frederic
New member
I’ve been skimming this BBS for a while now, and I’m starting to see similarity between the questions, so I thought it might be useful (maybe not?) if I put some of the studio construction knowledge I have together in one place, and ship it off to the group. Realize of course, my below comments are subjective, and your mileage/success may vary. My goal of this document is not to suggest how to build a perfect studio, but rather a lower-cost alternative. I’ve come to learn over the years that the last 5% or 10% of “perfection” tends to cost more than half of the budget. To me, I can live with 5% or 10% “incorrectness” and put my cash into new equipment
Location:
Its not uncommon (in fact, it’s the norm) for home studios to be “wedged” into available space, even if less desirable than other locations. Where possible, try to choose spaces keeping the following in mind:
1. The larger the facility, the more comfortable it is to work in, and remember in a studio, generally your walls are thicker, especially with 3” foam attached!
2. Sunlight generally promotes more creativity, as people aren’t nocturnal moles. Make basement windows a little larger, or in lofts, use skylights and such if you can.
3. Fresh, constant temperature air is important for vocalists. Try to keep the air a little humid, a little cool, but constant is more important.
Floating Floors:
A floating floor isolates the “usable” floor from the structure, which reduces vibrations from the rest of the facility from entering the control room/recording rooms through floor joist transmission, and vice versa. Constructing a floater is really not that difficult, here is how to do it on the cheap.
1. Starting in one corner of the room, mark every 1’ along all the walls. Then, draw on the floor, a 1’x1’ grid, using these marks as your guide.
2. Everywhere the vertical lines intersect the horizontal lines, including along the perimeters of the room (wall lines), mount a rubber puck using chaulk, hot glue, or other adhesive between the puck and the existing floor. DO NOT NAIL or STAPLE! Pucks are easily constructed out of one-half thick tire treads. Junkyards love to give away tires on the cheap because they PAY to get rid of them. A typical tire can make 25-30 or so pucks, so you can count intersections and divide by 25 and determine how many tires you need. Only use the tread, the sidewalls aren’t very useful.
3. After all your pucks are glued to the floor, you can start cutting down 2x4’s for one direction (horizontal or vertical). Caulk/Glue these to the pucks. Then, cut smaller sections of 2x4’s to fit in the other direction, between the longer 2x4’s.
4. At this point, you should have a 2” high floor grid. One-half inch for the tire tread pucks, and 1.5”thickness for the 2x4’s. A sidenote – None of the 2x4’s should touch the wall, but rather be approximately one-half inch from said walls. On top of this 2x4”grid, you can attach plywood and then the surface of your choice, be it carpet, hardwood, office floor tile, etc. For a little extra bass absorption, feel free to slap rockwool in within the gridwork you’ve completed in step 3.
Walls:
Concrete walls are the toughest, because they are difficult to nail furring strips to. Because you do not desire parallel walls, you should consider framing an angled wall in front of the concrete, using a heavy wood like a douglass fir 2x4 or 2x6. For building a wall between two rooms, use a 2x6 or 2x8 as the wall sill (bottom plate), and nail 2x4 studs 16” apart flush on one side, and in between those studs (8”) nail studs on the other side. This way, the wall is “open” in between the two rooms, and you have an air chamber that will help isolate the rooms. If the wall is constructed normally, you’ll have bass transmission through the wall. Fill the wall with rock wool or something like that if you wish, then cover with sheet rock. The green sheetrock for showers is better because its denser. The denser the material, the less audio transmission it will do, if attached securely. Before applying sheetrock or MDF or the greenboard, put caulk up the sides of the 2x4’s so the board seals and prevent air leaks.
Glass:
Glass should be safety glass – don’t even consider using anything else. Mount within the window area, two panes of glass. Make sure the glass is “floating” on a rubber or neoprene sill, all around the glass, so any vibrations are not transmitted to the wall. This is easily constructed by making a 1”x1” square wooden rod down the length of the window in the center of the wall, then affix the windows on the front and back of this internal frame. Caulk well, and seal it up airtight. It would be even better if the 1x1” square wooden rod is actually planed as to make the two windows not parallel. 1” on one side, 2” on the other, for example.
Electrical:
I cannot stress enough for a larger studio, how you have it on its own breaker(s). Air conditioner noise, the beer fridge and other items with motors and/or light dimmers will create hum, and sensitive analog equipment will pick it up and insert it into your mixing equipment. Nasty. Put all the “noisy” stuff on one breaker, and your studio on another (or several) breakers. Make sure all the outlets are grounded properly for noise reduction and safety reasons.
Wiring:
Audio wiring can be a pain in the butt. You have several choices, the first being you can purchase pre-made quarter inch snakes (or Elco, RCA, etc depending on your equipment) and install them directly between your equipment. You can expand on this by inserting patch bays next to the equipment, and next to the console table. If the equipment is in the console table area, then you may not need so many patch bays.
