John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi all!

I found a beautiful girl, we bought a beautiful old church in our hometown and then we got married in our own church and moved in and started renovating.

The best part is that I am allowed to build a studio in 2/3 of the church hall. That is where I want your help and inspiration.


But first let me introduce myself:

36 year old living on the west coast of Finland. I have been involved in sound engineering or music for almost my entire life. I have a degree in sound engineering and I have studied quite a bit of acoustics and electroacoustics. After finishing my studies I worked a couple of years as a consultant doing mainly sound system design and acoustic design for public spaces such as schools, churches, conference venues and some smaller concert halls. I believe I have quite good understanding of acoustics in larger spaces but I haven't got much experience in designing smaller rooms and studios. I have very little experience in sound proofing apart from some theoretical knowledge gained from my studies and reading the usual books on studio design and construction and hanging around the studio design forums. My current day job apart from the occasional consultant project is as sound system designer and system tech for live concerts, festivals and tours. Basically I hang big speaker boxes and measure and tune them so that a couple of thousand people can listen to music.


Enough about me. These are my thoughts about building my own studio:

1) My own private playground that can be used commercially if needed/desired.
I love gear, specially analog gear. I have collected a pile of outboards and stuff over the years. I got into sound engineering because I enjoy mixing but the last ten years or so my job has been more about engineering and less about mixing and all the nice, creative stuff. So I want to build a place where I can play around and get back to where I started from and do more recording and mixing. Mainly for my own private use but I want to make it good enough to be used professionally. A high-end home studio.

2) Sound proofing.
Since I will be using 2/3 of the hall as studio and 1/3 as our family's living room and since the rest of the building will be our home I will prioritize sound proofing. I want to be able to have a rock band playing in the live room at the same time as my wife is drinking wine with her guests in the living room. The street that passes right outside the building isn't at all heavily trafficked but there is some traffic and I don't want a passing truck to ruin a good vocal take. And I don't want the neighbors across the street to complain about a rock band recording drums in the middle of the night.

3) A really really good control room
I hope that this studio will bring me work opportunities as a mixing engineer. I would like the control room to be good and neutral sounding. I want the control room to impress people. Since I am used to listening to BIG sound systems I want my control room to have big soffit mounted main speakers that can actually be used for mixing. I am aiming for ATC SCM150 or Genelec 1034 or something in that range sizewise.

4) A live room big enough for recording 3-4 piece bands.
There aren't that many choices of good sounding rooms in this area for band who want to record, say drums, bass and guitar at the same time. I understand that 4 persons in a room will be tight but it should be doable. I want a room that sounds good with acoustic instruments and drums. A good drum room together with a nice collection of pics and preamps would certainly give me some clients.

5) A practical and cosy environment for visitors and clients.
There is enough ceiling height to make a second floor lounge above the non-soundproofed rooms like toilet, machine room, storage, etc. I want a place for people to hang out so that musicians that aren't performing won't be in the control room or the live room disturbing people who are actually trying to work.


Sorry for the long first post.

I will upload sketch models and dimensions and my suggestion for a floor plan in a while.

Thank you for reading this far!

All the best,

Anders

So here is a photo from the inside looking at the area where the studio is going to be:
In the back of the hall (behind the double doors in the middle) there are two toilets and a small storage closet That is also where the main entrance is. I will tear down the balcony completely but that is approximately the placement for the lounge.

This is a picture of the empty Sketchup model I made for the space. I am a newbie with sketchup so I apologize if there are things that are weird or wrong:
The dimensions of the whole floor are 9590mm X 8425mm and the ceiling height is about 5530mm at the highest point. The ceiling starts curving at about 4300mm.

The walls are made of horizontal timber logs about 160-180mm thick. The floor is concrete (the floor was renewed in 1980. there was a wooden flor before that. The concrete thickness is about 400mm thick in total with some insulation in it. I'll investigate that more in the near future.

There are two metal rods running between the walls at about 4300mm height. These run through the outer walls and are holding the building together.

In the photo you can see a chimney in the back. I am not sure about what will happen to it but at this stage I think we are planning to tear it down.

