My Studio Build Thread (Pics..)

[[Hedfone]]

a studio build thread, if you have any experience or tips which would come in hand, please leave a reply as i havn't done this before!!

I've been producing and mixing for a few years now, and have always wanted a place outside of the house to do it (I still live at home and as you all probably know, it's noisy business)

I've finally made the step from my bedroom to a seperate room inside our garage, it may look small in the pics but the exterior dimensions are 2.4m x 2.4m, (so minus a couple of inches for the timber and plasterboard etc),

My aim is to make a space where i can happily mix and produce at a decent volume without pissing anyone off, the main work surface will be directly opposite the door as you walk in (for all my production stuff, desktop mididi keyboard etc.) and there will be another on to the left of the door, to the right there will be a 2 person sofa.

worksurface will beabout 80cm high, havn't worked out the heightof the decks yet though.

the walls will be made up of plasterboard, loft insulation, wall insulation and carpet for the inside), the floor will be made of floor insulation foam, floorboards and carpet,

I will make 2 CDJ stands which will go somewhere on the wall (can't decide where they will go yet though) and make a recess for my mixer,



here are the pics;

van after the first b&q trip

garage before

outside frame

noggins and verticals in place

made another one,

the endtrance, i will have to walk round the back of the garage and through a seperate room, i like it this way though

the frames secured into the walls and floor,

the 14 sheets of plasterboard and 6 sheets of insulation, 4 sheets of floorboard and some more wood waiting tonight..

as the garage stands now.

not bad for 2 days work, spent half of saturday sorting out the garage so the beetle would fit in around all the stuff!

if anyone who has any tips or pointers with this kind of stuff, please give me a shout, would like to make this as good as i possibly can


should hopefully be done by the end of this week or half way through next week, will update when i do more,

cheers!

 

[Prideinyouride]

You concerned with soundproofing or is it just acoustics your after?

 

[[Hedfone]]

You concerned with soundproofing or is it just acoustics your after?

yeh very concerned, i want to try and make it as quiet as possible outside of the room, if you get me, as little sound escaping as possible. we thought about buying the SoundBloc plasterboard but it was 3x the price of standard, we were going to test out the room and if it was loud stick some soundbloc on the outside.

i really dont have much of a clue about soundproofing, i know the basics but not enough to be prepared to waste money etc..

my old music college used to use egg box foam in most of their rooms, does that soundproof the room or just deaden the sounds?? and in the larger analogue studios they had loose carpet filled with what mustve been loose bits of materials, squidgy foam etc, and was sewn horizontally at about 30cm to stop the foam from falling to the floor.


would appreciate any ideas or input!

 

[Prideinyouride]

Ok I've had the steepest learning curve due to issues with my studio space. There will no doubt be holes in my explanation so bare with me.

Sound proofing and acoustic treatment are two completely different subjects and cannot be treated as the same.

Soundproofing is the isolation of sound from one space to another. Acoustic treatment is the practice of making your mixing space as flat as possible "without becoming sterile" to aid in accurate mixes.

In order to stop sound escaping your space you have to look at isolation, you want (well, already are) creating a room inside of a room. You need to consider de-coupling the room from the room it's in (your garage) so ideally walls and ceilings aren't to touch, if they do ideally use acoustic isolation pads/ brackets to stop sound vibration transferring from one surface to another. Remember anywhere air can escape, so can sound. Creating an air gap between surfaces is good practice, especially if it can be filled with standard Rockwool, this will aid sound absorption. That's my extent of soundproofing.

