L
laptoppop
Musical Technogeek
20x20 is actually a good size for a student -- it corresponds to a typical 2 car garage. As such, there are some decent plans on John Sayer's SAE (!) recording manual, as well as some plans that have been discussed here and on his website's forum.
A lot of the construction costs depend on if you are having it built, or if you build it yourself. My one-room tiny studio probably cost about 5K for construction costs (not equipment, just sound and acoustic treatments). If a good contractor does it, it can easily run $200. per square foot - oops! there's 80,000 right off the bat! By scaling back and cutting down, maybe $100 per sq. foot -- its very site specific, so its hard to say. If its a thought excercise, then assume big thick concrete walls so you don't have to soundproof from outside to save $.
I guess for a paper, I'd allocate 1/2 to construction and 1/2 to equipment. For $50,000 you can go a couple of different ways. You can have a darn good used 2" analog tape connected to a mixing console, or you can have a darn good computer based workstation connected to a control surface. I *love* my high end PC (about $3K), running Sonar ($800), with 2 Aardvark Direct pro interfaces ($1K) and Mackie Control surface ($1k). That leaves you about $44K for outboard gear and a good selection of microphones.
Just some thoughts,
-lee-
A lot of the construction costs depend on if you are having it built, or if you build it yourself. My one-room tiny studio probably cost about 5K for construction costs (not equipment, just sound and acoustic treatments). If a good contractor does it, it can easily run $200. per square foot - oops! there's 80,000 right off the bat! By scaling back and cutting down, maybe $100 per sq. foot -- its very site specific, so its hard to say. If its a thought excercise, then assume big thick concrete walls so you don't have to soundproof from outside to save $.

I guess for a paper, I'd allocate 1/2 to construction and 1/2 to equipment. For $50,000 you can go a couple of different ways. You can have a darn good used 2" analog tape connected to a mixing console, or you can have a darn good computer based workstation connected to a control surface. I *love* my high end PC (about $3K), running Sonar ($800), with 2 Aardvark Direct pro interfaces ($1K) and Mackie Control surface ($1k). That leaves you about $44K for outboard gear and a good selection of microphones.
Just some thoughts,
-lee-