John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

My first question is HOW DOES THIS LOOK???? (SEE ATTACHED)

I plan to drywall the internal walls, but I am open to other materials.

I do wonder what to use as the internal ceiling. more drywall?

Also of interest, how would the tall ceiling height add or take away from the rooms?

I want a decent reverb time in the live room that I can dampen or enjoy as needed.

But the live room might be more cubic in volume than recommended.

How do I calculate the proper ceiling height in each room? Can I have 18 foot ceilings in each of these rooms?

I'd like to design a 24 x 48 foot studio design within an RV garage of the same size.

I'd like a reference room, two smaller iso/storage booths and a larger live room.

My first question is HOW DOES THIS LOOK???? (SEE ATTACHED)

I plan to drywall the internal walls, but I am open to other materials.

I do wonder what to use as the internal ceiling. more drywall?

The floor will begin as a radiant concrete slab.

Also of interest, how would the tall ceiling height add or take away from the rooms?

I want a decent reverb time in the live room that I can dampen or enjoy as needed

But the live room might be more cubic in volume than recommended. How do I calculate the proper ceiling height in each room? Can I have 18 foot ceilings in each of these rooms?

Gregwor wrote:

My first question is HOW DOES THIS LOOK???? (SEE ATTACHED)

- The back wall of the control room doesn't leave the recommended 2+ feet for hangers/absorption. NOTED

- Your ISO rooms don't have doors on both leaves. I WILL DRAW THEM!

- Your live room entry door is a double wide in your inner leaf and a single entry door on the outer leaf. Have one or two, but both leaves should have the same. Double wide is great for loading gear, but expensive and a nightmare to seal acoustically speaking. THANKS FOR THAT. I WANT A VESTIBULE FOR WEATHER HANDLING PURPOSES AND FOR SHOE REMOVAL. IT SNOWS A LOT IN IDAHO! DID YOU RECOMMEND THE OUTER DOOR SWING OUTWARDS?

- Your entry door into your control room from outside is missing the outer leaf door. I WILL DRAW IT IN.

- Your speaker soffits look way too small. HOW BIG SHOULD THEY BE? PERHAPS THE FRONT REFERENCE ROOM ACCESS IS A BAD IDEA.

- I could be wrong, but it doesn't appear that you will be able to achieve an RFZ sphere around your head with the current soffit shape/size. NOTED.

- Your sight lines into the live room are very narrow. I don't like that. I CONSIDERED ABANDONING WINDOWS FOR CAMERAS AND MONITORS. IS THIS SENSIBLE?

- The doors for your ISO rooms are far into the corners of the rooms. These small rooms are going to need all of the bass trapping they can get and the door positions are preventing you from having that. I CAN MOVE THEM. I ALSO NEED INSTRUMENT AND AMP STORAGE SPACE. I THOUGHT I MIGHT USE THE ROOMS FOR BOTH. WOULD STORAGE PROVIDE ANY SUCH TRAPPING?

- Your sound lock outer leaf door should open to the outside, not the inside. SEE ABOVE.

- Unless you need that sound lock for storage, I'd ditch it all together and utilize the space for a larger live room. I COULD MOVE THE VESTIBULE TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE LIVE ROOM... I MIGHT NEED AN ACCESS DOOR FOR CODE.

- Your ISO rooms don't have windows for sight lines between one another and/or the live room. AGAIN, WAS THINKING VIDEO MONITORS. VERY CURIOUS ABOUT THIS. ALSO COULD USE GLASS DOORS?

- Your head looks to be around the 50% depth mark of your control room, not the ~38% recommended. I WILL SHOOT FOR THAT.

- You haven't shown a mechanical room, bathroom, lounge, or kitchen. You don't NEED a bathroom, lounge or kitchen, but you DO need a mechanical room. In order to isolate your space easily, I highly recommend having an independent air handler unit for the space. THE MECHANICAL WILL BE LOCATED IN THE 24 X 36 FOOT ADDITION ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS DRAWING (NOT SHOWN.).

I plan to drywall the internal walls, but I am open to other materials.

Drywall is the best price to mass ratio material there is. It's easy to work with and is the most common material for walls. AWESOME.

I do wonder what to use as the internal ceiling. more drywall?

