John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hey everyone, long time no see!

My studio partner and I have just purchased a commercially zoned house in Knoxville, TN to renovate into a recording studio. The house is roughly 1900 square feet...the design of the house is a little hard to describe (unfortunately I don't have any photos of the outside)...its basically a big rectangle with a roof that all meets in the middle (like an indian tepee). There a first floor with 12' ceilings, and then an unfinished attic with a 13' tall apex from the existing ceiling. What this effectively allows me to do is remove all interior walls by simply adding cross beams (or wire possibly) and beefing up the existing roof, leaving a ceiling that is 23' tall at the apex and 12' where the roof meets the exterior walls. This has been cleared by a structural engineer.

Some info:

- Sound escaping the studio is not an issue, to the left we have a fairly unused private parking lot...to the right is another commercially zoned house that I also co own.

- There is an interstate about .5 miles away

- The studio will be used on sessions ranging from tracking full 5-6 piece bands live, to overdub style records, to mixing (which is going to be happening a lot.

- In terms of isolation between rooms, I have a pretty thorough understanding of how to do that properly and this early design DOES NOT properly reflect the two leaf wall design we will be building. Actually, to be more specific...the live room walls and ceiling will be substantially bulked up but will not be isolated from the existing structure. The control room, iso A and iso B, however will be fully isolated "room within room" designs. I have an architect friend who uses the software and for the sake of getting this posted I did not force him into depth on the representing the isolated walls properly.

- Iso A (dead room) will have a flat 10' ceiling in order to create storage on top of the structure, Iso B will have a vaulted ceiling with a 16' apex (used for tracking drums and grand piano, etc), the control will have a sloped ceiling starting at 10' and reaching 13.5' at the rear of the room, and finally the live room will have the aforementioned vaulted ceiling with a 23' apex. The mixing room B will have a vaulted ceiling with 16' apex...this room is too narrow i know, but it was kind of an after thought.

- We will be taking out a $100,000 line of credit for the build...which means I think we will definitely be cutting corners in some places. Spent too much money on gear...


This studio was designed by myself with functionality as the upmost concern(not necessarily perfect room ratio and/or complete isolation). With the current design these are my main aims:

- Large mixing/control room...there will be a lot of time spent here hanging with bands, mixing, etc.
- Large tracking room...very into making "band in a room" recordings...drum bleed and all.
- small, dead vocal booth.
- Large-ish iso room with live acoustics for drums, piano, strings, etc.

My questions/concerns:

- Is there anything about this basic layout thats jumping out as a bad move?
- Would love to hear some thoughts on the control room design...it has a ton volume, but the width isn't the best use of square footage possibly?
- is it going to be possible to have two people mixing in A and B at the same time without interfering with each other?

Here's a shot post first round of demolition looking through stud walls at ceiling

Also forgot to add, we will be starting construction in around a months time, but that all depends on finalizing plans to send for approval to the city. I definitely plan to post a photos along the way since those have been so fun for me to see.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Anybody still hang out here?

Anybody still hang out here?

Yup! But for some unexplained reason, I completely missed your thread before! And just found it, accidentally, while looking for something else...

So anyway, if you are still around, here's some answers to your questions. Hopefully not too late!

- Sound escaping the studio is not an issue,

What about sound going the other way? Rain, hail, thunder, wind, helicopters, planes, traffic, people, cars arriving / leaving, people talking, radios, dogs barking, lawnmowers, trains, sirens, ....

- There is an interstate about .5 miles away

That sort of partially answers the above, then: you do have an external sound problem.

- In terms of isolation between rooms,

... it can only ever be as good as isolation to the outside world. It all goes together. If you don't have much isolation between each room and the outside world, then you also don't have much isolation between rooms.

the live room walls and ceiling will be substantially bulked up but will not be isolated from the existing structure.

so in other words, you don't want much isolation, because you won't get much like that...

and this early design DOES NOT properly reflect the two leaf wall design we will be building.

Please post the updated version, so we can see how that is all being planned right now.

- We will be taking out a $100,000 line of credit for the build...which means I think we will definitely be cutting corners in some places

with 1900 square feet, that works out to roughly US$ 52 per square foot. Very much on the low side for a studio. From looking at your plans, it seems the actual studio part of the building will end around 1500 ft2, so that would make it more like US$ 67 per ft2. Still very much on the low side. I would suggest either increasing the budget, or reducing the studio area, or building in stages: Complete the full outer-leaf and as many of the rooms as you can on 100k, then do the rest once you have additional funds. Eg. Do just the live room and control room "A" for now, then do the others, one by one, as funds permit.

This studio was designed by myself with functionality as the upmost concern

I don't see a good load-in / load-out path for the live room. The one path that looks feasible goes through a small lobby, at a strange angle, and with a bathroom door opening part way across the main access door. There's no direct path into Iso-A or Iso-B, and perhaps most serious of all, no direct path from the CR to the LR! Setting up mics is going to be a major pain like that: Each time you move a mic, you'll need to walk from the LR through either Iso-A or Iso-B, around several bends, and through four doors, to get to the CR and check how it sounds.... Then walk all the way back to swap it for another mic, or adjust the position again... rinse... repeat.... Not such a good plan.

There's also no place in the CR to set up your speakers correctly and get good geometry, and the desk is too close to the window.

There's also no visibility at all from control room "B" to any of the actual tracking rooms, or the the outside world. To get from CR-B into any of those rooms, you have to go through CR-A, ....

- Is there anything about this basic layout thats jumping out as a bad move?

The above brief comments deal with that, to a certain extent. There's more I could add, but I'm not sure that you are still around, or still interested, or still needing help! So I'll leave it at that, for now.

- is it going to be possible to have two people mixing in A and B at the same time without interfering with each other?

It is, if you design both correctly. But I would suggest that you should have sight lines and access paths from that room into the LR and at least one of the iso booths. Use curtains or motorized shutters on the windows, if you might need privacy for simultaneous sessions with two customers.

Also forgot to add, we will be starting construction in around a months time,

Then I really do hope I'm not too late!


- Stuart -