Studio Lay Out

[OnTheBlackRock]

well in the house about to be built i have to give the plans for the studio (basic general idea of a layout I want) so this is what I've come up with so far...any suggestions? Please critique it and tell me if I'm doing anything really wierd or stupid. Also Post your plans or pics of your studio so we all can get ideas

[rsb]

I guess I do not really understand the logic behind the design but I have a few suggestions.

Read all of this site

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

Then look through all of these studios and their plans.

http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm

Then get some books by F Alton Everest ( for reference )

Then search through all of the posts on this site for details.

Then read more and more.

One last option ( go to this link and call John and pay him to do this design for you http://johnlsayers.com/Pages/Phone.htm )

Hope this helps

[c7sus]

I'm kinda curious who died and left your folks all this money.......

Why don't they try hiring somebody that knows shit from apple butter about this stuff instead of taking your word on it?

[OnTheBlackRock]

yahh....it was their idea to do it all and get it not mine. But hey I love it and I'm not complaining! would you be complaining if someone told you they wanted to build you a studio and buy you all the gear and went ahead and did it for you? COURSE NOT unless your outta your mind. I dont really care if the gear isn't top of the line but it's the though that counts...and the fact that it's still REALLY REALLY RAD and a hell of alot better than just my little 4-track recorder and mixer and a couple mics!

[Michael Jones]

I don't want to be harsh, but that lay-out proves beyong any shadow of a doubt that you have absolutely NO IDEA of studio design, ergonomics, spatial relations, and sound attenuation.
And that's ok. Not everyone can know all there is to know.
But you need to educate yourself if you're going to embark on an endevour like that.

Erase everything you've done, go to those links that rsb provided, and spend the next month reading them and trying to absorb everything you can in them.

Then get the books he spoke of. Spend another month reading those. Then go back to the sites, and re-read everything.

Then you'll have enough knowlege to know what questions to ask. Maybe.

My floor plan and construction pics can be seen here:
http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainpage/MP-Carriage.htm

[c7sus]

When you're 35 years old and still living at home strung out on Oxy and cheap wine your "rents" will be on Dr. Phil wondering WTF they went wrong.............

If your folks are having a house built how about running some ideas past the architect??? That's what they get paid to figure out.

A couple real glaring things here........

First, your setup for your control room is 90-degrees out of whack. You want to be oriented so you monitor with most room depth BEHIND you, not to either side.

Second, Aurelex isn't a suitable treatment for an entire live room. If you're going for some kind of isolation between instruments MaxWall won't cut it. You need mass and something with better IRC ratings than that. Like Rockwool or 703. You can use gobos when you have mic bleed problems tracking more than one instrument at a time. The amount of space allocated on your drawing for a drumset is at least half as small as it should be, and probably more like 1/3 of what is realistic. The best bang for your buck IMHO would be to design the room as a drum room and then use other portable treatments to modify the room for tracking other instruments.

Take a look at MJ's drum room and do a search for treating drum rooms. You'll want some slot resonators, some diffusion, and at least a couple layers of drywall on your walls. Staggered-stud construction is gonna be the most SOUNDPROOF but it doesn't get you to that point all by itself. Just ask Bruce and MJ how much time they spent doing research and design before they began work on their studios.

Since your live room is so small you would be better off with just a single ISO booth set up in a corner of the room for tracking VOX. Again, forget foam. Build a small room with no parallel walls, framed with wood studs and insulated with rockwool, covered with drywall and maybe soundboard and other treatments on the inside.

For the rest of the live room (and the control room, too) parallel walls are the last thing you want. That's the fastest way to create standing waves and flutter echos.

Also, you'll want the wall between your control room and your live room to be as soundproof as you can possibly build it. That means prolly TWO double-pane windows installed non-parallel to each other. You'll want at least a 6"-wall with staggered-stud build and as much Rockwool as you can fit in the cavity.

There's so much out there to learn about all this crap you might as well figure on spending your summer reading stuff if you're really serious about building a good-sounding room.

The best bet, really, is to hire somebody that builds studios to design your CR, live room, and an ISO booth for you.

Think how bad it would suck to go to the effort to build your room but find out the first time you played drums in it that it sounds like ass....................

[DDev]

If you take John's bedroom layout from the SAE site, and add the live room with a small vocal booth on the side, you might get something workable out of this:

[smellyfuzz]

I don't want to be harsh, but that lay-out proves beyong any shadow of a doubt that you have absolutely NO IDEA of studio design, ergonomics, spatial relations, and sound attenuation.

What makes you think that ???


I like his Studio, let's get John to put it up on his site !!!!!

When you're 35 years old and still living at home strung out on Oxy and cheap wine your "rents" will be on Dr. Phil wondering WTF they went wrong.............

LOL.
Don't fool yourself, he'll be running an Enron one day,

and you know it's true.

This kid is making my sides hurt from laughing.


Sean