Typically, for rooms here on the forum, people build what is referred to as "inside out" ceilings and often walls as well. John invented the design and it is awesome. For ceilings, you would typically frame up a skeleton out of LVL stud, then build modules out of dimensional lumber that are structurally held square via OSB or plywood, then layers of drywall would go on top of the OSB. Each layer would be sealed and have Green Glue compound applied between them. These modules are then raised into the skeleton and screwed in place then sealed. Search the forum for inside-out-ceiling and you'll find some pictures and lots of threads discussing how to do it in detail. If you have no luck, let us know and we'll post some more info for you. You need to ensure that your ceiling matches the same surface density as your walls. WOW. I WILL RESEARCH THAT. SOUNDS VERY COOL.

Also of interest, how would the tall ceiling height add or take away from the rooms?

You want them as tall as you can. Unfortunately HVAC takes up a lot of space. Next time you're in Walmart, look up and see how big their HVAC is. You need to fit oversized duct work and massive silencers into your space. This typically lives above your control room and ISO rooms. WHAT TYPE OF ROOM ARE TALKING ABOUT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SILENCERS?

I want a decent reverb time in the live room that I can dampen or enjoy as needed.

Variable panels will be essential to changing the character of the room then. OK.

But the live room might be more cubic in volume than recommended.

Nope. The bigger the room, the better.

How do I calculate the proper ceiling height in each room? Can I have 18 foot ceilings in each of these rooms?

Make them as tall as you can. That will all be determined by your design in SketchUp Make. Once you start trying to fit in your duct work and silencer boxes, you'll realize that your ceiling height will no longer be 18ft tall. Also, your ceilings can benefit greatly from deep insulation so that will lower your ceiling height as well. This goes hand in hand with your inside out ceiling skeleton LVL stud depth. The longer the span, the deeper your LVL stud has to be. Basically, rooms with more volume sound better. Volume can come from length, width, or height. It isn't great to have one or two of the dimensions small, but cubic volume rules. So if your small ISO rooms can have nice tall ceilings, let them. If I were you, I'd try to design the live room so that it has the tallest ceilings it can have. Try to keep the duct work and silencer boxes above the other rooms. Worst case, you can have Y style silencer boxes within the room and they won't eat up your height. GOOD CALL.

Greg

I WANT A VESTIBULE FOR WEATHER HANDLING PURPOSES AND FOR SHOE REMOVAL.

Your speaker soffits look way too small. HOW BIG SHOULD THEY BE?

PERHAPS THE FRONT REFERENCE ROOM ACCESS IS A BAD IDEA.

I CONSIDERED ABANDONING WINDOWS FOR CAMERAS AND MONITORS. IS THIS SENSIBLE?

I ALSO NEED INSTRUMENT AND AMP STORAGE SPACE. I THOUGHT I MIGHT USE THE ROOMS FOR BOTH.

WOULD STORAGE PROVIDE ANY SUCH TRAPPING?

ALSO COULD USE GLASS DOORS?

- Your head looks to be around the 50% depth mark of your control room, not the ~38% recommended. I WILL SHOOT FOR THAT.

THE MECHANICAL WILL BE LOCATED IN THE 24 X 36 FOOT ADDITION ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS DRAWING (NOT SHOWN.).

WHAT TYPE OF ROOM ARE TALKING ABOUT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SILENCERS?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SILENCERS?

I WANT A VESTIBULE FOR WEATHER HANDLING PURPOSES AND FOR SHOE REMOVAL. IT SNOWS A LOT IN IDAHO!

DID YOU RECOMMEND THE OUTER DOOR SWING OUTWARDS?

HOW BIG SHOULD THEY BE? PERHAPS THE FRONT REFERENCE ROOM ACCESS IS A BAD IDEA.

I CONSIDERED ABANDONING WINDOWS FOR CAMERAS AND MONITORS. IS THIS SENSIBLE?

I CAN MOVE THEM. I ALSO NEED INSTRUMENT AND AMP STORAGE SPACE. I THOUGHT I MIGHT USE THE ROOMS FOR BOTH. WOULD STORAGE PROVIDE ANY SUCH TRAPPING?

