Studio building experts - advice needed 1 1/2 car garage

[indie]

Ok,
My buddy and I have access to this small building. It's about the size of a 1 1/2 car garage. Cinderblock, wrapped in brick.
Dimensions are almost 16' wide, 24 long.


Basically, we want as comfortable of a control room as we can get and a drum room - where we're thinking we'll put up portable gobos to do vocals.

We're talking to a very knowledgeable builder now who has done studio builds before.

What would you do with this space? HELP! Would love to see some cool mockups
Thanks!!

[bensaddiction]

24 feet isn't really that long for a separate control room and drum room. Would you be happy making it an all-in-one-room studio?

[indie]

Originally Posted by bensaddiction

24 feet isn't really that long for a separate control room and drum room. Would you be happy making it an all-in-one-room studio?

Ahh - kind of Lanois style?? that might work... just one "big" room with no isolation?

[indie]

Actually - we ARE going to need an isolated drum room.

So I guess we're looking at 2 rooms of 15x12-ish each as best case scenario for having decent sized control room and any shot at a decent sounding drum room.
Whatcha think?

[gullfo]

simply splitting the rooms on an angle and treating should work.

[indie]

That's excellent Glenn, thank you.
Allow me to ask a stupid question...
Is it far better to do things on an angle like this? It looks great. Is the only purpose to not have parallel walls?

[gullfo]

you could go with parallel walls and angled treatments. in this case it may be simpler to go with the wall angles depending on your overall needs.

[andrebrito]

Non-parallels walls are indeed a good option for a tracking room

There is no such thing as room that is too large for a control room. The amount
of space it is taken for proper soundproofing and acoustical treatment is enormous.

[jhbrandt]

Indie,

I would not recommend splitting this room up. And (sorry) I would not use asymmetrically angled walls in a control room. These will work nicely in a recording/tracking room but would wreak havoc in a critical listening environment.

Go with a Daniel Lanois style set up. I think that you and your clients will enjoy the 'ensemble' and ease of communication. For more information, have a look at my newsletter archive and publications.

Cheers,
John

[dainja]

In gullfo's sketch the control room appears perfectly symmetrical to me...

[gullfo]

actually the boundaries in the split CR shown is asymmetrical but compensated using "hard" absorption to re-shape it and selective "soft" absorption to adjust the final room response. John's approach of using rectangular rooms is a fine one and certainly an option since you're going to use a variety of treatments etc to get the room response right either way.

[johndykstra]

Definitely one room. Any division of the space will result in an acoustical compromise of both environments on multiple levels and only gain a benefit in one.

Factoring in budgetary considerations as well... this would be a no brainer for me.

I have worked extensively in single room environments. The first few sessions are tedious yes. That's not to say you can't achieve a good product, just learning the work flow and patience with mic placement. Though you quickly learn the sweet spots of the room, and all of these non isolation shortcomings fade rather quickly.

I find a single room particularly conducive for the writing process. Not sure if this a primarily private use facility for you or not, but if it is; a single room will be a home run for you for sure. Even if it's not necessarily private use, but rather a select client base of those you would consider friends... same deal.

Considerations for a single room's flow should be taken into account. Lots of headphone runs. Monitors on an easily accessible separate switch. A book shelf with reading material and wifi to keep band mates quietly amused. Gobos... lots of gobos.


What should really be taken into account before any division decisions are made, is the existing isolation provided by the existing structure, and how much more you are going to need. This alone may very well dictate a dramatic reduction of your existing interior space and wallet, and make this decision a lot easier to make.

[indie]

This is all great advice, thank you guys!
Still considering the one room idea.
Option 1: One room and lots of gobos
Option 2:
The split room we came up with today with builder has no angles. Making the control room 15x14 and a small drum room/booth. Obviously we'd only be able to get a 70's dry drum sound, but that's ok for us with this place.

Question ----- on the inside, after framing/drywall and insulation , how do you guys feel about the walls in both rooms being all fabric?

Not sure what the term is -- the example being the older studios in Nashville all fabric in control rooms and tracking rooms, just real dead sounding.

So no drywall/hard surfaces showing, 703 covered by fabric.
I hope this makes sense..

[johndykstra]

It's a valid approach. Do a search for "nonenvironmental". some love this type of room, some don't. You will notice one consistent feature of nonenvironment rooms, is a hard, reflective front wall with the speakers mounted flush within it. This is a crucial aspect of the design, as it allow some amount of reflections to be heard from talking, chairs rolling... essentially sounds being produced by things other than the speakers. This will allow for a more comfortable feeling being in the room. Totally dead, and you would not want to spend so much time in there.

The one aspect of a NE room I feel you may have difficulties achieving, is an even decay time across the freq. spectrum. Your space being 14'x15'... it's going to be tricky to get the low frequencies to decay as quickly as the high frequencies will. You will likely need to bury tuned traps behind porous absorption, as I don't think you would want the depth of traps required to make strict broadband absorption effective down that low.

