Some questions about converting a room to a project studio

[bobmurphy]

hi - i am attempting to design a studio in our house. We have a dedicated room 15*18 ft, but we dont want to split it up into a control room and live room because we will also need to use this room as a practice room for our band. The idea is that we would use the adjoining landing area for recording drums/vocals/guitar overdubs etc and we have other locations we can use for amp rooms etc. No work has been started yet but we have researched the gear that we intend to put in it.
The studio will be usually used by three or four persons and will be used to record mainly rock based music and we dont intend to use it commercially. Our budget for the room is about €1500 but that needs to include the furniture to hold the console and basic decoration/painting/etc. Really we just invented the figure so if we need to spend more then we probably could. We want to get it right; but we dont need it to be perfect. Time is important. We dont really have that much time on our hands to do that much construction; however a sizeable amount may be needed.
One thing to consider is that although we would love the sound to be contained in the studio it is not a primary factor and anyway it is away from the main living areas.
We expect the studio to be used more for tracking than mixing.

The studio is located on the top floor of a dormer bungalow in the countryside, near (40ft from ) a not particularly busy road. Our neighbours are 1/4 mile away so not too many worries there. The music is pretty much rock so pretty loud.

The floor is 2" concrete slab laid on 3/4" ( i think ) plywood laid on 9" joists. ( a bit unusual i know but that's what we have )

The end wall ( left of drawing ) is a 12" block-insulation-block construction and the internal walls are 4" stud walls stuffed with wool insulation. The long walls at the sides are also stud walls but there is no plasterboard on the other side. They are backed with wool also. The plasterboard is around a 1/4" and has a foil back. The ceilings are similarly constructed.
The door is a solid pine door and the windows are velux roof windows.



QUESTIONS:

1)What is the best way to get decent isolation between the main room and the drum area. Naturally i want to be able to monitor at a decent level without getting spill on the drum mikes. I was thinking of another layer of plasterboard but ????? I know that the door is a big issue but again i dont know much more than the obvious like putting a bit of that sealer around it.

2)I was thinking of laying a double layer of underlay under the carpet but is this overkill or is there a special carpet i should use.

3)the room is rectangular and has a few moderate standing waves - do i have to make the walls unparalell to sort this out ?

4)is the block wall on the end alright or would i need to do something to it.

5)for the speakers i dont think i can install them into the corners like i've seen done in proper studios because they would be too far away from the engineers ( tannoy reveals ) so what i was thinking of doing was building a unit into both corners ( to effectively narrow that part of the room ) and mounting the speakers on the diagonally on them ( i will include a sketch ) - would this work ? maybe there's a better way

6)is there a standard way to construct a console ( or does this forum deal with the subject ) it is really important that 3 or 4 of us can be comfortable so i dont just want a pre made desk - any ideas - the desk we're getting is a tascam fw1884 but that particular model can be extended quite a bit with addons so it might get longer - keyboards will probably be relegated to a side position or somthing and the board will be the main focus

7)would i need bass traps in the corners ( all the corners ?)

The room that we will be recording the drums from is actually part of the house so i cant really do much to it - however there are only two noteable things that i can hear - first one is bad - there is a standing wave slapback echo in the short part of the room exactly where we will be putting the kit - my idea was to construct something like a room divider that i can use to move this in temporarily to break this up ???? would it work or is there a better way - another idea was to buy a nice wall hanging an put it there
the second thing is ( i think ) a good thing - the stairs leads to a pretty large hallway underneath and there is to my ears a pretty nice reverb created ( it's almost like a chamber reverb ) I was thinking of getting a large piece of cloth made so that i can put it over the entire opening or part of it so i can control the ammount of reverb if i want - again i would like opinions

Thanks so much in advance for this extraordinary wealth of information
BOB

EDit : forgot to include the room height at centre ( it's 8' )

[John Sayers]

Bob - could you try something als\ong this line??

cheers
john

[bobmurphy]

very impressive design - i never thought of that ...... unfortunatly there's a few issues and after spending a while thinking about advantages/disadvantages we dont think it will work for us - as i said the room that we're using as a live room is actually part of the house and we can't really live with a glass door in the middle of one of the walls( we even thought about putting a curtain on it ) - that's the main thing but also inside in the room we marked out on the floor the two different ideas and to be honest putting the console along the wall seemed to feel better. The original idea was to have a webcam link to a wireless laptop between the engineer and musician so i suppose we'll just have to opt for that instead of your nice sliding door.
Thanks anyway though - it was no harm to think outside the box for a while.
any other help/ideas appreciated.

