John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hey

This is my first post! I have to say how wonderful this site is. I have spent a week or so viewing some of the designs and build diaries. I have been so inspired to get my own project going.

I have always worked with mobile setups so I could meet an artist whenever was convenient.
A few years back partner and I built a studio, in NYC before we both left the city. (Studio is still there). He moved to back AU and I moved back to Ohio. Raising a family changes things!

He's is quite gifted with design and such so I asked him to help me plan this room. Sketchup is an powerful tool and fairly easy to get started with. I am excited about this new design.

This will be a small project studio. The room is 30x13x7. My house is between two other houses, separated about an 8' drive on either side. The studio will be in the basement underneath our kitchen and living room. The space will be 1/2 of the basement (The other half is laundry).

I would love to get some feed back on the design. I think that I complied with all of the forum rules.

BTW, my design was too large to post, so I just posted pix. Thanks

Myron
Ohio

Hey Myron, welcome!

First thing that sticks out is symmetry. Or rather, lack of it. Your control room needs to be symmetrical, or you'll never be able to get a good stereo image. But your front wall is angled, so the front of the room is not symmetrical. The desk is also not symmetrical, which might be a problem too, depending on speaker placement (which your model doesn't show).

I's suggest that you straighten out that leaf of the front wall of the control room to fix that. The other leaf of the wall (the side into the live room) can stay angled if you prefer it like that. It doesn't matter if the two leaves of the wall are at different angles.

Next, that looks like a rather long thin control room. What ratio is it based on?

The room also has a kink at the rear end, behind the staircase. I'm not sure what that "kink" would do acoustically, but I imagine that it would act as some kind of resonator. I reckon it would be better to close that off and make it into a storage area, vocal booth, machine room, or some such. In fact, you could even close of the entire rear end of the studio, right where the couch is, and use that as a vocal booth, storage room, etc. OR a second live room.

Then there is the issue of the door into the control room: it seems to be right where you need to place your speakers, and/or your front bass trapping, soffits, etc.

Those are the things I noticed, anyway. Maybe others might disagree, or have other things to add.


- Stuart -