together.
* The room is tiled all-throughout with big ceramic tiles, they have been laid on a concrete on sand base (12cm concrete layer as part of foundation + 9cm poured concrete/screed). Under the room that needs to become the studio, there's no cellar.
* The walls are hollow brick blocks - 14cm thickness. (I think) that they have been filled in with cement/concrete for the outside walls, not for the inside walls. On the attached floorplan, the walls connected to the outside have been colored blue, the inside walls have been colored grey.
* The outside walls of the house have one more layer of brick (I think 10 cm) with a 6 cm gap with rockwool type insulation material.
* The ceiling is concrete, thickness 25cm (14cm 'hollow' slab of concrete, 9cm poured concrete/screed). Unless someone's jumping up and down with boots with hard heels, you don't hear anything coming from upstairs.
* There are three windows in the room, all have double isolating glass (spec: Polyglass JRA 02/97 ATG 1314). The largest window is the sliding door to the garden (WxH: 3.75m x 2.26m). Then there are two more windows, 2.33m x 1.36m and 2.23m x 1.36m, both at a height of 0.90m from the floor. All windows are set in very heavy meranti frames.
* There are two doors in the room: One goes to the hallway of the house, the other to the kitchen/dining area. The door to the kitchen is currently not closed, but we're planning to put in a (probably sliding) door (as per the floorplan attached to the post).
Limitations that I need to keep in mind:
* The current layout has a seating area next to the window to the garden. The garden is a major part of the studio's vibe, so I can't compromise on the location for that. I'm all up for building structure within the rest of the room if needed though.
* The location where I currently would like to build the recording booth will need glass in it so that the light from the window in that space gets back into the studio. It doesn't need to be an all-glass wall, but there needs to be a window of at least 70cm height and 2/3rds of the width.
* I cannot remove the tiles from the room, except for maybe one strip if I have to build a wall. I do have a large collection of vintage tapestry that can be applied over most of the space though - I'm currently doing that, and it is reducing echo originating from the floors significantly.
Budget: As it stands, between 5 and 10K Euro, but I have some flexibility, and will consider going over that if ROI is significant enough.
Attached visuals:
* Floor Plan (Outside walls are blue, inside walls are grey). * Google Sketchup file of the space * Floor Plan with some doodled thoughts I had so far. * Google Sketchup with the console added to the space and a wall layout I was thinking about for the recording booth. * Floor plan idea with "room in room" for control room and recording booth. I hope that's sufficient information, here are the questions I'm seeking to answer at this point in time:
1) I understand that the materials and shape of the room are less than ideal. With the restriction in regards to the seating area & the window to the garden, is there anything that can be done sensibly to make the room into a decent enough control room?
2) I have added a very quick doodling to the floor-plan with some ideas I had on how 'optimize' the layout, create space for a recording area, and remove some of the straight angles and parallel walls in the room. That's in the floor-plan that I've marked up with red details. The sketch is of course an idea only, and I'm probably running ahead of the facts? Or is this a valid starting point?
3) As said above, I have no problem building a structure within the room to accommodate a mixing/production room (crammed with gear though), and a small recording booth... as long as I can keep the seating area and get to use light from 2 of the 3 windows... See the 3rd floor layout with the 'room in room' concept - that would allow for at least using 2 of the windows - if I can make that work with the recording booth... Are the dimensions of the control room large enough for this purpose - how much is it of a problem when most of the walls are going to have racks to waist-height, and having some keyboards and toys on racks in the back?
I'll take it from here, I'm sure I have much to learn, think over and discuss... but thanks upfront to anyone spending any time on this
Regards,
Dee
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Yeah, I know: Pretty much every text book insists that it has to be 30°, or if not then terrible, dreadful, scary things will happen... except that they don't actually happen!