Lastly, here is my suggestion for a layout. You are welcome to suggest changes to it or completely discard it and suggest something different. I greatly appreciate all the knowledge and helpfulness on this forum.
All the best,

Anders

And here is the Sketchup file I made if anyone is interested in helping me come up with ideas on how to make this a great studio. As I said, I am new to sketchup so please be gentle...

Thank you,

Anders

Welcome to the forum. It looks like you hit most of the required info for your first post. Do us a favor and put your location in your profile so we always know where you are located when you make other posts.

It looks like you have a good start on your Sketchup model. A couple of things: Learn to build things in groups and components. It will be much easier as you get more detailed to move and hide things when working on other parts of the design. Also, do a Google search for, download and install the House Builder add on. It's old, but it make building out framed walls, windows, doors and roofs so much easier, and faster.

Also, if you haven't done so yet, go to John's main website and download his recording studio design manual. Also, Rod Gervais' book Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros is the best entry level book on studio design. It can be had from Amazon pretty cheaply usually.

As for the project overall. I would be tempted in that space to try to find some way to get at least one other booth, either for vocals or drums, etc... in addition to the live room. Maybe steal some space from the Storage room and/or the Machine room.

I think your biggest stumbling block for "non-wife disturbing" sound isolation is going to be the original construction of the church itself. The walls and floors are probably not built with major sound isolation in mind, nor are the exterior walls. So you might have to either beef those up or add rebuild some of them. You won't really know until you open up a wall. At the very minimum, you will want to research and learn how to utilize the "two-leaf" construction method for your walls, floor and ceilings. Your existing exterior windows will be an issue.

I'm sure Stuart will be along shortly to go over all the other details.

JCBigler wrote: It looks like you have a good start on your Sketchup model. A couple of things: Learn to build things in groups and components. It will be much easier as you get more detailed to move and hide things when working on other parts of the design. Also, do a Google search for, download and install the House Builder add on. It's old, but it make building out framed walls, windows, doors and roofs so much easier, and faster.

Thank you for your reply. I'll check out the add on to sketchup.

Also, if you haven't done so yet, go to John's main website and download his recording studio design manual. Also, Rod Gervais' book Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros is the best entry level book on studio design. It can be had from Amazon pretty cheaply usually.

There is no shortage of books on my shelf. Gervais, Everest, Neville, Beranek, etc etc.

As for the project overall. I would be tempted in that space to try to find some way to get at least one other booth, either for vocals or drums, etc... in addition to the live room. Maybe steal some space from the Storage room and/or the Machine room.

Absolutely. It would be awesome to fit a vocal booth in there somewhere. As long as it won't be too small. I don't really like claustrophobic booths. I don't think it will be possible to make a drum room large enough to be sensible without making too big sacrifices on the size of the control room or live room. Please prove me wrong if you can. But a vocal booth should be possible.

I think your biggest stumbling block for "non-wife disturbing" sound isolation is going to be the original construction of the church itself. The walls and floors are probably not built with major sound isolation in mind, nor are the exterior walls. So you might have to either beef those up or add rebuild some of them. You won't really know until you open up a wall. At the very minimum, you will want to research and learn how to utilize the "two-leaf" construction method for your walls, floor and ceilings. Your existing exterior windows will be an issue.

I think the huge windows are going to be the biggest stumbling block.
The wall to the living room is not built yet so that's up to me to design. I'm thinking triple drywall sheets, 150-200mm rock wool, big air gap, more rock wool and a heavy inner leaf. All air tight and solid. If needed I'm no stranger to the thought of floating floors either (and yes, I have read the threads about floating floors).

The outer walls are really just wood. 160mm thick timber logs laid horizontally with a thin layer of natural grasslike fibers between. That's how we built houses in the early 1900's in the Nordic countries. So the exterior walls are really just one thick leaf. Inside of that I'm going to put insulation, air gap, rock wool and a heavy inner leaf, probably two sheets of drywall.

For the exterior windows I'm thinking to build a replica of the inner window frame but with a 12-15mm glass pane and put that in the new inner wall. 15mm glass has about the same surface mass as three layers of drywall.

I'm sure Stuart will be along shortly to go over all the other details.

