Moving studio to a bigger room.NEED HELP ON DESIGN PLEASE!!!

[war2dahip]

First of all a big Hi for everyone, this is my first post. I'm moving my studio to a slightly bigger room and need some help. I have attached 3 sketchup files; file 1 is the detailed room with measurements, door, window, type of walls and such, file 2and 3 is my perspective/idea of the final results, however, I will accept any ideas for the room as this is only an idea.
I will need a lot of help with the acoustics as I don't want to make the same mistakes I did on my actual studio.

My budget is about £700 to £1000.

The room is 4.80m x 2.50m x 2.30m and is on second floor, wooden floor that sounds like hollow, at the moment the room has laminated floor which I think to change for carpet.

New studio room.skp

New studio room + booth.skp

New studio room+booth+control room.skp

Please let me know your opinion about the design.

Any help will be much appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

[Eric Best]

I don't know how this was missed for so long.

With as small as that room is, you might be better off not having a booth and record using headphones.

Also, you want to have symmetry in your control room.

How loud are you going to be?

Carpet in a studio is usually not a good idea, it just absorbs the highest frequencies and just makes the room sound dull.

[leon.payne]

also worth find out how much noise comes from the wall that separates you and your neighbor. You wouldnt want a rumble of a neighbors tv appearing on you recordings.

I believe it is possible to get a booth (although very small) in the room but depending on you isolation requirements and the practicality of using a small space, as mentioned above, you may want to consider having a one room studio instead.
There are various examples of small studios being built here though (Im currently building a garage not much different from your dimensions), The container studio is an obvious example.

You might also find the components sketch up file at the top of the design section of interest, as this will show you how you can make modular type panels e.t.c to construct a control room.

[Soundman2020]

Hi war2dahip. Please check the announcement at the top of the forum about what to do to assure getting as many responses as possible.
The announcement leads to this post (click here). Actually, several people, who are experts on this forum, will most likely not reply if you don't do what is written in that post. Many others who are very helpful, will most likely not reply out of respect for the moderators' wishes.

That is most likely why you didn't get any responses for several days.


- Stuart -

[war2dahip]

Thank you for your response,

How loud are you going to be?

Quite loud, enough for mixing and mastering, as my neighbour is almost never home, and even when in they don't mind the noise.

[war2dahip]

also worth find out how much noise comes from the wall that separates you and your neighbor.

Hi Leon, I'm fortunately free from neighbour noise as my neighbour(female) live alone and she is out most of the time.

I believe it is possible to get a booth (although very small) in the room but depending on you isolation requirements and the practicality of using a small space

Space is not a problem, my current sound booth is just 1m sq, as I've mention before, I'm moving from a tiny room. We will be mostly recording hip hop, rn'b, soul, e.t.c., well, with that said you can see that, sound booth is gonna be used for micing one vocal at the time.

(Im currently building a garage not much different from your dimensions)

Good luck with that mate, have you got any pics of your project? How far are you?

Thanks very much for your response.

[leon.payne]

I'm currently into building my soffits and slot resonators. I'm building them like Mr sayers component diagrams in the Component sketch up drawing (just adjusting them slightly to suit my environment).
http://johnlsayers.com/Stuff/components.skp
might be useful to yourself?

the good thing about this is they are self contained and can easily be relocated if necessary
Obviously, being in a house, this maybe advantageous to you.

[leon.payne]

Just been playing round with your model using the components that i mentioned. This is not ment to be a finished model by any means, just knocked it up whilst some food was cooking.....hope it gives you some ideas.

[war2dahip]

Leon I gotta tell man you are DIAMOND, excellent design I'm delightfull with your choice.
Gotta tell that I like what you are doing to your garage. Did you think of it on your own? Also thank you very much for the Components man, shame that I'm robish at sketchup, belive me it took me all afternoon to sketch only the room.
Thanks again for everything

[Soundman2020]

Leon, I'm just wondering why you left such a tiny soffit area on the one side of the speakers, evident in the photos. How is that going to work? It seems like there is some misunderstanding of the principle behind soffits, and how they work. You might want to research "infinite baffle", and maybe consider re-designing your soffits to maximize their effectiveness. Right now, they won't do very much horizontally, as they are far too narrow.

- Stuart -

[leon.payne]

Well ive basically been trying to learn all i can. Its a big learning curve and sometimes hard to understand but i like to think that i'm slowly getting there.
I found sketchup really difficult to use at first but i have ago at peoples models from time to time and its amazing how quickly you get faster at it

have a look at these pictures. I have reduced the control room length slightly to try and give you a 2 leaf booth, using the inside out wall design (you can find it and the speaker enclosures in the recording manual link below). this should give you abit of isolation between your booth and the rest of the room. I havent shown insulation but will be in there too.

http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/index.htm

As mentioned above you dont have alot of space but i believe that you can always make something out of any enviroment.

[leon.payne]

Leon, I'm just wondering why you left such a tiny soffit area on the one side of the speakers, evident in the photos. How is that going to work? It seems like there is some misunderstanding of the principle behind soffits, and how they work. You might want to research "infinite baffle", and maybe consider re-designing your soffits to maximize their effectiveness. Right now, they won't do very much horizontally, as they are far too narrow.

- Stuart -

thanks for the heads up stuart, i will look into it.

[war2dahip]

Hi again Leon, would you recommend to double leaf the whole room or would it take too much space.
I'm thinking about making it without booth as Eric has mentioned, recording with headphones and a reflexion filter so I would have a lot more space for production stuff, sofa, e.c.t., e.c.t..

What would you do with such limited space?

BTW, them 2 door work is a killer, loved it.

Thanks

[leon.payne]

would you recommend to double leaf the whole room or would it take too much space

You mentioned earlier that your neighbors are rarely in, so you are not concerned about noise between the room and next door. As long as you are happy that external noises that will not interfere with what you record in there (or you can live with it), i would personally go with the extra space.

recording with headphones and a reflexion filter

I believe there are posts on here describing how to make something that will do a similar job on here....i'll see if i can dig it out. Failing that i have always liked the idea of a wall mounted double door cupboard (sort of like what dartboards are sometimes kept in) and you open the doors to reveal panels on the inside. Then you just stick your mike in front of it.....cheaper option maybe.

What would you do with such limited space

shift the speaker and slat panels upto the far end by the window as this area is more symmetrical and will give you a better stereo image. Make some panels to go on the side walls, bass traps in the far corner and possibly a cloud over your mix position.

[war2dahip]

I believe there are posts on here describing how to make something that will do a similar job on here....i'll see if i can dig it out. Failing that i have always liked the idea of a wall mounted double door cupboard (sort of like what dartboards are sometimes kept in) and you open the doors to reveal panels on the inside. Then you just stick your mike in front of it.....cheaper option maybe.

Yes cheaper and I could see it working.

shift the speaker and slat panels upto the far end by the window as this area is more symmetrical and will give you a better stereo image. Make some panels to go on the side walls, bass traps in the far corner and possibly a cloud over your mix position.

I was trying this morning to move the booth to the parallel side of the room, instead of near window, it would stay near the main door that in the case it would have being double door as you design on the booth.