John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I recently finished a basement in a house I'm renting and I have 2 rooms to work with for a home studio. One room is 12x14, and one is 13x20. I want to use one room for recording vocals and piano, and one room for mixing on event 20/20bas monitors + a DAW. Half of the basement is buried underground because the house is built into a hill. The small room is underground, and two of its walls are cinder blocks. The small room sound pretty dead because the cinder blocks and dirt behind them seem to absorb most of the sound. To me vocals sound better in the larger room because they sound more airy and natural.

I would like to mix in the smaller room and setup the larger room for recording, but I've read that you shouldn't mix in smaller rooms especially if the rooms are almost square. But I'm also afraid if I mix in the large room I will have too much reflection/echo going on.

I'm looking for advice/suggestions on which room I should mix in and also where in the room I should place my monitors and desk. I'm also trying to figure out where I might need traps or reflective surface treatment. I know some of you guys are acoustic experts, any info will help. Thanks.

..... also I forgot to draw in an air conditioning duct about a foot in diameter that is in the small room. It runs across the ceiling/corner of the south side of the room,, from the left wall to the right wall.

Sorry, looks like this "fell through the cracks" -

Is your drawing oriented with North at the top, which would put your AC duct on the wall where the doors between your two rooms are located?

12 x 14 is far enough from square to work; what is your ceiling height in the rooms? You can probably set up your speakers on the left short wall, firing down the long way of the room.

You're right in choosing the "dryer" of the two rooms for mixing; that way, you can tell more whether you have enough reverb in your mix, without wondering if it's coming from the listening room instead of from the recording.

It would also help if you could update your profile to include a location; a rough idea of budget wouldn't hurt either... Steve