Looking forward to that!

Thank you for your comments!

I guess I should say something about time and money at this point. We started renovating the part of the building that is going to be our home. And that is priority number 1. Until that is under control and the wife and kids are happy there will be no studio construction. So my guess is that this project will move over to the building phase in a year. That's a bit optimistic. Until then it's planning and throwing ideas around with you.

As for budget, I don't know. I do understand that this is going to cost money. A lot of it. I am guessing that somewhere around 40-50k€ should get quite a lot done. It really depends on the details that haven't been decided yet (floating floor, vocal booth, ventilation, etc). I don't want to do it cheap. But this is firstly a non commercial home studio so there will not be any huge amounts to spare. Basically the more it costs the longer it takes. And I rather wait to have something I'm satisfied with than to build it cheap and regret it.

All the best,

Anders

So I made a new sketch that includes a small vocal booth and made the machine room smaller.

It worries me a little bit that the live room has now shrunk to under 3 meters wide which is quite small in my opinion. I'll have to think about it and try to come up with some plan that will make it a bit bigger without sacrificing the size of the control room. Any suggestions are appreciated.

This is just a suggestion for a layout. Once I have come up with something that seems to be the best solution I will make everything a bit more exact (wall thickness, dimensions, etc.)

Let me know what you think.

/Anders

Hi there Anders, and welcome to the forum!

That's a really nice looking place, with great potential. Lucky you!

I love gear, specially analog gear. I have collected a pile of outboards and stuff over the years.

... and therefore, the machine room! But do make sure it is actually big enough to fit in a full 40U rack, or maybe two of them. You need space in front of the racks for operational access to the gear, yes, but you also need space behind the rack to get in there for installation, maintenance, trouble-shooting, changing things, etc. And at the front, you need to have enough space that you can fully slide in/out even the largest piece of equipment, especially if it is mounted on rails: you need the full depth of the item, plus several inches more to be able to handle it and maneuver it into place. Some rack rails need you to slide the unit all the way out, then press some catches or clips on the rails so you can slide them out even further, to fully disengage the unit from the rack. I used to do a lot of work in machine rooms, many years ago, so these are first-hand hints about things to avoid that can trap you badly. I have seen machine rooms where it is physically impossible to get some gear in, physically impossible to get behind the racks for maintenance, and even where the entire rack had to be assembled outside the room, with no door on the room yet, then the entire rack shoved into the room by several hefty men, then the door put on the room..... For your own peace of mind and ongoing sanity, do make sure that you leave enough space in your machine room. Right now, it does not look big enough. If you PM me, I can send you info on what I consider to be about the smallest possible single-rack machine room that is viable.

Mainly for my own private use but I want to make it good enough to be used professionally. A high-end home studio.

Cool! I love a studio that has lofty goals, but goals that are also attainable!

since the rest of the building will be our home I will prioritize sound proofing. I want to be able to have a rock band playing in the live room at the same time as my wife is drinking wine with her guests in the living room.

Lofty goals indeed! That's going to need a failry large budget... it is possible to do that, but expensive...

I would like the control room to be good and neutral sounding.

Excellent! Take a look at the document ITU BS.1116-2 to see the specs you should actually be aiming for, and take a look at this thread to see one such room that meets those specs (actually, it exceeds them in some places!): http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=20471

I want the control room to impress people.

Please notice my signature at the bottom of every post!

I want my control room to have big soffit mounted main speakers that can actually be used for mixing. I am aiming for ATC SCM150 or Genelec 1034 or something in that range sizewise

You'll need a fairly big room to be able to use those successfully. Lots of volume. ANd since you are looking in that size/price range, have you also considered the Eve Audio range? I've had some good success with those recently. The room you see in that link above is done with Eve SC-407's, but for your room you could maybe try the SC-408, or even the SC-3012, perhaps with a TS112 sub, if you really want to pump out the low end.

I want a room that sounds good with acoustic instruments and drums

You probably already know this, but the key for that is two things: room volume, and high ceilings. If you have a large floor area and a high ceiling, then it's fairly easy to get good acoustics in there. But since you want both drums and acoustic instruments, I'd suggest incorporating variable acoustics into the room treatment, so you can adjust the response as needed for different scenarios.

