Building a Hobby Studio in My Basement

JohnnyMan

JohnnyMan

New member
Readers,

My wife has given me permission to build a recording studio in my completely unfinished basement.

I am a hobby songwriter/musician/recording engineer/producer/…etc. I’ll be using a little less than ½ of the basement. Pictures to follow soon. The portion of the basement I’ve decided to use has two concrete walls that are underground. I still haven’t decided upon the dimensions of the studio and vocal booth. My goal is to make it a functional studio yet when I want to sell the house, I don’t want this home to only appeal to people like us (recordists). I do have intensions of wiring it for XLR connectors and ¼” patch cords. I live in a suburb of Atlanta therefore air conditioning (AC) will be vital. I had read that if you make your ducts make 90-degree turns, this reduces a lot of the noise coming from the AC. Apparently sound does not go around corners very well. I’m wondering if it’s worth bothering with the extra ductwork. Also I had read that making the walls not parallel with each other reduces reflections. Is that worth it?

I have been reading a few threads on this web site and I would very much appreciate any tips, wisdom, incite, and help on designing this studio.
 
Lots of good info at Johns site for sure. I used a flex duct at my place. It's like a giant slinky covered with insulation and a plastic wrap. Sound doesn't telegraph through this stuff much at all.
 
The beauty of John's designs is that they can be done as built-ins or as stand-alone pieces. If what you need is "treatment" as opposed to "soundproofing", I'd build a couple of John's corner bass traps and a few gobo's and start from there.

Finding OC 703 or Knauf Rigid Fiberglass Soundboard is a pain in the ass. Check with your local insulation suppliers. Stuff runs from about 80-centsUS/square foot up to about $1.25/square foot depending on thickness. 2-inch RFS should work fine for most designs, and can be stacked when you need 4-inches.
 
As far as ducting goes - you're better off with a rigid fiberglass duct board (Superduct by John Mansville or equivilent) than with flex duct.

Flex duct - by it's very nature is restrictive on air flow. The super duct is a polymer lined fiberglass board....... the liner assures that you won't have problems with loose fibers (fiberglass is a suspected carcinogen) and it has some very fine acoustical properties - much better than flex duct.

It's actually more important to increase duct size and thus reduce the speed of the air through the duct than it is to turn 90 degree corners. Large volume with low velocity is the key to successful quiet systems.

If you do have to make turns - do it with 2 - 45degree corners rather than a single 90.

Air tends to get caught in corners - and the turbulence causes noise.

Another thing that is important is decoupling the air handler unit from structure (through the use of isolation hangers) and being very carefull to make certain that the unit is not oversized and has adequate fresh air.

Fresh air can be dome without an intake fan by installing a duct vented to outside air to the return air duct immeadiately where it ties into the air handler. Step about 10' further up the return air plenum and install a 2nd duct to outside air with a barometric damper on it. That will release the excess air in the room so you don't just pressurize the space and stoip pulling fresh air in.

Have a mechanical engineer size your unit for you. Make certain he understands the extra insulation that has gone into constructing your space - standard HVAC calculations deal with heat loss/gain with standard construction. The calcs for a studio have to be done generally by hand.

An oversized unit will have very short run time - it will cool the room down very VERY quickly - and thus will not dehumidify the room properly. You need longer run times to pull the air across the cooling coil in order to maintain proper humidity levels.

The goal should be around 35 to 40 percent relative humidity unless you plan on having a piano in the space - and then you want 45 percent RH.

Rod
 
Rod,

WOW!! Thank you very much for your very in-depth help. I very much appreciate it and I intend on using it with my builder friend. He is a good neighbour/friend of mine who has built a studio for one of his clients.

As far as relative humidity, I will be keeping my acoustic guitars in the studio so I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I hope to get construction started at the beginning of February (I can't wait to start laying my first track). I will be posting pictures on my web site once construction starts.
 
Last edited:
Building a Studio in my basement

Here is the first of two pictures of my basement. View1 is what you first see when you walk past the furnace. The two walls you see are cement and completely underground. I will have to build two more walls to complete the room and shield the studio from furnace/AC noise. I will probably leave the posts in place and build around them. An isolation both will be included in the design.
 

Attachments

  • view1.jpg
    view1.jpg
    42.6 KB · Views: 498
Building a Studio in my basement II

View 2 is what you see when you pass the furnace and look to your left.
 

Attachments

  • view2.jpg
    view2.jpg
    37.4 KB · Views: 486
 
Last edited:
DJL said:
Here's some ideas...

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/pages/Variable Plans.htm

http://www.alexandermagazine.com/recordingeq/EQ/req0903/build1_0903.asp

http://www.alexandermagazine.com/recordingeq/EQ/req0903/build2_0903.asp

http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/cottage.html

https://homerecording.com/bbs/archive/index.php/f-20-p-3.html

http://emusician.com/mag/cover/emusic_planning_ideal_recording/

http://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Studios.htm

https://homerecording.com/bbs/archive/index.php/f-20-p-13.html

http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html
Click to expand...


Wow,

Thank you DJL. I have already visited John Sayers site and Ethan Winer gave me a link to his site yesterday. He wrote an article in EQ on exactly this topic (home studio construction). Looks like I have a lot of reading to do. Thanks again.

BTW, I was on Amazon on Friday and bought three second-hand books:

"How to Build A Small Budget Recording Studio From Scratch : With 12 Tested Designs (TAB Mastering Electronics Series)"

Sound Studio Construction on a Budget

Basic Home Studio Design

I hope to start construction before Xmas. :)
 
Your welcome... you should be able to build a nice little home recording studio in that basement... just take your time, study, and do it right the first time. :)
 
Johnny, you've gotten some really helpful advice from everyone so far; I'm not real familiar with some of the helpers, but if Rod hasn't done it, it didn't need to be done.

Some advice related to resale; unless you're VERY serious about perfect sound over resale, I'd forego doing splayed walls, etc - you're right, either you sell to another recordist or tear it out and redo before selling. You can, if you want, still build soffit mounts for your speakers; these can also be made portable, although the heavier construction the better; the John Sayers site has much more info on this concept, including why it's desirable.

Some concessions you CAN still make that won't negatively affect resale are the AC - no one objects to quieter air handling, for example; also, choosing dimensions that are musically compatible for modal room response is arguably even MORE important in rooms with parallel walls - this lessens the amount of acoustic treatment (traps, absorbers, etc) needed to optimise a room for sound, and won't even be NOTICED by a non-studio designer, since they're just the ratio of width/length/height.

If you build nearly all the needed acoustic treatments to be portable (and small enough to get through the doors) these can all be taken with you when you leave (or used as a "bargaining chip" if you're selling to another musician) especially if there are things you wish you'd done differently while building them...

The books you've already bought are a good start, and with the help that's available here and at the other mentioned sites they may be enough to keep you from making unnecessary mistakes in your construction; still, it's best to ask people like Rod or myself (in that order :=) on anything you're not absolutely SURE of - it's much easier, cheaper, and less frustrating than tearing out construction and re-doing it... Steve
 
knightfly said:
Some advice related to resale; unless you're VERY serious about perfect sound over resale, I'd forego doing splayed walls, etc - you're right, either you sell to another recordist or tear it out and redo before selling. You can, if you want, still build soffit mounts for your speakers; these can also be made portable, although the heavier construction the better; the John Sayers site has much more info on this concept, including why it's desirable.
Click to expand...

Steve,

You’re a mind reader!! I had a discussion yesterday afternoon with my neighbor about studio design and resale and I basically “caved” and elected to keep the walls with a “re-saleable” right-angle design.

Thank you for the advice and offer.

John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top