Any problems with control room and live room as one...

TomM · Post by **TomM** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 3:25 am

Hey everyone. I'm a solo operation (no assistant that is). I'm gonna be moving and building a studio at my house.

To maximize space, I'd like to keep the size of the live room big and the size of the control room big.

What are the disadvantages of doing this? Am I better off having 2 smaller rooms instead of one big one?

I can work and record with headphones that have good isolation. I can check sounds and important stuff on monitors after recording short bits.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...or any new ideas...

drfrankencopter · Post by **drfrankencopter** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:50 am

Its not a new concept....worth a search on this site. Has its positives (communication with band, and a good 'vibe' for experimenting, and better acoustics than 2 small rooms). Has its negatives too (especially if you record other peoples bands)...monitoring can be a problem, feedback, etc. Keeping bandmates quiet during takes can be an issue too. for me the positives outweight the negatives.

In fact, I'm building one, and this thread has been detailing my design efforts.

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4152

Cheers,

Kris

AjD · Post by **AjD** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:51 am

I'm also doing the "one room studio" thing. It goes like this - after 5 years in my previous house (basement studio; seperate small control room, smallish live room, no natural light), I've got a new house with a biggish walk-out (22 x 23 ft; approx. 500 sq. ft.) and lots of natural light.

The new space is great, but there's no obvious control room. I kicked around the idea of splitting up the space, but couldn't bear to ruin such a beautiful room. (Note - I also have a fairly roomy 8 x 6' ISO booth, which - would you believe it? - I actually considered using as a control room in the early phases of my planning. Crazy.)

Instead, I've put many hours into DIY sound treatment, isolation risers, and (soon to build) free standing baffles. I also bought a pair of Remote Audio HN7506 isolation headphones (used by motion picture crews to film extremely noisy on-location scenes, like at a race track).

It's not done yet, but the benefits are far outweighing the negatives (pretty succinctly listed above by the previous poster). I've got my monitoring station symmetrically positioned across the shorter wall, a few feet off the wall itself. There's a good 20 feet of space behind me, bass traps in all the corners, and several broadband panels on the walls. I'm getting ready to treat the ISO room next; last, I'll be stuffing the ceiling joists with 12" R38 to create a "ceiling cloud" (it's a grid ceiling, so the insulation will be hidden).

There's a photo of one corner of the room in this thread.

A bigger room just sounds so much better (I can already tell), and solves a ton of problems during tracking as well. My goal, with baffles, will be to record a live 4 piece rock band - all in the same room - and get enough separation to build album tracks off the original live takes. We'll see...

Plus, every musician I've showed the space too is extremely pleased. Most have never even heard of a one room studio, yet they immediately "get" the concept. It just makes sense to them ("why doesn't everyone do it like this?" is the comment I usually hear.) I have a band coming in from NYC in October, and they can't wait to work with a producer who doesn't "leave the room" everytime they start playing.

Adam

Dan Fitzpatrick · Post by **Dan Fitzpatrick** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 1:59 am

There's an interesting article in the most recent Tape Op about Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, where a lot of recording is done in one big room. With the engineer right in the room with the performers ... for example Elvis Costello was one of the artists mentioned.

Granted, their "BIg Room" is just a little bigger than the average garage studio

Don't have it with me at the moment ... well worth grabbing a free subscription at their website if you don't already have one. I only wish it came out every month, not every other ...

http://tapeop.com/

http://realworldstudios.com/

AjD · Post by **AjD** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:20 am

Cool link Dan. I've read the article in TapeOp too, but wasn't familiar with their web site. Here's a particularly interesting quote (from the site) that details the design philosophy of their one big room:

"Peter had spent his recording life working in traditional facilities, principally as a vocalist, and had come to the conclusion that the rigid association of 'control room - console - monitors - glass - studio - overdub booth' was rather restrictive and militated against the vocalist. He asked for suggestions as to how they could break this down, how to make a much more flexible design, and how to involve everybody in the creative process of recording.

"I came up with the proposal of integrating the control room with the studio and having a range of space for different applications. I didn't see it as a problem that Peter could sit at the console and sing into a microphone."

My favorite part is when he calls traditional control room / live room set-ups "rather restrictive and militated against the vocalist." Couldn't agree more!

My favorite "one room" studio that's seems a bit more attainable to mere mortals is this one in Seattle. Anyone know of others? They seem kind of rare (I know Allaire has a one room space that's breathtaking, but then, that's Allaire...)

Adam