Overview
My friend and I are building a small recording
studio in my small-ish double car garage.
Comments, questions and suggestions welcome (we trust we have provided enough info and not overdone it?)
Location
Australia.
Progress Stage
We are at the design and plan stage (about 8 weeks in).
Realistically we plan to start construction in November this year and
complete around mid next year (as we may only have one day a week to work on the studio).
Location Details
The double car garage has a level concrete floor and single brick walls.
There is one window on the East side.
Outside the window is a space with double cage gates for access to the
back yard in case of bush fire.
We are in a very quiet street/culdesac. Trains and truck rumble from
across the valley (1 km) are picked up by our large condensers microphones....
We have a plasterboard ceiling in the garage with cornices.
The ceiling is uninsulated in the
roof cavity.
It has a a gable style tiled roof with sarking.
We back onto a bushland valley (nice)
with no neighbours behind as we are on a ridge with bushland behind.We have 3 x roller doors which we prefer to leave intact but can be
removed and walled/panelled in - if imperative. We have designed around
them and they are included on the plan at full rolled up size.
The front 2 garage doors lead to the driveway and to the road out front
(approx 2 car lengths away).
On the drawing there is a small side door (SW) that is access to the
front hall of the home. This is where we will enter the studio.
Kick drums can fit through easily (I don’t plan on recording timpanis or rolling in full size pianos) etc).
Electrical
Currently I have light and power circuits in the garage. I get noise
spikes on my current recordings (done inside the house) from the fridge
and hot water units.
Most drawings supplied here face North.
I have found out that 3 phase wiring is wired from the street pole to our switchboard but 2 phases are terminated at the street pole.
The street does have 3 phases if required (available opposite side of the road) – so we would have to get these poles connected with 2 more cables.
Our Power board is on the other side (west) of the 2 storey house and extra phase
maybe be routed easily though cavity between floors.
The gap for internal cabling is line of sight from one side of the house (garage)to the other (far wall/switchboard).
So pulling an extra phase or 2 through from board to garage should be easy.
Only the south west corner is common with the house /entry area.
Research to Date
I have purchased Rod's book. I have read it cover to cover twice. Great
stuff.
My friend is an industrial arts teacher and has built much of
his own home. I have spent weeks reviewing all the wonderful information in the Forums
here and have attempted to apply as much as possible into our plans
prior to posting so we can (hopefully) ask intelligent questions and get
some constructive feedback?!
We have contacted CSR (Australian Gyprock supplier), local hardware yards and other studio owners.
Our wish list is as follows:
2 Rooms preference:
Relative sound isolation for a control room and maybe even better for a
multi- purpose small drum/vocal/gtr amp iso booth.
Proposed Float Floor
Plastic sheet, neoprene pucks, timber frame with rock wool, 13mm sound check (acoustic gyprock) with wood laminate finish. Pls refer drawings
Proposed Walls
From inside - Sound check - RC - Timber Frame/Insulation - Double/single
sound check. (see drawings)
Other walls (as per drawing) we are considering slat resonator as per SAE site.
We have rotated the room for symmetry and to avoid parallel walls.
Proposed Ceiling
Cloth, rockwool/frames/joists, sound check, rock wool.
One wish is to keep our wonderful neighbours happy for another 10 years
Our neighbours to the East (are approx 25 feet away and their place is double brick).
All our neighbours are keen on music and encourage us which is fantastic
- but we would like to keep them onside if we (on rare
occasion) need to record into the night.
Keep road and dog noise out.
We have dogs that bark in our back yard. It would be nice to have the iso booth isolated from such
noises - as much as practically possible with the space constraints we
have.
Our street is a quiet street (most of the time)
I would like to aim for better acoustics for recording and mixing semi pro projects.
I currently record some smaller professional projects in addition to
recording my own band but have realised the limitations of the
boxy/reflective , untreated rooms I have in the house. I wanted to wait for the studio before I go splashing $$$ on acoustic treatments.
I enjoy recording real drums and like to be in a separate room when
tracking to get the best sound possible to HardDisk. I am happy to add
"ambience and "grease" to the sounds after when mixing. Not everyone can record
drums under a great sounding stairwell in Wales....
Understanding rhythm section vibes I plan to record bass via DI etc at
the same time with the bass player either in the control room or next to
the drummer under headphones.
Then I plan to record the rest of the band individually and layer it.
Late Night Mixing
I would like to have the flexibility to mix into the early hours and
intend on attempting to preserve my hearing into old age - life
permitting - I don't mix at stupid volumes - real quiet and then
moderately loud to check bass etc. My setup is digital with racks (no
tape). I use the smaller Behringer Truth active monitors.
Air conditioning
I have organised Air conditioning quote and specs. These will be forthcoming in next few weeks.
Plan is to have split cycle system outside east wall.
Refrigerant Pipes will access through gap above East existing wall into existing ceiling.
The ceiling will house the rest of the air con equipment.
Supply Air will enter via North walls of both rooms and return via ceiling above couch in control room back into ceiling etc.
The doors between the control room and iso room will be open when using air conditioning.
That’s the rough plan.
Budget
$15k au
Questions
1. We placed this first post in the design section as we would like to confirm the layout and shape follow the guidelines.
Does the layout look OK?
2. Walls. (we can move these following questions to construction if need be?)
We have found (to our limited understanding) no consistent placing of
resonator slat walls and RC walls on mixed wall type small rooms....Are
certain walls in our design better with slats or RC? Which walls would you suggest?
We planned on going with walls as per Rob's drawing. Single Sound check
on RC on insulated wood frames with single maybe double sound check on
outside.
Then we saw John's space saving suggestion on incorporating treatment
with the walls.
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/
Walls and Ceilings - So we are wondering what sort of TL /isolation with
this design using resonator slats and doing away with the inside
soundcheck and RC (see John's "My Wall"). We would add extra insulation
on outside leaf as per drawing.
Can the resonator slats be coupled through the cloth directly to the wall
frame?
With the isolation I am hoping for (of course it won't be prefect)
should a double layer of soundcheck (13mm) be sufficient? I don't plan
on using green glue here. If necessary I will have to import it as other Aussies on the formums have suggested.
3.
Must all lighting be low voltage?
4. What about the slope on ceiling the iso room?
Is it necessary?
Is it necessary to slope the ceiling in the control room?
We really don't have too much room to play with like sloping a
ceiling due to space and the rear door. Should John's cloth ceiling idea
be OK (as per http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/) and then some down lights on swivels.
5. Soffits - we have worked on 60 degrees for hearing.
Does it look Ok on the drawing?
We are leaving 20mm behind for active speaker cooling etc.
6. I am unconcerned with the very low PC fan noise in control room. Should
I be?
We have put it off for long enough and we believe this is the right place to be at http://www.johnlsayers.com so here goes!!!
Thanks in advance for any constructive advice you can offer.
http://www.SideShowAnnie.com
