"Blank slate" room - where to begin?

[apwwest59]

Hi all,

First time posting here. There is a ton of great info here and I have been reading through it with great interest, and I apologize if I am covering something that has been discussed many times before.

My situation is this: I am buying a house (it is currently under contract and will very likely close within the next few weeks), and I have selected a room which I plan on building out as a combined mixing, tracking, and rehearsal space. I don't want to go the route of building out a separate control and tracking room because I don't think the space is big enough to do that (and also I would prefer to minimize the construction).

What I am working with is an unfinished basement room that comes off the back of a drive under garage. The room is 19 x 14 and the ceilings are somewhere in the neighborhood of 8.5-9 feet, although I haven't measured. Currently, the room is completely unfinished, with 3 sides concrete block and 1 side that I will be finishing out with drywall and adding a door. I can post a couple of pics if this would be helpful.

My question is, when I begin this project, what are the primary things I should be keeping in mind, as this is a "blank slate" and I can really do whatever I like with the space? I am planning on going the route of DIY absorber panels on the walls using Owens-Corning (or something similar), DIY bass traps in all 4 corners, more panels hanging from the ceiling, and potentially some DIY diffusors.

Using my very rudimentary knowledge, I believe the rectangular shape of the room to be fairly decent, as well as the overall size. Other than that I don't really know how suitable of a room this is, or how suitable it could be made to be, so I was hoping to draw on some of the knowledge here to develop a basic game plan in terms of building out this space.

Thanks in advance for your replies!

-Alex

 

[Btyre2013]

I'm not an acoustician but a lot of people who know more than me will tell you that the bigger the room the better, from what I know the ratio of the room is very important, so the relationship between length width and height, ideally you want a rectangular room as well not square and non parallel surfaces to help prevents modes from building up. Seeing as it's your own house and room you have the freedom of building your own space from scratch, then why not build a room within a room?

 

[JimmyS1969]

Unfinished under garage? I assume you mean the garage is not above you. Is that even possible?

Anyway, if the basement ceiling is unfinished, then I would look into one of the threads here about treating that. If you need some isolation from above (not complete), add some density to the subfloor above from below. a couple layers of drywall will help a bit. Then stuff the voids with fluffy pink stuff and cover with cloth. Forget the ceiling clouds. Keep the space as large as possible. Unless you have need for total isolation, just worry about the sound of the room itself.

As far as the space being large enough to build a separate control room, naw, you are correct there. Keep the room the size it is. It may be beneficial to at least treat a room correctly for at least guitar amp isolation while you have the chance. You will be best doing vocals in the control room. I still do even though I have another 13X24' drum room.

What do you plan to record in this space?

 

[apwwest59]

Ha, no what I mean by drive-under garage is basically that half of the basement is a garage. Both garage and future music room sit directly on the slab. Isolation will not be a significant concern as I am the only occupant of the house.

Is there a reason to skip on the 'ceiling clouds' (this refers to absorption panels hung from the ceiling, correct?)? I have read that treating the ceiling can be beneficial for a tracking room.

When you say "It may be beneficial to at least treat a room correctly for at least guitar amp isolation while you have the chance" - do you mean boxing off part of the room to be used as an iso booth for amps? Or what?

In terms of what I will be recording, it will be a demo studio for the music projects I am involved in, which are in the alternative/indie rock vein, with vocals, electric guitars, bass, and acoustic drums. My understanding is that drums are the most affected by the room. I want something that will sound at least decent/neutral for recording drums, and a room where I will have a good environment for mixing, as I will be doing much more of that than anything else.

Thanks again for the replies.

 

[JimmyS1969]

It would be best to show a layout of the whole basement. What I meant by isolation room for guitars, is if you have extra space outside of the main room to add such a thing. It is one thing to have to record drums in the control room. That in itself is a pain in the ass. If you have the space to section off another area outside of your control room, you would be able to at least get amps running loud without having to wear ear protection with earbuds in them for guitar recording. I have been there. Drums in control room is bad enough, but it is more of a pain in the ass trying to get a good guitar tone without isolating an amp to some degree.

Hell, some guys put a speaker in a freezer. lol. If you have the space and ability to build, think in advance.

Thus why I am curious as to what the actual layout is in your new basement. There may be options. I can't give any more than that without details or pics of the space.

 

[apwwest59]

That is a good point. I probably would not have considered that until it was too late! I pulled down a copy of the property record from the county website and done some crude annotation on it to give you an idea for the layout of the basement. The area I will be converting is the orange-ish area on the left. The black bars represent the stairs. Currently, some of that area is taken up by the water heater and part of the HVAC system, but I think there may be enough room to build in a decent iso box, at least big enough for a 2x12 cabinet. The dashed blue line above the stairs is where I will put the door, and the rest of that wall under the stairs will be drywall. The other 3 walls are concrete block. The garage is a 2-car, and the cars enter from the right. The purple area labeled "C" is a patio with no basement level under it. The base of the stairs is at the bottom of the photo.

