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rweiss
New member
I hope to start construction on this, or something similar, within the next 5 years. I was wondering what you guys think of this layout, from a professional standpoint. It's not to scale, just a rough idea.
mshilarious
Banned
That's a lot of rooms for only one control room. Usually pro studios with that many different rooms are set up so the rooms can be rented out separately. Otherwise you've got a lot of underutilized space.
I'd put the bathroom and storage off the hallway.
How about:
Move Lobby to Vocals
Storage to Lobby
Bathroom to Showroom
Showroom to Guitars
Acoustic Room becomes Control B
Drums becomes Studio B
Storage/Bathroom becomes Studio A Iso
You'll have to tweak the walls a bit to make those rooms work.
I'd put the bathroom and storage off the hallway.
How about:
Move Lobby to Vocals
Storage to Lobby
Bathroom to Showroom
Showroom to Guitars
Acoustic Room becomes Control B
Drums becomes Studio B
Storage/Bathroom becomes Studio A Iso
You'll have to tweak the walls a bit to make those rooms work.
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RobertN
New member
Why would the storage be at the entrance? 
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rweiss
New member
Hmm, I never thought of utlizing the remaining non-iso rooms for a second control studio. And in that first plan, the storage is just like the back exit/place to unload equipment or whatever, not an entrance. I've got a second design I'm working on now, will hopefully have it up in a little while.
RICK FITZPATRICK
New member
Go to a university and study architecture and acoustics. You'll make MUCH more money. Besides, world class studios of this size cost MEGA BUCKS to build correctly, mega bucks to maintain, mega bucks to pay TAXES on the building, and mega bucks to dismantle when it goes under. My best advice is.... THINK homestudio. That is where the real revolution is underway anyway. In 5 years, big studios like that won't be able to compete. In fact, many are already going under. Oceanway in LA recently closed. The best rooms ever built. So if they go under... ask yourself why. As far as your design is concerned, there are MANY suggestions to be put forth. But why waste the bandwidth. Your ambitions are admirable, however, REAL construction of this nature takes MUCH more input than this forum has the scope to address in real terms. You can talk design all you want....UNTILL you take the plans to BID. Without addressing your local codes first, ...like I said.. bandwidth. My .02
fitZ
fitZ
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rweiss
New member
I understand - I had planned to build this on a plot of land next to my house. So it is, in essence, a "home studio", but do you even think it's worth starting a studio of this proportion if it's mainly for hobby use and only semi-pro? Just for fun, I corrected my first design and made this:
RICK FITZPATRICK
New member
I think this will answer your question. This will show you what it takes to build ONE room correctly.
http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.php?t=456&start=0
As to my opinion.....No. The link should give you a reality check. BTW, its SEVENTY pages for one room.
fitZ
frederic
New member
Your diagram is good for a start... but there are several glaring defects. First, I concur with others that you might want to consider a "A" studio, a "B" studio, etc, to maximize the number of bands/artists you can work with at one time. This increases your dollar per hour by having simultanious multiple clients. Makes up for days that are dead - and there will be some dead days I can assure you of that.
Another option which I found to be an acceptable cash cow was to have one or more practice rooms. Essentially, a practice room is nothing more than a sound resistant room way in the corner away form your live room/console room, where you toss in all your old amps, your old drumsets, etc. Renting it out for a very reasonable price, allows garage bands who do not have a place to practice, well, practice without annoying neighbors, friends, etc. THe largest of the three studios I've owned had four such rooms, and they were booked solid from when schoo let out until 2am every day, 7 days a week. The other neat thing about practice rooms, is like I said above, you store your old amps and drumkits in there for the renters to practice with. And when you need a certain older amp in the live room, you just to steal it from one of the practice rooms. Think of this as a rentable closet, for bands to practice in. Certainly not the same rates as renting the studio of course, but four such rooms comes darn close. Keeps the lights on. And it's also an opportunity to find new local clients. Bands that practice often in your practice rooms are more likely to record in your studio rather than some guy 20 miles away. They know you, you treat them well, etc.
