John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi Guys

I am new to this forum but could sure use some help with a project that I am faced with. I have to get a design and build a 2 room studio at my company. We do drum only recording so I need help with a drum room and a control room I have attached a PDF sketch of the space I have to work with. On one side of the studio will be a warehouse and on the other will be offices. The space I have is as follows.
Control Room – 14 ft wide, 24 feet long and up to 15 feet tall
Drum Room – 15 ft wide, 20 feet long and up to 15 feet tall
These rooms will be built inside a larger 30 ft long by 25 ft 4 in wide and 18 ft tall space we currently have. I have to work around an existing Mechanical Closet that will eat into my drum room space. I also need doors connecting the existing Photo studio and new drum room to the control room. The control room will be located between these two rooms.
I guess I have 3 questions to start.
1. What building techniques should I use for the 2 new rooms?
2. What tweaks to the size/ dimensions of each room would yield the best sound possible?
3. What treatments should be considered to create the best sonic working environment?
Sorry if I have left off any needed information. Kind of new at this and I would prefer to do it as close to right the first time as I can… Your help and suggestions will be greatly valued,

Hi Mike, and welcome to the forum!

These rooms will be built inside a larger 30 ft long by 25 ft 4 in wide and 18 ft tall space we currently have.

That's a nice sized space, and it has the added benefit of the high ceiling. Is it on the ground floor (slab on grade), or is it on an upper floor, with other rooms below you?

Control Room – 14 ft wide, 24 feet long and up to 15 feet tall
Drum Room – 15 ft wide, 20 feet long and up to 15 feet tall

Decent sizes, but does it have to be in that exact division, or might it be possible to have the division in another manner?

1. What building techniques should I use for the 2 new rooms?

The most effective method at the lowest cost, is fully-decoupled two-leaf MSM construction. Especially considering that one of the rooms is a drum booth, implying very high isolation levels.

2. What tweaks to the size/ dimensions of each room would yield the best sound possible?

That's sot of like asking "I need to buy two cars: how big should they be?", but without providing any more information!!! There's any number of ways that the rooms could be sized, depending on what you actually need. Control rooms should only be sized in certain ways, based on the ratios of dimensions that give best modal response, but the drum booth should be as large as it needs to be, for the size of drum kit and acoustic you are looking for. Recording a small setup for light jazz is one thing, recording a huge kit for a major rock band, with multiple kicks and pedals, multiple toms, multiple crash, ride, splash, china, bells, etc. is a very different thing.

3. What treatments should be considered to create the best sonic working environment?

Wow! That's akin to asking "What clothes should I wear?". It's such a big question that there is no simple answer! The best one can say is "it all depends". Control rooms should be tuned for neutral acoustics, designed to meet specs such as ITU-BS.1116, EBU-3276, AES-TD.1001 and other similar ones. THe basic concept is that the room should neither add to nor subtract from the sound coming form the speakers: it should deliver that sound, unchanged, to the ears of the engineer at the mix position. The actual method for achieving that is very, very different for each individual room, based on a whole bunch of factors. It's impossible to say what treatment would be needed without first defining the room, just it is impossible to say what clothes you should wear without firs defining the place where you will be wearing them.

That's for the control room, where the specs and concepts are clear. For the drum booth, it's an entirely different thing. The acoustics should be what you need them to be for THAT room, with THAT drum kit recording THAT genere with THAT mic setup and THAT drummer and THAT engineer. If you don't know what all the "that's" are yet, then it would be best to set up the room generically for a typical contemporary pop drum recording, but then to design the room so it is flexible enough to accommodate other setups. That might include having specific "zones" in the room that are more live or more dead, where the drum kit could be moved or oriented, or it might include movable gobos that can be arranged for the wanted sound, or it might include variable acoustic devices that can be opened/closed/flipped/rotated to change the acoustic response of the room.

