John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hey, First I'd like to say what a help this board is..!

Well Im moving to a new house and I plan on using my garage as a studio. I do not have the measurements or a plan yet. But my question is how much would it cost for me to add walls for a small vocal booth and also how would I go on installing the walls.

THANKS A LOT!!!

Hey, xP, welcome to the board - First, we'd need to know your approximate geographical location (mostly for material availablilty and pricing) how close your neighbors are, what your existing garage walls are made of (and exactly HOW), how loud a sounds you're trying to isolate, etc -

There is no ONE answer to any question, so the above info would help narrow down options/necessities... Steve

Hey thanks for the reply... Well I do not quite know the actual material the walls are made of but I wont need to worry much about neighbors because its pretty far apart and also there no one actually living next to my new house yet. The sound would just be someone singing, no drums. And Ill be moving to a city near Atlanta, GA.

Hope that at least helps...

Ps..Just came up with another question. Do I have to do something to the garage door to make it soundproof? And by the way the door is electronic.

Thx again

Although there are (sort of) sound deadened garage doors available, most normal garage doors are about as effective at sound control as spitting upwind trying to put out a forest fire. You will almost certainly need to build a real wall behind the garage door to get any isolation.

I'm not sure how involved you want to get in building a vocal booth - there are booths done cheap, and booths done well. It depends on how long someone is going to be in it at a time, whether you want to provide for constant ventilation, how much isolation you need, whether you need it big enough for more than one person, or to play a guitar in, etc - If you can get a little more specific as to your needs, I can draw some basic ideas and post them for you... Steve

Thx a lot, just that has been a big help. Well I dont really want to spend like a $10,000 on a home studio but I want a cheap place where the sound is at least decent. I mean now Im recording my stuff on the small bathroom and the sound is a lot better than the plain room so I guess I want a place better than the "bathroom". Im looking to build the booth at about 8'x8' or maybe bigger I want a place for a person to play guitar and sometimes just vocals. I wish I could help you a lot more but I havent really checked out the garage because someone is still living in it.
But how much does it cost to build a home studio that is at least medium quality?

Thanks a lot you have been a great help..

You're already starting to fill in enough blanks for me to steer you a different direction - for sound, you need to stop thinking like a carpenter and start thinking like a cabinet maker/musician. By that, I mean that having a room with two, (or worse, all three) dimensions the SAME is REALLY BAD. For example, if you have the headroom, the dimensions of 5'x7'x9' tall work out really well acoustically for a booth. That would also be in your ballpark for rough size.

As to cost, you can do quite a bit in that size area for less than $10k - when you can get access and post more details on the EXISTING construction we can figure out just HOW MUCH less... Steve

Wow..lots of information on this forum just from browsing I sure learned a lot. And thanks a lot Steve I will sure post as soon as I check out the place THANKS!

You're welcome - while you're brousing, brouse HERE -

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

This is John's old site, there's a TON of info here. Click on EVERYTHING, there's tabs across the top, each and every WORD in the index, whole sections on the sidebar, etc...

I'm really a masochist, because I KNOW this will actually INCREASE the # of questions you have - still, that's how we all learn (assuming we actually LISTEN to the answers... :=) Good reading... Steve

LoL.. that was what I was just reading.. A lot of good stuff but confusing well not confusing just a lot of aspects.