John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi all,

First post on the forum! I'm at the stage of house hunting on eastern Long Island in New York state and intend to relocate my gear out of my parents basement into a proper recording facility constructed by me. I've been living in apartments after schooling and all my accumulated recording gear and instruments back from high school and college had stayed in the house a grew up in. My condo is not far from their house and weekly I've met with band mates there to write and record but needless to say that despite some treatment the sound is far from optimal. Well the wife is on board now with getting a house so I have been exploring my options. I've considering using a garage as a shell but most have 8 ft ceilings out here and are 2 car attached garages which would not serve me for tracking live drums and having a separate control room as I've read that the goal for a good tracking room for live drums is approximately 500 sq ft with 10-12 ft ceilings and the goal for a solid mixing room is approximately 250 sq ft. After reviewing all the houses on the market in the area that interests us, I'm seeing that there's really no adequate shell in a residential area that will accommodate. Being that 0.5 acre properties are common out here I started to consider building a structure from scratch. I familiarized myself with the zoning regulations and depending on the zone I could build a 1200sqft with 20ft ceiling structure max or 1000sqft with a 15ft ceiling structure max. I understand that the bigger, the better but wondering would 1000 sq ft with 15 ft ceiling suffice after erecting the walls to accommodate a proper tracking room, mixing room, and a single isolation room for loud guitar amp or vocal? I don't have an exact distance to nearest neighbor however the properties are quite large on average, definitely not houses stacked next to one another.

Thanks,

Jan

In this photo if you remove the office and lobby from this structure then you have a total area of just over 900 sq ft. With this modification this is the closest floor plan so far I've encountered to fit my needs. Any thoughts? Given the room within a room construction what would the actual size of the foundation have to be to accommodate this plan minus the office and lobby. Does it well maximize the room areas?

Hoping somebody would chime in. Some further calculations estimate that provided an exterior wall thickness of 1 foot using 2x4 studs MAM construction with 1" air gap and double 5/8" drywall panel my interior square footage would come down to 874 sq ft from 1000 sq ft. Shooting for approx 500sq ft live room and 250 sq ft control room, I'd be left with 124 sq ft for an iso booth which would slightly decrease after installing interior walls. No room therefore for the pictured hallway and closet which I think is ok. I'm looking into the ideal room dimensions assuming a 12ft ceiling using the well know ratios. Can anyone confirm I'm on the right track so far and possibly propose a basic design for these three room maximizing space available and suggest where to put the doors and glass panels? I presume that building from scratch opens up many options and there must be some canned designs for a 1000 sq ft foundation.

The side walls of your control room at 5 degrees are too narrow.
Here's how to shape it using 12 degree sides which will give you a better RFZ for the front of the room.
cheers
john