Shopping for new house - project studio is major concern. Suggestions?

[Scott Whigham]

The wife and I are at the beginning stages of Project "House 2012" and it's time I spend some time thinking about what I ideally want vs. what I may have to practically get. We're buying a "used" house and we're spending all available funds to do so (so there's no budget afterwards for serious remodeling).

What I have already: good quality room treatment that currently is in my 12'x'13'x'8' room (OC703, OC705, some 2", some 4", some 6" plus superchunks). So this isn't about room treatment - this is about things other than room treatment. Room treatment I can test for, add, modify, remove, re-run tests - all of which I can (and will) do.

What I want from the studio: I want to track acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and then mix it myself. 99% of what I record/mix is "solo, instrumental guitar".

So, what are my things that I should look to make sure are there? I figure this is important stuff:

• Ceiling height - most houses around here are 9' but many of them arch upward to 12'
• Room dimensions - I recognize that squares are bad but what else?
• Windows - I have two window plugs in my current studio that do well; I suppose I'll do the same if this is an issue. Many of the houses have a "media room" which would likely be a good candidate for a studio (and these don't have windows)
• Ceiling fan - it's coming down and my clouds will go up
• Flooring - if it's not a wood floor, I do plan on putting a section of wood flooring in the room so that I can track acoustic instruments in it. This will be away from the mixing area

What else? Any other advice, thoughts, ideas?

[DanDan]

Location x3.
Noise coming in, noise going out.
Visit your prospective house at odd hours. Check for insomniacs with a Disco in their garage. Airport nearby? Trains? Motorway?
REW will log SPL over a long period. If you are allowed you could leave a laptop running in there overnight or for a few days.

You don't really want to be next to a very quiet place either, they will complain.

DD

[babooino]

Originally Posted by DanDan

Location x3.
Noise coming in, noise going out.
Visit your prospective house at odd hours. Check for insomniacs with a Disco in their garage. Airport nearby? Trains? Motorway?
REW will log SPL over a long period. If you are allowed you could leave a laptop running in there overnight or for a few days.

You don't really want to be next to a very quiet place either, they will complain.

DD

That and good food around!

[oakleaf]

Get wood flooring for the looks, not the acoustics. Any acoustic effect you think you're hearing with wood vs cement or tile is purely placebo. In fact, cement is usually a better bet for it's isolation properties as any reflective properties are nearly identical. I am pretty sure that Ethan had a good article on this somewhere that I'm too lazy to try to find right now.

The real factors you should be considering:

1) Size (AKA not too small)
2) Isolation (Neighbors won't bug you, you wont bug them)
3) Room modes (look it up if you don't know about it already)
4) Electrical wiring and interference in the existing space.

If you plan on properly treating your room, then everything not listed above is just aesthetics.

#4 is something that I had to figure out the hard way. My studio is located directly above the main fuse box for the building and recording guitar has been a nightmare because of all the electro magnetic interference. The only real solution to fix it would be to reroute where the electricity comes into the house which is not really possible for me. So keep in mind your power situation and make sure you aren't next to a lot of high voltage to keep out of trouble. Almost all other electrical problems are much cheaper (less than 1k) and easier to fix.

[RScott]

For noise concerns, try to gauge the neighborhood. Talk to the neighbors about how loud they like to listen to their music. Chances are, if they like theirs loud, they won't mind yours loud. Then again, if their bass is blaring then that shuts down your tracking session.

If you want, take a speaker with you and a CD player with some pink noise and play it at a high volume in your intended work zone. Take a sound meter and see how loud it is outside the house. How loud is it in the bedroom? My wife will stop the party long before it's loud enough to bother the neighbors.

For acoustic, you may be concerned more with the noise from outside than what you're sending out. Neighborhood may be a big factor here and unfortunately it's only possible to eyeball the situation without living there or leaving a laptop there to record sound data. Playing a speaker inside and measuring outside will also let you know about how well your walls are stopping sound coming in too. Good to know if cars driving by will destroy your tracking.

Basements are nice for studios because they can be partially underground and pretty well isolated. Of course spending to build out a basement is still spending so that may not work.

For the sound of your room, the bigger the better. Avoid squares. Don't worry about having one of the "golden" room dimensions, but certainly avoid walls sharing common dimensions or multiples of each other (9'x18'x12' for instance). I'd say for residential just try to get the biggest room you can that is well isolated from outside noise.

I bought my house a little over a year ago. Once you're in the space, you're there for a long time and sometimes you can't polish a bad space into something usable without considerable investment. Since a bad space can totally shut down your musical ambitions, take the time and try to stick to your guns when looking at homes if having a recording space is a big concern for you. Best of luck!!

[Scott Whigham]

This is all great info - thank you to everyone for sharing your knowledge and experiences!

Originally Posted by oakleaf

The real factors you should be considering:

4) Electrical wiring and interference in the existing space.

#4 is something that I had to figure out the hard way. My studio is located directly above the main fuse box for the building and recording guitar has been a nightmare because of all the electro magnetic interference. The only real solution to fix it would be to reroute where the electricity comes into the house which is not really possible for me. So keep in mind your power situation and make sure you aren't next to a lot of high voltage to keep out of trouble. Almost all other electrical problems are much cheaper (less than 1k) and easier to fix.

Okay - so make sure the studio isn't next to/over/too-close-to the fuse box. Got that. Other than that, how can you make sure there's no electrical interference? If I take a guitar amp in there and here lots of electrical interference/hum/buzz, then that would be a deal killer?

[oakleaf]

I broke down and got an EMF meter. They're about $40-60 on amazon. I've found that in general, you want your studio to be about 20-30 feet away from high voltage like power lines outside your house or the main line to your fuse box. It only takes about 5 mili gauss to make your guitar pickups hum like crazy. High voltage sources going to the box usually run about 100-200 mili gauss right next to the metal, about 30 mili gauss at 2 feet, 15 mili gauss at 4 feet, 7 mili gauss at eight feet, and so on. By 20-30 feet the problem is gone.

You can also shield with magnetic metal (no other material including cement shields magnetic fields.) In general every 1/16" drops the field by 1 mili gauss. However, this is a REALLY expensive solution with current steel prices so the best solution is distance.

I guess one other point I forgot to mention above is to also make sure there are no large radio towers next to you, as that is another type of interference that will drive you nuts. However, it is much, MUCH less common than the electro magnetic interference.

[Scott Whigham]

Wow - a "ghost detecting meter", eh? Cool!

Do you know which one you bought? Most of the ones up on amazon are $100+.

Great info - thank you for sharing that.

[DanDan]

+1 EMF meter. Which one did you get? Link?
Great info. Not visible, one could build a studio and find it impossible to use due to RF. Strangely I have seen this happen twice in the countryside. Electric Fences. No solution.

DD

[Scott Whigham]

Originally Posted by DanDan

+1 EMF meter. Which one did you get? Link?
Great info. Not visible, one could build a studio and find it impossible to use due to RF. Strangely I have seen this happen twice in the countryside. Electric Fences. No solution.

DD

I found it in another thread:

Originally Posted by oakleaf

There are cheaper ones out there (some as low as $25) but you need something that is still accurate around high levels of EMF.

This is the one I bought:
Amazon.com: Lutron 822-A Fully Digital EMF Meter (Wide Range, High Resolution): Home Improvement