John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Folks, I am in a situation where I will be contracting with an architect to design our dream house, which will have a room dedicated for my recording/jamming studio.

I had been reading the forum in the past as a lurker and saw references indicating that if you are designing a room, you need to allocate at least 240 square feet for it to have a chance of sounding decent.

I have gone back and cannot find those references using the search function.

Can someone chime in on that "rule" or where I can find more info about it on the site? Thanks. I am simply looking to allocate the required room size up front and will have the actual design of the room done at the appropriate time. We are in the bubble planning phase, early days.

I know of no such rule. Choose a size that suits your need.
cheers
john

Can someone chime in on that "rule" or where I can find more info about it on the site?

ITU-R BS.1116-3 states the following for a control room:

For monophonic or two-channel stereophonic reproduction: 20-60 m2.
For multichannel stereophonic or advanced sound system reproduction: 30-70 m2.

For a live room, typically, the bigger the better but as John said, make it a size that works for you (budget, time frame to build, etc, etc)

Greg

I dont want to hijack this topic, but Ive been also wondering since reading these "rules" on size and shape of the rooms
that in GENERAL in smallish home studios(mostly for mixing and some small vocal etc recordings):

-is it better to try get your room big as possible even if you sacrife the perfect ratios (something like Height=1, length=1.6, width=1.25?)?

-is it good to try to make angled walls etc at cost of loosing some space or just try to make the room big as you can?

-If you only have something like 20m2 of space, is there any point of trying to split that into vocal booth+mixing room or again maximize the space by making a one "big" room?

"-is it better to try get your room big as possible even if you sacrife the perfect ratios"

Tom Hidley, the father of control room design would start with a 35' x 35' square room!!
It's the internal walls and his treatment which determined the sound of his rooms.

cheers
john