There is enough ceiling height to make a second floor lounge above the non-soundproofed rooms like toilet, machine room, storage, etc. I want a place for people to hang out so that musicians that aren't performing won't be in the control room or the live room disturbing people who are actually trying to work.

Right! the classic "green room". Smart idea. I see you already have a balcony area above the rear of the hall: how about using that, and just extending it a bit more?

There are two metal rods running between the walls at about 4300mm height. These run through the outer walls and are holding the building together.

Structural tie rods. Yep. Sort of important! There's not much you can do about that, unfortunately. That does place a limit on that you can get in terms of isolation. You might need to box those in, or damp them, or some such.

Lastly, here is my suggestion for a layout. You are welcome to suggest changes to it or completely discard it and suggest something different. I greatly appreciate all the knowledge and helpfulness on this forum.

Personally, I would rotate the CR 90° so it is facing the LR, for good sight lines (glass between the soffits, or even glass soffits if you really want to go high-end!), then place the vocal booth two one side, in between the LR and CR, where there are sight lines into both rooms. It's not a good idea to have the vocal booth visually isolated from the LR, as musicians do like to have visual contact. It helps to keep things "tight". That would also give you a better shaped LR, I think.

So my guess is that this project will move over to the building phase in a year. That's a bit optimistic. Until then it's planning and throwing ideas around with you

Perfect! Do not rush the design. There's so much that you need to put in there! Studio building is 90% design, 10% actual construction.

As for budget, I don't know. I do understand that this is going to cost money. A lot of it. I am guessing that somewhere around 40-50k€ should get quite a lot done.

For very high isolation, you will probably need to go more than that. It's a large space, you have "lofty goals" for it, so it won't be cheap.

It really depends on the details that haven't been decided yet (floating floor,

Floating floor is probably not needed, as you have a good thick concrete slab base, and enough height that you could build a great drum riser to decouple the drums from the floor without any penalty in sound quality. You MIGHT need s floating floor on the LR if you really do want extreme isolation, but you will definitely need a larger budget if that's the case. Floating a floor correctly is a big deal. Read this: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ?f=2&t=817

ventilation,

HVAC is a necessity, not a luxury. You need it. It must provide the correct amount of air flow at the correct speed for each room, and it must do so in absolute silence. A tall order!

- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:Hi there Anders, and welcome to the forum!

That's a really nice looking place, with great potential. Lucky you!

Thank you, Stuart! I've been hanging around here a couple of years and reading a lot of what you and John and other knowledgable studio designers have written. Just waiting to find my own space to start my own dream project. And I do believe that this building is the closest to a dream project I'm going to get.

... and therefore, the machine room! But do make sure it is actually big enough to fit in a full 40U rack, or maybe two of them. You need space in front of the racks for operational access to the gear, yes, but you also need space behind the rack to get in there for installation, maintenance, trouble-shooting, changing things, etc. And at the front, you need to have enough space that you can fully slide in/out even the largest piece of equipment, especially if it is mounted on rails: you need the full depth of the item, plus several inches more to be able to handle it and maneuver it into place. Some rack rails need you to slide the unit all the way out, then press some catches or clips on the rails so you can slide them out even further, to fully disengage the unit from the rack. I used to do a lot of work in machine rooms, many years ago, so these are first-hand hints about things to avoid that can trap you badly. I have seen machine rooms where it is physically impossible to get some gear in, physically impossible to get behind the racks for maintenance, and even where the entire rack had to be assembled outside the room, with no door on the room yet, then the entire rack shoved into the room by several hefty men, then the door put on the room..... For your own peace of mind and ongoing sanity, do make sure that you leave enough space in your machine room. Right now, it does not look big enough. If you PM me, I can send you info on what I consider to be about the smallest possible single-rack machine room that is viable.

I totally agree on that. I've done many installations and service of rack mounted equipment in rooms/closets that are not built for service. I will not make that mistake. I want to fit two 40U racks in there plus some shelves for other stuff. I was thinking about making the whole racks on rails or wheels to be able to slide them either front or back when I need to get in there. That only takes some good cable management but it's not really a problem. The best solution of course would be to have a really big machine room but I just have to face the fact that my space isn't unlimited.

