First studio build help

[SlimboJimbo]

Hello everyone,

My name is Jim and I am building my own studio. I just registered, but I have been snooping over this forum and others for the past few months. So basically here's where I am at.

I have been recording for about 10 years and I have worked freelance at many studios around NJ and NY. At the beginning of this year, I figured I worked hard enough, I can make it on my own and would like to get my own place. I own a house so I decided, what better place? Ideally, we all want the biggest room possible with the ungodly high ceilings, but we have to be realistic and economical right? If anyone is from the NY area, you know the prices for some rooms around here. So, I have a basement that is pretty big, I have a floor plan I will post below. I would like to use all three rooms. I have a working bathroom in there. My neighbors are far from me. I'd say about 2000 feet away and there is open land on one side of my house. I haven't had a problem with them in all the years that I would practice music down here. I have loads of equipment, cables, gobos, a mixing board, monitors etc. Just need the plan and the build.

2 things I really need to quell is the bit of noise I get from the laundry room when the washer and driers are on, also the heater. It's an oil heater. Also, I don't wanna disturb my wife all that much. She's cool though. She's a singer and is totally behind my plans to build and will actually be on the admin side of the business, but still, I get foot steps and can hear talking so I have to isolate that.

The construction of this place is pretty unique. 28" between the ceiling and the upstairs floor. Double joisted. 3 sides of the basement and one of the rooms is about 3 foot thick solid concrete. Floors in the basement are concrete. There's no support beams vertically anywhere, just a large wooden support beam that runs in the middle of the hallway to the bathroom and the bigger room and into the smaller room behind it.

The walls are covered with 70s fake wood panelling right now, but I want to rip them down and just have the exposed concrete. The bathroom is drywall. THere's a shower but plan to get rid of that. I wanted to make one of the small rooms a control room and the other a drum room, but not sure which one. The bathroom seems better. The other smaller room is a very odd shape. The walls are L shaped. Think of one large concrete "step" all around. Originally was used as a wine cellar and that step was to hold kegs of alcohol. Another thing is that it's raised up about 1 1/2 feet so the ceiling height is about 6 1/2 feet. As opposed to the rest of the basement being about 8 feet.

What I record is mostly soul and reggae. So we aren't as loud as a rock or metal band. I do mostly production for singers and songwriters. I have a studio band that consists of the same players all the time. There's a drummer, percussionist, 2 keys players, 2 guitarists and a bassist.

I had been looking on the forums and I think I'd like to use thermafiber for the walls and the ceiling, but I want to get a clear picture on paper before I proceed and have some help. My budget would be about $2000 for materials.

Let me know what you guys think, what can work, what can't. My floor plan has all the exact measurements. You will see the bathroom and the laundry room on there and where everything is placed. And let me know if there is anything that I missed. I will surely let you know.



PS i noticed in my floor plan, I forgot to indicate that there are no doors other than the door seen between the "bottom" small room and the big room. There's also a door leading to the outside in the corner of the "middle" big room and the laundry room

[Soundman2020]

Hi there Jim, and Welcome!

It sounds like you have a usable space there.

The construction of this place is pretty unique. 28" between the ceiling and the upstairs floor. Double joisted.

That is unusual! Got any pics of that? Hopefully, that space will be usable for something.

3 sides of the basement and one of the rooms is about 3 foot thick solid concrete. Floors in the basement are concrete

Excellent! You should be able to get very decent isolation.

There's no support beams vertically anywhere, just a large wooden support beam that runs in the middle of the hallway to the bathroom and the bigger room and into the smaller room behind it.

Also excellent.

I had been looking on the forums and I think I'd like to use thermafiber for the walls and the ceiling,

Either mineral wool or fiberglass insulation is good for acoustic treatment, but unless you actually build a proper isolation system, just putting that on the walls and in the ceiling will do absolutely nothing to stop those sounds getting in. And out.

but I want to get a clear picture on paper before I proceed

Much better than paper, is "SketchUp". It's free design software that is very powerful, and will let you model your entire studio in complete detail, before you start building anything.

My floor plan has all the exact measurements.

But not enough detail to figure out anything! You'll need to do your plan in much more detail than that, so we can give you useful feedback on it. Photos of the basement area would also be very useful.

- Stuart -