John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi!

Keep intro short for my first post. Drummer and muso. Have a small studio (without all the frills) and make a little bit of recording here and there. Sound quality ok for now...

I'm here because i have been "commissioned" by my boss to build a commercial studio for his dad. He noticed that i made music and had a "studio" (inverted cos it's just a room with a nice pc, soundcard and software and a relatively goodish mic with which i make mediocre recordings) and asked me if i would like to be involved with the studio. I said yes, and they practically said - "ok, start building!". I know very little about construction. I have read up on acoustics, sound proofing, dampening, diffusion and mostly from my own recording experience in terrible rooms, i know sort of what is needed to make nice!

These guys have four concrete walls at the mo, i have seen a nice diagram at the SAE institute which i think i will go with. It is "big facility 2", has control room with two studios and a vocal booth/kitchen. I will have to get dimensions into this post later on, for anybody who may reply and ask for this info. They plan to start recording 1 July. I personally know that this is impossible. No wait. It is definately impossible.

One more thing, BMG records quoted R90 000.00 (about $14000.00) to soundproof a room. This sounds pretty right to me but these guys reckon they can get it done for cheaper. Can you? I dont think very much cheaper.

Anyway, i plan to float the floors of the studio areas, build single walls on the floating floor up against the exterior walls with fibre board and on inside of exterior wall, air space of six inches then insulation foam attached to outside face of interior studio wall. Inside if interior studio wall (tracking rooms), more fibre board, with carpet riveted on.

Ceilings will be built to spec, fitting above "floating wall" high enough to reach existing ceiling. Basically, Ceiling board - Insulation foam - air space - fibre board - Existing Ceiling - foam insulation.

Above all this, diffusors and absorbers added to two of four walls in each tracking room should be ok - yeah?

Control room will not be as "soundproofed" as tracking rooms. Well, this makes sense to me. Needs good acoustic control and correct speaker placement.

Please help me. Anyone. Some advice. Please tell me what more (besides the above mentioned details and obvious measurements) info i need to give so i can be helped in this ridiculous task.

I love recording studios. Didn't think i would end up posting in this forum for a good couple of years however. Would appreciate some help from those in the know. Some direction if you will.

Regards,

Well I can't let this nicely written intro from fellow drummer get by without a reply!

Greetings and welcome to the forum, Stix. You've covered a lot of ground with your introductory post -- I'm not sure how much help I can be on this, but maybe I can get help get the juices flowing on this thread.

As far as costs go, I'm definitely not the one to confirm or deny what the BMG folks said. I will say "it depends" on so many factors.

i plan to float the floors of the studio areas, build single walls on the floating floor up against the exterior walls with fibre board and on inside of exterior wall, air space of six inches then insulation foam attached to outside face of interior studio wall. Inside if interior studio wall (tracking rooms), more fibre board, with carpet riveted on.

Have you been following all the "to float or not to float" discussions here lately? Dan, Mike, and I have all struggled with that dilemma for months. We've finally all just about settled on not floating (although this too can change again -- one never knows around here!).

Define "insulation foam." (I'm doubtful that will work.)

Carpet riveted on? I can just about guarantee that's not wise. Yes, you'll reduce reflections, but in general, carpet on walls is a bad idea. I don't have time at the moment, but doing a search for the keywords "carpet," "walls," and "bad" will probably yield a number of threads in which this idea is crushed.

We don't have any illustrations or dimensions from you to work with or comment on yet, so perhaps some of this talk about construction materials and technique is a little premature. Since they've already got a "cement box," it should be fairly easy to get some measurements and whip up a drawing that shows "what kind of canvas you have to paint on," so to speak.

Be sure to include as much information as possible about the environment -- what's outside this building? Are there sounds that need to be kept out? Are there neighbors that need to be protected from noise leakage from the studio?

You may also want to start a thread in the Studio Design Forum once you have your dimensions -- that one can be geared towards "where to put what and how," vs. this thread which can be geared towards "how to build it."

