John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi everyone! I just discovered this forum recently and this is my first post.

I am opening a recording studio business and I would like some help with the design and layout of the space we have acquired. The space is a side portion of a fairly large warehouse and is pretty much unfinished. We are working on a tight budget of $15,000 for construction and so will probably be doing most work ourselves. We are well aware that we will not be able to completely isolate the space with our budget, but we want to make sure to hit the most important parts. I am going to just try and describe the space as well as I can and hopefully with the pictures and rough blueprint you all will be able to help us. In advance I would like to say I greatly appreciate any help you are willing to offer, and I promise to update with photos throughout the construction!

Description:
- The space is two 23' X 13' rooms back to back making one 46' X 13' room when the middle wall is removed. Ceiling are 14' and unfinished. As you can see from the pictures the existing walls do not even reach up to the ceiling.
- On the other side of the wall with the windows there is a downtown road. The road is a back road and so doesn't have cars whizzing by and is not all that busy but when standing in the room the outside noise is very apparent. The wall is made of brick and just has framing and sheet rock on top of that (see pictures). The windows are not well insulated at all, and from my testing that is where almost all of the outside noise is coming through. Ill take this time to say that we would prefer to have some natural light coming into the space but if that is going to be to hard to achieve we can close the windows off.
- On the other side of the western 13' wall, to the left of the drawing, there will be a storage room for a coffee shop that will soon be in the front of the building, and for the southern 46' wall there is a hallway where the entrance to the recording space will be. We are much more concerned with keeping sound from coming in to the space than to keep our sound from escaping. We own the whole building and have say
- The floor is solid concrete and looks to be the foundation of the building.
- We are working on our loan and plan to begin construction in late septemeber and open for business in January.
- The $15,000 will have to include installing heating and air and electricity.
- We also have been given about 2400 square feet of 2 inch OC 703. I understand that this is not typically used in isolation or construction, but we have it and it was free.

Goals/Questions:
- We would like to have a control room, a smaller dead room, and a large live room.
- We would prefer all these rooms to have access to one another without having to go out into the hallway.
- The ceiling is an issue of concern for us. We feel that since our space is pretty narrow, the height of the ceiling is a big advantage for us in achieving big roomy drum sounds.
- The sound of our live room is the most important to us
- Because of the road, the wall to the outside is a big deal in terms of construction and isolation.






Looking out the window

Forgot to add my drawing, and also wanted to add that we are interested in learning some suggestions for the concrete floor.

Hi there "Garrett4sale", and welcome!

We are working on a tight budget of $15,000 for construction and so will probably be doing most work ourselves. ... making one 46' X 13' room

I don't want to rain on your party, but that budget is probably rather TOO tight! Consider that you have 600 square feet of floor space there, and you plan to spend 15k, max. That works out to US$ 25 per square foot. Your materials alone will be more than that, if you hope to have a good quality studio. And that doesn't even figure in the cost of HVAC, doors, and windows, all of which are pretty pricey. So you'll probably need to increase your budget quite a but, even if you are doing the labor yourself.

we would prefer to have some natural light coming into the space but if that is going to be to hard to achieve we can close the windows off.

It can be done, and it really is nice to have natural light, but isolating your windows is very likely outside the range of your budget. Large panes of thick laminate glass are not cheap.

- The floor is solid concrete

Excellent! That's one big point in your favor. So you don't need to assign any of your budget to that, at least.

- We are working on our loan and plan to begin construction in late septemeber and open for business in January.

That allows about six weeks for planning, design, permits, etc. That is also on the tight side. Realistically, it could take you 3 or 4 months just to come up with the design, unless you already have a really good background in both acoustics and construction. But if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be here on the forum! So here too, I'd suggest allowing more time for the design stage. One very wise (and highly regarded) acoustician says that building a studio is 90% design and 10% construction: He's right.

- The $15,000 will have to include installing heating and air and electricity.

