First step - thoughts on studio location

R

rfalcon

New member
I have two basement choices - similar in size, one finished one not.

Finished basement, which currently houses my photo studio, is 14x22, 8' ceiling, with an attached 8x14 finished room (currently housing my wife's weight machine).

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The unfinished side is 14x20, 8' ceiling, but is adjacent to the furnace (noise)

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I have my own thoughts, but would like to hear observations, pros and cons, from those more experienced than I. Just for information, I am a capable builder, but would like to avoid tearing down walls lol. The two areas are not really adjacent - end to end mostly, with a 3' hall space between (entrance to unfinished basement is to the left of staircase in the finished photo showing desktop).

Appreciate any thoughts.

Pardon the mess i the photos lol. Been remodelling...
 
Personally, I would move the photo studio next to the heater (photo/video is not going to be ruined by the fan turning on), move the weight machine to the same area (maybe drywall and paint up the space first). Then make yourself a nice studio with the attached control room. If the cabinets can be removed without damage, they could be moved as well (or demolished if you don't want them). Then comes the fun of room treatment! :rolleyes:
 
I would take your photo studio and dual purpose it. Treat it for sound, use the weight room for more isolated recording if needed, move weight room to the area where that is closer to the heater. The heater kicking on and off is going to be a big problem.

If you mainly record solo, treating the mixing room and record in the same room is not that big of an issue, use reverb to bring life back into it during mixing. If you have more people, the current weight room can be treated for tracking and used as required. Once you have things set up, then adjust as required. But using the photo area and just adding some sound treatments would not hurt the photo area.
 
Pretty much the studio will be used for recording myself solo. My son, a professional actor and singer, might use it if I design it well enough. He lives two hours away, but it would be cheaper for him to come home rather than pay studio fees for a some things. Yes, there are times the professional studio will be necessary, but times not.

Several thoughts I had about the large finshed, and Ill let everyone evaluate them, is that the open area, and the hallway to one side, a by the steps, and the shelves behind (which could be covered with large acoustically treated doors to maintain storage space), are good for diffusing reflections. A control room in the weight area would not provide great visibility to the larger room, but if the weight room became a vocal booth, and the main room the control/mixing area with room for instrumentals...

The only advantage I saw to the unfinished area were the concrete walls and floors for reflection. Drywall, I understand, is not a particularly good choice. Any in-depth comments on sound dynamics would be appreciated, as well.
 
Since you are handy, I would build some doors for your cabinet. Use screening or some material to hold in the material. Once again, using some Roxul, something like this, start looking at areas to hand them for reflective sound. Then build a few bass traps for the corners.

After that it will be getting your room optimized. But the same process will work in the weight room, but you could treat that more as to "how it sounds" in the recording than like you would for mixing environment.

From that point, it becomes perfect you want the room. Most of us treat pretty decent and work with the short comings, others are very detailed. The nice thing with the above, you build it to be transportable. If you decide to move it, everything goes with it. I have my sound reflections hanging on the wall. Bass traps you could use latching device to keep them in place.

These are just ideas that leave your options open until you have better idea of your final setup. When one first starts up, it is all experimental. This approach allows much changing without losing much if anything.
 
DM60 said:
Since you are handy, I would build some doors for your cabinet. Use screening or some material to hold in the material. Once again, using some Roxul, something like this, start looking at areas to hand them for reflective sound. Then build a few bass traps for the corners.

After that it will be getting your room optimized. But the same process will work in the weight room, but you could treat that more as to "how it sounds" in the recording than like you would for mixing environment.

From that point, it becomes perfect you want the room. Most of us treat pretty decent and work with the short comings, others are very detailed. The nice thing with the above, you build it to be transportable. If you decide to move it, everything goes with it. I have my sound reflections hanging on the wall. Bass traps you could use latching device to keep them in place.

These are just ideas that leave your options open until you have better idea of your final setup. When one first starts up, it is all experimental. This approach allows much changing without losing much if anything.
Click to expand...

From everything I've been reading, the rooms (mixing and recording) are treated differently. For now, I'll be mixing from headphones. As I learn, that will change. I really want to work on getting the initial sound down first.
 
Most people here have one room for both mixing and tracking, this means typically its a pretty dry room - lots of trapping. If you're mixing with headphones, you can start out with minimal trapping - but remember that if you track well, it requires less work during mixing - and if you track with a lot of uncontrolled room reflections, you'll have a tough time getting it all to mix well.

