John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi Folks!

This is my first post here. I'd like to start by saying that I've read so much fantastic information here, I've read through a ton of builds, and I would probably never have gotten around to doing this project if it weren't for all of you and your stories!

For starters, a bit about me. I'm a government contractor who works from home on most days. I enjoy woodworking, video editing, and playing music. My wife is a painter. We have a modest two story colonial brick home in a small town in WV, although we ARE in city limits with a reasonably strict building code. All of our hobbies have exploded throughout our house, and we're to the point where we need a dedicated space. So here goes! This is what we're planning on doing.

2-story, 4 car garage, barn style roof. 28ftx48ft. 10 foot celings on the first floor, 8 foot celings on the second. Second floor is 22x48x8 because of the attic trusses.
Construction will be stick built with 2x6, 5/8 OSB walls, 7/16 OSB roof with Hardie board cement clapboard.
My wife and I have agreed the first floor will be 2/3rds woodshop, 1/3 art studio.

The second floor will be:
-My home office with two desks, a small sitting area, and microkitchen on one wall. 12x28
-Bathroom
-Control Room/ Video editing room.
-Live room (maybe with an iso booth?)
-Hopefully a home theatre

Before I go too much further, is it at all feasible to do a home theatre and live room together? This is not at all for commercial purposes, just a place for the family (and occasional praise and worship band) to hang out. The intention here is to get all our hobbies out of the house and give them their own space.

Sound goals. The building will be located approximately 45 feet from the neighbor's bedroom window. I don't dig metal music, more a jazz/blues, CCM music guy. Right now, my music/video stuff never tops 85dB although I anticipate when my son becomes a teenager, that may change in the studio. There will never be a drumset in my house.

Budget: $80,000 for the building (excavation, slab, framing, window's, doors, siding, roof), $20,000 for wiring, plumbing, downstairs drywall, and mini-split), and $25,000 for the whole upstairs. The slab, "dry-in" construction, HVAC, rough plumbing, and mains install will be hired out, I will be doing all the drywall, insulation, electrical from the panel down, bathroom/kitchen, and finish work. Assuming I can do an inexpensive kitchenette and bathroom for $4,000, that leaves me with roughly $21K (although that number is a bit flexible.)
I'm pretty flexible at this stage, as we won't be breaking ground until next spring.

Questions:
1. Anyone have any recommendations on where I should begin?
2. Is it possible to combine a control room and video editing suite to save space.
3. Is it possible to combine a live room with a home theatre screening room?
4. Can I get away with pin (red) oak for helmholtz resonators (I have to take down two trees for this building, and will have ~ 10,000 bd. ft. of the stuff). If not, hard maple is reasonably cheap around here.
5. What is the cheapest half-way solution to inexpensively dampen the woodshop downstairs. I won't be using the woodshop while recording upstairs, I just don't want to piss off my neighbor. Planing lumber is loud.

I appreciate any input.
Very Respectfully,
Ken

Hi there Ken, and Welcome!

The second floor will be:
- ...
- ...
-Control Room/ Video editing room.
-Live room (maybe with an iso booth?)
-Hopefully a home theatre

Don't look now, but you are building your studio upside down! Building a studio on an upper floor is a LOT more complicated, a lot more expensive, and seldom as good as building it on the ground. That's not to say it can't be done, but it makes things more complex, and costlier. I'd really suggest rethinking your design, and put most/all of the studio on the ground, while moving the art area upstairs. You have well over 1300 ft2 of floor area on the ground level, and you could very easily fit your entire studio into half of that, no problem (both live room AND control room/edit suite AND vocal booth). The other half can be your workshop, and all the rest can go upstairs.

Another point: You are plannig 8 foot ceilings upstairs and 10 foot ceilings downstairs. If you have an area available with 10 foot ceilings, why on earth would you kill your studio by trying to force it into another area that has only 8 feet? That's like having a beautiful Olympic pool out in your back yard, sparkling clean, heated, covered, and wonderfully maintained, then deciding that the best place you can swim is in an icy cold, shallow, muddy puddle...

Before I go too much further, is it at all feasible to do a home theatre and live room together?

Yes it is.... sort of! You'll need to build variable acoustic treatment devices, that allow you to adjust the acoustic response of the room, because "live room" NOT.= "home theater". Those are two very different acoustic situations. So as long as you have a lot of extra money, time and inclination to spend on designing and building a series of acoustic treatment devices that allow you to switch over the room response from "live" to "dead", then yes, it can be done.

