Small Composition/Production/Mixing Room (No recordings)

[Koris]

Hello everyone,

I am now at the planning stage of my home studio. I will rent this space starting from October 1st, which is located in the underground parking lot of my building. It’s basically a space in between 2 parking spots. The owner had some walls constructed to make a small storage room and I decided to rent it to have my home studio there.

It’s the only choice I have.

I will use this space to compose, pre mix and pre master only. Final mixing and mastering will be done elsewhere, to summarize, DAW work only.

Please find the dimension of the room below.

Studio dimension.jpg

Height is 3.61m

How loud am I ?

I usually produce around 80db. When mixing, it would depend if my ears are tired or not but I can go up to 100db.

Construction/walls materials:

Floor is concrete: I believe it’s an ideal situation, according to what I read on this forum.

Walls: The smallest wall (1.50m) is concrete (same as floor). The rest of the walls (left, right, lower walls on the plan) are made out of concrete bricks (please see picture below for the texture). Lower wall is mostly a two door opening in wood.

photo.JPG

Ceiling: Concrete – Height is 3.61m

Budget :

800 euros for acoustic treatment and eventual soundproofing.

Questions:
Best placement for monitors: As my room is not very large, will it be an issue if the monitors are too close to the side walls?

I was thinking of getting this desk: http://www.thomann.de/fr/studiorta_creation_station.htm

The top platter for the screens and monitors is 150cm wide, which means it would fit at half room with about 10-15cm left on each side of the monitors.
Sound proofing: As I am in a parking underground, I don’t believe I need a lot of soundproofing ? Any recommendations?

Acoustic treatment:
From my understanding, I would need some bass trap on the 4 corners, some absorbing panels left and right around the middle of the room (at my ears height) and on the bottom a diffuser foam.

Basstrap:
I was thinking of this model: http://www.thomann.de/fr/acousti_pro_ai ... ap_2er.htm
How many do I need per corner, knowing the height is 50cm of each? Do I need to go to the ceiling (I doubt) or is it enough to have some at the same height as the monitors?

Absorbing foam type and placement:
I was thinking about this:
http://www.thomann.de/fr/eq_acoustics_s ... atural.htm
One on each side wall, around the middle of each wall : is this optimal ? if not, any recommendation ?

Or this:
http://www.thomann.de/fr/auralex_acoust ... purple.htm
Same wall location/spot in replacement of the previous item.

Diffuser:
http://www.thomann.de/fr/hofa_diffusor.htm
placed on the bottom wall, on the door (wood).
Good/Bad ?/Recommendations?

There might be flaws in my thinking, I’m not a pro, I just tried reading all that I could up to my level of understanding.

In advance thanks you very much for the time and answers.

Regards,
Koris

[Eugene_ER]

Hi Koris,

I have kind of the same problem, although my room is a little bit different
Just want to mplay some music and do some mixing stuff in there...
I tested the auralex panels, which look quite nice but are somehow nasty to fix on the wall. Maybe I was too stupid to glue them correctly...
After all a friend has some of this Hofa stuff and his home recording room sounds quite well. So I used this calculator to find out which modules I need: http://hofa-akustik.de/en/acoustics-wizard/
Maybe this helps you too. Actually it helped me to have a kind of sophisticated information...
Why is this acoustic stuff so confusing ???

Best regards
Eugene

[Soundman2020]

Hi Koris, and Welcome to the forum!

Please find the dimension of the room below.

That's a very narrow space! But if that's all you have, then that's what it will have to be. It is still much better than "no place at all"!

Floor is concrete: I believe it’s an ideal situation, according to what I read on this forum.

Right!

Best placement for monitors: As my room is not very large, will it be an issue if the monitors are too close to the side walls?

Yes it will be a problem if the speakers are close to the side walls, so we will have to try to optimize the position for your speakers.

But first, what speakers are you going to use in there? (Make and model).

I was thinking of getting this desk:

That one has a shelf for the speakers: That's a bad idea. You should never put the speakers in the desk, or on a shelf attached to the desk. They should go on proper stands just behind the desk, up against the front wall.

From my understanding, I would need some bass trap on the 4 corners, some absorbing panels left and right around the middle of the room (at my ears height) and on the bottom a diffuser foam.

Right! Large bass traps in all four corners, 4" absorption on the side walls at the first reflection points, and probably at a couple of other locations further back down the room, also absorption on the front wall, where the speakers are, and thick absorption on the rear wall. You will also need treatment on the ceiling, and I would suggest putting a large "cloud" over the mix position, plus some additional absorption further back.

Basstrap:
I was thinking of this model:

Way too small for that room. And expensive, too! I would suggest that you build your own bass traps. Search the forum for "superchunk" to learn how to do that. Very effective, very simple, and not expensive.

Absorbing foam type and placement:
I was thinking about this:

That would probably work, but once again you can make your own much cheaper.

Diffuser:

The room is too small to be able to use diffusers: I would use very thick absorption on the rear wall, such as 6" (150mm) of OC-703.

There might be flaws in my thinking, I’m not a pro, I just tried reading all that I could up to my level of understanding.

You are on the right track, for sure!



- Stuart -

[Koris]

Dear Stuart,

First of all i would like to apologize for the delay of answer. Also, i would like to thank you for the very precious advices and tips.

The bad news is i won't have access to this location anymore but the good news is that i successfully negociated with my wife to move out our office room and transform it into a "music room"

Dimensions are much better and proportion are more common. I believe by reading posts on this forum i will have all the elements to optimize the room for my musical needs.

Again, many thanks for the help!

Regards,

Koris