John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi John,

First of all thankyou for all the INCREDIBLE resources you have provided very generously.

I was put on to this site from an AW4416 form. The fellow there suggest I join! Wow, what a great forum!

My problem is this, I have a little dinky room that I want to make release quality hit music in. (tongue in cheek) A little joke.

Seriously. The room is quite small, and I need to be able to record drums in there. My friend is purchasing a Pearl Session Custom kit soon, and we need to have it setup semi-permantly in my home. (oh yeah, thanks for the AWESOME recording tips on drums. I'm going to start using them!)

What I wanted to do is set up the room as my project studio. I was thinking of setting up the drums in against the back wall (furthest from the door facing out). I was thinking also about removing the walk-in robe (but keeping the cement divider) and setting up my desk (aw2816) and monitors in there. When we'd record drums, I'd probably move them outside for tracking. I'd also like to record loud guitar amps, at which point I'd remove the drums, as well as vocals, accoustic guitars etc.

I understand that it's probably not possible to achieve all of the perfectly in one room, and there must be comprimises. Recording the drums with the best possible quality is what we want the most.

Is it possible to achieve professional results recording drums in a room of this size, and what kind of accoustic treatments would we need? How about diffusion products etc.

The other thing is isolation. The window you see looks over at another unit, and so that I don't keep the neighbours up, and we don't get car noise coming through, what would you suggest I do to achieve that?

Isolation from the rest of the house is important too, but I'm not overly worried about bleeding into the house. (however, I might later heheheh)

I have attached a drawing of my room with all the measurements that I'd thought you'd need. Let me know if you need any more measurements.

Again, thankyou for this invaluable resource.

Dwane Hollands
Darwin, Northern Territory.

Dwane - you are asking a lot for a small room. Definitely remove the walk in robe as you'll need the space.

Check out the Studios Under Construction site and see what the guys at HR have achieved in similar rooms. http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm

cheers
john

Hi John,

I've been having a look at some of the studios you've tweaked. I've also been rethinking my studio.

Instead of try to jam the control room and live room into that really small Room, I was thinking of sacrificing my bed room and using it as the control room.

The Live room would still be the room I showed you earlier. My Main concern i capturing the drums well. Yes I would like to record vocals, guitars and other instruments in there, tracking separately. My uneducated guess is, if you can get a drum kit to work in a room, then the other intruments should work too.

I noticed in the pictures of Cloud Studios that they had fairly small Drum Booth

The room was made of pine angled for diffusion, and glass windows and slate floor. As I have a small room, I thought that maybe there is some hope. You said the room was a live room, because of all the pine etc.

What size is that room? (note: I'll probably still remove my walk in robe)

Any hope for me?

Thanks John,

Dwane Hollands

RE Logging on Issue: oh yeah, Um . . I think I'm a tool , because I realised that the username is case sensitive and now I get in everytime. However the FTP directory issue was still worth noting for your web administrator. Anyways. . . .

Yeah - Cloud would be a bit bigger than your room but you could build a room like that. I'd put some variable panels on a couple of the walls because it would be tooo live for vocals etc.



cheers
john

Hi John,

Hope you're having a good friday! I have a few more questions for you.

What is a variable panel? Is it something you hang from the corner of the rooms, like suspended with insulating foam of some sort? Or Rigid Fibreglass batts?

With cloud studios' drum booth, are the angles really scientifically worked out? Is there a formula to achieve optimum diffusion? For example maybe an angle difference between adjacent panels to encourage diffusion?

Thanks alot John. Oh yeah I looked up the idead of the airconditioning vent. What was the outcome in relation to health safety issues? will the plastic covering over the fibreglass, conteract the absorbtion characteristics?

Cheers,

Dwane Hollands

a variable panel absorber is the type listed at the bottom of the Low frequency absorber page at SAE.

cheers
john