It actually got me thinking about the door between the two rooms - there is practically no seperation between the two rooms - i really need to remedy this somehow

another thing i noticed being up there today is that there is a reasonable ammount of noise from distant traffic outside - it is pretty low level but maybe i can do something about it easily enough

[John Sayers]

then maybe this approach

cheers
john

[bobmurphy]

well that's interesting - i particularly like the double door idea and the way that blends into the bass trap;

i have a few questions about it though

the console i want to set up is for three or four people and not for midi - so i will have the keyboard off to the side and i would probably make the desk more straight without the angles at the sides ( so that all people could get at the mixer without having to lean over one another ) - would this be ok would you think ? - i think it would be about 6'6" or 7' wide


Is there a purpose to the material behind the couch/sofa or would i be able to make it thinner and make the bass traps at the back smaller because i need as much free space as possible

i would also like to get rid of the material adjacent the bass trap on the left hand side of the drawing but again i dont understand if it serves some purpose - i suppose it's to stop that nasty reverb from the paralel walls but then if that's the case then don't i need to make the other walls ( to the left and right of the sofa etc.) non paralel also

would the door's in the diagram have to be special studio doors or would regular doors suffice given that there's two of them

[bobmurphy]

ok - i have done a fair ammount of thinking about this and i think it's perfect for me, (thanks john).

the dividing wall is the main bit of construction work so i want to get it right first time or at least not get into a situation where i'd have to go undo something.. so i have a few questions about it:

when i'm building the second wall, i know that i shouldn't leave on the inner layer of gypsum that's now on the existing wall, but do i actually have to take it ALL off - read somewhere that it will work better if i just cut large holes in it ?

considering that i'm building another wall and so would have a double layer of isolation, would it be worth it for me to use r/c also or not? ( the main loud thing i'd be recording is a rock drumkit )

basicly my plan at the moment is to:
take of the layer of gypsum ( or cut holes in it )
build the new inside wall
put in place rockwool
hang the doors and seal them
put on one layer of gypsum and caulk etc
do a sound leakage test and decide on next course of action
at this stage i suppose i'd be looking at either putting on more layers of gypsum or r/c or greenglue or something - or maybe that would be enough


i wonder how much sound will leak from one room to the other around the back and overhead - i was thinking that maybe i need to get that part isolated too - but not sure what is the best approach


is there some sort of acceptable level of isolation for this type of thing or are we just aiming at zero tolerance or what ?

[John Sayers]

your basic plan is correct Bob - go that far and see what you get - you will get flanking down the outer walls, floor and ceiling, so going any further would just be overkill.

cheers
john

[bobmurphy]

had the builder up today and now have a couple of queries -

the wall between the two rooms - the part at the back of the room, where there is no slant - how should i decide how much space to leave between the old wall and new one - is it as simple as "as much as i can afford to leave to get the best isolation" - or is there any need to leave any at all
- also it would be pretty easy for me to angle this wall slightly also - would it be worth it for me to do this or is there any need

regarding the gap between the doors - similar question - is it a case of as large a gap as possible

on the opposite wall which is now concrete block - i see in the drawing there is a new stud wall created in front of it - is this necessary/advisable and can i / should i just attach the frame for the stud wall directly to the block behind or should i seek to keep the two seperate - i was thinking of maybe putting a layer of rubber between the stud frame and the block wall and screwing it down to it from there - but i wouldn't bother building it at all if i didnt need to

in the room i was thinking of using panel traps and mounting the speakers on stands so i wouldnt be doing any construction in the corners really - i think i will put a few diffusers along the back wall - it has also crossed my mind to put a helmholtz resonator in too but where ? and do they have to be symmetrical