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Here is a room I am trying to figure out how in the hell to set it up for tracking AND mixing.
It will be a decent sized attached garage with 8,9 or 10 ffot ceilings, and I havent decide which height yet, but I need to soon.
The floor plan is here:
http://
The problems so far? The garage door on the south side, the untility closet with furnace on the north side.
Here are some specifics, since some of these might matter...
I am going to put down a pergo style floor that looks like hardwood in the garage so that it looks nice, it will be fully drywalled and painted nicely (thinking a dark maroon, teal, or purple) with recessed lighting. All this will give it a comfortable, not-a-garage feel. I hope. I am not entirely opposed to framing a wall in front of the garage door inside and making pretty much a facade on the outside, but it WOULD be handy for people bringing gear in and out. The other thing to think about with the garage door: noise entry... it is a dead end street, very low traffic and I am halfway to the end and there is generally not much noise around there. I know garage doors seems to let in every little peep. I will be trying to find a nice heavy garage door that seals nicely. It will be painted the same inside as the rest of the garage and maybe masked with a wall of tall artificial plants. Looking at the drawing, the untility closet and the garage door kill my every idea of where to place things.
What are your best ideas on where to place the mix station, the drum tracking area, and your proposed ideas for room treatment. I am already going to put bass traps in all four corners, and diffuse the area above the drum rug (thin, tight weave throw rug) and behind it most likely. Lots of things actually depend on where to place this stuff. If it were you, and the tracking and mix station had to be in one room, where would they be, and how would you treat it?
Peace!

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KurtFoster Sun, 10/20/2002 - 08:38

tubedude, your getting a house!
Congrat on the new digs! Home ownership is a wonderful thing. I would think about 9'or 10' ceilings. 8' ceilings are a no-no! Bass nulls at 4', very bad. A wall in front of the garage door would be nice (you can cheap out on the garage door) Put a sliding glass window in and build the wall so you can open the garage door (recessed pocket). If you do this think about a taller ceiling to allow for the door pocket. Another thing you could do is hang moving blankets over the garage door and build some screen/ tall gobo things to place in front of that. I've done this before with very good results. As I look at the floor plan, the inside left corner is about the safest most out of the way place for your workstation. It's also the only clear wall space in the room. What kind of speakers are you planning to use? Large speakers don't work well in corner set ups. Auralex makes a cool corner workstation thing. Take a look at that. I would diffuse above the mix station as well as around and above where the drum kit will sit. Bass traps as you specified, the ones I speced for DH are pretty universal. You could build some additional gobos to make a screen between the mix station and the drum kit. The screen/gobos should reach to the ceiling. If you set these up diagonally across the room leaving an equal spaces at each side, you have a diffuser! This is a new idea John Storik has come up with in the past year or so. If you use pegboard on the side that faces the drums and fill it with fiberglass it's an absorber too! You have to drill all the holes in the pegboard out to at least 1/4" for this to work. That should give you a start. Let me know how it goes....Fats
:w:

anonymous Tue, 10/22/2002 - 18:31

I may be posting again later. But this is my first impulse thought on the garage door. Maybe if you were to build that inside a foot off the garage door. And build a slightly larger than normal door into the wall inside so you would still have a wall keeping the sound outside , outside, and a normal wall instead of that garage door, wich would most likely have some effect on the sound quality.

But then again you would still also have the convinance of having a wide door off the driveway for your talent to bring in their gear.

Just an idea, I'll look and think some more, let you know if I have any more ideas.

Good luck on the new stomping grounds

Rob

anonymous Tue, 10/22/2002 - 19:20

tubedude:

The garage door at my previous house was one of those metal sectional roll-up doors. I needed to keep the garage door operational so I went to the local upholstery supply house and bought some very dense 1" thick foam and put it inside the sections. Then I bought some adhesive backed foam strips, put that between the sections and installed a thick rubber seal around the perimeter of the door. It worked good enough that my band could play without complaints (I measured us at 115db!) and helped keep the dust out. Even with the weight of all that foam I never had a problem with the door or the opener in over 2 years of daily use.