Studio for a new music school

[the1hub]

A

[Soundman2020]

Hi Aaron. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

That said, those are very nice sized spaces, and with excellent high ceilings, so you should be able to build good studios in there, if you design and build carefully.

Your diagrams have very little detail on them, so it isn't possible to say much about them. One things I did notice is that you plan to have diffusion at the back of the CR in Studio B, but it doesn't look like that room is big enough to be able to use numerically based diffusers, so you might want to re-think that.

I know almost nothing about acoustics.

You basically have two choices then. One is to hire a studio designer to design the place for you, and the other is to learn how to design it yourself. If you go with the second option, then I'd suggest 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 book will give the basic background in acoustics that you need, and the second book will give you information on how to actually design, plan and build your studios. If you take this route, the realistically you should set aside about 3 or 4 months to learn what you need to know, then another 3 or 4 months to actually do the design, until you have a good plan ready.

So figure about 6 to 8 months total, until you can actually start building something. That's about how long it takes, in realistic, real-world figures, for most people to get from where you are, to being able to build.

If you look over the forum, you'll find a few places where people have tried to go faster than that, and they all did not end well. They either had to go back, take things apart, and fix them, or they just never actually finished the place at all...

And if you look at the threads of people who did design build and complete their studios successfully, you'll notice the one thing they all have in common is that they spent a LOT of time on learning how to design, then a lot MORE time on the actual design, before they ever lifted a hammer.

So those are your options. If you have the time and the inclination, then learning to do it yourself can be a very rewarding experience. But if you need it done fast, then that's probably not an option, and hiring a designer would be a better choice for you. This is going to be a big facility, so you really might be better off just hiring a designer.

1 How are these room sizes going to feel. i am afraid they will be a tad small.

Right. They are a bit small, but there are ways that you could make better use of space there, and with good treatment they could still be usable. I once designed an entire four room studio in 450 square feet, and it worked out. It is very cramped, yes, and the acoustics are not ideal, simply because of the very small room sizes, but it can be done. John has built studios inside shipping containers! So "small" does not have to be "bad". You have over 700 ft for Studio B, and nearly a thousand for Studio A. That's enough space to do something really nice, in both cases. And your high ceilings make it easier to get good results, too.

2 are any of the angles going to be a problem and need to be avoided on these plans.

It's hard to see what the angles are from just a simple line drawing, but there do seem to be issues. The process of determining what angles you need for your walls ("ray tracing") is long and slow, but from experience your CR walls do not seem to be angled anywhere near enough to create a good RFZ design. To me, it looks like there are better ways of laying out your rooms, that make better use of space, have better angles, and better sight lines too.

3 does anybody in this forum have any experience with sliding doors for use in the control room. i have lots of experience with them in recording spaces and i can't imagine they would work with a control rooms. how effective are they.

They can be fine, if the entire control room is designed with those in mind. If you look at John's studios, you'll see that in many of them he uses sliding glass doors on the control room. I have used them in a few designs myself. It's a good option, and works well, when designed properly.

- Stuart -

[Soundman2020]

Very curious! I just noticed that the original post disappeared, and was replaced by a single letter "A".

Strange!

- Stuart -