Cool! I love a studio that has lofty goals, but goals that are also attainable!

That's going to need a failry large budget... it is possible to do that, but expensive...

Yes. Lofty goals. I'm not asking for impossible. I'm aiming for the best possible. The more expensive it gets, the longer it takes.

Please notice my signature at the bottom of every post!

Your signature has been in my head since way before I even bought the house. It will be the motto of this project.

You'll need a fairly big room to be able to use those successfully. Lots of volume. ANd since you are looking in that size/price range, have you also considered the Eve Audio range? I've had some good success with those recently. The room you see in that link above is done with Eve SC-407's, but for your room you could maybe try the SC-408, or even the SC-3012, perhaps with a TS112 sub, if you really want to pump out the low end.

Is there really such a thing as too big a speaker for a room? I often hear claims that a room is too small for a certain speaker or that a certain speaker is too big for a room but I haven't really seen any theoretical reasoning behind this. I do understand that a small room can't have modal support down to the really low frequencies (my suggested control room would have modes starting at 30-35Hz) but is that the reasoning or is there something else that I haven't thought about? In my day job I usually deal with larger than 200 000 cubic meter size rooms and more than 100kW loudspeaker systems so I don't really know.

The reason I mentioned the two speaker models is that I might possibly be able to get a good price on either of those from a friend. If I have to buy main monitors that cost what they are supposed to cost we are looking at something a bit smaller, like Genelec 1038 or SCM50. But I would really like to have big massive speakers unless somebody explains to me why that is not a good idea.

...two things: room volume, and high ceilings.

I have relatively high ceilings so that makes me believe that we should be able to make things sound good in here. Even if we waste some of the height on isolation the height doesn't have to be the smallest dimension. And if we really need it, we could tear away the old ceiling and make things even higher. But I don't know if a 20 square meter room with 6-7 meter height is desirable so I have left that thought for now.

But since you want both drums and acoustic instruments, I'd suggest incorporating variable acoustics into the room treatment, so you can adjust the response as needed for different scenarios.

Yes. Absolutely. I am going to do variable acoustics in the live room. Motorized heavy drapes in front of the windows and reflective areas when a dry room is needed and a more lively and bright (both visually and acoustically) room when that is desired. Maybe also some other type of variable acoustics than just heavy drapes. Open for suggestions.

the classic "green room". Smart idea. I see you already have a balcony area above the rear of the hall: how about using that, and just extending it a bit more?

I was thinking about tearing the balcony down and building the green room approximately in the same position. The floor that the current balcony stands on is not as good as the concrete floor in the rest of the room and I'm afraid that the balcony isn't that well built either. I think that the best thing is to convert it into fire wood and make something new from scratch. Possibly a bit bigger depending on how the control room - live room layout will look.

Personally, I would rotate the CR 90° so it is facing the LR, for good sight lines (glass between the soffits, or even glass soffits if you really want to go high-end!), then place the vocal booth two one side, in between the LR and CR, where there are sight lines into both rooms. It's not a good idea to have the vocal booth visually isolated from the LR, as musicians do like to have visual contact. It helps to keep things "tight". That would also give you a better shaped LR, I think.

I guess this is where my lack of work experience in the studio environment shows. I imagine that most of the time spent in the control room I will be watching a screen while mixing and editing. Also, I would think that a performer would be more comfortable if the engineer is facing so that he is not looking straight at you all the time but that he still would be able to have eye contact when needed. That's why I drew the control room turned that way. The screen in front and the artist to the left. I don't know. I do respect experienced opinions on this so I am totally open to having the window in front if that is believed to be a better solution.

I do agree on having the vocal booth next to the live room for visual contact between musicians. I need to try and re-draw everything from scratch and come up with a different layout but it's kind of hard. I have been thinking about this space and this design for so long now that I am a little bit stuck.

Do not rush the design. There's so much that you need to put in there! Studio building is 90% design, 10% actual construction.

I won't rush. This won't be in the construction phase in a year. I really enjoy the design phase so I'm not in a hurry. Besides, I got booked for a lot of gigs the coming summer. Tour buses are great for reading and playing with sketchup...

