John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi to all, and thank you for all the amazing knowledge in this site.

I'm from Quito, Ecuador, and after working some time as an electronic engineer, I've manage to save some money for my purpose in life which is building the first professional studio recording in Ecuador.

I have to take the decision to buy or not to buy a full 4th floor, this would be inside a building of 8th floors, all of the building is for officework, beneath me there will be a video production studio (just office, they dont have soundtreatment of any kind), above me there will be government offices (scholarship programs). The only great thing about this property is the location, one of the most valuable places to have a property in Quito, and the street is very quiet and safe, this is important and very rare to happen in Quito.

So, to comply with your forum's rules, I have read for months your forum and other books, and they all talk about how terrible low ceilings are. Well, my ceiling would be 2.3m/7.5ft !

As far as loudness, I will be recording everything here, from salsa, rock, metal, reggae, son, jazz, and even philharmonics. This studio will work 24hrs, if requested. Good thing is that after 5pm no one will be on the building, although we will have to work also on daytime. The neighbourhood are all offices, very few apartments, most buildings around are office buildings.

Details about the existing construction, are as follows. The floor I am (or not) buying is an old apartment, I will have to demolish a few walls to create the area you can see in the cad attached. There are three attached drawings, the first has the area available for the studio after demolishing walls, the second is the first design, the last one is a zoom for the studio design only, since the rest of the floor will be used as my home. My father will be helping as he is a 30yrs experienced civil engineer.

Dimensions for control room are 5.3x3.9x2.3m (16.7x12.79x7.5ft). I will like to have a separate room for tracking drums (11.4x9x7.5ft), a separate room for recording guitar amplifiers (4.5x3.9x7.5ft), and a live room (22.4x9x7.5ft) . All this measures are before soundproofing. You can see in more detail in the drawings.

As a budget I have USD $200k. This budget is a lot for construction here. Wood, labor, materials, are relative cheap. Renting heavy machinery equipment (backhoe, dozer, excavators) is easy and also kind of cheap. After buying the apartment, I will have left USD 80k.

- So question is, is it worth it to put all these money into these apartment, and "try" to build a professional studio in there, just because it is very well located ??. Land is very hard to find and also way more expensive than apartments.

- Is it possible to design something worth the investment? Drum recording room is what made me realize I might have a problem, because of height and mic placement.

- What kind of quality will I be able to obtain out of these rooms, will it be enough?

Please comment you would help a lot.

I can email the dwg for autocad if anybody needs it, or pdf's for more detail resolution. Ohh, and we can get rockwool down here, they sell it for $13usd a piece of 3x2ft, 2" only. There is neoprene also available here, and the fluffy fiberglass.

Thank you!

Hola Damian, y muy bienvenido al foro!

You have a really nice project there. You have a good location, good budget, sensible goals... but some tough limitations in two major aspects: situation on an upper floor, and ceiling height.

Since you have been reading the forum for a long time, you probably already know that building on an upper floor creates a while new set of problems that simply are not there if you build on the ground floor. It is harder to isolate an upper floor, since the floor itself basically acts like a drum head: it is a membrane stretched across an air cavity. There are ways of dealing with that, such as by properly floating a second floor above the first one, but that takes up headroom, where you are already very limited, and it is also costly and complex to do correctly. You would lose at least 15cm, probably more like 20cm, from floating your floor, which means that the available height would drop from 2.3m to 2.1m. And then you still need to isolate your own ceiling from the floor above, which would take up at least another 15 to 20cm. So the final ceiling height would less than 2m. And then you still need put acoustic treatment up on that ceiling, which could be another 10 to 20cm...

So you don't really have enough space there to float your floor, even assuming the building structure is strong enough to allow that, and that you could get authorization to do it. In the very best case, you might be able to build a drum riser about 8cm or 9cm thick, and put your drums, bass cabinets, etc. on that to prevent impact noise and vibration from getting into the building structure itself. Even so, and even assuming that you do not isolate the ceiling at all, you'd still only have about 2.2m: put 15cm of absorption on there (to kill some of the reflections and help with vertical modal issues and flutter echo) and once again you are down very close to 2m

Setting up drum overhead mics would put them very close to the ceiling, with all the resulting problems.

