Your suggestion of layout

C

chris-from-ky

New member
Hi. I'm hoping to build a home this spring and it will have a basement that I will build to a be half recording studio and half dance studio (for my wife). My half is 27' wide by 40' deep by 10' high. I've got a stairway to deal with on my side. I know that I will have tons on mass between the ground floor and basement ceiling I also assume I need a mass-air-mass structure between the dance side and recording side. I would like to have a control room and a drum room. Any advice would be great. And please don't say "Go to John Sayers website." I may do that anyway but, I wonder what I can get here first since I'd have to register at the other forum. THANKS!!
 

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Well, what do you want to know exactly? Are you asking about how to set up your listening position and monitors, or how to acoustically treat the room, or how to set up instruments for recording, or...
 
Mainly I'd like dimensions of a control room and drum room with good acoustics for listening (control room) and recording (drum room).

I did the drawing in paint and the scale gets messed up with diagonals.

Thanks,
Chris
 
So you're talking about building a smaller room within the big room? Actual room construction is beyond my knowledge, I know a bit more about acoustically treating an existing room and setting up in it than the optimum dimensions of a new room.

I do know that non parallel walls can be helpful, but only with higher frequencies, and that no matter what you do you'll need bass traps. Also, to avoid having bad room modes you should design the room to have all three dimensions different and unrelated to each other. As in, if the room is ten feet wide, don't make it ten feet long because it will reenforce the same frequencies, and don't make it fifteen or twenty feet long either because those dimensions are multiples of the first dimension.

There's something called "The Golden Ratio" that many use when designing rooms and speaker cabinets, and that ratio is 1:1.618:.618. It does work to keep room modes minimized (but DOES NOT negate the need for bass trapping) but any set of irrational numbers will do fine.

Translated into material terms, this would mean that if your room (just for the sake of argument, I know this would be a stupid room) had a ten foot ceiling, then the other two dimensions could be just over six feet and sixteen feet.

Realistically though, it may be easier and more cost effective to just treat the room you have. Having a room all tuned and everything sounds cool, but you can treat any room and have it sound good.
 
Here's a simple solution. Sorry for the crappy drawing, Rick is way better at stuff like that. Some of the slanty walls aren't the exact angle I wanted, because my program is basically a toy and only has a few wall angles available, but you'll get the idea.

The plan avoids parallel walls, has a symmetrical (well, it's supposed to be) control room, and utilizes most of the space available for the live room. You can change those parameters as you like by moving the long diagonal wall between the control room and the live room further into the live room.

Read Ethan's article here for lots of great info:

http://www.realtraps.com/art_studio.htm

The good news is you have a lot of space, so you could do many different things. You could add an iso booth, some closet space . . . plus with big rooms, you should have an easier time getting a good sound.
 
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Well, I switched side with my wife and I decided to just scribble around with the layout and this is what I think I might do. What do you think. This is just the shell. I'm not gifted enough to draw all the treatments. They'll be there though.
 

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Oh, you wanted a big control room! OK, I missed that. Looks good, although I'd slant the drum room wall nearest the stairs.

You should be aware these are large rooms, which is good, but given the proper mix position in the control room, you won't have a good sightline into the drum room. What if you switch the control room and drum room locations?
 
Yeah, I want a room just big enough to record drums in and the rest of the space be a control room. I don't mind not being able to see the drummer or whoever is recording in the "Live" room. Really I see this room as a super-sized isolation booth. I don't plan to deaden it, but all instruments and vocals will be tracked in there. The control room needs to be big so i can record scratch guitars and vocals in it while tracking drums. Above all it needs to be acoustically accurate. So how do I go about getting the dimensions fine tuned for that accuracy? [I know that no matter what the dimensions are, there will need to be treatment inside the room as well for ultimate acoustic accuracy.] Also, I'll take that advice on adding a diagonal wall nearest the hallway & stairs. Good idea.

Thanks!!!!
Chris
 
Man! That looks a lot better than I was imagining. There's even room for a storage closet in that plan. I was obviously wasting space with my plan. Thanks! Is there any way I could get the dimensions and angles used there?
 
Great layout, Rick. The nice thing about having 2 tracking rooms is that it gives you the chance to have a couple of different flavors acoustically that can enhance your recordings. For instance, I know that Blue Bear has one room that is "live" meaning that there are room reflections that can enhance certain types of sound (desireable room ambience). He also has a more dead room that keeps the room sound out of the recording and allows use of adding ambience later in the mix. Flexibility is the rule, and with that amount of space you definitely should take advantage of it and build in some flexibility.

Darryl.....
 
Is there any way I could get the dimensions and angles used there?
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Yes. In fact, IF you give me EXACT dimensions of the "as built" spaces, I can send you a file that can be plotted on a "E" sheet at any graphics house that plots blueprints. Then you can make copies to make notes, alter the plan, or even use as a preliminary bid document. If you are going to hire a contractor, this comes in handy. However, since this is a new home, to keep your insurance intact, plan on doing this via permits, which is a whole different animal. You will need to submit a set of drawings showing much more. Contact you local Building Inspection Department and ask them what they require. If you need help after that just give me a holla. I can even include sections and details, but you are not at that point yet.
fitZ

PS. Thanks Darryl :)
 
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RICK FITZPATRICK said:
You will need to submit a set of drawings showing much more. Contact you local Building Inspection Department and ask them what they require. If you need help after that just give me a holla. I can even include sections and details, but you are not at that point yet.
fitZ
Click to expand...

Nice plans, and they just might be enough (minus the people). I'm in a major jurisdiction, and I've gotten permits with plans that have almost no details at all for interior renovations that don't affect bearing walls. So yeah, call ahead, you might get lucky.
 
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