Room construction - Need help from mastering gurus!

[Room?uest]

Here's the deal:

I'm in the planning stages of building a new mastering room. I've been speaking with the top and not-so-top architectural engineers / acousticians stateside about the costs.

Prices for design have ranged from 4500 USD to 35,000 USD with overall costs estimated at between 100,000 and 280,000.

We're talking fully floating room built inside an existing structure.

My problem is that no-one is willing to make an estimate of the costs of the building materials.

As the build will be done by myself, this makes it hard for me to choose the right designer, as i don't know how much $$$ i need over to pay for the materials.

My budget for materials alone will be about 100,000 euro.

So here's my question to the mastering gurus:

Could someone with experience in building mastering rooms please tell me the sort of construction that might be used? Obviously the more detailed the better, as i will then be able to use this information to make a rough estimate of the building materials.

Thank-you in advance!

[inlinenl]

if you're spending that kind off money .. you should know what you're doing and be able to answer that question yourself .....

[livingstone]

first,
a professional acoustician after delivering you it's study (even a pre study) should give you the exact (at 15%) list of the building materials that will be used in the construction ,
you can go with this list to negociate prices with building material resaler.

second,
a professional acoustician knows usually how much these kind of things costs more or less, so they should have been able to give you a more precise range

i think you had just very quick contact with some of them, and that the quotes they gave you were "on the fly", find the good ones, and ask him/them for a precise quote.

edit:

you have 100 000€ for materials only and want to built it yourself ???
you're crazy man !!
with 100 000 it's far enough for a big big big BIG room far bigger than any of us here !
be prepared to work a looooonnng time to build yourself a such big room
better think to hire pro crafters and work much sooner in your room

is all of this really true ??????

[Room?uest]

Wow, I'm feeling a lot of love in here already.

Inline: On what experience is your comment based? Building a fully floating pro room?

Livingstone: Yes, all of this is really true. The funds are in place and it will happen this coming year. Contrary to your statement, 100,000 euro is not a lot for a high end room. I happen to know that a really top, pro room will cost 300,000 USD upwards, which is waaay above my budget. Check out Studio B Mastering or João Carvalho Mastering - Toronto, Canada - About - Artists Gallery I have researched this and can assure you that both these rooms will cost you upwards of 300K. Imagining that I have a design budget of 20,000 USD plus 20,000 for labour (of course i won't do this entirely on my own), you can see that 140,000 euro is not that much compared to top rooms.

Back to my question. Of course I will be able to get a detailed list of materials needed, after i have chosen my designer and payed him a large chunk of wad. But until I have an idea of the material costs involved, it hard for me to choose a designer. Chicken & egg.

So, could anyone give me some details of typical, highend-ish mastering room construction?

[livingstone]

well the room you shows might have been been expensive to build yes and not only because of the acoustic design...
have you ever build a studio by yourself ?
that's not an easy task ... you have to know how to work a lot of different materials...

[mischa janisch]

We've been through this the past year and from my own experience I can tell you that you probably don't get the answeres you'd like to get simply because this answere wouldn't be worth anything without having the design allmost finished. Experienced designers know that, thats why they won't (actually they can't) tell you. The location, the construction thechniques, and design goals will determine what you will need and how much it will cost...

We started construction this week after 4 months of planing, negotiating, designing and redesigning, renegotiating,... Running a two room facility already we thought we knew everything in advance - we had very focused ideas of what we wanted from the new facility. We initially thought that we'd spend one month with studio design and then immediately start with the construction.

I'm not an acoustician, but just the last days have taught me that by simply changing deflection values and nominal loads of various springs, the same rooms can be built using 50 or 100 pc ceiling hangers @ 40,- EUR each of - and thats just the ceiling hangers. You can use 1500,- EUR doors or 4000,- EUR doors - the list is almost endless and it's not always a matter of better/worse.. One fifth of our investment is gear, almost the same we spend on HVAC!!! (we do already own quite a bit of gear allready). Money spent on room acoustic materials is 1/10th, a little more than the fee of the designers.

Can a great room for this kind of money be built - for sure it can. But in the wrong location you might have to spend a third on necessary structural improvements, simply because the building won't be able to support the load...

My advice is get someone who has allready built great rooms that you like and has enough infrastructure to guide you through all aspects - from Isolation, HVAC, electric requirements to room acoustics.

[Room?uest]

Mischa, thanks!

Good luck with your build, I'll be following it closely!