building a post audio studio?

A

asterix2k10

Member
Hi,

I have a medium-small room that I want to use to build a small post audio studio mainly for ADR recording but considering also using it for 5.1 mixing. The space is 13'1" wide x 19'9" deep x 9' tall. Here's a diagram:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79340367@N06/8703232645/in/set-72157633392616083

I was originally planning on using a third (or half) of the room to build a booth. But some people have said that a small booth for ADR will not sound good. So my first question is: what is an ideal size for an ADR stage?

Some people recommended treating the whole room and using the whole space to record ADR as well as mix / edit. This seems to be the best idea so far as I would have sufficient space (I think) for a full 5.1 setup, plus be able to record ADR and get a decent sound.

I understand this is how ADR is recorded in Europe. However, I'm in Los Angeles and I'm not sure if this will be acceptable to my clients. The advantages to a booth is that the talent is separated from the director/producer, etc. - they can talk amongst themselves without being overheard by the actors. Also, people have more freedom to make noise, type, eat, cellphones etc. during recording.

It seems if I have to build the booth, it would be fairly small and may not produce a good sound. Then there will be only enough space for a stereo control room that could mostly be used for editing or stereo mixing.

What is the best plan of action here, all things considered?

Any other tips for building the studio? I am looking for a consultant to help me with the acoustic design and sound treatment. As for gear, it's going to be a PTHD Native OMNI system connected to an iMac. I have a Sennheiser 416 mic but want to add a Neumann 193. I have Dynaudio BM5A Mk2 speakers and may want to get 3 more + a sub. Maybe an additional lcd monitor for mixing, a lcd video screen for ADR, and maybe a projector for viewing. Maybe an external pre-amp. Might get some lav mics.

Also could do foley recording and VO here.

Any advice? Thanks!
 
Last edited:
I've done a few of these projects, and the advice on the construction and acoustic treatment on the net is generally sound. A good place to also look is in the home recording music forums - where decent sounding home studios are now really common. For your room, you just need even more treatment to make the room even more dead.

The BIGGEST drawback to the success is not the room, it's the equipment. Computers and other hardware make so much noise nowadays, so either remoting them to a small cupboard next door, or building in such a feature in the room, with ventilation is really important. Leaving screens, mice and keyboards is fine - but dump the computers somewhere else because they ruin so much of your hard work. All the sound treatment also works so well at heat insulation, so you need silent aircon, or at worst, a feature to dump the foul air quickly and replace with fresh - absolutely essential. It also means working with headphones, which isn't ideal, but can work fine if they seal properly (DT100/150 style)

One room operation can work quite well - I've a two room studio and a one room here, and am seriously considering converting the two into a big one room because that seems to be how it's more often used.
 
The two big questions that pop into my mind are who will your clients be? If your creating a more "profesional" working environment and charging a bundle, then you have to take impressions into account. If your doing low budget films and projects where "high priced" clients are not going to drop in then there is more flexibility.

Second what kind of post audio are you doing? You mention ADR but if you're doing post you should also be looking at Foley. Foley can be messy and you really don't want to be doing that around your gear.

And I guess the third question is do you own the place? Building an iso room is probably not a good choice if you are renting unless it's a comercial space and they don't have a problem with you changing the floor plan.

Personally I prefer having a second isolated space for a couple of reasons. The equipment noise is pretty big and if you are going to have more than you and the talent in the room people noise can be a problem. And you will have to monitor on headphones.

When we started doing a bunch of national ads we built a dedicated building (rebuilt a garage) with a couple of rooms. Our Foley stage, that we also used for ADR when needed, was about 8X8, which is fairly small for Foley but nice for vocal. We made two walls very dead and the others fairly live and you can move around till you get the right balance. We had some roll down padding to deaden the third wall if needed but almost never used it.

When I was doing low budget films on my own I would often do ADR either just in the house or remotely. For that I generally only gave the talent an audio reference not picture. Audio only actually works better most of the time since actors tend to get distracted looking at themselves and try to "improve" their performances.
 
Yep who and what are your clients, that is the question.

I know commercial writer/producers who have one room studio/booths and this work well for them. They have close contact with the voice talent and it saves space. They work on h/phones for the voice sessions, then speakers for the track laying/mix, after the actors have gone.

