The luxury and burden of starting from scratch

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 5:06 pm

Hi Folks,

Hoping some of you experts can send me in the right direction. I am building an addition for a family room and can build a project studio / office below it. Possibly about 5-6 feet down below ground level. I'm probably limited to about 400 sq ft each floor, and height of about 9 feet, but I have flexibility on specifics like exact room dimensions and materials.

While some of you might think that this is a luxury, it's really a burden, because I don't have a lot of time. But I hate to build the walls in the wrong shape! I can always go back and change certain materials and internal structures, but I got one shot at the room.

I am looking for an overview of how to approach this. Is it a book, a web site, or a company? I really didn't have luck in this forum finding such a basic guide, maybe because I don't know what I'm looking for. Can anyone help?

For a sense of what I need (and if anyone wants to use this opportunity to do a little teaching), here's my situation:

1. Mostly I want it to be a great space to create music on my DAW with synths, guitar, bass, and vox input. Most everything is recorded direct with the occasional bass or guitar track recorded through an amp. Most of my time is spent sitting in front of the computer tracking, working with samples or mixing with all my racks around me. I need to be able to create reasonable mixes and masters that will translate acceptably to the outside world.

2. I plan on a single room with computer running because I would prefer the sound of a bigger space.

3. My gear is reasonable. I use meek, Sebatron and an avalon pres. I have Mackie 824s, and a M-audio 1010 interface (may upgrade). I use mostly waves platinum plugs. Everything runs through a mackie LM 3204 line mixer which helps me with all the routing.

4. The music ranges wide in style from heavy electronica to rock to kids music (I have a 6 year old!).

5. I'm an amature, with some potential to use the studio to record some semi-pro voice overs and vox. and maybe some semi-pro mixing and DAW work.

Thanks, Peter

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 8:06 pm

I guess I found one answer. I read the stickies that lead me to Ethan Winer's wonderful site.

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 11:57 am

Peter,

> I hate to build the walls in the wrong shape! <

Besides the general acoustics advice on my two sites, this particular article on my company's site might be useful:

http://www.realtraps.com/art_studio.htm

> I plan on a single room with computer running because I would prefer the sound of a bigger space. <

Yes, exactly, and this is what I almost always recommend.

--Ethan

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:33 am

Ethan--thanks much for link. So in your writings you point out that there are three "ideal" rooms

Height Width Length
1 1.14 1.39
1 1.28 1.54
1 1.6 2.33

but also show that non-parallel is a better design. Which is the best direction to take? Is there an ideal non-parallel wall dimension set?

Thanks, Peter

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:32 am

I had the luxury of building my space from scratch. I went for a detached building, which is mostly wonderful (though it's isolation from main house definitely hampers the 30 minute tweaks that us family/dahjob guys use to get stuff done).

I cannot recommend highly (pun intended) enough to get yourself some vertical space. I have 10' ceilings that "cathedral up" to 14', giving me the big space I wanted. My overall dimensions are 16' X 23' with aforementioned ceilings. Much of my approach was guided by sage advice on this forum.

For cost reasons, I went with parallel walls, since conventional construction is all about the right angles. Still, with my DIY OC703 treatments, I think it sounds really cool. You'd be surprised how easily you'll fill the space with gear, crap and empty beer bottles.

Here's my studio and Here's some stuff I've recorded in there.

Good luck, have fun, but above all else, don't spend so long making your space that you don't have time to make music. I finally got to the point where I cut aesthetic corners, just so I could move in and make tunes. So, there's a bunch of stuff in my studio that "I'll get to one of these days."

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 4:50 pm

Peter680 wrote:

in your writings you point out that there are three "ideal" rooms

My ModeCalc program lists eight:

www.realtraps.com/modecalc.htm

You don't even have to download the program. Just cick the screen shot and you'll see them listed.

> but also show that non-parallel is a better design. <

Small rooms don't benefit from angles because that makes the space even smaller. Also, angles can help at mid and high frequencies, but modes affect low frequencies.

--Ethan

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