By now you've probably already seen the famous "Before You Post" post -- but even if you have, I'd recommend going through it again, and following all the links on the "Reference Area" announcement. It's one of those things that, when you read it the sixth time, you pick up on stuff you missed the fifth time.

Hopefully that gets this thread pumping with some life, and your project off to a successful start.

Hi Sharward!

Thanks for the response.

I have attached some pictures (i hope they meet the criteria as i'm not too sure how to re-size them or whatever) for yours and others perusal. Hopefully will get some interest from more forum users. I would like to post in the Design forum but construction has begun so we are left where we are.

The walls are up for main tracking room. Contrary to my previous post, we are only going to build 1 tracking room and 1 control room for now. You will notice in the pictures a few things:

Control room window seems to be too small.

OK How do i treat the initial layer of the tracking room walls?

Oh! I can only have three attachments!

More to follow...
Plaster added to outer tracking room wall.
Ceiling not floating yet, same with floor.

I will still add measurments to this thread ASAP. I have been pretty busy with some recording projects of my own and hav'nt been to the site for a while. I took this snaps this morning on my way to work. I'm hoping someone will pick up some grave errors from the photos and assist me before too late.

EDIT: Measurments below, please tell me what else i need to include;

Height of entire room: 2.5 meters
Width of room: 5.9 meters
Lenght of room: +- 9 meters
Tracking Room: +- 3 meters by 5.9 meters
Window Wall: 2.23 Meters Width, 2.25 Height
Window Size: 80cm Height, 98 cm Width

Walls are ALREADY constructed so if they are wrong, we will just have to learn from the mistakes. As you can see in the pics, we have 8cm concrete bricks, with fibre board inside, followed by insulation foam (i NOW know this was not the correct material) then an air space then the same structur on opposite inside wall. Outer wall of Tracking room(facing mixing desk) is plastered.

god those pics are Not huge anymore (thanks Sharward and all)
See below how i reduced them

any way here's some more, i got it right this time...

Great pix, but whoah -- they're way to big. They need to be resized. They're currently 1600 pixels wide, and that's causing them to take over the screen and force lateral scrolling of everything, including text.

I realize you don't yet know how to resize photos, but it's something you should learn how to do. Here's a Microsoft tool for Windows XP.

Hope that helps...

If you're on a PC, use the Paint program; load the file, click on Image>Stretch+Skew, then for X and Y dimensions type in 45% and click OK - this will reduce 1600 pixel width to 720, just right.

If you're on a Mac (the "Graphics King" with NO IMAGING WHATEVER in their Operating System ) you'll need a separate program. Or, maybe your camera has software included for photo editing... Steve

If you're on a Mac (the "Graphics King" with NO IMAGING WHATEVER in their Operating System ) you'll need a separate program.

actually not true, you would use iPhoto. Not the easiest or most intuitive program, but it does the job ... it's just not easy to find the function.

you're right, it's not really an imaging program either, it's more of an organization tool. but you can crop, resize, adjust brightness and contrast, and a few other things.

not to be a mac defender or anything. i'm an equal opportunity OS hater

So ... while clicked on the "Organize" tab, select the photo or photos you want to resize (shift click to select multiple)

Select File --> Export

You will then have the opportunity to enter new pixel dimensions.

You will be creating a new set of smaller photos, not overwriting your originals ... so you will choose a destination for these new pix.

I'm not a huge fan of iPhoto, but it does have some cool features, like creating quicktime slideshows from stills easily [with music and built-in cross-dissolve!]. It's cool if you learn how to use it i guess. My wife uses it a lot.

Dan

Thanks Dan, not a Mac hater myself, just hated their quadruple prices early on; now, I'm so deep in software I don't wanna change. iPhoto must be a newer addition? seems like all the "puter puta's" are starting to realize what us mere mortals actually DO with the damn things ('bout damn time too) Steve