Sorry if I have left off any needed information. Kind of new at this and I would prefer to do it as close to right the first time as I can… Your help and suggestions will be greatly valued

Based on what I can understand from your post, I would suggest that you should probably hire a studio designer to do this project for you. It sounds like a major investment that you have in mind, so getting it wrong would be very sad. That type of professional facility is going to need proper design, or it is going to need that you spend about six months to a year learning how to design it yourself. I would suggest that you contact John himself directly, and ask him to quote for doing your project. If you don't hear back from him in a few days, then contact me and I'll try to get hold of him for you.

- Stuart -

That's a nice sized space, and it has the added benefit of the high ceiling. Is it on the ground floor (slab on grade), or is it on an upper floor, with other rooms below you?

This is on a Slab between an office and warehouse.

Decent sizes, but does it have to be in that exact division, or might it be possible to have the division in another manner?

Because of spacing and walls we have landed on these dims... 19.5 ft long by 13 ft wide by 16 ft tall. We will use these for both rooms. Using the AMROC Room Calculator found on this site these specs yielded pretty good results.

Wow! That's akin to asking "What clothes should I wear?". It's such a big question that there is no simple answer! The best one can say is "it all depends". Control rooms should be tuned for neutral acoustics, designed to meet specs such as ITU-BS.1116, EBU-3276, AES-TD.1001 and other similar ones. THe basic concept is that the room should neither add to nor subtract from the sound coming form the speakers: it should deliver that sound, unchanged, to the ears of the engineer at the mix position. The actual method for achieving that is very, very different for each individual room, based on a whole bunch of factors. It's impossible to say what treatment would be needed without first defining the room, just it is impossible to say what clothes you should wear without firs defining the place where you will be wearing them.

That's for the control room, where the specs and concepts are clear. For the drum booth, it's an entirely different thing. The acoustics should be what you need them to be for THAT room, with THAT drum kit recording THAT genere with THAT mic setup and THAT drummer and THAT engineer. If you don't know what all the "that's" are yet, then it would be best to set up the room generically for a typical contemporary pop drum recording, but then to design the room so it is flexible enough to accommodate other setups. That might include having specific "zones" in the room that are more live or more dead, where the drum kit could be moved or oriented, or it might include movable gobos that can be arranged for the wanted sound, or it might include variable acoustic devices that can be opened/closed/flipped/rotated to change the acoustic response of the room.

Because of Budgeting we had hoped to get the construction out of the way and use the Pro's to help with room tuning for lack of a better way of putting it. From our research we are looking at 2 by 6 double leaf walls and an isolation mat between the concrete slab and the floor joist. We are still unsure of what insolation to use. Any suggestions? Like wise is there a large enough benefit to the Acoustic Drywall vs traditional Dry Wall materials to make up for the cost? Every dollar saved can be used for other needed items... (like upgraded monitors)

Thanks for your reply.

we have landed on these dims... 19.5 ft long by 13 ft wide by 16 ft tall. We will use these for both rooms.

That's close to Louden's fifth ratio, so that's fine. It also gives you over 250 ft2 of floor area, and over 4000 ft3 of room volume, which is pretty nice for a control room. But I'm not too convinced that it's a good idea to have the CR and LR the same size... The normal rule of thumb is that the LR should have considerably greater volume than the CR, so that you can hear the reverb tails of the live room, when you listen in the control room. If the two rooms are similar in size, the acoustic response of the control room itself will mask the "sound" of the live room, so you won't be able to hear what it actually sounds like.

That's one of the reasons why live rooms are usually quite a bit larger than control rooms.

Using the AMROC Room Calculator found on this site these specs yielded pretty good results.

Having an even modal response is important for a control room, yes. But not for a live room. There's no need to be too concerned about that for your live room.

Because of Budgeting we had hoped to get the construction out of the way and use the Pro's to help with room tuning

That's not a good plan at all! In medical terms, that's like saying "We hope to perform the actual brain surgery ourselves to save money, then call in the doctor to stitch up the patient afterwards, and pat on some cosmetics to make him look nice."... I hope you get the point!