Another thing to consider, if you are going to have multiple console rooms, is to link them together electronically. One of the studios I had Studio A was analog - neve/otari kinda stuff. Studio B was essentially a mackie 32*8 console with several expanders, wired into more adats than you can shake a stick at (okay, nine). By having patch bay feeds from studio to studio, this enabled us to transfer audio from the adats to the otari's, or vice versa. Also, this saved by having the master stereo recorder in the main studio, and studio B had access to it. Mixing down to stereo for mastering was usually done when the place wasn't rented, so this worked out well for us. We didn't have to purchase two 1/2" stereo decks, just one.
I'd also recommend having more than one vocal booth. If you have two studios within your structure, have two vocal booths. Have them configured between the console rooms so either console room can use both booths. THis too will save you real estate. You can "decide" that booth A goes with studio A and so forth, but by having the cabling available you can "shuffle" both booths to studio A for a larger multi-singer project. Same for your live rooms. Make one gloriously large and warm, and the other a bit smaller, you can use it for smaller groups of artists, maybe a drum room, etc, but by wiring them together via patch bays, you can use anything any old way as your clients require. You can also change your rates if you wish accordingly.
Studio A is $75 an hour, Studio B is $65 an hour, and the whole darn place is say, $85 an hour. Or whatever rates you end up w[ith, but you get the idea.
And I'll agree with Rick that with all prices of recording gear becoming significantly less costly than it was 20 years ago, and with more 'stuff" too, you'll find that the demand for larger studios are going away, slowly. Maybe not completely, there is always a need for a larger, acoustically pleasing facility, but we're in a recording revolution. Just look at Eiffel65... their album was recorded on a computer (mac, I think) with a fancy pre-amp and a nice microphone. The rest of the recording process was VST plug ins and such. That "studio" is a vocal booth and a computer. This will be your competition, especially starting out. Guys with $500 mixers and $200 recorders thinking they're top dog. And a few of them are. A lot of rap albums (and I hate rap too, sorry had to throw that in there) are recording in home studios. Some are recording in disgusting, acoustically embarrassing facilities too. Yet... it sells.
As far as taxes go... you need to learn to negotiate my friend. A few years back I was seriously working to embark on the same thing you're considering, and the building was bought out of mortgage foreclosure for a song. I started the design, and was going to contract it out to John Sayers (www.johnlsayers.com) to do the real design, and project manage the implementation. For quite a few pretty pennies, but it was going to be worth it. Anyway, the negotiation part is this... I approached the town the building was located in, and expressed "my strong desire to become a participating employer in the town's community". In exchange for promising to hire local where possible, and support at least one youth group of some kind (boy scouts, girl scouts, brownies, big brother/big sister, something along those lines), the town was willing to FORGIVE PROPERTY TAXES FOR FIVE YEARS.
So, I figured the worse case is $2K a year to boy scouts, and I save $20K in taxes? Sign my ass up! The main reason why this worked is the building I bought is in an area of town they wanted to revigorate. No, no burned out buildings or rows of crack whores, certainly nothing that bad... but the economy emptied a lot of the buildings, so the town was being aggressive in the area filling up with legitimate businesses, to AVOID the crack whore problem down the road. Smart thinking on their part...
Turned out the mortage title company screwed up so bad I ended up not owning the building... but negotiate with the town. Emphasize your desire to help build the community. Don't just buy a town hall booster and slap it on the window, get involved. Small towns like that crap. And its cheap as compared to what you get out of it - less or no taxes for a period of time.
Another option which I found to be an acceptable cash cow was to have one or more practice rooms. Essentially, a practice room is nothing more than a sound resistant room way in the corner away form your live room/console room, where you toss in all your old amps, your old drumsets, etc. Renting it out for a very reasonable price, allows garage bands who do not have a place to practice, well, practice without annoying neighbors, friends, etc. THe largest of the three studios I've owned had four such rooms, and they were booked solid from when schoo let out until 2am every day, 7 days a week. The other neat thing about practice rooms, is like I said above, you store your old amps and drumkits in there for the renters to practice with. And when you need a certain older amp in the live room, you just to steal it from one of the practice rooms. Think of this as a rentable closet, for bands to practice in. Certainly not the same rates as renting the studio of course, but four such rooms comes darn close. Keeps the lights on. And it's also an opportunity to find new local clients. Bands that practice often in your practice rooms are more likely to record in your studio rather than some guy 20 miles away. They know you, you treat them well, etc.
