John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Here's a layout of my room. The black blocks are doors or windows. The red blocks are gobos/bass traps. I can't decide if I want to permanently treat the entire room, which is used for recording and mixing, or to use portable gobos and have a different setup for recording and mixing. I won't be able to put traps in the corners with the doors, which sucks. Any advice on bass trap layout? And could I use 4" foam for the "rear wall" of my mixing desk? Thanks for any help.

what are some dimensions of the room?

The longest side wall is 17'. The desk is 6'. The ceilings are 8'. I think the width is 13'.

This is what I would do with your space - reasons for most changes are on the mark-up of your drawing... Steve

Thanks for the advice! However, over the drum area, there is a high "A" ceiling with a lot of open air. I doubt that I would be able to hang anything above that area. Would the open space be beneficial or do I still need to do some absorbing on top of the drums?

Curtis,

Steve has you covered, but I'll add this:

> over the drum area, there is a high "A" ceiling with a lot of open air <

In that case it's even more important to place absorption from the ceiling, to avoid the focusing effect that occurs under the peak. I have that type of ceiling in my home studio and also in my home theater, and in both rooms I put absorber panels suspended under the center of the peak.

--Ethan

How important are the gobos in front of the drums?

They will help kill a lot of reflections from that area while mixing, especially due to the glass; in fact, you may want 1 or 2 more so you can overlap them slightly. When recording the drums, the soft sides should usually be toward the drums to kill reflections getting into the drum mics; then, for mixing you would turn them around.

While mixing, you may also find that you need to lay pillows on all the drum heads and lay a blanket over the entire kit (cymbal damping) in addition to the gobos... Steve