- So question is, is it worth it to put all these money into these apartment, and "try" to build a professional studio in there, just because it is very well located ??.

That is really hard to say! I wish I could just give a simple "yes" or "no", but in reality, it isn't that simple. If that is the only option you have, then yes, it could be turned into a usable studio, with limitations. But if there might be a better option some other place that is in the ground floor and also has a higher ceiling, then the answer is "no", it is not worth it. If you absolutely need top quality acoustic tracking, in the same class as the best studios around the world, then no, it is not worth it. If you can live with the acoustic limitations of having very low ceilings and a claustrophobic feeling, then yes it is worth it. If the building regulations do not allow you to isolate the room properly, and you need isolation in order to provide the service you want to provide, then no, it is not worth it. Etc. There are a lot of factors to consider here, and I don't know which are the most important ones for YOU! that's the key issue. For me, I might have a different set of priorities from what you do, so if we both had the same situation, then I might take one decisions while you take another, and we would both be right!

- Is it possible to design something worth the investment? Drum recording room is what made me realize I might have a problem, because of height and mic placement.

If the basic decision is just "investment vs. return", think in terms of a world-class studio, then no, it is not worth it. Investing US$ 200k can build you a REALLY nice world-class studio, in pretty much any city in the world, so investing that in a studio that would not be world-class, does not make sense as an investment. However, since there is also the issue of security (and we both understand just how serious that is in Quito!), well, that throws another factor in. Investing 200k in a bad part of town where your customers would never go, and where you'd probably get mugged, kidnapped, or killed, is not a good investment either!

So there just isn't any simple, clear-cut answer here, because this is not a simple clear-cut situation.

Perhaps it would be best to carry on looking around in the same area where this building is, to see if there might be a better place available?

- What kind of quality will I be able to obtain out of these rooms, will it be enough?

Quality can be "reasonable" or maybe even "almost good", but it won't be "fantastic". It won't be the same quality that 200k could buy you in another place. For 200k in Santiago, I could build you a really good world-class studio in a good location in town, and I could do the same in Lima or Buenos Aires. But Quito is not Santiago, and it is not Bs.As.

I guess the answer to your question is: What do you mean by "enough"? If you mean "good enough to beat most other studios in Quito", then yes, you certainly can achieve that. But if you mean "good enough to beat most other studios in Latin America", then no, you won't achieve that.

I can email the dwg for autocad if anybody needs it, or pdf's for more detail resolution.

Please PM me with the PDF's. I'd like to take a closer look at those. Also, please take some photos of the actual place we are talking about, taking care to show the ceilings and floors as well as the walls and windows.

I really do wish it were possible to give you a more concrete answer, but there's just too many things involved that only you can judge!

Muchos saludos, y ¡mucha suerte! Si yo te puedo ayudar con esto, cuenta conmigo.


- Stuart -

Hey Stuart, thank you so much

Well world class is what I'm aiming for, I don't want to contribute to the home studio fever and low quality recordings I've been doing until now.

If you absolutely need top quality acoustic tracking, in the same class as the best studios around the world, then no, it is not worth it. If you can live with the acoustic limitations of having very low ceilings and a claustrophobic feeling, then yes it is worth it.

no, I can not live with that after working so much.

Perhaps it would be best to carry on looking around in the same area where this building is, to see if there might be a better place available?

yes, thats what I'll do, I'll post what I can find. this will be a long series of posts...

I can email the dwg for autocad if anybody needs it, or pdf's for more detail resolution.

Please PM me with the PDF's. I'd like to take a closer look at those. Also, please take some photos of the actual place we are talking about, taking care to show the ceilings and floors as well as the walls and windows.

I'll pm you those pdfs, as far as pictures, i took a gopro when I was in quito to take pictures of the place, the pictures came out very crappy , i'll send them anyways. (my work is in the galapagos islands, cant take new pictures)

Muchos saludos, y ¡mucha suerte! Si yo te puedo ayudar con esto, cuenta conmigo.

gracias! te estaré preguntando mucho!! gracias por tu tiempo

thanks to all