This is not at all for commercial purposes, just a place for the family (and occasional praise and worship band)

Right now, my music/video stuff never tops 85dB

Ummm... you DID say "praise and worship band", so I'm assuming that means "contemporary praise and worship band", as in drum kit, bass, electric guitar , keyboard, acoustic guitar, and vocals. That right there is well over 100 dBC, probably more like 110 or even 120, depending on how hard you guys play. So it seems you are way underestimating your levels by about two orders of magnitude.

There will never be a drumset in my house.

Ummmm... now you are REALLY confusing me! So just what type of prasie and worship band do you have, with no drums? What instruments are in your band?

Budget: $80,000 for the building (excavation, slab, framing, window's, doors, siding, roof), $20,000 for wiring, plumbing, downstairs drywall, and mini-split), and $25,000 for the whole upstairs.

So you are estimating around 150k total, for a building with a floor area of 2400 square feet, which implies around US$ 62 per square foot. That's very much on the low side, for a ground-up build of a home studio plus home theater plus workshop plus art studio plus bathroom plus kitchenette. If it was just one floor, I'd say that it's about right, but for two floors, it's low. I'd suggest either doubling your budget, or greatly reducing the floor area. Think of it this way: 2400 square feet is about the size of a house. Look around in your area, and find out how much 2400 ft2, two-story houses sell for. That's roughly what you can expect to spend on building a studio of the same size.

1. Anyone have any recommendations on where I should begin?

If you have never designed or built a studio before, I'd suggest that you should start off by buying and carefully reading 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 one will give you the basics of acoustics, in sufficient detail that you can understand the concepts of how sound works, and how it can be controlled. It will also show you why trying to build a studio in the second floor is such a bad idea. The second book gives you the basis for designing and building your studio.

Once you have that stage completed, you should then learn SketchUp (the 3D design software, which is free!), and start using it to lay out your building very roughly, arranging the rooms in several different ways, checking access paths, sight lines, dimensions, acoustic response, etc. until you come up with a layout that seems to work well. Then post your design here, for comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism.

2. Is it possible to combine a control room and video editing suite to save space.

Yes, definitely, and that's a lot easier than trying to combine a live room with a home theater! Video post production and audio tracking/mixing/mastering have pretty much the same acoustic requirements, so there's no problem. In fact, all you really need to do is to add a couple of large video monitors on the front of the room, and fit in your edit suite and DAW side by side, or even using the same hardware, perhaps with a KVM switch to flip between them if they are on two different computers.

3. Is it possible to combine a live room with a home theatre screening room?

Yes, but with caveats. See above.

4. Can I get away with pin (red) oak for helmholtz resonators

Why do you even think you'll need Helmholtz resonators, when you have not yet started the design at all? What makes you think that you will need tuned devices at all? You won't have any possibility of determining that until you are quite well advanced with the design. And if you design the rooms properly, you absolutely will not need Helmholtz resonators!

5. What is the cheapest half-way solution to inexpensively dampen the woodshop downstairs. I won't be using the woodshop while recording upstairs, I just don't want to piss off my neighbor. Planing lumber is loud.

Here's your first lesson in acoustic design: It is illegal to use the words "cheap" and "loud" and "isolation" in the same sentence! That's not permitted by the laws..... the laws of physics and economics, that is. Here's why:

Isolation requires mass. That's the most basic, fundamental rule. You cannot isolate sound without mass. Massive building materials are expensive. Therefore, "isolation" and "cheap" are not possible together. There's really only two choices here: save money by using less mass and get much less isolation, or spend more to get the right mass and good isolation. I wish I had better news for you, but that's the reality. You can't fool the laws of physics, nor bypass them.

I'd suggest that you do some re-thinking here, and work out how to get the studio down on the ground level. One more point about that: The praise and worship band will not be praising your wisdom very much, as they drag their heavy gear and delicate instruments up and down the stairs every time the come over to play....

- Stuart -

kenaucre wrote:is it at all feasible to do a home theatre and live room together?

I think we are trying to reach almost the same goals... hehe

I was trying to figure it out too... Make my room work as a live room AND a home theater...

Now I'm thinking a way to put the home theater together with the control room instead of the live room...

So hard...