 

[apwwest59]

 

[mjbphotos]

Are you going to be recording others or whole band set-ups in the room? If its just yourself tracking and playing, then isolation of drums and amp from control room is not really an issue. Also on the amps - how LOUD do you put your amps, that too is a factor.
I wouldn't advise dividing up that size room any further. Use movable/stackable traps to semi-isolate things as needed.

 

[apwwest59]

I would only be recording 1 instrument at a time, although it will not always be me. I don't use super high wattage amps, but even an AC30 driven to the point of getting some good dirty tones can be pretty dang loud, so building out a little iso box under the stairs is seeming like a decent idea since there isn't really any other way I could use the space anyway.

 

[mjbphotos]

If you want truly loud amp miking, then by all means build an amp isolation box, but don't put up a wall across your room to isolate the control section from the rest for recording drums or amps. Just not enough space to make that practical.

 

[apwwest59]

Gotcha. Yeah, I sorta figured that dividing up the room would not be the best move. Do you think the room is big enough to get decent drum sounds (with proper bass-trapping and wall treatment of course)?

I think I remember reading somewhere that hard floor + treated ceiling was the way to go for a room you are going to record drums in.. Any truth to that, or should I be putting down rugs on the floor?

I will post a couple of pictures of the room for further reference (I know, not very pretty right now, and I am going to take care of the water intrusion evident from the pictures before starting the build-out).

 

[apwwest59]

 

[JimmyS1969]

With that limited space and all of the ventilation and plumbing going on I would make the best use of the space by treating the walls and ceiling and go with framed panels and cloth covering everywhere (if you care that it look nice). Keep the floor concrete and stuff the ceiling with pink stuff. You will also save money by gluing panels to the concrete block at first reflection points from your monitoring position. No need to make fancy looking bass traps, just support frames then continue the cloth wall over them. I would however make sure to use fire retardant cloth or treat it though. That could go up really quick with a electrical short or spilled ashtray.

Anyway, that is what I would do with the space on a budget. You may have other ideas. Another more expensive and more safe/attractive idea would be to do slats of wood with gaps between them for the absorption behind.

If you have some cash to pay someone for professional advice, I would totally recommend JH Brandt (also a member here as I am sure you have seen now and again) to give you detailed design plans. Google him and email. He will give you an honest estimate and advice as to what the room would benefit from the most.

 

[mjbphotos]

Start small, good suggestions from Jimmy. You don't want to be enclosing/hiding all the HVAC/plumbing stuff because if it ever needs to be accessed, you'd be ripping all your work out to get to it.

 

[apwwest59]

Yeah, good point. I wasn't planning on covering anything up for that reason (and because its a good bit of work). I might try to lift that main PVC line up closer to the ceiling, but thats all.

In terms of looks, it doesn't need to be fancy or nice looking, just clean and functional. I will clean up the concrete and paint the walls to make it look a little less depressing, and add some more lighting but thats about it aesthetically. For acoustic treatment this was my plan: create some detached panels using OC703 or similar (not sure what size, maybe something like 4w x 6h) and hanging them a couple of inches off the wall from cable attached to the joists. I would also build corner bass traps using the "super chunk" triangle design for all 4 corners. I will attach a layout "blueprint".

For the back wall, should I consider a DIY diffusor? Or just more absorption? (the yellow box).

Does this look like a reasonable amount of treatment or should I be doing more/less?

 

[apwwest59]

 

[mjbphotos]

that looks like a good start, don't forget the ceiling cloud panels, too.

 

[apwwest59]

Here is a close-to-scale layout, using 4' x 6' panels of 2" fiberglass board. The green dashed lines are placement of ceiling clouds (although that may not be totally possible due to HVAC). I am coming from an environment where I am doing my mixing in a totally untreated room. Along the lines of the 80/20 rule, how much of the way is this going to get me?

There is a shop locally where I can get OC 703 for $75 for a box of six 24" x 48" x 2" panels. My estimation for the amount of fiberglass I am going to need plus fabric and wood puts this at about $1200-1500 all in. Seems like a lot, but in the big picture I guess it isn't that much to pay to have a good sounding room I can actually use to track stuff in.

 

[JimmyS1969]

Here are some pix of what I did in my drum/guitar room. Again, the whole ceiling is filled with insulation. In my case Roxul 80. I found out later that fluffy would have likely performed as well, but the nice thing about the Roxul is that it is stiff enough to cut 1/2" over the opening size and it holds itself up. Over two years of recording in there and no sag. There would be no need for a ceiling cloud by doing it this way. The hanging panels are 4"x2'x4' Roxul 80 panels hung 6" off the walls. No corner traps in this room as it is only for recording and I found it not needed after I performed this treatment. The panels are just office dividers that I hung at angles from the ceiling to tame reflections off the walls behind them which are about 8' behind them.

 

[JimmyS1969]

You can get double the amount of Roxul 80 for the same price as the OC703 by the way. Performance is not much better with the 703. It is much 'stiffer' though.