John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello, first time posting! Thanks for all of the great info on this forum and in advance for your advice!

I'm currently in the process of leasing a commercial space for a new studio. The space is about 2500 sq.ft., on the ground floor in the middle of a single-story, block-through building. There are currently no tenants either in front of, behind, or below the space, and it is already a very quiet room. It's also dirt cheap, but the owner is only offering a two-year lease. I'm trying to negotiate better terms, but I may have to go into this with the risk that it will be a short term situation.

I'm planning on recording primarily classical and acoustic music, so I want a nice, lively room. I'm going to have a 9' Steinway D in the space, and my current plan has an approximately 1070 sq.ft. live room. The space has 10' drop ceilings, and it looks like there's an additional foot of headroom above the drop frame. My budget is potentially up to around $50k, but I don't want to spend too much on construction that I might be throwing away if I have to move in a couple years. I'm hoping to install as much modular treatment as possible that I could take with me in a worst-case scenario.

The floor is all pretty ugly old linoleum on a wooden sub-floor over a basement (unoccupied storage space.) It feels pretty solid, but does seem to have some small amount of resonance if you stomp on it.

I'm not terribly concerned about sound proofing in terms of noise going out or coming in; I'm mostly just looking for decent isolation between the live and control rooms, and the best sounding, feeling, and responsive live room possible. I'm planning on doing standard dry-wall construction on all of the new walls (details are included in the plan), and lining most of the live-room walls with book-cases filled with books and scores. I'm hoping to do double sliding doors between the live and control rooms. It's not in the plan, but I'm also planning on thoroughly treating the control room with basic 703 panel traps and focussing on a good RFZ strategy.

I've attached some simple SketchUp plans of the space as it is, and then my plan for the buildout. Sorry for my limited skills with this stuff! So, I guess my major questions are:
A. Is my planned arrangement of the space logical, practical, and effective , or are there other ways of laying this out that would work better?
B. What would you suggest in terms of floor and ceiling treatment? I was thinking of keeping most of the drop ceiling and replacing a good portion of the existing tiles with staggered RPG hemiffusors and possibly some simple wood reflectors. I'm going to have to rip out all of the bad florescent lighting that's currently in there, and I'll probably replace it with track lighting.
C. Do you think it's possible with this setup to have a well controlled but lively room for chamber music and acoustic ensemble recording? What advice can you offer towards achieving this?

Again, thanks in advance for the input, and let me know if I need to include further details on my situation and plan.
-Ryan Streber

Ryan - the only problem I see is access - I'm assuming that either the rooms bottom left, or top right are toilets which means people have to go through the studio space to access them - very annoying when you are trying to record. I also wouldn't recommend the rear door entrance to the control room where you should have decent trapping.

you could add a sound lock that gives access to the bottom left rooms as well as side wall access to the control room.

Thanks so much for your reply, John, and sorry that the plan isn't labeled more clearly. The two rooms in the lower left would be an office and a storage room, and the upper right rooms are indeed two bathrooms. Access is definitely a problem there, and I'm not sure really what to do about it.

I agree that an airlock giving access to the rear left of the control room and the hall for the office and storage room might be the best solution. I had actually sketched that out but ditched it for maximal live room square footage. But I think you're right that that might cause more problems in the long run.

I don't know of any way to gain alternate access to the bathrooms besides through the live room or the front of the control room (which I assume should be avoided.) The passage along the right side of the control room leads to a stairway down to the lower level of the building (storage space rented by another tenant.) That stairway interrupts any possible side route through to those rear rooms.

I'll reexamine things to see what other options I have in this regard. In the meantime, any other thoughts are appreciated!
Thanks again!

Here's a revised plan with the airlock, CR door relocated, and some better labeling added. Any other thoughts?
Thanks!
Ryan