It is impossible to tune a room that has not been designed correctly. No matter what you do to it, it will never work well.

The decisions you make in designing the room and in building it have a major effect on the way it will sound. If those decisions are not taken with acoustic parameters in mind, for acoustic reasons, then the result will be mediocre at best, even if you use the very best studio designer on the planet to do the tuning. It would be short-sighted to have inexperienced amateurs do all of the real acoustically important things, leaving no space at all for the expert to actually do his job. Room tuning is not just about hanging a few pretty panels on the walls... it is about shaping the entire room to provide the cleanest possible acoustics. It takes into account every possible aspect of the room, starting with the make and model of speakers and the proposed use of the studio, running through the optimization of layout, dimensions, geometry, angles, distances, materials, techniques, involving not just the room itself but also the associated HVAC system and electrical system, as well as the surrounding rooms in the facility, for positioning doors, windows, access paths, etc.

I would urge you to re-think your plan here. This is a large professional facility, from what you have said. It is going to cost many tens of thousands of dollars to build. The small fee that a designer will charge you won't have much of an impact on the overall budget, but could very well be the difference between a successful studio where people want to come back and record, time and time again, or a dismal failure where nobody ever wants to record.

If you follow your current plan, very probably the expert designer that you hire in the end will tell you: "Sorry, this patient is brain-dead. There's nothing I can do fix him now."...

From our research we are looking at 2 by 6 double leaf walls

Why? If you are going with a proper double leaf wall, then 2x6 isn't needed (unless you plan to carry an extremely heavy load on top, such as a parking lot or something!) 2x4 framing for each leaf is fine, and less expensive. You only need 2x6 is you are going with a staggered stud wall, due to space limitations, which is certainly not the case with your studio.

an isolation mat between the concrete slab and the floor joist.

Why? Are you trying to float your slab? I was under the impression that the floor slab is already there! And when I asked if there was another room below yours, you didn't reply to that, and simply said that it is a slab, presumably slab-on-grade: So where do the joists come in? Are you saying that your concrete floor slab is supported on joists underneath it, and you plan to somehow cut and raise the slab so that you can get "isolation mat" in between? How would you do that, and why would you even want to try? That is not the correct way to float a floor.

You really should read this thread:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173

We are still unsure of what insolation to use.

For what application? Studios use different types of insulation for different purposes, in different places. Each type is carefully chosen to optimize the performance in that location. One type is used for the MSM damping, another for ceiling clouds, another type for the superchunks, yet another type for the first reflection points,and yet other types inside any tuned acoustic treatment device. You would have to describe which specific part of the studio you are talking about, so that we can guide you with the correct type of insulation to use.

Like wise is there a large enough benefit to the Acoustic Drywall vs traditional Dry Wall materials to make up for the cost?

That one is easy to answer: No, there is not a justifiable difference in performance. The best drywall for studio walls and ceilings is plain old 5/8" fire-rated drywall, that you can buy at any building supply store. Note: 5/8" (never thinner). And note: fire-rated. Not because your studio might burn, but because it is higher density than ordinary drywall, and that does have a benefit.

Every dollar saved can be used for other needed items... (like upgraded monitors)

Very true! And you should, in fact, start out be selecting your monitors, since parts of the control room design process takes that into account.... The Q the monitor and the spectrum are both important factors, as are the size and the location of the acoustic axes on the monitor. You need to know all about those in order to correctly design the control room layout and geometry...


- Stuart -

That's close to Louden's fifth ratio, so that's fine. It also gives you over 250 ft2 of floor area, and over 4000 ft3 of room volume, which is pretty nice for a control room. But I'm not too convinced that it's a good idea to have the CR and LR the same size... The normal rule of thumb is that the LR should have considerably greater volume than the CR, so that you can hear the reverb tails of the live room, when you listen in the control room. If the two rooms are similar in size, the acoustic response of the control room itself will mask the "sound" of the live room, so you won't be able to hear what it actually sounds like.