You should start by looking into HVAC systems for rooms that big. You have nearly nine thousand cubic feet of air that you need to cool, dehumidify and circulate. You are looking at something well in excess of 50,000 BTU/hr, and well over 2000 CFM for that. Allow for silencer boxes, fans, ducts, registers, variable dampers, control system, and the HVAC system itself: your entire budget sounds about right for doing the HVAC system, assuming you want it done right.

- We also have been given about 2400 square feet of 2 inch OC 703. I understand that this is not typically used in isolation or construction, but we have it and it was free.

In fact, you were give a pot of gold! OC-703 is pretty much the very best acoustic absorber you can get. Highly rated, highly desired, and very, very useful. If the guy who gave you that can come up with some more of it, buy him several crates of beer! It will be well worth it.

- Because of the road, the wall to the outside is a big deal in terms of construction and isolation.

Isolation is a complete system, involving the entire building, both inside and outside. You can't just isolate one wall to a high level without also isolating the other walls to the same level. Isolation is only as good as the weakest part. In other words, your isolation plan has to be designed such that the entire studio has the same amount of isolation as is needed on that one wall that faces the road.

- We would like to have a control room, a smaller dead room, and a large live room.
- We would prefer all these rooms to have access to one another without having to go out into the hallway.
- The ceiling is an issue of concern for us. We feel that since our space is pretty narrow, the height of the ceiling is a big advantage for us in achieving big roomy drum sounds.
- The sound of our live room is the most important to us

Your goals are very reasonable, well though-out, and absolutely do-able: just not on the budget you have in mind.

You have an excellent space there, with beautiful high ceilings and great possibilities: that truly could be a top class studio, if designed ad built carefully: The only drawback that I see is the budget.

we are interested in learning some suggestions for the concrete floor.

The best possible suggestion for what to do with the concrete floor, is: "Nothing!". Don't do anything to it. Concrete is pretty much the best possible floor you can have in a studio: Extremely massive, very rigid, thick, well-damped (assuming it is a "slab on grade"), reflective, etc. Nothing better, acosutically. Of course, if it is in lousy condition (cracked, stained, chipped, uneven, etc.) then you might want to hide it, or maybe you just don't like the look of concrete: if that's the case, then your best bet is to lay laminate flooring on top of it (with the correct underlay, of course): Other alternatives are ceramic tile, and linoleum. But if the concrete is in good condition, then leave it like it is, or perhaps stain it artistically.

Anyway, I didn't actually see any questions in your post, so I'm just commenting in general on what you said. I hope that's what you were looking for?

If you are planning on doing the design yourself, as well as the construction , then I'd suggest that you get two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. The first one will give you the info you need to know about basic acoustics, and the second one will give you the info you need to know about actually designing and building the studio. Between the, you'll have all the basics to get started. Realistically, it will take you a couple of months to work through them both and get to the stage where you can start designing, then probably another couple of months to actually come up with a workable design. So you should take that into account with your planning.

I'm looking forward to following your thread, since you have such a great space to work with.

- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:Hi there "Garrett4sale", and welcome!

We are working on a tight budget of $15,000 for construction and so will probably be doing most work ourselves. ... making one 46' X 13' room

I don't want to rain on your party, but that budget is probably rather TOO tight!

Stuart! Thank you so much for the thorough response. Everything you said makes a lot of sense. I have many other questions, but just for the heck out of it...what do you think a more realistic budget would be for building the place out to a useable studio? I'm talking absolute minimum.

My business partner and I both learned to make records in very less than ideal rooms and environments. That being said we DO want a place that is nice and sounds really great.. but our standards may be lower than some guys on huge builds and massive budgets.

One option to save money is that the non-profit that owns the building could potentially outfit the space with heating/air and electricity, the downside to this is that we would have to wait longer to start construction and our monthly rent would increase. The situation is hard to explain, but in a nut shell: My business partner is a part of the non-profit that owns the building, but because the studio is a for-profit venture we have to pay rent to the non-profit to avoid a conflict of interest. Anyways! Do you think we could pull it off for $15,000 if electricity and heating/air were covered?