I like idea of closing off the weight room to make an iso room - at 8x14 it won't be too boxy with some traps in there, and you can use it for storage space, too. The main room, as suggested, could double as photo studio and recording/mixing room - since you are not planning on tracking full bands, you've got lots of room to work with.. Sheet rock is fine for recording, and bare concrete would need the same acoustic treatment. I'd get rid of the shelves/open cabinets. doesn't look like they're getting used anyway
 
mjbphotos said:
Most people here have one room for both mixing and tracking, this means typically its a pretty dry room - lots of trapping. If you're mixing with headphones, you can start out with minimal trapping - but remember that if you track well, it requires less work during mixing - and if you track with a lot of uncontrolled room reflections, you'll have a tough time getting it all to mix well.

I like idea of closing off the weight room to make an iso room - at 8x14 it won't be too boxy with some traps in there, and you can use it for storage space, too. The main room, as suggested, could double as photo studio and recording/mixing room - since you are not planning on tracking full bands, you've got lots of room to work with.. Sheet rock is fine for recording, and bare concrete would need the same acoustic treatment. I'd get rid of the shelves/open cabinets. doesn't look like they're getting used anyway
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Now I have to negotiate with DW about moving her weight machine...
 
Reflection question - if I use one end of the large room for mixing, how much difficulty would it cause having the weight machine, shown in photo, at the other end of the room?
 
That weight machine shouldn't cause that much trouble (if any) at our level.
 
After a little straightening up in the room - not much *grin* - I used the "clap test" to find the deader part of the room, as it is currently. There were two, on opposite ends of the room, mostly I believe because there were larger open areas on the sides, which may have permitted reflections to bounce out of the main room, rather than bounce around inside of it. Just a theory.

Anyway, the two photos below show what I'm thinking. The Mike is in the that 'sweet spot', and with the desk positioned as it is, I could still use the smaller room to the right as n enclosed vocal room later on and someone at the desk could see the vocalist.

Treatment will come later. Any thoughts always appreciated.

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Looks like a good spot. I would get rid of the shelving or move them to the backside of the room. Filled up they could serve as some "natural diffusing"

One thing baffles me. They are empty. How is this even possible? :D

In my place every shelf/bookcase is filled up! And I still dont have enough shelf space. :D
 
RFR said:
Looks like a good spot. I would get rid of the shelving or move them to the backside of the room. Filled up they could serve as some "natural diffusing"

One thing baffles me. They are empty. How is this even possible? :D

In my place every shelf/bookcase is filled up! And I still dont have enough shelf space. :D
Click to expand...

Before I retired about three years ago, we thought we might sell the house, so began cleaning out stuff we no longer used. Having changed our minds, we're now in the process of filling it back up again...

The shelves are built in, and I'd like to keep them. I'm thinking pretty hard about building sound absorbing floor to ceiling doors or partitions so one wouldn't know they were there, but they could be accessed. Shouldn't be too difficult to make it work well and look nice. Always wanted to it doors on those shelves, anyway.
 
The sound absorbing material might be good for catching arrows, too. Did I mention this is not only my photo studio, but archery range as well?
 
DW got me a new mic for my birthday, so I spent the past week messing with it, to get the sound I wanted. Rode has some decent videos on their website, and one which came with the mic.

Ended up setting it up so I'd sing across the front of the mic, at an angle, through the pop filter. Gave me the best tone, IMO, for my vocals. A few interesting discoveries about using the room: I positioned the mic so, when singing, my voice was aimed/angled into an adjoining room, which seemed to reduce the reflections. Also, I moved some large soft boxes (photo lighting diffusers) along the wall in the large room to get them out of the way. A few minutes later, doing the clap test, I noticed the ringing noise in the middle of the room, near the soft boxes, had disappeared. I can only assume the soft boxes are diffusing the reflections. Whatever, I like the results.

With the basic setup in mind (I also moved the desk and mic further forward, thinking it would help control reflections), I can start considering treatment and equipment placement. Monitors can be positioned in front of the shelves at the appropriate distance.

Still learning.

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Any thoughts on the sound quality I'm getting from this setup? I'm just developing my ear, so any observations or suggestions are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I make no claims about being a singer lol. That's my son's provenance. I'm basically looking to improve the sound enviroment. the singer is probably beyond repair.

The file is a raw recording - no alterations were made.

https://soundcloud.com/jerry-glenn-hartwig/mike-setup-test
 
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