small garage studio needs some advice!

[badegg]

The walls of this space are all sheet rock with plain old insulation on the inside of that.

I want to record(mainly)
-vocals
-drum kit (4 mics)
-guitar
-bass

musical styles?
anywhere from rock to jazz to soul


**I would be using a mainly DAW based studio with some odd end controllers


now, not all of those will be recorded at the same time as I dont have the money or the mics, but if you were to try and set up this room to best suit the prerequisites i have listed above what would they be?


-which room would you put your control room in?
-where would you set up your computer and how you face your monitors?
-where would you build a vocal booth?
-acoustic treatment?

thanks any help will do

my budget= around $500, I have the help of a carpenter so construction prices will be excluded only material for acoustics and building the vocal booth


**also no worry about neighbors or soundproofing**

 

[audio_leak]

i doubt your going to be able to treat both rooms, properly at least, for $200

the room thats wider is going to be a better sounding room, so it depends on if your going to be mixing ALOT, or mainly just recording and a little bit of mixing.

if your one of those guys who spend days on the mix, your going to want your control room to be the best sounding room you can do with that budget.

if you are just doing hiphop or some simple acoustic/vocal track and your main goal is to record, do some quick mixing then upload it to the internet for fun, promotion ect.

OR!!!!

you plan on tracking full bands, tracking drum kits, ect.

build the larger room as your "vocal/live iso booth" even though really it will just be a well treated room.

as far as treatment advice

its really going to be all based on what your goals from this are

-what instruments are going to be played inside the recording area of your room
-how loud is the sound going to get
-are there neighbours, family members close by or next door, this will require maybe extra or maybe different treatment to that wall in particular
-what the problem areas of your room (is it too bassy, or are the high freq. causing havok)

you need to ask yourself all these questions and more, and then more again

consider your equipment, were everybody is going to be sitting if you have 5 people recording at once, is your budget AND your studio planning on upgrading again from this $200 worth of treatment or is that all you want to spend

provide some more information, and actual pictures of inside your room if you can and ill do my best to help you out. there is a few other people here who know more about acoustics that will be willing to lend a hand, you just have to take the time to type out the proper information for us to help you. just by looking at that sketchup picture and making 3 dot points what you need wont get you too much help around here.


to start you off, BASS TRAP THE CORNERS! this is always where i would start especially with your rooms being on the "smaller" side.

a quote your going to run into again and again with acoustics is
"you can never have enough bass traps"
literally!

search google for DIY acoustic treatment, basstraps, gobos, baffles, broadband absorbers, ect ect.

post up some more details!

 

[Weasel9992]

Use the larger room for mixing, the smaller room for tracking. From there, do all of the following (or as much as you can):

• Make sure you setup so that you’re firing down the longest dimension of the room.
• Your head should be placed 38% of the way into the room, centered between the left and right walls
• Your head should also be located at the tip of an equilateral triangle with your speakers. Start at a 5’ width and go from there.
• Use at least 4” bass trapping in all the corners, floor to ceiling if possible.
• Use 4” or 6” bass traps on the back wall; the thicker the better basically.
• Use 4” panels behind the speakers on the front wall
• The reflection points to the right, left and above your head can be treated with either 2” or 4” panels. I prefer 4” panels personally; you can never really overdo bass trapping.
• In the case of larger rooms you can use diffusion on the right and left walls near the rear of the room, between your bass traps on the back wall or on the ceiling to the rear of your ceiling panels.


Frank