I COULD MOVE THE VESTIBULE TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE LIVE ROOM... I MIGHT NEED AN ACCESS DOOR FOR CODE.

ALSO COULD USE GLASS DOORS?

THE MECHANICAL WILL BE LOCATED IN THE 24 X 36 FOOT ADDITION ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS DRAWING (NOT SHOWN.).

WHAT TYPE OF ROOM ARE TALKING ABOUT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SILENCERS?

HVAC design is a MAJOR aspect of studio design. Get Greg to tel you about how much he is suffering with his HVAC system re-re-re-re-design, after his contractors screwed up the construction of the places he planned to put them originally... (Hi Greg! )

Soundman2020 wrote:Hi there " ViperDoc", and welcome back! THANK YOU, STUART! FEEL FREE TO CALL ME BRIAN. VIPER IS ALSO FINE.

I'd like to design a 24 x 48 foot studio design within an RV garage of the same size.

Eleven hundred square feet us a very nice size for a studio. That's excellent. NICE!

I'd like a reference room, two smaller iso/storage booths and a larger live room.

By "reference room" I assume you mean a "control room"? The room with perfect acoustics where you do your actual mixing and mastering magic? ABSOLUTELY, YES. CONTROL ROOM. FOR TRACKING CONTROL, MIXING AND MASTERING...IF POSSIBLE.

My first question is HOW DOES THIS LOOK???? (SEE ATTACHED)

Greg already pointed out several issues with your current design, so my comments are just additions to what he said. In some cases, I'm pretty much saying the exact same thing...

I plan to drywall the internal walls, but I am open to other materials.

First question: How much isolation do you need, in decibels? That's the number one most basic key question. IF you don't know how much isolation you need, you can't know what materials to use, or what techniques to use. I WOULDN'T KNOW HOW TO NUMERICALLY DESCRIBE THAT. LET'S SAY I JUST DON'T WANT TO PISS OFF THE NEIGHBORS WITH THE DRUMKIT. WE LIVE ON 2.5 ACRES WITH SPARSE NEIGHBORS IN GENERAL, BUT ONE CLOSE NEIGHBOR JUST BEHIND OUR PROPERTY. HER HOUSE WILL BE APPROXIMATELY 80-100 FEET AWAY FROM THE STUDIO BUILDING.

I do wonder what to use as the internal ceiling. more drywall?

The actual material usually isn't critical from the acoustic point of view, but can be from the budget point of view. What's important acoustically is that you have the same mass (surface density) on all sides of your room, and the same depth of air spring. If there's some reason why you need to change the mass at some points, then you need to change the air sprig to compensate. It's that simple. But all of that depends on the "number": how many decibels of isolation do you need? WHAT IS "AIR SPRING"?

The floor will begin as a radiant concrete slab.

That's fine, but do take into account the final positions of your room walls when you do the layout for the heating pipes. Make sure that the pipes don't run under the places where your walls will be: you don't want to have the situation where you need to drill the slab to put in an anchor bolt, and it goes right through a heating pipe... Plan carefully. Don't do that slab until you have every aspet of your entire studio finalized. VERY GOOD POINT, THANK YOU. NOTED.

Also of interest, how would the tall ceiling height add or take away from the rooms?

General rule: higher is better. Of course, there are caveats to that rule (a broom closet with a 50 foot ceiling would still sound pretty lousy!), but generally for live rooms, higher is better. GREAT.

I want a decent reverb time in the live room that I can dampen or enjoy as needed

That's fine, but the decay times and signature of a live room should be designed for the PURPOSE of that room. If you normally track death metal rock bands in there. well, that's a rather different scenario from tracking a single grand piano, or a jazz band, or a string quartet, or a Gregorian chant choir, or a Hammond organ with a Leslie on it, or a small orchestra... all are very different acoustic needs. There are ways of dealing with those, sure, and the bigger the room is, the easier it is (in general) but it makes sense to have the basic design of the room set up for the most common type of session you'll be tracking in there. So first define the typical genre you plan to track in there most usually, and design the acoustics for that, with the possibility of modifying that acoustic response as needed for the other types of sessions you think you'll be recording. I SUPPOSE WITH MY LIMITED EXPERIENCE, I WOULD JUST SAY THAT HAVING ROOM MICS THAT CAN ACTUALLY CAPTURE ROOM DECAY THAT'S USEFUL IS ALL I WOULD PREFER. I DON'T WANT TO RULE OUT TRACKING METAL DRUMMING, BUT MOST OF MY RECORDING WILL LIKELY BE MORE ROCK, JAZZ AND ACOUSTIC ORIENTED. THIS STUDIO WILL MAINLY BE FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE, BUT I LOVE THE WAY YOU ALL APPROACH THIS FROM A PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVE. IT'S EXCITING TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITIES. AGAIN, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY HOW MUCH DECIBEL REDUCTION I NEED, I WOULD JUST BE GRABBING AIR.