[johndykstra]

Thomas Northward is also doing some interesting variations on the traditional NE approach:

http://www.northwardacoustics.com/

[jhbrandt]

Originally Posted by johndykstra

... some love this type of room, some don't. You will notice one consistent feature of nonenvironment rooms, is a hard, reflective front wall with the speakers mounted flush within it. This is a crucial aspect of the design, as it allow some amount of reflections to be heard from talking, chairs rolling... essentially sounds being produced by things other than the speakers. This will allow for a more comfortable feeling being in the room. Totally dead, and you would not want to spend so much time in there.

The one aspect of a NE room I feel you may have difficulties achieving, is an even decay time across the freq. spectrum. Your space being 14'x15'... it's going to be tricky to get the low frequencies to decay as quickly as the high frequencies will. You will likely need to bury tuned traps behind porous absorption, as I don't think you would want the depth of traps required to make strict broadband absorption effective down that low.

I don't know anyone who doesn't like working in a Newell or Toyoshima NE room. They really are not totally dead.

**And the LF absorption of gypsum panel walls is too often overlooked.

Also, properly designed NE or it's variations will be acoustically balanced and will not sound 'dead' to the occupants. They simply eliminate the room sound from interfering with the source material.

Originally Posted by johndykstra

Thomas Northward is also doing some interesting variations on the traditional NE approach:

As do I, and I offer a variation that can be used with free-standing speakers. - My RFZ/NE approach is applicable to small rooms.

Cheers,
John

[jhbrandt]

Originally Posted by indie

....Question ----- on the inside, after framing/drywall and insulation , how do you guys feel about the walls in both rooms being all fabric?

Not sure what the term is -- the example being the older studios in Nashville all fabric in control rooms and tracking rooms, just real dead sounding.

So no drywall/hard surfaces showing, 703 covered by fabric.

indie,

I get that... gawd I hate those rooms. Sort of a take off from the LEDE rooms there in Nashvegas - and if you had a chance to work in some of the older indie rooms you would have seen quite a few compression ceilings as well... - another bad idea, IMO.

Don't copy the 'dead' room design. First determine the decay characteristics of the room as it is now and calculate the absorption needed to bring the decay down to a manageable level. Have a look at my paper 'Room Acoustics Design and the Frequency-Power Spectrum'.

Cheers,
John

[SörenHjalmarsson]

Yeah! the trick is to terrrap the kerrrap () out of the room, without deadening it and without preserving any undesirable primary (or laterally) arriving HF early reflections - so that's what i would do, piece of cake right!

Everything clear??

[Jeffrey Hedback]

Indie,

I'm more in favor of an "all-in-one" room, based on a quick read through the thread, for you. But the real answer is based on your clientele and type of projects. Certain work (like John mentioned writing for example) can be ideal for "all-in-one". If you're always bringing in paying clients, the single room can be tough to pull off. For a band that sets up "shop", awesome. A proper vocal booth just big enough for drums could give best of both worlds.

As for room response model, I am very much a supporter of retaining lo-level upper mid/hi energy providing modes are controlled (not to exceed 400ms above 30Hz) and early reflections are controlled to -15dB.

That said, for reasons that were unique to that projects...a small NE room is definitely possible and very workable. See the thread linked below and posts 130 & 135 have test data. There are plenty of details of the process and result throughout. Note, the Blue Sky monitor system are every bit as much of the acoustical response as treatments.

The birth of my studio ... so to speak

I see you're making progress toward a solid design. There are some great ideas coming your way in this thread- John(s), Gullfo, Soren, etc. I suspect that if you could define your goals just a bit better, the right approach will fall together quickly at this point.

[indie]

I really appreciate all this advice.
We will use the space for writing, but the main use is for producing singer/songwriter type projects... along with some bands.

We know the "tracking" room is severely limited in space, so we opt for a really dead sounding room for that 70's type drum sound (at least that's our thinking with this tiny space) If we need a drum sound that's zeppelin like, we'll go to our friends place

That's why we're thinking keep the control room as big as we can. So the tracking room will most likely be 15 by 9-ish. It's SO not optimal, but the actual size of the building is 15x25...not sure what else to do...hmmmm.

[johndykstra]

Singer songwriter?

Don't go dead response. In either environment if there's two, or if you do single room.

You're not small to the point where completely "dead" is your only option.

[George Necola]

sounds silly, but if you are just preparing yourself for such an investment you should maybe check out other buildings/garage kinda things.

too small for 2 rooms.

cheers
George

Originally Posted by indie

I really appreciate all this advice.
We will use the space for writing, but the main use is for producing singer/songwriter type projects... along with some bands.

We know the "tracking" room is severely limited in space, so we opt for a really dead sounding room for that 70's type drum sound (at least that's our thinking with this tiny space) If we need a drum sound that's zeppelin like, we'll go to our friends place

That's why we're thinking keep the control room as big as we can. So the tracking room will most likely be 15 by 9-ish. It's SO not optimal, but the actual size of the building is 15x25...not sure what else to do...hmmmm.