Acoustic treatment as I said a completely different animal. Ideally what you want to do is firstly avoid having a square room, 4 walls equal distance apart. Secondly set up your speakers in an equal triangle between you and them (if that makes sense?) it's good practice to set the mixing position roughly 30% from the end wall. Once your sat at your desk get someone to run a mirror down the left and right walls, once you can see the adjacent speaker come this is where you place your first acoustic panel. This can be made of acoustic foam (personally not recommended as foam with a density high enough to absorb low frequencies is expensive) google DIY sound absorption panel. I made some myself. Very easy, look for Rockwool RW3 panels available from studiospares. And repeat the process on the other wall. Then you want to hang one or 2 panels above your head this is known as a "cloud" ideally spaced off the ceiling slightly to provide greater absorption again. Then deeper or even foam panels behind you on the rear wall.

What you'll find massively useful is hanging these panels or foam corner traps in the corners where walls meet walls and walls meet ceilings, these corners are where bass frequencies like to hide and resonate instead dispersing or getting absorbed equally.

A free program called REW wizard will help you identify problem areas in your space and help you treat it accordingly.

If you want any more detail let me know or check www.gearslutz.com they were very helpful.

Mods do you want to make my post a sticky or something as I see similar threads popping up with questions that I've just covered.

Thanks.

Pride.

 

[[Hedfone]]

Thanks for that, I had heard of all if the points but you explained them well and related them to my situation ,

thanks for going into detail and giving me an idea of what to expect. I'm going to have to make a plan if action tonight, ill read up on gearslutz, cheers mate!

 

[Prideinyouride]

?
V

Did that not make sense?

 

[[Hedfone]]

Did that not make sense?

It made a lot of sense sorry that was my phone being random, was about to we're a reply but it posted that. Thanks again

 

[Dugg Funnie]

Anybody else look at the first picture and assume he was going for some pimped out gangster-ass lookin' mobile studio.

 

[Prideinyouride]

Gearslutz is a fantastic source however beware, it can be a little complicated at first, also be prepared for people to tell you your going to have to spend more cash. But a common conception is that you should spend equally as much if not more on acoustic treatment as you did your monitors, which isn't what I wanted to hear considering I have a pair of HR824s. :-s

 

[lostnthesound]

Thanks for posting this, I'm actually considering doing a similar thing so it will be very inspirational to follow your progress. That's a helluva lot done in a day's work!

Cheers!

 

[danwell]

how much has that cost so far?

 

[[Hedfone]]

Gearslutz is a fantastic source however beware, it can be a little complicated at first, also be prepared for people to tell you your going to have to spend more cash. But a common conception is that you should spend equally as much if not more on acoustic treatment as you did your monitors, which isn't what I wanted to hear considering I have a pair of HR824s. :-s

So about £800/900ish on acoustic treatment.. right.. haha!

Speaking of monitors that's the very last thing I have to buy, i managed find some CDJ100mk3's and a vestax pmc-280 mixer quite cheap, so that has put my monitor budget back a bit, will be buying some at the end of this month, still unsure though i've been looking at the Rokit RG8's, yamaha HS80m's, and... Adam A7x's... but i'd have to wait another month for them. hmm.. thanks again mate.

Thanks for posting this, I'm actually considering doing a similar thing so it will be very inspirational to follow your progress. That's a helluva lot done in a day's work!

Cheers!

Thanks, i was quite happy with what we got done, can't promise that we will be doing this the right way, but you can learn from our mistakes (should we make any... which we will! ha) and use the them to your advantage in your studio.

how much has that cost so far?

its cost ROUGHLY about £450, we had a 3rd trip to b&q today... practically live there now!!

we have bought all the electricals, all the timber we need now (and we'll definately have some to spare which we can either return or use in the garage as a workbench or whatever)

bought almost all the insulation and we had rock rockwool already,

bear in mind that when we had the option to pay slightly more for more material than we needed, we did, just for future use either in the house or wherever,

i have the receipts so at the end of the project i'll go through and calculate the proper figures based on what we actually used and didn't use etc.

safe for looking by the way didn't expect anyone to look at this! i'm a bit worried about isolating the sound though, i think i'm going to have to rely on wall-mounted isolation pads although i won't over do it.



one last question in this post, i have the option of carpeting both the walls and the floor, or just the floor, or nothing at all obviously. what would people recommend in such a small space? i don't want the room to become a bass bin but don't want it to be a coke can either... would this be something to leave til the room is finished and test with the REW Wizard program??


cheers boys

 

[Mr Fletch]

I dont know much about soundproofing or building etc, but am I the only one thinking that that room when finished and filled with equipment is going to be ridiculously small?