Another thing to consider, if you are going to have multiple console rooms, is to link them together electronically. One of the studios I had Studio A was analog - neve/otari kinda stuff. Studio B was essentially a mackie 32*8 console with several expanders, wired into more adats than you can shake a stick at (okay, nine). By having patch bay feeds from studio to studio, this enabled us to transfer audio from the adats to the otari's, or vice versa. Also, this saved by having the master stereo recorder in the main studio, and studio B had access to it. Mixing down to stereo for mastering was usually done when the place wasn't rented, so this worked out well for us. We didn't have to purchase two 1/2" stereo decks, just one.
I'd also recommend having more than one vocal booth. If you have two studios within your structure, have two vocal booths. Have them configured between the console rooms so either console room can use both booths. THis too will save you real estate. You can "decide" that booth A goes with studio A and so forth, but by having the cabling available you can "shuffle" both booths to studio A for a larger multi-singer project. Same for your live rooms. Make one gloriously large and warm, and the other a bit smaller, you can use it for smaller groups of artists, maybe a drum room, etc, but by wiring them together via patch bays, you can use anything any old way as your clients require. You can also change your rates if you wish accordingly.
Studio A is $75 an hour, Studio B is $65 an hour, and the whole darn place is say, $85 an hour. Or whatever rates you end up w[ith, but you get the idea.
And I'll agree with Rick that with all prices of recording gear becoming significantly less costly than it was 20 years ago, and with more 'stuff" too, you'll find that the demand for larger studios are going away, slowly. Maybe not completely, there is always a need for a larger, acoustically pleasing facility, but we're in a recording revolution. Just look at Eiffel65... their album was recorded on a computer (mac, I think) with a fancy pre-amp and a nice microphone. The rest of the recording process was VST plug ins and such. That "studio" is a vocal booth and a computer. This will be your competition, especially starting out. Guys with $500 mixers and $200 recorders thinking they're top dog. And a few of them are. A lot of rap albums (and I hate rap too, sorry had to throw that in there) are recording in home studios. Some are recording in disgusting, acoustically embarrassing facilities too. Yet... it sells.
As far as taxes go... you need to learn to negotiate my friend. A few years back I was seriously working to embark on the same thing you're considering, and the building was bought out of mortgage foreclosure for a song. I started the design, and was going to contract it out to John Sayers (www.johnlsayers.com) to do the real design, and project manage the implementation. For quite a few pretty pennies, but it was going to be worth it. Anyway, the negotiation part is this... I approached the town the building was located in, and expressed "my strong desire to become a participating employer in the town's community". In exchange for promising to hire local where possible, and support at least one youth group of some kind (boy scouts, girl scouts, brownies, big brother/big sister, something along those lines), the town was willing to FORGIVE PROPERTY TAXES FOR FIVE YEARS.
So, I figured the worse case is $2K a year to boy scouts, and I save $20K in taxes? Sign my ass up! The main reason why this worked is the building I bought is in an area of town they wanted to revigorate. No, no burned out buildings or rows of crack whores, certainly nothing that bad... but the economy emptied a lot of the buildings, so the town was being aggressive in the area filling up with legitimate businesses, to AVOID the crack whore problem down the road. Smart thinking on their part...
Turned out the mortage title company screwed up so bad I ended up not owning the building... but negotiate with the town. Emphasize your desire to help build the community. Don't just buy a town hall booster and slap it on the window, get involved. Small towns like that crap. And its cheap as compared to what you get out of it - less or no taxes for a period of time.
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rweiss
New member
Will get started, thanks.
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rweiss
New member
Hmm, a harsh reality. I did expect to get that sort of response (I've been reading around these forums for about a year now) - and I also do know the amount of detail involved in room isolation and acoustics (the plan I had was just a general idea I felt like throwing up). Thanks for all of your advice. I just don't know what I could do to be successful that would lend me enough inspiration to do it. I know I want to do something in music, or some form of engineering, I just don't know exactly what. I AM serious about this studio, but it won't be for a while. Everyone has dreams, and that's what I'm doing - but I'm confident that eventually I'll undergo construction on some form of a studio. As a freshman, I suppose I'll just research what the best possible major could be for me. Do you have any suggestions on good universities for architecture/acoustics (is there a specific major for acoustics or something similar?) Or do you have any other suggestions on common college majors related to music (preferrably some form of engineering)? Maybe contractings... I don't know. Sorry for all of the questions, and I don't expect you to know all of the answers, but right now I just need some guidance. Thanks.