I have heard of those books, I will surely purchase. Thanks Again for your response!

- Garrett -

Update:
We have convinced the board that makes decisions for the building to let us use the hallway outside of our original space. The hallway was 4' 6" so this adds a considerable amount of space to our live room and also allows us to have a cool design for the iso room. The hallway (which is now the 4th wall in our live room) is a solid brick wall. I am thinking about leaving the brick wall because i think it will look aesthetically pleasing in the live room and since the brick wall wont be touching any of the walls in our control room it seems that it will work as far as keeping the control room somewhat isolated.

Our isolation needs are purely practical recording needs, we want to be isolated enough to track drums in the live room while tweaking those drums in the control room. Because we are on such a tight budget, the wall design i have come up with is just a one leaf wall between the control room/iso room/and live room, the order of materials in the wall will be wood paneling(or barn wood), 5/8" drywall, green glue, 1/2" drywall, framed wall filled with 703(we already have 2400 square feet of the 2 inch variety), 1/2" drywall, green glue, 5/8" drywall.
I have slightly splayed the walls in the manor i have because the side wall of the control room next to the hallway is an existing wall that we are going to keep standing and redo. Also, because of the existing piping that is running along the live room ceiling, we are going to do an off center vaulted ceiling that has a peak of 14 ft.

Are there any big "no no"s in this design? Keep in my mind our $15,000 budget

I deleted my design photo, because it was stretching the page out causing people to have to scroll to the right and because my design has completely changed. I will make sure to update everyone with a sketch of my design, but for now i have question to help with budgeting.

We have about 2700 square feet of OC 705 and are trying to figure out the best way to use it. I have plans for some serious slat bass traps and also some cool broadband absorbers in the control room. We thought about using the OC 705 in the walls to increase isolation (making a standard double wall construction but with a layer of 705 attached to the back of one of the leafs. Is 705 good for this or would we be better off saving it for acoustic treatment?

OC-705 is a bit too dense for deep bass traps, but it should work fine for broadband absorbers aimed at the mids and highs, so I would keep some of it for that. It would work decently in a cloud too, probably.

We thought about using the OC 705 in the walls to increase isolation (making a standard double wall construction but with a layer of 705 attached to the back of one of the leafs.

I'm not sure I understand; You MUST put insulation in the MSM cavity between the leaves. It is part of the MSM system: it acts as a damper on the resonance, so it is needed for sure. If you don't use 705 in there, then you'd need to use something else instead, but you have to use something!

Also, the insulation in the cavity does not "increase isolation" by itself. In fact, porous absorption is pretty lousy at isolating sound (unless you make it many feet thick!). So just putting it in a wall that is not properly designed won't do much to increase isolation: maybe a couple of dB. But when it is used correctly, as the damper in a properly designed 2-leaf MSM wall system, then it increases the total isolation by around 8 to 16 dB. But NOT because of its mass or because it somehow stops sound getting through: not at all. It only does that because it is acting as part of a tuned system, to damp specific types of resonance.

It would help if you could do a more detailed sketch of what your plans are for all of the construction, so that we can check you are doing it correctly. From what you say, I suspect that you might not be going the right way here.


- Stuart -

Hey all!

It has been quite sometime! I have encountered many delays on starting construction for my new space, but we have also since acquired more square footage for the studio as you can see from my uploaded design!

