John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

After reading a couple "Acoustics/Studio Design" books, it is my understanding that a room's acoustics are too uncontrolable/poor under 3,000 cubic feet. As I am starting to plan for my future studio, the idea of having a live room w/ proper acoustic (read: having a "live" sound, some "echo") is quite attractive.

My concern is that I could get a live room in the 3,200 cubic feet range (+/- 150 cubic feet) ... but is it really worth it? It would kill me to have a 3,200 cubic feet room that does not yield the expected results because it truely is still too small.

While I would prefer to have a room-sound in my Live Room, it would be cheaper to build a small dead-sounding booth and use FX boxes ... but that's Plan B ...

i think the problem is the other way around. If the room is toooo big the reverb is too long. Ask yourself - when was the last time I put 3.5sec reverb on a drum kit?? I usually use something around 1 - 2 sec long.

Another factor is "Do you want the same reverb on everything?" i.e. everything you record in that room will have the same reverb. Live rooms are fine provided there is a choice of other rooms as well IMHO.

cheers
JOhn

I see your point ... I think I am OK w/ having a "living-room" ... it is intended to track drums/bands or acoustic instruments ... I could always use Gobos and/or close-miking to reduce the "room" effect ... I intent to also have two iso-booth as well, so there wound be other sonic options ...

What's important to me is that it sounds like a room ... and not a box or a resonator . The live room could be somewhere around 20x15x12 ... which is near 3,600 cubic feet ... would that be too small or too big? ... or just a plain bad idea to have a main room that small !?

This is close to what I am looking for, except w/ a large live room in front of the Control Room.

20x15x12 is not a small room by studio standards, some would have a control room and a studio in that area.

cheers
john