John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi,

Yes, against all economics and logic, another studio is being built.

This one's actually in John's neck of the woods (Sydney). I've done the initial designs borrowing heavily from John's ideas and fantastic recording handbook (thanks SAE).

There are many compromises, such as:

- no visibility between control room & studio (except CCT)
- wide (not long) control room
- only one room, rather than two (my preference anyway)
- living there too (economic reality)
- band room has sloping floor (although that will be fixed eventually)
- parallel walls here and there

The exterior walls are brick, the interior walls will be single stud design with a flexible metal channel between gyprock and stud, with Rockwool insulation. The lounge, kitchenette, bedroom and bathroom are already built. At the moment the rest is just an empty space.

There will be a floating floor in the control room, but nothing but a big rug in the recording room- it's on a ground floor (concrete slab). I'd like to build a raised floor but my initial budget doesn't stretch that far. The thing on the left is a drum riser maybe for screening off loud drummer.

I'd love any feedback/ideas/potential problems with the current design, it's uploaded it as a PDF for anyone that can be bothered looking.

http://www.wagrecords.net/PDF's/Plan_5.pdf

Cheers!

Chris

you may want to seriously consider redesigning the space. The way it is, you won`t even be able to see in to the drum room. And a session without good sight lines is a pain in the butt.

Isn`t there a way that you can rearrange your space so that the sight between the studio area and the control room is better?

I would be interested to see what the others come up with.

Hi chrisv - welcome to the site mate

Nice work with smartdraw even got my drums. BTW - with smartdraw go to file/export and select .jpeg and you can make a .jpeg to post here.

BUT I'm afraid I have to agree wih Daniel - unlike his design which is really good.

The vox booth is tiny and has no visual contact with the control room and as Daniel said you can't see the drummer. It's hard though given the space - I'll think about it.

I've made a jpeg of the plan for others to see and comment on.

cheers
john

<doublepost deleted>

John Sayers wrote:Hi chrisv - welcome to the site mate

Nice work with smartdraw even got my drums. BTW - with smartdraw go to file/export and select .jpeg and you can make a .jpeg to post here.

cheers
john

Thanks for the input so far, definitely food for thought.

I used Free hand as I have a Mac, it imports PDF's very easily. It does export JPEG's too (duh why didn't I do that).

I totally agree with the the comments so far, but I have spent quite some time trying to arrange it so you have visual contact but I always end up compromising the space too much.

If I rotate the control room 90 degrees and make it longer and thinner, then I need a door between the main monitors. Also my console is too wide to nicely fit facing the other direction.

I have used CCT in a previous studio and I didn't find it too restricting, although it is a pain when the talent can't see what I'm doing.

I thought of maybe installing glass doors between the control room and studio, and maybe a couple of panes of glass so you can actually see to a limited extent. I can't help thinking though that glass would upset the acoustics in the control room.

Maybe I'll go back to the drawing board and work out a few alternatives.

Cheers

Chris