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mshilarious
Banned
rweiss said:
What is lacking in your last diagram is a killer live room, which needs to be a lot bigger.
Anyway, as for majors you are going to have to pick, because you can't major in acoustics engineering, music production (sometimes called music industry), and architecture, or you'll never finish. If you are already a freshman, you are behind in terms of any music major, since they start with the core classes early. So get into music industry quickly, and take a physics class--after that, anything in acoustics or electronics will seem simple.
. . . or if you want a career that actually makes money, major in architecture
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rweiss
New member
Do you have any idea how long I'd have to go to school for architecture? Also, do you know of any popular colleges/universities in the US notorious for architecture?
RICK FITZPATRICK
New member
California University at San Louis Obisbo. Also at Berkley California I believe. I also believe its 8 years I could be wrong though.
frederic
New member
rweiss said:
Rweiss, if you're response is to my comments... please, really, don't feel discouraged. I'm a natural pessimist when it comes to any and all business ventures. While it might be annoying to you for me to present "the dark side" so to speak, you'll thank me for it later, as your expectations will be a little closer to reality. ALL of us have hopes and dreams, and those of us that actually move them from dreamland into reality more often than not have some "happy baggage" associated with that movement. This is because in our hopes and dreams, there are no obvious negatives. In reality, there may or may not be, and our reaction to them often isn't ideal. This is human nature and nothing to worry about - we all do it to varying degrees.
There are many options for you that won't bilk you dry financially right off the bat too. You can design the entire facility as you have... then build out the structure, but only insert the console room and the live room to start. Leave all of the available space, available. Then as funds arrive due to hard work either from outside employment or studio-related work, you can expand within the structure. I'll wildly guess and suggest that going this route will cut your initial construction costs in half. The building shell is the cheap part as compared to all the treatments, angles, and complicated wiring that studio building entails.
The inpiration for me all three times I ran a pro studio... was the desire to record other people's music and be involved in the industry. That desire was very strong at the time, and my complete focus at least within my head. For me its about adding my own creative touch to the artist's music capturing their work as sonically precise as I can, enabling me to work some magic after the fact during the mixing phase. I enjoyed this immensely.
So please don't take my prior comments as discouragement, all I was trying to do is illustrate the market has changed a bit, and that running a studio can be complicated in the magnitutde you are thinking about. And by all means, if its your dream and aspiration to do so - do so. Spending 300K on a new from-scratch studio is a lot of money, that decision shouldn't be taken lightly, yet at the same time, it can be an incredibly rewarding business to be in. There are good times, and bad times. Remember, its not a dunkin donuts where you have a steady flow of sugar addicted customers walking in every 30 seconds - its a very specific business and one just needs to keep that in mind, that's all.
I really hoped i helped rather than detracted from your aspiration..
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rweiss
New member
Well you didn't crush my dreams - you really did just bring me closer to reality. As of now I just need to figure out how to get a nice paying job that's somehow related to music - preferrably tied in with some form of engineering, whatever it may be. After I can get that under my belt I'm sure I won't have any problem going about this particular dream as a serious hobby or side-job. Again, Rick and Frederic, thanks for all of your insight.
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xstatic
New member
The overall layout looks pretty decent to me. Gear is a big consideration. Your control room may be too small if you are going to put a console and some racks in. All in all I think it would be better to utilize all of your space for one decent studio instead of trying to fit in another teeny little control room. If you are that booked that you need two seperate setups than you should be able to just build on. I would maybe stick with one big room for tracking, a nice sized control room, 2 med/small iso's, and a lobby and bathroom. Find a way to make storage out of all of your corner cuts that are there to break up the squareness of the rooms. If you are willing to spend the money to do all this without the absolute security of making it back, then i say go for it. It's like buying a Lexus when all you need is a Toyota. For some people it is worth the money spent
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brzilian
New member
Regarding some people's posts here and the direction "studios" are taking...
