So, what do you think the smallest amount of space you could get away with would be to record a full band setting? Drums, guitars, bass, synths, piano, vox, acoustic instruments, etc. Including control room etc?

Must be of high quality/pro quality. To be used for marketable music.

How would you go about it in a house? Living room (typically biggest) for tracking, master br for CR?

Thanks for your thoughts

I'm working out of a converted in-law unit on the back of my house. I have a control room in the master bedroom thats 12' x 15'. It's not amazingly big, but seems to work ok at the moment. The living room (big room) is 20' x 17' with an amazing sloped ceiling (drums sound huge). There is a smaller room to the side of the big room that has the same sloped ceiling. It's 10' x 12'. There is also a smaller bedroom that's 8' x 9'.

I just had a 9 piece Reggae band in here a month or so ago. There was plenty of space for everyone. Tracked the whole band live in the big room. Vocalists in the smaller room. No need for overdubs. Usually when I track bands, we do the drums first and work from there doing everything via overdubs, but this band didn't have the time or the $$. The bleed wasn't bad, but I had gobos up everywhere. Regardless, I hate dealing with any bleed at all, so its not what I call 'ideal'.

If you check out the youtube link in my sig, in the first video you can see a band playing live in my big room. Might help you get an idea of how much space you can have in a 20' x 17' room, with a four piece band.

Cool thanks for sharing, that helps for ideas.thumbsup

In general I understand "bigger is better" and that a 10,000sqft house would be killer, but does anyone have an idea of what the smallest situation would be for such a setup>?

And then what a 'really nice/workable' size / layout would be like.


Thanks again.

Can you expand a little on how what it is your looking to do specifically. And how much separation you need. Are you looking to record bands live, all in the same room, no worries about bleed? Or are you wanting to record them live but full isolation, as in separate rooms? Do you just need a live room to record drums, and then overdub from there? Do you NEED a control room in a separate space from the recording room?

I would say if you wanted a control room + live room the minimum amount of space is a 10' x 11' for control room. And something a tad bigger for the live room. Maybe 15' x 17' minimum. If you need a large mixing board or have large amounts of outboard in your control room, start jacking the size up. My 12' x 15 control room has enough room for me, my desk, all my outboard gear racked to the desk (i have 18 rack units), 4 keyboards, plus I can move around. I record acoustic guitars in there all the time so there is still a nice amount of space. When I get the band in for listening, it gets real cramped, real quick. I'd never be able to record a full 4 piece band in a room the size of my control room even if I took all the gear out. So think big for the live room if you need to record a full band, all at once.

But, if you just wanna record drums, and overdub from there you can get away with less. I would say the control room should be the same size as above. But you could get away with a much smaller live room. I use the smallest bedroom (9' x 8') for drums quite often. For rock stuff it has a real punchy sound, and for mellow stuff it has a nice intimate sound. I just can't get any big room sound like I can in the 20' x 17'. Regardless, if I was doing overdub work only, all I would need is the control room plus this 9' x 8'. In my opinion, thats the smallest you could work with.

If I had my dream space, I build a control room that is pretty large. Big enough for a full sized console plus rack gear. And I'd want 3 or 4 live rooms connected to that. Or to each other. I want one big enough to record a full band, but be able to separate all the band members in their own rooms watching each other through glass. Right now, you can see from my live room into the smaller live room via two sliding glass doors I installed. But I can't see either the large or small live rooms, through glass, via the control room. I can't see into the small bedroom either. I have cameras set up for watching the live rooms from the control room, which is working out ok. But glass would be the best.

My advice is to make sure walls and surfaces are non- parallel

The ancient Greeks came up with the golden room dimensions. You multiply your ceiling height by 1.6 and 2.6. To make the math really easy say you have 10' ceilings, then you'd want 16' x 26' size room.

I've built a room to approximately these dimensions and with a vaulted ceiling and only the small front and back walls parallel it sounds really good in there!

I'd suppose the smallest size would be having the CR and all instruments in one open room, and overdub one at a time.

The next would be having all in one bigger room and go live.


Then the isolated versions.


I think I could get away with overdubbing, but would like to also know stats for a full band setting, pref. isolated so as to be flexible with a broader array of situations.

Thanks for your thoughts.

You could get amp lockers to house the amps, or you could put amps in a handful of other rooms/closets. If you did that, you might be able to get away with 1 live room. Put everyone in there, and track drums. All amps would be in another room(s). Take bass and keys DI.

These are some good ideas so far, thanks for the inputthumbsup

if you are building from start, DO NOT use the golden rule. the golden rule was not created for recording purposes. you do not want divisibility. an example of a good room being 3*5*7, a bad room: 2*4*6.

There is a lot of good info on the "Studio Building" sub forum
or John Sayer's forum