I have been looking for this board for 4 years!

T

thelivingexampl

New member
Halo..

I am very new here and only saw about three messages to know that I will probably find answers to my 4 year old questions here. First let me thank in advance anyone that can help me out.

I have amassed a crazy amount of gear to accomodate an entire band and record it as well over the past 6 years from a huge mixer to a layla, to bass gear, to guitar gear, I already had drums, so basically a bands worth and a way to record it. I have been trying to find the most cost effective way to build a 1.most importantly Soundproof practice/recording room and 2. a nice sounding recording room after the soundproofing has been taken care of.
I got a book by Jeff Cooper off ebay on building a recording studio, and that all makes sense with what materials have what ratings and such, but I don't know if what I want to spend can get me what I am looking for.

I am planning on taking a second mortgage and use up to $10,000 on getting either a room built in my garage, orif it is all the same price wise, build an addition the size of the studio onto my house. I have a father in law and I guess uncle in law that can build the room if given the materials, so I was thinking that most fo the money would be going into the structure itself, some type of soundproofign material, and an additional central AC unit just for that room, and maybe even professional sound engineering or plans from I don't know where.
Am I crazy in thinking that I can do this for this amount of money or does anyone here think it is possible.
My Main concern is wanting to be able to play my drums and sing/scream from 12am-6am without getting the cops called on me or waking my son. If after that I can record well, that would be a huge bonus.
I was also thinking about the instrument section and then a control room, like a 20' x 10 x room total for both sections.

Thanks again in advance and I hope someone there can help me, or even direct me to blueprints or plans or I don't even know, but the interest rates are low enough for me to do this now and it's either now or never!

Thanks for any help, insight, and personal experience anyone can give.

Jim
 
Well, are you going to build a structure, or just work with an existing one?

Contrary to what alot of "studio types" say - you can easily soundproof a given area very cheaply (in comparison to professional material).

Some materials that stop sound excellently are padding from underneath carpeting - not just one layer, but a few.

Also, carpeting itself stops it very nicely.

If you know someone who lives in an apt. complex, go to the lobby and ask if they can give you the old material. I liv ein a small complex and at least once a week an entire apt. is redone and there's a truckload of carpet padding!!
 
Thanks for replying so fast, wow!

From what I have read, to build within a structure I am going to lose about 1 foot all around to accomodate the new frame for the room/insulation/soundproofing on studs and such, etc. I would only be able to do it in my garage then and would give me about 10'w x 14'L x 13' H. I don't know how much different building a room within a room or building an addition the size of a room onto a house would be, other than building permits and siding, but then again that's why I am here I guess, because I am not a carpenter or sound engineer. I don't mind shelling out for new stuff if it is going to do the job, but I just don't know what would do the job. It is so frustrating not knowign if you buy all this stuff if in the end your neighbors are going to hear you anyway, ya know!
Have you set up, or seen a home based studio that can keep the sound of acoustic drums in the room? I wonder if it can be done without buying a $30,000 modular soundproof box to shove inside an existing room. I have read of one that can brign a marching band to a muffle, but from that point on that doesnt account for how the music sounds.

What do you think?
 
From your first post, you are mostly interested in
sound proofing, to keep noise in. The key to
soundproofing is mass. Double walls, ceilings
and floors (box inside a box) work well,
but are expensive unless you can get relatives
to build it for you. Even the isolation hangers are not
cheap.

Rugs and padding work mostly on midrange
frequencies up. They don't do much for kick drum
and bass guitar.

The room you'd have left in the garage is too small
for serious drum recording. It will work for the rest
of the band, altho it will be hard to isolate the
guitar amps.

Before I spent 30 Gs, I'd do more than check one
board. I'd at least check all the recording oriented
boards and newgroups, subscribe to all the magazines,
etc.

Especially see Ethan Winer's at
http://www.recording.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=34

Square and rectangluar rooms are not ideal.
Serious studios have no parallel walls to build
standing waves. But designing them is not
trivial, I'd hire a pro for advice.
 
To be honest - your garage isn't nearly big enough for any sort of decent studio. You couldn't make a control and an iso room - it's just not going to be possible.

And you certainly couldn't fit drums in there with enough room. If you're looking to do something that serious - perhaps you should build something onto the home.

Your best and cheapest bet would be to take down a garage wall and make the garage larger.

The details involved are far to complicated to post here - even if I knew them all by heart. I posted recently asking for book titles for structural building a studio - so check out the thread when someone replies.

If you're serious enough to take a mortgage out I would suggest you do build an add-on and get it perpfect down to the beams.
 
Thanks!

There is no way I can afford to spend 30 g's anyway. 10 is the limit for me. Is it possible to make a regular 90 degree all around room and then use things within it to round it out? I am thinking of my houses resale value and I don't think people would like a ranch with a planetarium on the back.

The plan I came up with originally in my mind after reading that book by Jeff Cooper, is to build a room with sheetrock/insul/frame/soundproofing rubber type material on the frame/insul/sheetrock.
Concrete floor/rubber sprf material on top and floating floor for the kit.
Floating ceiling and an external ac unit with a maze of ductwork to keep the noise from getting in or going out.

To me that sounds very simple, and that is why I dont think it has a snowballs chance in hell for allowing me to play that late without bothering anyone.

Is there a directory of sound engineers/consultants that anyone knows of? I live in Toms River, New Jersey and haven't found anything in the yellowpages and have already called around to most of the studios around here where most of them claimed that they made their own studios themselves but didn't really care too much about the outside world as far as sound is concerned.