If you choose to wire it yourself, i.e. put racks of gear “way over there” away from your console table, more than likely you’ll be soldering. Use a CL-2 cable, and preferably use balanced (TRS) cable, with soldered patch bays both sides. The advantage of running all the cable balanced, is if you need unbalanced, you simply use unbalanced patch chords. But if you wired it unbalanced, you are missing the extra conductor, and can never run balanced audio through it. And if you try to do so, your signal level is reduced and you get more noise TRS cabling is a fraction more expensive than unbalanced snake cabling. Solder well, and try not to heat the wires too much as not to burn/melt/disfigure the insulation. Label everything!
Vocal Booths:
These can be constructed like any other room, or you can make the walls out of more interesting designs. The vocal booth I’m building will be constructed of aluminum rectangular “poles” with MDF panels screwed to it. Caulking as usual, and between the wood panels and the aluminum poles I’ll have rubber strips for isolation. Screw it down tightly! This method allows the walls to be thinner, rather than the usual 4-6” thick. In addition, since the wall is sealed, before the top is sealed shut, ordinary “play sand” will be poured into the walls to make it heavy and vibration free. The only outlet in the vocal booth is in the floor, as are the two XLR connectors that run underfloor to the console table’s patch bay.
Ceilings:
Plaster, sheetrock, greenboard, and even plywood can be used. Here is a cheapo trick to acoustical dispersion: Paint the ceiling (and walls) with “sand paint”, available at any paint store, and instead of stroking the paint with a brush as one normally would, use the wide side of the brush, and smack the sand paint on. This will result in an interesting, non-repeatable texture which will in turn act as a basic acoustical disperser. Sound reflections coming off such surfaces will be diffused and dispersed, which helps reduce standing waves. On top of this surface, you can attach your chosen acoustical foam, but I’d recommend using 2x2’ squares of the foam, seperating them by 6” or so, thus mixing absorption and dispersing (by exposing the odd-ball surfaced sandpaint.
Acoustics:
Before purchasing one piece of foam, walk around the room with the doors shut (do this for each room), and clap your hands loud. Move your head around to different areas, and listen for “slap echos”. These are standing waves, and will be a problem. If you are near walls when this clapping creates a slap echo, that’s where you want to put acoustical foam.
Bass tends to hover in corners, especially in line with the subwoofer (floors usually), so make sure you wad up something in these corners. While you can buy nice pretty foam specifically to do this, a wadded army blanket which is dirt cheap will do a very nice job of absorbing bass. Not a professional baffle, but it does work.
Windows:
Often outside windows are viewed as a problem, and if you do, you can cover them with shudders, with foam on the back. Easily enough to create.
Flexibility:
Smaller studios with one recording area, even if it’s the control room, can make large boards covered with foam on one side, and left smooth on the other side. This way, one surface is reflective, one surface is absorbing. The panel is movable around the room of course, and can isolate instruments/musicians from each other. Or, you can flip them around, and reflect sound.
Bathrooms:
Bathrooms with lots of tile clearly do not make good vocal booths, without hanging lots of heavy wool blankets around the perimeter of the room. However, bathrooms do make good echo chambers. Put your guitar amp in a bathroom, crank the volume, and stand outside the bathroom and play. Interesting reverb effect, no?
Air Conditioning:
I like a cooler workspace, so air conditioning is mandatory. Your vocalists might appreciate it too for their vocal chords
Anyway, a window unit will do the job, and you can soundproof around it, and shut it off just before your turn the recorders on.
Central air is even better, as the compressor is outside and away from your microphones, but often you get "breathing" from the air conditioning system's vents and ductwork. To solve this, you simple put in more vents in your studio, thus reducing the airflow, and put acoustical foam behind the vents/registers. This way, all the airflow has to 'wobble' through the foam before it enters the room. Air filters also work, so feel free to use that instead. THe idea is to break up the regular airflow to a more haphazzard flow, thus reducing the noise that passes through the air ducts.
If you have one system feeding multiple vocal booths, make sure each booth has its own feed from the main duct, and they either curve around a little, or have right angles in them. You want to prevent sound from one booth entering the other(s), as much as possible.
Lighting:
Bright lights are easier to work with, but you'll find over that being able to dim lights is easier on the eyes, especially later at night. Also, in the vocal booth, especially a small one, a blazingly bright light will make too much heat, halogen or not. Dimmers obviously are the answer, but put them on another circuit instead of your studio circuit.
Battery backup:
I have been bitten by this before, and lost a really good take (or several). Seriously considering heading over to your computer supply place, and purchasing a battery backup unit for your recording/digital gear. APC, MinuteMan, Elgar, Tripplite, and a hundred others make units that provide A/C power to your equipment when the lights go out. This should provide you enough battery time so that you can eject your tapes, power down your hard disk recorders safely, etc etc etc. They even make rackmount units that would mount with your racked gear. You can buy smaller units for one or two pieces of equipment, or sometimes used larger units that your entire studio (minus your amps) be pushed through.
Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time, hope some of this is even remotely useful.
Location:
Its not uncommon (in fact, it’s the norm) for home studios to be “wedged” into available space, even if less desirable than other locations. Where possible, try to choose spaces keeping the following in mind:
1. The larger the facility, the more comfortable it is to work in, and remember in a studio, generally your walls are thicker, especially with 3” foam attached!
2. Sunlight generally promotes more creativity, as people aren’t nocturnal moles. Make basement windows a little larger, or in lofts, use skylights and such if you can.
3. Fresh, constant temperature air is important for vocalists. Try to keep the air a little humid, a little cool, but constant is more important.
Floating Floors:
A floating floor isolates the “usable” floor from the structure, which reduces vibrations from the rest of the facility from entering the control room/recording rooms through floor joist transmission, and vice versa. Constructing a floater is really not that difficult, here is how to do it on the cheap.
1. Starting in one corner of the room, mark every 1’ along all the walls. Then, draw on the floor, a 1’x1’ grid, using these marks as your guide.
2. Everywhere the vertical lines intersect the horizontal lines, including along the perimeters of the room (wall lines), mount a rubber puck using chaulk, hot glue, or other adhesive between the puck and the existing floor. DO NOT NAIL or STAPLE! Pucks are easily constructed out of one-half thick tire treads. Junkyards love to give away tires on the cheap because they PAY to get rid of them. A typical tire can make 25-30 or so pucks, so you can count intersections and divide by 25 and determine how many tires you need. Only use the tread, the sidewalls aren’t very useful.
3. After all your pucks are glued to the floor, you can start cutting down 2x4’s for one direction (horizontal or vertical). Caulk/Glue these to the pucks. Then, cut smaller sections of 2x4’s to fit in the other direction, between the longer 2x4’s.
4. At this point, you should have a 2” high floor grid. One-half inch for the tire tread pucks, and 1.5”thickness for the 2x4’s. A sidenote – None of the 2x4’s should touch the wall, but rather be approximately one-half inch from said walls. On top of this 2x4”grid, you can attach plywood and then the surface of your choice, be it carpet, hardwood, office floor tile, etc. For a little extra bass absorption, feel free to slap rockwool in within the gridwork you’ve completed in step 3.
Walls:
Concrete walls are the toughest, because they are difficult to nail furring strips to. Because you do not desire parallel walls, you should consider framing an angled wall in front of the concrete, using a heavy wood like a douglass fir 2x4 or 2x6. For building a wall between two rooms, use a 2x6 or 2x8 as the wall sill (bottom plate), and nail 2x4 studs 16” apart flush on one side, and in between those studs (8”) nail studs on the other side. This way, the wall is “open” in between the two rooms, and you have an air chamber that will help isolate the rooms. If the wall is constructed normally, you’ll have bass transmission through the wall. Fill the wall with rock wool or something like that if you wish, then cover with sheet rock. The green sheetrock for showers is better because its denser. The denser the material, the less audio transmission it will do, if attached securely. Before applying sheetrock or MDF or the greenboard, put caulk up the sides of the 2x4’s so the board seals and prevent air leaks.
Glass:
Glass should be safety glass – don’t even consider using anything else. Mount within the window area, two panes of glass. Make sure the glass is “floating” on a rubber or neoprene sill, all around the glass, so any vibrations are not transmitted to the wall. This is easily constructed by making a 1”x1” square wooden rod down the length of the window in the center of the wall, then affix the windows on the front and back of this internal frame. Caulk well, and seal it up airtight. It would be even better if the 1x1” square wooden rod is actually planed as to make the two windows not parallel. 1” on one side, 2” on the other, for example.
Electrical:
I cannot stress enough for a larger studio, how you have it on its own breaker(s). Air conditioner noise, the beer fridge and other items with motors and/or light dimmers will create hum, and sensitive analog equipment will pick it up and insert it into your mixing equipment. Nasty. Put all the “noisy” stuff on one breaker, and your studio on another (or several) breakers. Make sure all the outlets are grounded properly for noise reduction and safety reasons.
Wiring:
Audio wiring can be a pain in the butt. You have several choices, the first being you can purchase pre-made quarter inch snakes (or Elco, RCA, etc depending on your equipment) and install them directly between your equipment. You can expand on this by inserting patch bays next to the equipment, and next to the console table. If the equipment is in the console table area, then you may not need so many patch bays.