But the live room might be more cubic in volume than recommended. How do I calculate the proper ceiling height in each room? Can I have 18 foot ceilings in each of these rooms?

Start with the control room. That's the most important room in the studio. There are well defined specifications that your control room MUST meet if you want this to be a world-class facility. The acoustic response of your control room MUST fit the exact profile defined by the specs. Such as this room: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=20471 Scroll down and look at the acoustic response we achieved in that room, as seen in the actual graphs that show every possible aspect of the acoustics in that room. It's pretty much as perfect as it could be. Here's another thread abut a control room that is currently in the process of final tuning: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=21368 Soon to be completed, in the upcoming weeks. Subscribe to that thread for updates, since your final room tuning will likely take the same path. WOW, COOL. I'LL CHECK THOSE OUT.

There are many equations, concepts. "rules-of-thumb", calculations, procedures, etc. that you need to take into account when designing that room, and to answer your question, the ceiling height of that room will be defined as the result of that process. There's a minimum and maximum recommended size for both floor area and room volume, and you can choose something within that range that meets your needs in terms of occupancy, gear, speakers, console size, comfort, etc. Smaller rooms are harder to treat, larger rooms are harder to heat / cool / ventilate / control humidity. Once you have the basic size defined (floor area), the optimum "room ratio" will define your ceiling height, and that in turn will define the basic treatment. Of course, the design concept itself will also have large influence on the control room shape and size. A true RFZ style room with the speakers correctly flush mounted in properly built "soffits" has different needs from a purely rectangular room where the speakers sit on stands, and both of those are very different form the outdated LEDE concept, or the NLE concept, or MR, or CID, or any of the other concepts. The purpose of the room also has an influence: Is this control room JUST for tracking? Or also for mixing? Or is it mostly for final mastering? Three different needs, three different approaches. I WOULD LIKE TO DO AS MUCH OF ALL OF THAT IN THIS SAME ROOM AS POSSIBLE. PERHAPS THAT'S UNREASONABLE FOR SOMEONE OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE, WHICH I APPRECIATE. I'D BE HAPPY WITH THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS, AND JUST TO BE ABLE TO EVENTUALLY PRINT TRACKS THAT SOUND GREAT!

Then, once you have come up with your preferred size for the control room, you can move to the live room: That needs to be have about 5 (or more) times the air volume of the control room, for subtle acoustic reasons. So for example if your control room ended up with 4,000 cubic feet of volume, you should shoot for a live room of about 20,000 cubic feet volume, but if your control room was only 2,000 cubic feet, then your live room could be smaller, at around 10,000 cubic feet. If you get to this point and figure out that you don't have enough floor area, then you can go back and "shrink" the control room a bit until they both fit. Or if you notice that there's plenty of space left over, you could make the rooms larger. THANKS FOR THAT, THAT'S VERY INTERESTING. HOW DO I APPROACH DESIGNING EVERYTHING TO ACCOMMODATE THOSE RATIOS? FOR EXAMPLE, I CAN SEE HOW IF I HAVE AN 18 FOOT CEILING IN THE LIVE ROOM, MY CONTROL ROOM COULD BE REASONABLY SIZED BUT PERHAPS HAVE A LOWER CELING HEIGHT. HOW CAN I USE THE DEAD SPACE ABOVE THE CONTROL ROOM TO MY ADVANTAGE?

