John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello,

I am a HS Teacher who's forming an audio engineering program. We've secured grant funding to $10,000 and purchased an analog tape machine, a DAW pc, an analog console, mics, etc. Now the district is looking at retrofitting either old classrooms as a studio & control room space, or possibly incorporate it into new construction funded via bond issues and other grants.

Currently, the board is looking at moving classrooms out of the upstairs of an old HS building, and we may take over that space. We'd have two rooms with 16' ceilings (before building a room within a room) and about 24x36'. Walls of the rooms are cinder-block, with a hardwood floor.

I had a coworker play guitar at a loud level (~100 db) and went around the building seeing what current bleed was like. It could be heard throughout the building downstairs, except in central office for the High School, which was downstairs, and on the opposite side of the building, which is a good start. However directly under these rooms is a basketball gymnasium, where the sound is easily heard (and with the high ceiling, difficult to treat from that side).

So at this time, I am wanting to see what would effectively lower the sound level to acceptable amounts (40db or less I think?) outside our door and downstairs in other parts of the building. If we could effectively use this space, it saves funds from wholesale new construction, leaving that space for the departing classes.

If this is wholly impractical, my superintendent is open to including Audio Engineering in the new construction. I could certainly propose to have it at the end of a new build, with the control room being the only thing near the rest of the new addition, and the live room being 'built out' away from other rooms to ease isolation concerns. If this path is the one to go down, what significant cost differences in a new build should we anticipate? We hope to speak with the board around Nov 21st, and vote on this in December.

Welcome to the forum. Could you please completely fill out your profile?

If I understand this correctly, your studio spaces would live above the gym? Some things you would need to address in order to achieve the isolation you are after:
- HVAC duct silencers. In the main city near where I live, the university built a studio including several rehearsal rooms. They didn't use silencers and now, only one group of people can use the entire section of the building at a time because the isolation is basically non-existent.
- Surface density. Make sure the floor, ceiling, walls, doors and windows all have at least the minimum required surface density in order to achieve your isolation (this includes your outer leaf and if you do figure out that you need to build a room in a room, the inner leaf needs this surface density as well).
- Sealing. You need to make sure everything is perfectly sealed.

All of the above adds a crazy amount of weight. Basically, the heavier the material, the more isolation you achieve. Again, I'm under the impression that your studio spaces are on the second floor, this means that the structure needs to be able to safely hold up all of that extra weight including any people, instruments, and recording gear.

I would highly suggest reaching out to John Sayers here on the forum to see if he would be interested in designing the space for you. He is very affordable and of course, amazing. I'm sure he can advise you whether or not the current building would be suitable or if it would be better to have your new building purpose-built for the above requirements.

Greg

Thanks for the response!

It turns out that we passed a bond issue for 2 million USD. We are hiring a company to handle all the projects we wnt done, including building a dedicated space. Linked are my plans and a mockup that I shared with them. Thoughts?

https://imgur.com/a/SS1T1gO

TMInsall wrote:Thanks for the response!

It turns out that we passed a bond issue for 2 million USD. We are hiring a company to handle all the projects we wnt done, including building a dedicated space. Linked are my plans and a mockup that I shared with them. Thoughts?

https://imgur.com/a/SS1T1gO

It looks ok in general, does the company that you’re hiring Specialise in acoustics/studio design? If not then definitely don’t go with them for the studio build or design.

In your design I would change it so that the control room is completely symmetrical. You might want to consider keeping the room rectangular and using the space behind the speakers for extra bass trapping. There’s a few other things I’d change but those are the main ones that stuck out so far.

Paul

TMInsall wrote:Thanks for the response!

It turns out that we passed a bond issue for 2 million USD. We are hiring a company to handle all the projects we wnt done, including building a dedicated space. Linked are my plans and a mockup that I shared with them. Thoughts?

https://imgur.com/a/SS1T1gO

Hi, nice work getting that funding!

I completely agree with Paul's points.
With that budget get a professional design done by someone like John (this forum's awesome owner, look at his work) you will save a ton of money just getting the design right, it will be worth any quote he gives you.

There are some areas of the space that could be reworked. Mainly the symmetry could be improved on the control room.

You don't show the dimensions of the each room so I can't say for sure, but it seems you don't have the required rear wall treatment for an RFZ design, which is what the room front wall seems to suggest.

There doesn't appear to be decoupled walls in each room, which I hope is just a simplification for the plans (but even still I would keep them in a simple plan to make sure your builders don't screw up).

I can almost guarantee that if your contractors haven't built professional studios before, you will not get the isolation you need. Your plumbers will cut holes in an isolated assembly, your electricians will couple your spaces, your carpenters will leave gaping holes behind every door frame/lining. And to fix these issues they will think they're being helpful by spraying in expanding foam to "seal the holes"

A complete design by John (or a trusted colleague he recommends) will give detailed drawings for every stage of the project.

If you decide to go ahead with a company please let us know who you're looking at and we'll see if we can dig out any info or experiences with them before you use them.

Dan

Also is it just me or do the speaker boxes stick out the other side of the wall in those plans, and also converge at a point about 2 feet in front of the listening position, instead of 1-1.5 feet behind it

If this is a "rough sketch" design, how did they produce the treatment plan? The speaker angles affect the entire control room's treatment locations and types.

Dan

Hire a Pro.