Need your help in designing my mini studio!

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says

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Hi All,

I am planning to set up my mini recording studio in my garage. The requirement is to have at least three vocal booths and a control room. Within the available space here is the tentative layout which I came up with.

Studio_Layout.webp

I have the following questions regarding this layout:

1. Is this layout acoustically acceptable for a studio with 3 vocal booths and a control room?
2. What would be the ideal height for the studio ceiling for this layout?
3. I plan to use acoustic gypsum ceiling and walls which have Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) = 0.80. This would save me from having to add additional studio foams on the walls for high frequency absorption. However, I would need to have a bass trap somewhere in the control room. I was planning to have it between the ceiling and the wall behind the work station in the control room (this is the only way I can have it in the current layout :) ). Do you think this would be sufficient to treat the low freq issues?

Looking forward to your expert advises...

Thank you,
Says
 
Not to be crude, but what is everyone's obsession with vocal booths? In a small place like this, they'll likely all sound just BAD. Even having just one vocal booth in this small space would be a waste of space imo. So let alone 1 booth, but 3?! :eek:

Seriously though, I just want to know, is there a reason you're wanting this many rooms for separation? Think about the majority of the tracks you'll be recording. Is the main use of your studio going to be having 3 sources being recorded at the same time? And if so, for what purpose? If it's for that "live" feel, you won't get it with this much isolationn. You'd be best off using the entire space and having some wheelable (or carryable) freestanding gobos for separation, as needed. But if you're like most modern home studios, you'll likely be recording most things one at a time.

I'd suggest having it all in one space, with no walls separating anything (not even for control desk). Maybe some sort of curtain you could draw during tracking if you want that privacy, but I think if you even made just 2 separate rooms (control/tracking), you'd still be very claustrophobic and have a hell of a time with acoustics and listening problems in both rooms.

If you absolutely must have at least a control room and a tracking room, have the first right half be your tracking room, then a door leading to the control room on left side. Put the door (on the separating wall) so that it won't be right next to one of your ears in the listening position, but further back behind you where fewer reflections are. The reason I suggest the tracking room right when you walk in, is so your clients (or bandmates) can easily load their gear straight into the tracking room and keep it there, rather than having to go through the control room or THREE booths.

Sorry about the rant. Just my two cents for what they're worth! :o

Good luck!
 
RecordingMaster said:
Not to be crude, but what is everyone's obsession with vocal booths? In a small place like this, they'll likely all sound just BAD.!
Click to expand...
Agreed. I think people read "vocal BOOTH" and think "telephone BOOTH". You're much better off recording in a bigger room. Vocal booths in pro studios are the size of most people's whole recording area. The more you split up your garage, the less chance you'll get good recordings and mixes.
 
yup...:)
And the dimensions of the whole room (no booths) look like it'd work fine.
If'n it were me, I'd put my desk at one of the short ends with my back to the length, letting the monitors fire down the length of the room. Just bring the desk in from the wall a couple or 3 feet...just not right up against the short wall.

As to the height, the most you can get outta it. ;)

Then I'd start with bass traps in all 4 wall corners and go from there on what other treatment you'll need. I wouldn't worry too much about taming the mid to high frequencies at this point. Bass freqs are strong as hell and will be the ones you wanna tackle first.
Start with some good traps in the corners. I made some "superchunks" for mine and it made a very nice difference.
After the bass traps, then go for some spot treatment like gobo placement where needed.
peace-n-shit.
:D
 
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on my plan. I guess I was expecting a little too much of the available space. However, I do have a valid reason for having at least a 2 tracking rooms set up for the kind of music I am going to record. I would be recording more of Indian classical music which has a lot of tempo changes during the song. In other words, the vocals would be recorded live along with percussion instruments without using any metronome for recording. Having said that there is one other thing which I need to bring to all your notice. The percussion instruments used for Indian classical have relatively low decibel levels which makes me feel we can confine these sounds within a room with proper sound proofing. In fact even the vocals (unless we have a singer with exceptionally loud voice ;)) and the other instruments too would have very low decibel levels in this form of music.

May be I am being too ambitious to expect too many rooms out of the available space. But if I decide to go with one tracking room, is there a way to record both the vocal and a percussion instrument in the same room without having to compromise too much on the track quality? May be using some of the movable partitions may do the trick as told by RecordingMaster.. Can someone throw more light on what materials to be used for these partitions and how they should be designed and used ?

Thank you.
 
"But if I decide to go with one tracking room, is there a way to record both the vocal and a percussion instrument in the same room without having to compromise too much on the track quality?"

Sure.
Use dynamics.

Close mic everything and don't worry about bleed. With dynamics, and the fact that the percussion and vocals will be lower decibals, the bleed will be damn near nada.
Plus ya have the added bonus factor of a bigger (presumably acoustically tamed) room.

;)
 
Or you could try my idea of at least having a control and a tracking room. Split right down the middle, so your control room is as big as your tracking room. You don't want to compromise the control room's size, seeing as the smaller it is, the worse your acoustics and listening situation will be in there (so I have read). So if you soundproofed either the control room, tracking room, or both, then you could have the singer track his/her vocals in the control room wearing headphones so they can hear the isolated percussion player in the other room. You'd most likely get best results out of having at least the vocals the isolated track, if you had to choose ONE. So if other instruments, like sitars or what have you, are being tracked with the drums, just use the partitions/gobos for separation. With your instruments, a little bleed ok as mentioned by Dogbreath, especially with the very "organic" sound of most Indian music.

To make these gobos, just look up how to make your own bass traps. Once you make a few of those in the dimenisons youi prefer, make some little feet for them or install some locking wheels on the bottom so you can easily move them around. You'll probably want them at least 6" thick if you expect them to stand on wheels with no other balance/support.

A cool thing you can do to make gobos is find some old use office partitions (you know, what they use to form cubicle walls in office buildings), or you could buy new if you felt like spending the cash. I found TONS at the Habitat for Humanity store here in Windsor. It's a second hand store that gets all types of materials from foreclosed businesses and homes. Doors, windows, bath tubs, counters, and yes, office partitions! You need to take them apart and stuff as much medium to high destiny foam or insulation inside them. Close them, back up and they're already free standing, so you're good to go. They make the half-heights or the full heights. I find the half heights do fine for most applications like separating amps and sit-down instruments. The full height ones are good for sectioning off a drum set.

Good luck. Do post pics once you start/finish building!
 
Thanks a ton RecordingMaster and Dogbreath for your valuable inputs!!

I need to sort out a few plumbing issues in my garage before I can start this project.:o The idea is to keep the area free of moisture from any water sources. I should be starting with the studio work once this is done in a couple of weeks. Will surely post the updates once it is done.

Best Regards,
Says
 
No problem. Make sure you plan out the ventilation as well.
 
Please do post updates and your key learning, pictures etc. on this project. when I have some time and money I am planning to do similar project in my basement to record Indian vocal/instrumental classical music.

Best wishes
 
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