Once you have the general size / shape / volume for those two rooms, see how you can fit the other rooms in around them. Tiny vocal booths sound terribly disgusting ("boxy", "dead", "lifeless", "thuddy", "unbalanced") and are also unpleasant to work in for your artists: nobody likes to be in a small stuff claustrophobic room that sounds terrible. You cant expect a musician or singer or voice artist to perform well in there. So make your booths as large as you can, to get good acoustics and also pleasant "ambience" to work in: good sight lines so that everyone can see everyone else (very important), good lighting, good ventilation, good access and traffic flow, etc. I your current plan, there's no access or sight lines between either of the booths ad the live room, so you'd have trouble getting a band to play "tight" like that: they need to see each other, as well as hear each other, especially if they are used to many years of playing together. THAT'S VERY INSIGHTFUL. I'M HAVING TROUBLE CONCEIVING A DESIGN THAT ACCOMODATES ALL OF THESE CONCEPTS (SIZABLE, COMFORTABLE ISO BOOTHS/AMP BOOTHS; GREAT SIGHT LINES; CORRECT FLOOR AREA AND VOLUME RATIOS FOR ALL; STORAGE) FIT TOGETHER INTO A 24 X 48 FOOT RECTANGLE. ANY PREEXISTING DESIGNS YOU'D RECOMMEND I COULD USE FOR INSPIRATION?

Once you have all of that roughed out, think about traffic flow: Where is the parking lot? What path will the band use for load in / load out? Is that path short and simple, with the minimum number of doors, turns, and passages to navigate while carrying heavy instruments and gear and beer crates and pizza boxes? Is there a path from every room to the outside world WITHOUT needing to go through another room to get there? Right now, if a guy in the Iso-1 needs to go to the bathroom, how does he get there? It looks like he has to go through the control room AND the live room... ! I assume you do have a bathroom, right? And a green room? And a kitchenette? And a storage room? None of those are shown, but all are necessary for a good recording facility... plus maybe a machine room too, if you have lots of outboard gear, or noisy gear... ALL GREAT POINTS. I'LL EVENTUALLY UPGRADE THE DESIGN AND SHOW THE CONNECTED 24 X 36 VOLUME. THE 24X 48 STUDIO WILL FIT INTO HALF OF A SINGLE BUILDING THAT IS ESSENTIALLY 36 X 48 WITH AN ADDITIONAL 12 FOOT EXTENSION ON ONE HALF. THE FRIDGE AND BATHROOM WILL BE LOCATED WITHIN THAT OTHER VOLUME IN THE SAME BUILDING. NOT PLANNING ON A KITCHEN, BUT I CAN ALWAYS PICK UP A MICROWAVE, OR HEAD INTO THE HOUSE.

You have a very nice sized space there, with excellent possibilities, and assuming your budget is decent, this can turn out really, really well. IT just needs careful design... I'm looking forward to following your thread! THANK YOU SO MUCH, STUART. I NEED YOUR HELP, SO ALL OF YOUR GUIDANCE AND ADVICE IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED. YOU GUYS KNOW YOUR STUFF. I WILL DEFINITELY KEEP YOU POSTED. THANKS AGAIN!


- Stuart -

Gregwor wrote:

HVAC design is a MAJOR aspect of studio design. Get Greg to tel you about how much he is suffering with his HVAC system re-re-re-re-design, after his contractors screwed up the construction of the places he planned to put them originally... (Hi Greg! )

Yep! I'm STILL not done designing my HVAC. Not only do things like contractors using up your space for plumbing and crap like that (pun intended), but the general studio design and requirements mess with it too, and vise versa.

Check out my thread here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =1&t=21436

Until you draw it in SketchUp Make, realize you need to figure out what material you're going to use for something, research what's available in your area, then try to fit it into your design, then realize that it will get in the way of something else, you then have to solve that problem, which leads to another problem, etc, etc. You get the idea. Long story short, get designing, then redesigning and draw it up in SketchUp. I feel that this forum is as much of a therapy support group as it is a studio design bible.

Greg

Gregwor wrote:Hey Brian!

You could go for a design like this one where your soffit wings are actually windows looking into your booth on one side and your live room on the other.

http://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Sonar.htm

Greg

JCBigler wrote:Hello ViperDoc, cool looking project you have here.

Are you using a pole barn type building for this structure? I'm thinking about a similar type building as the basis for my studio.