[johndykstra]

Originally Posted by indie

If we need a drum sound that's zeppelin like, we'll go to our friends place

Keep this in mind. If you have a different tracking location with good space, consider a top notch control room only. You have the room to achieve this. You can still of course track many things in the control room, but great mixing environments are really hard to find. You just may find yourself renting the room out to other local engineers looking for a great mix spot. Easy money.

[indie]

Originally Posted by johndykstra

Keep this in mind. If you have a different tracking location with good space, consider a top notch control room only. You have the room to achieve this. You can still of course track many things in the control room, but great mixing environments are really hard to find. You just may find yourself renting the room out to other local engineers looking for a great mix spot. Easy money.

This is true. The one room thing still appeals to me in every way except drums... trying to figure that out.

The main thing is I mix at my place in another town.
we stay really busy and couldn't really rent it out for other mixers that often.
It would really be used for our own projects 95% of the time.

Along with bands we produce, we do jingle work as well so we would need access to it constantly.

I

[SörenHjalmarsson]

Originally Posted by johndykstra

Keep this in mind. If you have a different tracking location with good space, consider a top notch control room only. You have the room to achieve this.

Also keep in mind. That the response of your control room should be made to 'match' that of your tracking location. If that TR is BIG i.e. has a big ISD gap - your CR response should be made to exceed that ISD. This of course, does not apply if you are making an NE based control room...


Cheers,

[dmm]

Indie,
Don't split a room that small. Just been there, done that. Sadly wasted a few grand and many hard weeks laboring on that failed experiment. Took the partition out and life is better now. Open and lively rather than small,dead and depressing. Easier mixing, too.
cheers

[Northward]

Originally Posted by johndykstra

Thomas Northward is also doing some interesting variations on the traditional NE approach:

http://www.northwardacoustics.com/

Thanks for the ref

To the OP:

I'm afraid there isn't enough room in this building to build a NE or FTB Control Room up to specs. Length is okay, but width is missing ~4 feet at least. Height on the side of the garage roof is likely a serious problem too.

Just a thought as well, maybe irrelevant in your case... Or not:

Another thing to look at / consider before going any further is also the load bearing capacity of the existing roof structure, which is likely only: [self weight + added load capacity for weather related pbs (snow for ex) + legal safety margin] ... and... that's it.

So no way one can anchor anything serious to that (unless for some reason the roof's load bearing structure has been built to much higher standards, which while unlikey because expensive, would be really good news.)

So it means you'd lose height because there is a need for a secondary & serious ceiling structure inside the garage to sustain the weight of the studio's ceiling which is always substantial. In particular with NE and FTB.

Sorry, I feel like I'm ruining the party here with all this.

But detailed existing conditions need to be factored in before anything is decided and planned.

EDIT: How high are the load bearing walls?

[johndykstra]

Originally Posted by SörenHjalmarsson

Also keep in mind. That the response of your control room should be made to 'match' that of your tracking location. If that TR is BIG i.e. has a big ISD gap - your CR response should be made to exceed that ISD. This of course, do not apply if you are making an NE based control room...


Cheers,

To a point Soren. The OP has a room of 25' in length. Let's deduct 10' of it for trapping, diffusors, and speaker to listener distance.... I'm ballparking here. (kinda based on my room) This still leaves 15' from head to back wall. This provides an ISD gap as long as 30msec... give or take. Getting into that "echo" range of reflection... undesirable aka... plenty of room. From my understanding, you simply want your control room ISD termination to be after only the reflections of the recording that share that type of intensity... not necessarily "all" reflections of the recording. Regardless of tracking room size, we are typically talking about a floor reflection between source and mic... and possibly one wall bounce (if the mic is in the center of a very large tracking room, those first wall reflections will likely not be of an ISD termination intensity...and thus audible over your already decaying CR bloom). So yes, in a CR "attached" to a large tracking room, you want a long ISD gap... but not so long as to reach echo length, which would be achievable in a 25' long room. However, I think really the magic is in controlling the diffuse blooms decay rate and intensity that can make or break the relationship.

I think I just confused myself with that, so good luck.

And please, I'd LOVE to be corrected if wrong, this is my interpretation.

[SörenHjalmarsson]

I hear you Dyk,

The gap itself isn't the whole story of course, but the proper determined ISD gap in alliance with the character of the ISD termination signal (properly diffused and attenuated reflections etc...)

Just like the character of the recording space, aswell as it's size, will determine the final reverberation time...

I was merely trying to make our OP aware that the TR response must be taken into consideration when calculating the CR response. The standard '20mS' might not be enough, or he might get away with less... either way you need to know what you should be aiming for and why.

I dont know what an outer boundary ISD would be, but i'm guessing you dont want a slap echo in the control room.


Cheers,

[SörenHjalmarsson]

Something else that is worth taking into consideration when choosing a response model is the complete setup of gear, racks, instruments, tape machines, drum kits, etc...

Perhaps in a one room studio, with lots of 'stuff' present, it might be hard to achieve a good CR response based on a laterally arriving diffuse field (due to all of the stuff interfering with the reflections). On the other hand... The recordings in an NE based space might not be as pleasant as it would be in an RFZ based design...


Cheers,