Basement studio help

[jklein]

Hi, newbie here. Nice site, saw some good info on home studio ideas so I'm looking for ideas on mine. I've got an unfinished side of a finished basement (door to unfinished side). Basically as you walk in your on the leftish side of a 20x16 foot room, with an 'L' extension around the right corner of about 10x10 feet. So the far wall as you walk in is 20', left wall is 16', right wall is 25' (goes back around the right to the 10x10' section.

I have a basic drum set, keyboards, combo guitar amp, and keyboard amp for equipment. For recording I have a Yamaha MG-16, AMD computer with Cool Edit Pro 2, and a stereo receiver and small monitor speakers for playback. It's been used as a practice area for my son's band and me fiddling around, but we're looking to arrange it for recording as well.

It's an underground basement with concrete walls on all sides except for the inner walls (metal studs, sheetrock). Ceilings are about 7 foot in the main area, 8 foot in the 'around the corner' area. I've already got 2-3" foil backed insulation nailed to the concrete walls (there when I bought the house) and installed 8" paper backed insulation in the above rafters in the larger area (2x10" rafters). I haven't done the corner area yet, lots of AC ducting to get around. I've got a LOT of pink egg carton packing foam from work (about 2" in 18x18" squares) and a fair amount of pressed paper real egg carton racks (about same size as foam ones). I've also got some thicker 6" eggcarton packing foam that's more rectangular in shape to use.

Anyone got any good ideas on arrangements? I've searched the net but most ideas deal with square rooms.

Thanks,
Jeff K

 

[knightfly]

Jeff, a lot of people (including me) have a hard time visualizing a space from verbal descriptions - if you could do a basic drawing in Paint, labeling walls/doors/water heaters, etc, it would probably get you more answers. Also, if you have an idea of what may be wrong with your space, throw that out there too. I'll take a wild guess and say it's "boomy" - concrete walls don't give much, so bass doesn't tend to go away very well...

You also didn't mention if you're trying to isolate your basement from the upper living area, or just make it sound good enough to record.

The more info you give, the better we can "butt in"... :=) Steve

 

[87PRS]

ba-ba-ba-butt-in...that 10X10 sounds like a good drum room area, if walled off and treated right. Like Steve said, you'd have to give the forum a better "picture" or drawing for anyone to help you out. Looks to me like you've got a good space to work with. Ralph

 

[jklein]

Hmmm...I'm starting to realize that now. I'll start work on a drawring (as Simon says) and post it today.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[John Sayers]

Is this it Jeff??

cheers
john

 

[Richard Monroe]

JKlein- photos would be good too, along with a layout. They are worth 1000 words, they say. Don't count on packing foam to do much. It is usually much lower density than acoustic foam.-Richie

 

[jklein]

Here's a picture of how I've got it set up now. There's a bunch of stuff stored behind the mixer table right now; a big nautilus gym that I hope to move out into the finished side with the (also unused) bowflex and a huge amount of egg crate pink packing foam I've been saving from work over the last 2 years. I've really got an unlimited supply of that...sure it won't do _any_ good <G>? I could call my studio 'The Pink Room', haha!

Actually, we'd probably call it 'The Dark Side' if anything...our kids used to refer to the unfinished side of the basement as 'the dark side' since those lights didn't get turned on by any switches in the finished basement side, so they'd have to 'brave the dark' to get to the pull-string light bulb fixtures if they needed anthing back there <G>.

Jeff

 

[jklein]

Hmmm...let's try that picture attachment thingy again...server was busy.