 

[[Hedfone]]

I dont know much about soundproofing or building etc, but am I the only one thinking that that room when finished and filled with equipment is going to be ridiculously small?

i'm sure everyone has different ideas when you say "full of equipment".


i have a fairly compact setup, and i am going to use the space wisely. i thought the space looked small, and i'm sure it looks tiny on paper and in the pics, but it actually isn't that bad. when you think that some people use single desk piled and crammed with all there gear, midi keyboard and mouse, screens and synths all of one desk, it makes it more promising. i am going to make two deck mounts for my cdj's and have them hung off a wall, and i'm going to recess the mixer flush with the worksurface. the two desktop monitors take up little desk space, the desktop will go under the worksurface, midi keyboard or computer keyboard (cant decide yet) on a slide out tray under the desk, sound card fastened in under the desk at the front so it's accessible, kaoss pad and ext hdd are fairly small anyway, and monitors will go on the worksurface either side of pc monitors.

i know it's not massive but it's all i have to work withand i don't own my own house so this is the inbetween!


edit; @Mr Fletch, you've made me worry now.

 

[[Hedfone]]

Na fuck it, I'm actually happy with the size. I can't wait til it's done

 

[lostnthesound]

I wouldn't carpet anything but the floor, you won't get much treatment from carpeting your walls. Sound test the room prior to purchasing your acoustical gear so you can get an idea of what to buy and how much. Gearslutz is gold for this type of stuff.

Cheers!

 

[spyre]

Anybody else look at the first picture and assume he was going for some pimped out gangster-ass lookin' mobile studio.

I now want one of those

 

[Elzerk]

I dont know much about soundproofing or building etc, but am I the only one thinking that that room when finished and filled with equipment is going to be ridiculously small?

I was thinking exactly the same.

 

[[Hedfone]]

I wouldn't carpet anything but the floor, you won't get much treatment from carpeting your walls. Sound test the room prior to purchasing your acoustical gear so you can get an idea of what to buy and how much. Gearslutz is gold for this type of stuff.

Cheers!

Nice one , ill do that then, cheers.

And yehh a mobile studio would be a beauty, but gona pimp it in a party van kinda way, tv and Xbox etc, could chuck a little portable studio in there for fun though, we'll see.

And again, it's small but hey, it's only for me, I'm super keen to have my own little space to mix and mellow cheers guys

 

[Mr Fletch]

i'm sure everyone has different ideas when you say "full of equipment".


i have a fairly compact setup, and i am going to use the space wisely. i thought the space looked small, and i'm sure it looks tiny on paper and in the pics, but it actually isn't that bad. when you think that some people use single desk piled and crammed with all there gear, midi keyboard and mouse, screens and synths all of one desk, it makes it more promising. i am going to make two deck mounts for my cdj's and have them hung off a wall, and i'm going to recess the mixer flush with the worksurface. the two desktop monitors take up little desk space, the desktop will go under the worksurface, midi keyboard or computer keyboard (cant decide yet) on a slide out tray under the desk, sound card fastened in under the desk at the front so it's accessible, kaoss pad and ext hdd are fairly small anyway, and monitors will go on the worksurface either side of pc monitors.

i know it's not massive but it's all i have to work withand i don't own my own house so this is the inbetween!


edit; @Mr Fletch, you've made me worry now.

Lol sorry to put doubts in your mind, I'm sure you'll manage fine. To be fair I'd like to have the space to build a dedicated studio room but I live in a 1 bed flat so thats not gonna happen! Good luck, and dont forget to keep us updated on the progress