John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello there!

Sometime ago, my brother made a rehearsal room for his band in our house basement, now I've opportunity to make there a recording studio. But! As always, there is some problems. Especially with control room, it's small, and not very dimensional either.
I've put some rock wool absorbing panels on walls and corners, but still the sound is beefy (something like 80-250Hz) in bad way meaning...
I'm thinking about 2 ways.

1. Make new acoustic treatment in control room, and put monitors further back to the corners
2. Make control room in studio A space, and have studio, and control room in one place.

I live in standalone house, so it don't need to be quiet around...
Also I'm looking for recording real instruments, and bands.

EDIT:
I saw that there's no specific question!
So, I'm asking you guys, for a advice what to do...
Is there any chance, to make existing control room, more "work friendly"?
Or maybe, just take whole control room to the recording room, cause it's bigger ?

There's a file with lay-out and dimensions!
Thanks!

Welcome to the forum and thank you for all of the pictures!

You have lots of options. I think the determining factor is budget and how extensive of renovation you want this to entail. Do you want to just work with the layout you have and try to acoustically treat it to be the best that it can be? Or do you actually want isolation between the rooms (so you can be listening on you speakers in your control room while someone is playing drums or singing in your live room/vocal booth). Do you want it to look like a professional studio? I assume you want all of the goodies otherwise you wouldn't have written here.

Especially with control room, it's small, and not very dimensional either.
I've put some rock wool absorbing panels on walls and corners, but still the sound is beefy (something like 80-250Hz) in bad way meaning...

Small rooms will always sound boxy and boomy. With endless amounts of treatment, it will always have issues. The bigger the rooms, the better. If you want a critical monitoring situation, you will have to have a bigger control room. Luckily, you have options.

Or maybe, just take whole control room to the recording room, cause it's bigger ?

I'm far from an expert, but from what I've learned, I'd say you're on the right track here. You seem pretty good with your mock up software. If I were you, I'd try experimenting with some different layouts. Maybe try having the control room in Studio A location with windows on your left and right walls (like lots of John's designs). One window could look into a vocal booth (where your control room is now) and the other window could look into your live room (where studio B is now). It could be horrible, but worth drawing up and seeing what it would look like!

Remember, in order to have isolation, you're going to have to de-couple the walls/ceiling. If you're not worried about drums annoying neighbours, then maybe you could just concentrate on isolating your control room. Remember though, it's not all about keeping sound inside your space. You don't want lawn mowers, cars, furnaces, etc bleeding sound into your perfect vocal performance! Having said that, you will probably want to isolate those other rooms as well. At MINIMUM, isolate the room where there will be singers. I've recorded drums in some pretty noisy spots and if it's rock or metal, you might be able to get away with it. But if it's any delicate type of music, it's not going to happen.

Consider your HVAC while designing. Make sure there is adequate air circulation. And sadly, to maintain the isolation between the rooms, you're going to have to build silencer boxes. They are quite large, so try to leave room for them.

You're on the right track by measuring and drawing up your layout. I suppose the next step is to experiment with different layouts. Just remember, keep your control room large. You can check if your dimensions are decent here: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc
Don't get too hung up on it, but make sure you don't have a BAD dimension. From there, you can work out all of the other details.

Greg

Thank You Gregwor, for some ideas!

Ok, so I'm thinking about this layout.

Between "new" control room and studio B, there are a garage doors, big heavy, which I can close, whenever I record a drummer there.
I'll try to put my desk there today, and maybe something new, will come to my mind...

Awesome! That looks closer to what I pictured in my head. I look forward to seeing what you come up with after experimenting!

Greg