If you choose to wire it yourself, i.e. put racks of gear “way over there” away from your console table, more than likely you’ll be soldering. Use a CL-2 cable, and preferably use balanced (TRS) cable, with soldered patch bays both sides. The advantage of running all the cable balanced, is if you need unbalanced, you simply use unbalanced patch chords. But if you wired it unbalanced, you are missing the extra conductor, and can never run balanced audio through it. And if you try to do so, your signal level is reduced and you get more noise TRS cabling is a fraction more expensive than unbalanced snake cabling. Solder well, and try not to heat the wires too much as not to burn/melt/disfigure the insulation. Label everything!
Vocal Booths:
These can be constructed like any other room, or you can make the walls out of more interesting designs. The vocal booth I’m building will be constructed of aluminum rectangular “poles” with MDF panels screwed to it. Caulking as usual, and between the wood panels and the aluminum poles I’ll have rubber strips for isolation. Screw it down tightly! This method allows the walls to be thinner, rather than the usual 4-6” thick. In addition, since the wall is sealed, before the top is sealed shut, ordinary “play sand” will be poured into the walls to make it heavy and vibration free. The only outlet in the vocal booth is in the floor, as are the two XLR connectors that run underfloor to the console table’s patch bay.
Ceilings:
Plaster, sheetrock, greenboard, and even plywood can be used. Here is a cheapo trick to acoustical dispersion: Paint the ceiling (and walls) with “sand paint”, available at any paint store, and instead of stroking the paint with a brush as one normally would, use the wide side of the brush, and smack the sand paint on. This will result in an interesting, non-repeatable texture which will in turn act as a basic acoustical disperser. Sound reflections coming off such surfaces will be diffused and dispersed, which helps reduce standing waves. On top of this surface, you can attach your chosen acoustical foam, but I’d recommend using 2x2’ squares of the foam, seperating them by 6” or so, thus mixing absorption and dispersing (by exposing the odd-ball surfaced sandpaint.
Acoustics:
Before purchasing one piece of foam, walk around the room with the doors shut (do this for each room), and clap your hands loud. Move your head around to different areas, and listen for “slap echos”. These are standing waves, and will be a problem. If you are near walls when this clapping creates a slap echo, that’s where you want to put acoustical foam.
Bass tends to hover in corners, especially in line with the subwoofer (floors usually), so make sure you wad up something in these corners. While you can buy nice pretty foam specifically to do this, a wadded army blanket which is dirt cheap will do a very nice job of absorbing bass. Not a professional baffle, but it does work.
Windows:
Often outside windows are viewed as a problem, and if you do, you can cover them with shudders, with foam on the back. Easily enough to create.
Flexibility:
Smaller studios with one recording area, even if it’s the control room, can make large boards covered with foam on one side, and left smooth on the other side. This way, one surface is reflective, one surface is absorbing. The panel is movable around the room of course, and can isolate instruments/musicians from each other. Or, you can flip them around, and reflect sound.
Bathrooms:
Bathrooms with lots of tile clearly do not make good vocal booths, without hanging lots of heavy wool blankets around the perimeter of the room. However, bathrooms do make good echo chambers. Put your guitar amp in a bathroom, crank the volume, and stand outside the bathroom and play. Interesting reverb effect, no?
Air Conditioning:
I like a cooler workspace, so air conditioning is mandatory. Your vocalists might appreciate it too for their vocal chords
Anyway, a window unit will do the job, and you can soundproof around it, and shut it off just before your turn the recorders on.Central air is even better, as the compressor is outside and away from your microphones, but often you get "breathing" from the air conditioning system's vents and ductwork. To solve this, you simple put in more vents in your studio, thus reducing the airflow, and put acoustical foam behind the vents/registers. This way, all the airflow has to 'wobble' through the foam before it enters the room. Air filters also work, so feel free to use that instead. THe idea is to break up the regular airflow to a more haphazzard flow, thus reducing the noise that passes through the air ducts.
If you have one system feeding multiple vocal booths, make sure each booth has its own feed from the main duct, and they either curve around a little, or have right angles in them. You want to prevent sound from one booth entering the other(s), as much as possible.
Lighting:
Bright lights are easier to work with, but you'll find over that being able to dim lights is easier on the eyes, especially later at night. Also, in the vocal booth, especially a small one, a blazingly bright light will make too much heat, halogen or not. Dimmers obviously are the answer, but put them on another circuit instead of your studio circuit.
Battery backup:
I have been bitten by this before, and lost a really good take (or several). Seriously considering heading over to your computer supply place, and purchasing a battery backup unit for your recording/digital gear. APC, MinuteMan, Elgar, Tripplite, and a hundred others make units that provide A/C power to your equipment when the lights go out. This should provide you enough battery time so that you can eject your tapes, power down your hard disk recorders safely, etc etc etc. They even make rackmount units that would mount with your racked gear. You can buy smaller units for one or two pieces of equipment, or sometimes used larger units that your entire studio (minus your amps) be pushed through.
Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time, hope some of this is even remotely useful.