My personal opinion is that there is too much of an emphasis on "live" recording studios, i.e. you want bands to come in and record. I see a market opportunity for other areas.
If you have sound engineering skills, I suggest you find a good video or CGI guy to work with and market yourself/your business as a place to come to for post work or true audiovisual production. If you have the time, take some video production classes as well.
The video industry is also seeing a real revolution in terms of what you can do with your out of the box G5 or P4 system. Software like Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and After Effects produce high quality, broadcast ready content at a fraction of the price it cost to do this stuff with high end Avid systems 10 years ago.
If you can bring the audio and visual aspects together, you should be very marketable.
This is the angle I have taken with my "on the side" work and it has paid off. My day job is doing Industrial Design in a corporate enviroment, but I make good money in the evenings with A/V work.
My personal opinion is that there is too much of an emphasis on "live" recording studios, i.e. you want bands to come in and record. I see a market opportunity for other areas.
If you have sound engineering skills, I suggest you find a good video or CGI guy to work with and market yourself/your business as a place to come to for post work or true audiovisual production. If you have the time, take some video production classes as well.
The video industry is also seeing a real revolution in terms of what you can do with your out of the box G5 or P4 system. Software like Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and After Effects produce high quality, broadcast ready content at a fraction of the price it cost to do this stuff with high end Avid systems 10 years ago.
If you can bring the audio and visual aspects together, you should be very marketable.
This is the angle I have taken with my "on the side" work and it has paid off. My day job is doing Industrial Design in a corporate enviroment, but I make good money in the evenings with A/V work.
MemoGtr
Así o más verger?
"going about this particular dream as a serious hobby or side-job"
thats what i say...there are some cool studios here in mexico
but most of them are going down
sigh i dont know why but most of the mexicans bands that get signed end up recording in LA or something like that.
www.myspace.com/thermo
the drummer of that band is trying to change that, he owns a studio and recorded his bands albums. check it out
i love recording but i dont think i would make any money here (but maybe if i move to canada and make friends with blue bear hahaha). but as a side job or hobby im sure id kick serious butt
oh and i cant study engineering or something like that right now cause med school sucks up most of my time =(
thats what i say...there are some cool studios here in mexico
but most of them are going down
sigh i dont know why but most of the mexicans bands that get signed end up recording in LA or something like that.
www.myspace.com/thermo
the drummer of that band is trying to change that, he owns a studio and recorded his bands albums. check it out
i love recording but i dont think i would make any money here (but maybe if i move to canada and make friends with blue bear hahaha). but as a side job or hobby im sure id kick serious butt
oh and i cant study engineering or something like that right now cause med school sucks up most of my time =(
DDev
New member
Just a couple of comments on the question regarding architectural schooling. Most architecture programs are 4-5 year programs, BUT it will take you 3-5 years after school to go through an apprenticeship and finally be able to go through the testing to get your professional architects license.
Now, with that and the other comments provided earlier, there are options for education which include technical training. Of course there are schools that specialize in training for just recording, although the industry pros kinda poo-poo this educational approach. Another approach is to get into a normal university that has an audio engineering program (most state schools have something like this and a few are renowned for their programs).
Anyway, good luck and don't ever let reality checks squash your dreams. Sometimes it takes a few years to make progress towards your dreams (it took me 25 years to finally build my studio; I think Fitz has me beat, though
).
Cheers,
Darryl.....
Now, with that and the other comments provided earlier, there are options for education which include technical training. Of course there are schools that specialize in training for just recording, although the industry pros kinda poo-poo this educational approach. Another approach is to get into a normal university that has an audio engineering program (most state schools have something like this and a few are renowned for their programs).
Anyway, good luck and don't ever let reality checks squash your dreams. Sometimes it takes a few years to make progress towards your dreams (it took me 25 years to finally build my studio; I think Fitz has me beat, though
).Cheers,
Darryl.....
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rweiss
New member
Hmm, the audio/video combination looks intriguing... We are moving to Florida soon so I'm wondering if I should consider Full Sail for Digital Media. Though I have more interest in working with my hands (electronics, building, etc) - I suppose I'll just research majors at various schools based around these careers and see what interests me.