Thanks,
Jim
 
For the building requirements you should start here:
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

For the cost analysis; I'm currently building a 1200 sq. ft. studio where I'm doing a lot of the work myself, and sub-contracting things like the foundation, roofing, electrtical, and HVAC.

If you're going to do new construction, and do most of the work yourself, you're looking at around $45 - $55 per square foot. If you're going to modify an existing room, you're in the $35 - $40 per square foot range.

If you're giong to have a contractor build it for you - double those figures.

If $10,000 is your budget, and its new construction, you're looking at about a 200 sq. ft room - or something roughly the size of a single car garage.

If you're modifying an existing room, and $10,000 is your budget, then you're in the very small 2 car garage sized room.

And those are just construction costs. You'll still need to treat the interior of the room, acoustically.

The point is:
Studio construction is not like home construction. The associated costs with obtaining adequate sound transmission losses can make the overall price increase considerably.

I would start off by planning for the 200 sq. ft room you mentioned (although, that seems small for a dedicated control room, live room and iso.

Visit the SAE site, have a look at some of the smaller designs on there, and re-think your construction budget.
Have fun with it, good luck, and keep us posted.
 
Thanks for the advice!

If by iso you mean isolation room, I am not looking to have one of those. Just a room where everyone plays, either all together or one at a time, and the room to record it. I just measured the space outside where I would like to put it and it can be 12' wide by as long as my yard, but I woudl like to keep it at 20'. The garage studio 2 on the SAE site looks like what I want with a much smaller control room.
Other than having a cool place to play all day and night, my time is a big factor in building this thing since it is hard enough to find time to cut the grass sometimes, it is infinitely harder to drive to a studio however far away to jam out.

Once again I really appreciate all the feedback so far, I wasn't imagining it so fast!
Jim
 
You say you don't want an iso room - but you want "room to play" and a "room to record".

Well, if the room to record is not ISOLATED from the play room, what's the point in having two rooms?

thelivingexampl said:
Thanks for the advice!

If by iso you mean isolation room, I am not looking to have one of those. Just a room where everyone plays, either all together or one at a time, and the room to record it. I just measured the space outside where I would like to put it and it can be 12' wide by as long as my yard, but I woudl like to keep it at 20'. The garage studio 2 on the SAE site looks like what I want with a much smaller control room.
Other than having a cool place to play all day and night, my time is a big factor in building this thing since it is hard enough to find time to cut the grass sometimes, it is infinitely harder to drive to a studio however far away to jam out.

Once again I really appreciate all the feedback so far, I wasn't imagining it so fast!
Jim
Click to expand...
 
I was under the impression that the control room needed to be soundproofed and seperated from any room in which you would be recording. My first thought before reading or seeing anyones studios on here was to just have one huge room that is soundproofed and have my recording gear in the back to record whatever we are playing at the time. The control room being seperate made sense because if I decided to have people record individually, I figured all that had to be done is for everyone to clear out of the studio and into the control room as to not add extra noise into the recording.
When I looked at the Garage Studio 2 diagram, that looks to me only like a studio and a control room and I didn't see any iso room. Maybe I am mistaken in what I think an iso room is, I don't know(drummers are not so swift) j/k to all the drummers out there cursing at their monitor for another dumb drummer joke.
 
Last edited:
You mean THIS plan?:


Garage%202.gif


That's a good plan. It would make a nice little studio! With your budget, it could work out nicely for you. And yes, you could use the studio as an iso(lation) booth.
 
I'm in the same boat. I'm thinking about using half of my garage and would love isolation but because of the size available (lack of) just go with one large recording/live room.

Do you think two 1/8 dual glaze sliders would be sufficient in the plan Michael posted? Do you think you could hear the drums through the monitors while recording good enough? Home depot has them for 300 bucks a piece.

Any tips for air conditioning in this plan?

Thanks,
Chad
 
I'm using a set of 2 double glazed sliders in my studio to separate the drum room from the control room.
But they're $600 each at Home Depot, not $300?

The main thing on sliders is that they have seals that kind of overlap each other where the sliding door meets the stationary door. They sort of "hook into each other".

pic6_CRright.jpg


The glazing in these sliders are 3/8" and 1/4". I think you would be dissappointed with 1/8" glazing.
 
Looking great Mike. Yeah, your sliders are much nicer than the all vinyl sliders I looked at. If I do go with isolation maybe I will just build a window fixed window.
 
You may as well forget it, is what they're trying to tell you. If you can't do it right no sense in bothering at all.

Anyway, for people on budgets, here's what is critical for your garage: a control room and a live room. Your control room could be the addition on to the garage, say a modest 8x10 room, which by Michael Jones' calculations would cost roughly $4000.

The interior of the garage would require a simple sub-floor and a new frame interior. That's a couple of hundred bucks. Double up on the 1/2" drywall (which, curiously, is the cheapest available at Home Despot). You could do resiliant channels but I'm not convinced they're necessary if you're: A)on a budget, and B)able to find a creative solution (of which there are many). For a 10x14 space, the drywall would cost roughly $240.

This leaves a lot of cash left over for the ceiling, doors, finishing, and treatment. It would also allow you to build some movable walls that you could use to isolate things instead of wasting time, space, and money on a separate booth.

I suggest reading everything again, thinking about your budget, and using a little brain power and creativity to get the most out of your money.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top