I haven't been able to be as hands on with the design as I would have liked, but I have the opportunity to make final tweaks before the plans are submitted to the city for inspection in the next weeks. I have uploaded a photo of the design I got back from the architect and also a photo that I have made proposed changes too with a red pen. The current design has the inner leaf anchored to the warehouse walls in several places and I have removed those anchors with a small red dash(the architect says this will be fine, and only did it originally because he didn't understand the thinking behind my original request to have an isolated inner room) I have also tweaked his placement of the doors. He also angled the far right live room wall...i put this back to square because the wall on the opposing side of the live room(sharing a wall with the control room) is angled at the same angle...in my mind having the both walls angled the same way is counterproductive and harder to construct. I have also proposed creating the jagged wall on the north wall of the live room(on the blueprint) to create a live room with no parallel walls. Also, just for your information, the ceiling will be pitched....being 12' tall on the north wall and rising to 15' on the south wall.

My questions:
1.) With the "jagged" wall that I have proposed on the north wall of the tracking room...how drastic should I make these angles to have a significant effect on the sound of the room? I don't want to eat into the volume of the room too much. I am trying to eliminate any flutter/slap, and hopefully improve the low end response.

2.) The north and south walls of the control room are currently parallel...what would be a good way to go about combating this and should I even be worried about it? I thought about incorporating a "jagged" wall on the back wall similar to what I am proposing in the live room. One problem with our control room design is that the doors swing almost flush with the back wall...this doesn't leave much room for excessive amounts of bass trapping on the back wall (we do however have a good 7' to 8' of back wall that above the doors that is fair game for bass trapping) so it seems to me that have non parallel surfaces is essential.

Thank for your time, and eagerly awaiting any responses!!!

Welcome back! It's been a while....

The points you raise are interesting, but not that important in the scheme of things. There are some far more major issues with the design as it stands right now. Clearly, it was not done by an architect who understands recording studios or acoustics! These are issues in addition to the ones you already found and highlighted:

Probably the biggest issues are the location of the doors in the control room: they are in the exact position where you need your rear bass traps! The rear wall of the control room is the single most important wall of all, by far, and there needs to be at least a couple of feet of acoustic treatment on that rear wall, but there's no place to put it with the current layout. Next, the vertical corners at each end of that rear wall are the single most important locations for bass trapping. There should NEVER be doors in those locations... In addition, there seems to be only one door from the hallway into the control room, but there should be two doors, back to back (one in each leaf).

Second, the front of the control room suffers from the same problem! The places needed for the speaker soffits and/or front bass traps, have windows in them! Those windows will have to be fully covered over by either the soffits (if you decide to soffit mount) or the bass traps.

Third, there is no access door into the live room! The ONLY way to get in and out, is through the control room. So all of the gear, equipment, instruments, people, accessories, furniture, and everything else that are needed for a session will have to be dragged through the first pair of doors into the control room (at the end of the hall), then across the back of the control room (right in front of the critical treatment on the critical wall), then through the second pair of doors... then it will all need to be dragged back out again, through the reverse route, after the session is over. Anyone in the LR who needs to go to the bathroom, or go answer their phone, or go get a cup of coffee, or whatever, will need to interrupt whatever is going on in the control room to do so... then interrupt a second time when they come back.... The control room is supposed to be an area where the mix engineer can listen, concentrate and work uninterrupted, along with the producer and possibly the client.

That just is not practical. The live room needs its own individual access door, in addition to the direct door to the control room.

Fourth, there's a room next to the control room marked "Tech", whose purposes is not clear: it seems to be isolated with a 2-leaf wall, and it has a double window to the control room, yet it only has one door, instead of the required two doors. So there's something wrong there: the missing door needs to be added.

Fifth, there appears to be no place at all to put the client couch at the rear of the control room, for the producer, client, assistants, etc.: That couch would interrupt the only path to the live room, especially after allowing space for the thickness of the rear wall treatment....

Sixth, there's a triangular "thing" in one corner of the live room that is wasting a lot of space. What is that? Is there some type of shaft going up through the building there, that needs to be enclosed? If so, then that should be left inside the wall cavity, and not part of the room.

There are quite a few other details that could be improved too, but the above are the major deal-breakers. I'd suggest that you should return those plans to the architect and tell him they are totally unacceptable and impractical for a recording studio, and that he should try again, with a blank slate.


- Stuart -