Building My First Studio...Any Advice Welcome

[Macfanuk]

Hi All,

This site has been a great source of information and I am now taking the plunge and having been a musician for some time, have decided to set up a recording studio in my spare room and would love to hear any advice available.

I will be using this thread as a sort of diary on the progress of my studio, with pictures, and as a kind of thinking board.

I have two rooms available, one is 1.83m x 2.67m and the other is 2.69m x 2.68m. I am thinking of using the smaller of the two rooms because it's more of a rectangular shape should be easier to get the acoustics right, but will a 1.83m x 2.67m room be big enough?

I am planning on building a desk the exact width of the room (so about 1.8m) and the desk will go directly under a window, with thick curtains covering the window.

So far on my shopping list is:
1. Desk (will build myself out of MDF)
2. 27" iMac to be used solely for music
3. Pair of Yamaha NS8's
4. SE Electronics Z5600A MkII for recording vocals and acoustic guitar
5. SE Electronics Pop Sheild

Is there anything crucial I'm missing?

For the acoustic treatment, I am planning on buying some sheets of insulation and covering them in black fabric. Will this work as well as actual acoustic treatment or should I shell out for the proper stuff?

[Mike Stranks]

For the acoustic treatment, I am planning on buying some sheets of insulation and covering them in black fabric. Will this work as well as actual acoustic treatment or should I shell out for the proper stuff?

Well it depends what you mean by 'insulation'!

You need Rockwool (RW3) at least 100mm thick. You'll need a frame, means of holding it in the frame - chicken-wire is good and a fabric covering which is transparent to sound, but stops the fibres flying around. Cara is often recommended, but others say that cotton dustsheets are just as effective. If you can arrange things so that there's an air-gap between the Rockwool and the wall so much the better.

[AndyN]

Your room is a similar size to mine so here are a few things that I have found.

It is surprising how quickly the room will fill up with stuff. When you factor in the door, windows, your chair, desk etc. there isn't much room for anything else. If you are thinking of putting anything on the walls like a guitar, bookshelves etc. that makes it worse. I have managed to squeeze in 4 panels of 4ft x 2ft with 100mm rockwool in them. Two are in the front corners behind my monitors, one on the ceiling above my head and one directly behind me. The bookshelves to my right act as a bit of a diffusor.

I have made some shelves from strips of kitchen worktop mounted on 100mm legs from B&Q. Thes sit on my desk and give about 2 units of rack space underneath them. If you put your iMac on top of these it will still be at a decent height and you can put things like a keyboard/audio interface underneath it.

The biggest problem I have found is that it is really difficult to move stuff around once it is in situ. I would advise you to put things in without cabling them together and sit in front of them to check that it will work for you. Are your monitors at the right height? Can you get behind your mic in a comfortable position to perform?

In a room of this size you have to get the practicalities of fitting in before you think about acoustic treatment. I know that we want our rooms to sound as good as possible but if you can't function properly you won't perform well and all the acoustic treatment in the world won't fix a bad performance.

Just my 2 pence worth.

Andy

[Macfanuk]

Your room is a similar size to mine so here are a few things that I have found.

It is surprising how quickly the room will fill up with stuff. When you factor in the door, windows, your chair, desk etc. there isn't much room for anything else. If you are thinking of putting anything on the walls like a guitar, bookshelves etc. that makes it worse. I have managed to squeeze in 4 panels of 4ft x 2ft with 100mm rockwool in them. Two are in the front corners behind my monitors, one on the ceiling above my head and one directly behind me. The bookshelves to my right act as a bit of a diffusor.

I have made some shelves from strips of kitchen worktop mounted on 100mm legs from B&Q. Thes sit on my desk and give about 2 units of rack space underneath them. If you put your iMac on top of these it will still be at a decent height and you can put things like a keyboard/audio interface underneath it.

The biggest problem I have found is that it is really difficult to move stuff around once it is in situ. I would advise you to put things in without cabling them together and sit in front of them to check that it will work for you. Are your monitors at the right height? Can you get behind your mic in a comfortable position to perform?

In a room of this size you have to get the practicalities of fitting in before you think about acoustic treatment. I know that we want our rooms to sound as good as possible but if you can't function properly you won't perform well and all the acoustic treatment in the world won't fix a bad performance.

Just my 2 pence worth.

Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your post. Have you managed to get a good sound in your room? Some guys over on Gearslutz have suggested my room is way too small.

The main (maybe only) piece of furniture is going to be my desk. It's going to be the full width of the room (should I go for the smaller room) and will be 600mm deep. This will give me approx 2m x 1.8m space for the chair and recording space, but the recording will only be done one track at a time with one person at a time so I'm hoping it'll be ok.

[AndyN]

There is loads of really good advice on this on the SOS forums but at the end of the day you have to work with what you've got. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to get a perfect sound in a room as small as yours but you can do a lot to improve it. I think the sound in my room is pretty good but I use small Genelec 1029a monitors so they don't excite the really low frequencies and I use a good set of headphones for the low stuff. Get hold of Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. It has a great section on monitoring and will explain things much better than I can. He also gives you a range of methods for assessing the low end in your recordings where you will get most problems in a small room.

Set your studio up. Make some music and see how it sounds. Then try to eliminate any problems as best you can. Lots of people don't have a dedicated space for a studio so look on the bright side. We can still go to a commercial studio if it is that important.

Andy

Ps. I'm never going to be a top producer and have managed to come to terms with that. You may be on the brink so feel free to ignore everything I've said. I will try to get a picture of my space so you can get an idea of my way of doing it. A

[AndyN]

Here's a pic of my studio. I can't get back far enough to get it all in but you get the idea. The room is 2.4x2.0 meters.

Hope this helps My Studio

[Macfanuk]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I agree when you say we can only work with what we've got. My main concern is getting a good quality recording in the first place. The mixing can be done with headphones as you say, so I'll go for some basic acoustic treatment and see where we go from there

[iceman]

research read and research look at youtube videos by reputable companies and read some more lol! seriously you cant do enough research!