That's one of the reasons why live rooms are usually quite a bit larger than control rooms.

The live room can be smaller but I have no additional space to make it larger. The problem is, we will be doing videos of drum performances in this space as much as recording. I need all the space for lighting and cameras that I can get. It will be multi-uses…

That's not a good plan at all! In medical terms, that's like saying "We hope to perform the actual brain surgery ourselves to save money, then call in the doctor to stitch up the patient afterwards, and pat on some cosmetics to make him look nice."... I hope you get the point!

It is impossible to tune a room that has not been designed correctly. No matter what you do to it, it will never work well.

The decisions you make in designing the room and in building it have a major effect on the way it will sound. If those decisions are not taken with acoustic parameters in mind, for acoustic reasons, then the result will be mediocre at best, even if you use the very best studio designer on the planet to do the tuning. It would be short-sighted to have inexperienced amateurs do all of the real acoustically important things, leaving no space at all for the expert to actually do his job. Room tuning is not just about hanging a few pretty panels on the walls... it is about shaping the entire room to provide the cleanest possible acoustics. It takes into account every possible aspect of the room, starting with the make and model of speakers and the proposed use of the studio, running through the optimization of layout, dimensions, geometry, angles, distances, materials, techniques, involving not just the room itself but also the associated HVAC system and electrical system, as well as the surrounding rooms in the facility, for positioning doors, windows, access paths, etc.

I would urge you to re-think your plan here. This is a large professional facility, from what you have said. It is going to cost many tens of thousands of dollars to build. The small fee that a designer will charge you won't have much of an impact on the overall budget, but could very well be the difference between a successful studio where people want to come back and record, time and time again, or a dismal failure where nobody ever wants to record.

If you follow your current plan, very probably the expert designer that you hire in the end will tell you: "Sorry, this patient is brain-dead. There's nothing I can do fix him now."...

This is the kind of input I was hoping for thank you and I do understand.

Why? If you are going with a proper double leaf wall, then 2x6 isn't needed (unless you plan to carry an extremely heavy load on top, such as a parking lot or something!) 2x4 framing for each leaf is fine, and less expensive. You only need 2x6 is you are going with a staggered stud wall, due to space limitations, which is certainly not the case with your studio.

If money can be saved then 2 X 4 it is… Question Metal or Wood Studs?

Why? Are you trying to float your slab? I was under the impression that the floor slab is already there! And when I asked if there was another room below yours, you didn't reply to that, and simply said that it is a slab, presumably slab-on-grade: So where do the joists come in? Are you saying that your concrete floor slab is supported on joists underneath it, and you plan to somehow cut and raise the slab so that you can get "isolation mat" in between? How would you do that, and why would you even want to try? That is not the correct way to float a floor.

You really should read this thread:

We will be in a shared space with large tow-motors just outside the first wall. This space is attached to our current video/still photography studio and you can feel and hear them as they go by. I thought the ¾ inch mats will help with Sound and vibration transference. There is no room below and we want to build off the existing slab. Slab, mats, floor and walls…. Thanks for the link...

For what application? Studios use different types of insulation for different purposes, in different places. Each type is carefully chosen to optimize the performance in that location. One type is used for the MSM damping, another for ceiling clouds, another type for the superchunks, yet another type for the first reflection points,and yet other types inside any tuned acoustic treatment device. You would have to describe which specific part of the studio you are talking about, so that we can guide you with the correct type of insulation to use.

In the 2 leaf wall system…Also in the ceiling system...

Very true! And you should, in fact, start out be selecting your monitors, since parts of the control room design process takes that into account.... The Q the monitor and the spectrum are both important factors, as are the size and the location of the acoustic axes on the monitor. You need to know all about those in order to correctly design the control room layout and geometry...

Needed info again… Thanks