Building My First Recording Space

[Jasonpl]

Hi. Glad to be here.

I am moving into a new house & luckily there is an extra room outside (use to be a garage, but is now closed in). I want to make that my music room so I can practice & record.

Basicly, I am looking for someone to tell me what to do with it.

From how should I thicken the walls (they are pretty thin right now) to should I install wall plates to my mixer, etc. (to make it easier)

I currently have the Fostex recorder (red one...$300) & a ber. mixer.
I am also open to using my computer to run sound and all.

I am just looking for an inexpensive way to get this room set up.

The main stuff I will record is acoustic guitar mic'd with the condenser mic I have or recorded straight thru. Plus vocals & maybe a little light percussion.

Hope I am not too confusing. I am typing this in a hurry.
Looking to stay between $500-$1000.
I live in Louisiana, USA

Thanks
jpleonard@cox-internet.com

 

[DDev]

Probably the best advice for starters is to point you to a site that goes through a ton of stuff related to studio design and construction. Read it first, think about what applies to what you want to do, then ask more questions. Everyone here is very helpful, but we all want to make sure you have done your homework first before we start helping with design issues.

The site you shoud go to first is:

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

Darryl.....

 

[dwillis45]

The main stuff I will record is acoustic guitar mic'd with the condenser mic I have or recorded straight thru. Plus vocals & maybe a little light percussion.

It looks like one of the biggest challenges you face will be sound isolation. Condeser mics tend to pick up a lot of ambient noise even when you are close-micing an acoustic instrument. And as you will soon learn, it's expensive to achieve good sound isolation since that involves large amounts of mass between you and the outside world. With that in mind, I would listen to the space as it exists now to determine potential sound isolation issues. Listen for road noise, noisy neighbors, dogs, wildlife, airplane sounds, landscapers, airconditioning compressors, water/pool pumps, etc. Or take your Fostex MR8 and a condeser mic out to the room and listen with a set of headphones.