planning for a project studio in a furnished basement

[slaveern]

Hey there...

I'm planning to set up a project studio in my basement and I need some critique. Here are the basic info:

Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - single detached house basement
Dimension: 9' ceiling throughout, with 8' ceiling in some area - shaded grey in the picture below.
Room #1: 11x13.5'
Room #2: 12'x12'
Room #3: 10'x12'
All walls are current drywalled and painted. Ceiling is painted with the non-flat white 'stucco'-like material.


I'm looking to utilize two rooms and leaving one room with my wife's stuff but I can occasionally use it as Iso. I'd need some input on what room to be used for what, efficient way to treat accoustically...etc. Instead of tearing down all the walls, I intend to build whole bunch of movable panels (8') that can be placed around the room with one hook onto the ceiling. That way I can alter the air space and the angle to create different room sound. One thing I really want is an outlook window. I do not plan to break any wall except the wall that I need to put the window in, so room usage suggestion, acoustic control and 'non-destructive' ideas are very welcomed. For budget, I'll guess the current plan will cost less than $1000 DIY.

This is what I plan to do:


As you can see I don't have much choice of where the control room is. Althought Room #2 seems ideal for control, yet tearing down the closet at Room #2 is too much hassle as I need to break a few walls and relocate the closet - my wife's gonna be mad!! So the next best is to use Room #3 as control room. Room #1 is possible yet I afraid #3 is too small for drum tracking.

The following are some pictures of the 4 walls in Room #1 and the intended look as tracking room:









The two black covering for the center view picture are the windows covering for two windows looking outside. The basement ceiling is roughly 2.5'-3' above ground.

Questions:
1. Are the choice of room ok?
2. Are there too many / too few 8' gobos around the tracking room?
3. Does the gobos need to be angled? How about the overhead ones?
4. Does the 'movable' gobos idea make any sense at all - in terms of altering angle/air space to create different room sound?
5. Can I use PVC double-pane windows from hardware store, instead of building my own for the outlook window?
6. Based on my choice of control room, I think I pretty much need to tear down both sides of that drywall. Since I need to rebuild the wall, does this sounds ok for rebuild materials: fabric-705-drywall-pink_stuff-drywall-705-fabric?

Sorry if I miss any detail. Thanks for any suggestion/recommendation...

Regards,
Ernest

[kendale]

Aloha and welcome to the forum Ernest

Congrats on your studio build! Any chance you could please:

Edit your profile to include your location. This is very important, because this is a worldwide resource, and as such, material costs and availability vary widely. For example, masonry is cheaper than gypsum in some parts of the globe, whereas it's the exact opposite in other regions.

I think you'll get a few more responses if you do, and this will really come in handy two or three posts down the road. It's also part of the forum guidelines: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Thanks!

Here's a couple of handy links: http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html
(click on acoustics, absorbers, construction in left hand column, and tabs at top of pages)
Wall units: http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm

Looking forward to your build!

Aloha

[guitardad72]

Hey, I'm a Canadian snowbird who got stuck down south (Florida) and has decided to never fly back home... too cold!!!

If you can't switch out room #2 & #3, and have to make # 2 the CR then you should turn it 90 degrees. Engineer (in small rooms) always faces the short wall.

$1,000 CND = about $700 USD, that's a real low budget

Good luck

Marc

[John Sayers]

maybe you could try something like this??

cheers
john

[slaveern]

Kendale, Guitardad, esp. John for the redesign: Thanks for all your replies!!

Talking about short side... such a hard choice as it's so convienent to look at the performer while tracking. OTOH if I find the sound is just plain bad, I can still rearrange to a sideway arrangement.

John, room #2 is definitely the best for control yet taking down the closet is just too much for me. The closet is built-in with drywall surrounding it. One day if I got serious enough that I find the sound is just not good enuf in room #3, I'll prolly do that, or even renovate the entire basement!!!

Currently in room #1, the ringing is plain scary. I decided to screw the absorption panels onto the walls. I hope those will tame those ringing. Does an additional piece of ply on the drywall actually do much? With a gobo I thought unless mounted with space in between there's no use for that piece of ply. Now I'm just thinking about drywall->insulation with frame->polyester batting->fabric. The batting is to control the potential leak of insulation that may cause allergy. I'm going to use Roxul Safe'nSound btw.

BTW, thanks to my father-in-law, we took down the wall and built the frame for the window. And hopefully in couple of days we'll put the window in place. I'll post some pictures later...

Cheers,
Ernest