...it won't be cheap.

We can agree on that. I rather spend a bit more money on putting three layers of gypsum board in a wall that just putting two and not be able to use it. Let's start designing. I'll pull the breaks when I feel that something is economically not justifiable.

It really depends on the details that haven't been decided yet (floating floor,

Floating floor is probably not needed, as you have a good thick concrete slab base, and enough height that you could build a great drum riser to decouple the drums from the floor without any penalty in sound quality. You MIGHT need s floating floor on the LR if you really do want extreme isolation, but you will definitely need a larger budget if that's the case. Floating a floor correctly is a big deal. Read this: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ?f=2&t=817[/quote]

Yes. I know. If I decide that I'm going for a floating floor then I will do it correctly and I will accept the cost. And then I'm going to record drums and Ampegs all night. We'll leave that open for now.

HVAC is a necessity, not a luxury. You need it.

Absolutely. What I meant was the price range between doing ventilation with expensive high-end equipment and going for a more DIY approach. As it happens, my older brother designs HVAC systems for a living so I count on a fair amount of help from him. I am not going to try and design the ventilation system on my own.

- Stuart -

Thank you Stuart for giving your time to my future project. I hope it's going to be educating, fun, interesting and I hope that it will impress people.

/Anders

Interesting so far, but for some reason, I look at it and think that it would make a great single room recording space.

FLZapped wrote:Interesting so far, but for some reason, I look at it and think that it would make a great single room recording space.

So let me see now: you came to the forum anonymously nine years ago, you refuse to follow the rules for posting, your ISP blocks your location and ID, and yet want to offer questionable, unfounded advice to forum members, by posting on just six randomly chosen threads in all that time? Strange.... I don't quite get what you are up to, but I'll be watching carefully....


- Stuart -

In fact it would probably make a great single room recording space. The biggest problem with that is that I'm not really interested in single room recording studios. I like to be able to sit in a well designed control room tweaking and listening to what is being recorded. I have never understood the single room concept. Doesn't fit my workflow.

Sorry for being so inactive in this thread. Fact is I have been very inactive with the whole studio design thing lately. Life and work and everything else gets in the way.

Actually, to be honest I'm a bit stuck. I have set up a couple of aims or "design rules" and I'm struggling to meet all of them and still fit everything inside the walls and still have something practical that can be used as a studio.

1) I want the control room to be no smaller than 20 square meters. This is for (obvious) acoustic reasons. It's hard (impossible?) to build an acoustically neutral control room if it's really small. The EBU design rules states that it should really be larger than 30 square meters but I can accept that it's going to be a bit smaller than that. My intuition (I don't want to call it experience) tells me that 20 square meters is really a minimum.

This has practical reasons as well. I have an analog console and my outboards easily fill up a 5x 15 unit rack. And a Studer... And you got to have a couch... And...

2) The live room should have a volume that is significantly larger than the control room. Since the reverberation of a room is closely related to the volume of the room I feel that the sonic signature of the reverberation tail of a (acoustic) recording can't be evaluated or appreciated if it is masked by the reverberation of the control room. And I would really like to be able to have a recording room with an acoustic sonic signature. Overly damped and dead rooms are so much more boring. Am I making sense at all with this rule or am I just making things up?

3) The vocal booth should have sight lines to both the live room and the control room. And I don't want it ridiculously small.

4) As stated before, the machine room should not be so small that it becomes impractical.

5) Storage. I want to have somewhere I can put away a drum kit (Yes, I have at least two) and a small pile of synths. Doesn't have to be huge. But I don't want it to be impractical.

6) Green room and pentry. Should be big enough to hold a handful of musicians so they don't disturb the guys who are actually doing some work. I think I can make this bigger by using space above the control room. There is plenty of unused air volume up there and rule #2 dictates that the control room height will probably be somewhere around 3,5 - 3,9 meters.

I'm not asking you to design my room for me but I appreciate all input and suggestions. That's what I'm here for. Brainstorming and coming up with ideas together with other people that can help me see things that I've overlooked.

All the best,

Anders