John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

OK, first post here, and I hope I get it right. After reading through and doing a search, all I found was mostly things about using your studio as a rehearsal spot. What I want to do is open a rehearsal studio with 12 rooms for rent and have my recording studio in the same building.

The good news is I'm looking at new construction, so no building limitations.

The bad news is my budget for the build is only $400,000 US.

I'd like the keep the rehearsal rooms at 20' x 20'.

I'd need 2 bathrooms for the rehearsal side and a lounge and work/storage area for the studio side.

EDIT: On the studio side, I'm looking for a good size live room, a drum iso, 2 iso/amp rooms and a good size control room with machine room.

Other than that my plan is wide open. I can do some of the construction myself, as I've done some general constuction work before.

The isolation for the rehearsal rooms doesn't have to be perfect. I was thinking a staggered stud / RC / double layer sheet rock (sealed with acoustic caulk) would work. But any help on anything would be usefull.

If there's any other info you guys need, let me know. I'm just at the planning stage right now, so I wanted to get an idea if it's even possible with my budget.

Thanks for the help and all the info I've gotten from this site!

Wes Pitzer
WCS Media

Wes, this is generally John's side of the forum but I'll start by suggesting that you stop thinking in terms of SQUARE rooms if you want repeat business - they will sound like CRAP without a LOT of treatment, and will NEVER sound as good even WITH treatment as a proper ratio room.

You can start by doing a google search on words like sepmeier, bolt, and louden (each with the word ratio or room or mode included) - a google search will also help if you don't find enough on THIS site... Steve

_________________
Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...

You mean for the rehearsal rooms? All the rooms I've been in (and every one I know of in North Texas) are square. I'd be down for some splaying of the walls to make them sound better, but would rather have the square rooms if it has much of a noticable impact on build cost.

If you mean the recording studio, I built my current space and have read everything I can over the past year. I understand the ratios and have a rough plan of using this design for the studio side (using the sound lock entrance as a second amp room when needed).

Thanks for the quick answer, though. Good stuff here.

Yeah, I meant the rehearsal rooms ALSO - it doesn't cost any more or less to build the same square footage (or close) that does NOT have any two dimensions the same, it just sounds better inside because you don't have two different dimensions of the room giving you the same peaks and nulls, which would make these uneven sounds even WORSE.

20 x 20 is 400 square feet, if you use 8 foot ceilings the 20 foot square room would have identical peaks and nulls in both directions - this means that if your bass players amp is at 5 feet from each wall of a corner, any note near low B flat would almost entirely disappear INSIDE the room, but still be passing thru whatever sound walls you have in place and be audible OUTSIDE the room (to the extend of your soundproofing success)

There would also be a general "hole" in the room response around 40-50 hZ in general, as well as several "hot spots" around the room where different frequencies would be much louder or softer than elsewhere.

If you intend to build using lots of drywall, it's no big deal to make your rooms 18 x 22 instead; with 8 foot ceilings, these would have near perfect modal distribution, take less treatment to balance out, about all you'd need to do would be either diffusion of some sort or "checkerboard" absorbers to kill flutter.

It's of course up to you, just thought I'd mention this because even though bands may not know WHY they don't like the sound of your rehearsal rooms (or anyone else's who've also built square rooms) they will be able to tell the difference... Steve

_________________
Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...

This is why this forum is so cool. I would have never thought of that and it's completely doable. I'll plug those into my basic plan and see what I can come up with. Hopefully I'll have a pic for you guys to go off of.

The plus of the rehearsal room design is it's a great selling point.

You guys rock!

So here's my simple little sketch. Let me know if there's some glaring problems.

how much do you expect to rent the rehersal rooms for?

most rooms down here in Dallas are half that size and they are in stinky old warehouses. I've never seen rubergloves but I expect it is the similar.

I'll be renting them for $450 a month. Josh (the owner of Rubber Gloves) is a friend of mine and is actually helping me out.

This from the RG website:
"Monthly studios range in price from $275-$375 per month, depending on size. Our smallest studio is 10' x 12' and our largest is 16' x 25'. The studios can be shared by more than one band."

I think bands will pay more for better rooms...

i'd ditch rehearsal room 13. all you need is some teeny metal band (who will want room #13...) pounding away while some concert pianist is trying to record for $200/hr...
maybe make that room general/equipment/sales storage so you have more isolation.

_________________
Glenn

Yeah, I thought about that. My only concern is any space not making money is costing money.

I'm thinking I might go with smaller rooms to cut down on the square footage for the build.

Any ideas?

hi,

you could move the bathroom/toilets to the rehearsal 13's place and vice versa. And get the nice side effect that you could listen to the concert pianist while sitting on the loo

greez
roman