John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi,

great forum, but a tad overwhelemed by the information. Long story short the plan is to convert an isolated garden house into a studio for hire, nothing over the top, just reliable and future proofing. I did try my upmost to utilise sketch up, but couldn't even lay down a shell, so i used my woeful art skills to construct the layout of the room, along with some photos. I will aim to get precise measurements, and some better pictures if they are not sufficient, but my main aim was getting enough information to start work, rather than being idle

The studio has kitchen facilities and a bathroom along the right side of the wall as you enter, which keep it seperated from what would be the control room and recording booth, and there is a nice open plan to possibly accomodate a band if we really wanted to upscale, so wouldn't want to rule that out.

Ideally I would like a recording booth at the left corner furthest away from the door, with the control room to the right, inbetween the kitchen and the booth, partitions to seperate the space wouldnt be ruled out if reccomended.

As the space is fairly large I would also like a separe workstation area which can accomoadate music production, this would be place on the left side as you enter, in the middle of the building, and allow the seperation of production, recording and mixing... smells like partioning to me

Lastly, on the wall as you immediately enter would be a 2 or 3 seater sofa to accomodate any guests, or artists who might be in the writing stages

Neighbours are fairly distant due the nature of the garden house and without using a DB measurement, the isolation from outside noise is very good and better than recording studios. The house is about 7 Meters either side from any residential housing, and is surrounded by gardens on either side. Unfortunately I do not have all the neceesary building construction details to hand as the property was bought as is


Few things I want clarification on if you could be so kind to please help

Would the first thing I work on building be the recording booth?
What would be an acceptable way of performing cable managment while still making sure cables can be replaced if broken
How does air con work with regards to the construction of the booth, or is that an after thought
Are there any updated guides on building a vocal booth and the materials needed... I did learn that the dimensions should not be equal , but a lot of material seems to be fairly older than I would like
Is anyone familiar with anywhere in London, UK that might be the best place to provide required materials (trade discount preffered)

No one is able to help on this project?

How about you give us some real dimensions of the space.

cheers
john

Long story short the plan is to convert an isolated garden house into a studio for hire

So will you be recording loud instruments like drums or guitar/bass amps ever or just vocals? Answering this will determine whether or not you need to take isolation more seriously or not.

I did try my upmost to utilise sketch up, but couldn't even lay down a shell

Use the older version called "SketchUp Make".
Search youtube for these topics and you should be off to the races!
- inferencing
- components
- layers

Ideally I would like a recording booth at the left corner furthest away from the door, with the control room to the right, inbetween the kitchen and the booth, partitions to seperate the space wouldnt be ruled out if reccomended.

So, for mixing, you want a symmetrical room. That means no kitchen on your right with a booth on your left. Also, you want a long room in that any reflections from your rear wall are hitting your head >20ms. Your rear wall is potentially the most important wall of your mixing room in that it should have nice deep insulation. There are a bunch more control room guidelines to try and adhere to but my point is, your current plan fails to meet any of these.

As the space is fairly large I would also like a separe workstation area which can accomoadate music production, this would be place on the left side as you enter, in the middle of the building, and allow the seperation of production, recording and mixing... smells like partioning to me

Sadly your space is not that big and you're probably better off to avoid too many walls. I would try to combine mixing and production into one desk. Personally, I would tinker with the idea of having a corner control room.

the isolation from outside noise is very good and better than recording studios.

That is a bold statement that I know is incorrect. Typically walls (like yours) max out around 30dB or isolation. HVAC and generic windows will often lower that level of isolation further. I would guess your isolation is between 20 and 30dB. Properly built home studios can reach upwards of 60dB of isolation. Considering these figures are logarithmic, your building is very very very poor at isolating than even a properly built home studio let alone a professional commercial facility. There is a famous studio that achieves over 100 dB of isolation!

Would the first thing I work on building be the recording booth?

No. The first thing you need is a 100% finished design. That includes things like:
- electrical
- hvac
- windows
- doors
- audio/data routing
- acoustic treatment
- and every other small detail involved in the construction including a supplies like what model door hinges you need and where to buy them.

What would be an acceptable way of performing cable managment while still making sure cables can be replaced if broken

Using wall panels (of course, implemented such that it does not wreck your isolation) would allow you to only ever wear out or damage the connectors themselves. The cabling shouldn't ever have an issue.

How does air con work with regards to the construction of the booth, or is that an after thought

After an initial layout, the next thing to figure out is HVAC. There is a lot of information on the forum about this as it is pretty confusing and very very important.

Are there any updated guides on building a vocal booth and the materials needed... I did learn that the dimensions should not be equal , but a lot of material seems to be fairly older than I would like

Like any room, acoustic theory applies. That means considering modal distribution which means you should have a certain size of room if you want voices producing lower frequencies such as 100Hz to sound natural. Due to size and layout restrictions in home studios, this is often why so many people use a single room to mix and track in. In order to do this, variable acoustic treatment is implemented.

Is anyone familiar with anywhere in London, UK that might be the best place to provide required materials (trade discount preffered)

I don't know what is available in the UK, I'm sorry.

Greg