John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello all I'm finally ready to start building my recording studio in my parents basements and i really need some help on the design.

The room is 33.63 sqm/362 sqf (On the floor plan 1 picture is called Sgombero), but the ceiling is pretty low (2.16m/7'.1").

I'm attaching the floor plan...any suggestion?

Ideally i'd love to keep it open and use it as live room and mixing room when needed, but i'm not sure if it'd work.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Gigi

Hi Gigi,

welcome to the forum! It seems that you are missing some information, please read over this post http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231

there are some things in that post we will need to know... such as your expected level of isolation, what your budget is, which areas of the plan you are able to use etc...

there are many one room studios here on this forum that you can use as an example... while your ceiling may somewhat limit what you can do realistically, we all must work with what we have.

cheers,
kevin

Hi Kevin,

I'm so sorry...i found your forum very late at night and i somehow missed the basic rules

Let's start again

My parents have just finished to dig the basement to a decent living hight, and i want to use it as a Recording/Mixing studio.
I don't have any neighbours, so what i need is purely acoustic treatment, not soundproofing.

After my research (knowing i can't move walls around, but i can build some inside), i've found a website that does Acoustic Calculation Online; http://www.acoustic.ua/recommendations/800

On there i found out that the best place in my basement without moving walls to put the control room is the lower part of what is called "sgombero" in the map. This room has already an Oak floor and brickwork walls.

Using the Technical Recommendation R22-1998, the right sizes should be H 2.17 - L 4.60 - W 3.20.

The second room (called "Cantina" H2.21 x L3.15 x W3.10 in the Floor Plan) could be used as Drum Room or Amp room, has a ceramic floor and brickwork walls.

Using the Technical Recommendation R22-1998, the right sizes should be H 2.21 - L 3.15 - W should be between 2.7 and 2.8 m so i would need to put another wall to decrease the size.

In terms of loudness it depends on the band. I'm not going to record only myself, so it depends on different drum kit, different drummers etc.

My budget is between €2000 and €3000.

What i would like to ask you is:

Am i doing the right thing using Technical Recommendation R22-1998?

If so, do i need to put a wall to create the control room? if so, what material?

What would be the perfect layout? I'm not sure about how to choose the right angles even though i had a look at your "The Control Room" layout.

Thanks in advance and hopefully i've put all the info you need to help me

Gigi

After my research (knowing i can't move walls around, but i can build some inside), i've found a website that does Acoustic Calculation Online;

Unfortunately, that site is for listening rooms such as home theaters or stereophile rooms, not for studios. There's a lot of questionable advice on there as a well: I would not take that too seriously.

To determine if your room ratio is good, use either Bob Gold's calculator, or Andy Mel's calculator (or both!) Here are the links:

www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

http://amroc.andymel.eu/

They are both very good, and give you visual and numeric indications of how well your room will work. Andy's also give you "auralization", the ability to actually listen to each of the predicted modal tones.

What would be the perfect layout? I'm not sure about how to choose the right angles even though i had a look at your "The Control Room" layout.

There's a fairly standard way of laying out the control room: start by setting the speakers up right against the front wall (your room is too small to do it any other way), leaving a gap of about 10cm between the back edge of the speaker and the wall, and at about 89 cm from the side walls (distance from side wall to the center of the speaker). That means your speakers will be about 140 cm apart from each other. Set up your chair about 1.8 m from the front wall. Or rather set it up so your ears will be about 1.8 m from the front wall when you are seated normally at the desk. Angle the speakers so that the imaginary "acoustic axis" line coming out of each speaker goes just past where your ears will be, and the two lines meet at a point about 20 to 40 cm behind your head. The speakers must be set up very heavy, rigid, massive stands, not on the desk or on top of the console meter bridge, and they must be set so that the acoustic axis of each speaker is 1.2m above the floor.

That's the basic layout. Then you need to add the basic treatment: Large bass traps in the corners, absorption on your first reflection points (side walls), a cloud above the mix position, and thick absorption on the rear wall.

That's the basic treatment. You might need more than that, but that's the basis.


- Stuart -