But most other studios are recording areas and booths, if only because for the punters, that's the accepted idea of a recording studio.
The others have listed the advantages above.

Over 40yrs I saw quite a few audio/video studios build up great businesses in rented buildings. The owners noted this and basically put the rent up to the point where it was unaffordable. Moving to a nearby location proved impossible for just about all these outfits. It was very expensive, had to be close because of their clients and importantly have at least 4 car spaces available 24/7.

One very successful studio outfit bought a 5 story building, the first floor for them the other 4 floors to rent. The idea was the rent would pay for the building repayments and outgoings. They had big repayments and during the recession of the late 80s here, they couldn't fill the other 4 floors and they went broke. Eventually they took over another studio nearby whose owner was retiring, and they're still there today.

We bought a building in 1979 built 3 successful studios and sold the business, the building and semi retired in 2001. One advantage of that was, the city expanded to our location and the property values increased to where we accepted an offer we couldn't refuse. So I'd recommend you study LA property and try the same, it might take a year or so, but you bite off more than you can chew .. and chew like buggery! The harder you work the luckier you'll get :)

One other clue is to run a sideline, eg: medium runs of CDs. Ours was audio cassettes, then CDs and DVDs and it built up to where we had a 10 slave Otari loop bin system. Sony and Co couldn't economically produce runs of 500, we put great emphasis on consistent audio quality so they subcontracted to us.

I mangaged to secure the contract to supply most of the retail store chains in Australia with all their store background music. Eventually we delivered 6-8000 cassettes and CDs weekly to a mailing company. We had to get into bulk printing the labels and had a staff of 8 working 2 shifts a day.
Delivery on time was paramount.

If you really get into it, one thing will lead to another. Build up a good reputation, always protect it and look after your people, make sure they have free parking. Good luck.

12 years later our company name is still going .. http://www.blackinc.com.au/

Cheers.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the responses. My clients will probably be low budget indie filmmakers. At this point I'm pretty set on building the booth, maybe utilizing the back 1/3rd of the room. The rest of the space will be used for stereo mixing and editing but I think it will be too small for serious 5.1 mixing. I am renting but it's a commercial space so I can change the floor plan.
 
Last edited:
"I think it will be too small for serious 5.1 mixing"
- Depends what you mean by "serious".
I wouldn't attempt a mega-budget theatrical mix, but TV/DVD BluRay home theater type mixes can be done in smaller rooms with the 'correct' monitors and calibration. If you mean for film festivals, this has been discussed and the general consensus is that stereo is recommended. ie: fool-proof.. the theater's 5:1 system may not be calibrated... broken or doesn't exist, and bizarre things can happen when downmixed.
 
Part of the reason I try to steer low budget filmmakers away from 5.1 is exactly that. Even big budget films have their 5.1 mixes mangled on a regular basis by mis calibrated or poorly maintained threatre owners. I have seen much worse from festivals. We sent a film around that had a surround mix and unless we showed up early (usually with a six pack) to get the projectionist to run the film and check the speakers we had problems. Ironically one time we checked the sound system and it was fine and then show time came and it sounded AWFUL and the projectors color balance was crazy off so everything looked very "arty". Turns out the film that showed before us also came in to check the system and their film was not matrixed and must have been "color corrected on an uncalibrated monitor so they "tweaked" the projector so their film looked good and switched off the matrix and the Dolby SR NR.

This is not as huge a problem with desecrate 5.1 but festivals are the wild west.

Home systems are almost always horribly out of whack. Few rooms were built to allow a proper 5.1 placement and even fewer significant others will allow you to put speakers were they need to be in the first place.

Mixing LCR makes a certain amount of sense but putting anything important in the surrounds is still pretty silly if you are not showing in a real theatrical space.

You have plenty of space for a low budget indi 5.1 mix. To do a "serious" 5.1 mix you would have to get Dolby certification and that is not going to happen in that space, and you probably couldn't afford it even if you could qualify.

But really clients who would be willing to mix in a small in-the-box space are going to be low budget indi and maybe some game folks. Maybe some ad's but they have producers and agency folks wh show up at the mix who really want to be pampered. We did a lot of nationals but we did the post and sent the sessions off to places like POP to do the actual final mix.
 
I'm wondering about what size and shape the ADR booth should be. Here's another diagram, an old one with some early plans I had.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79340367@N06/8703232615/in/set-72157633392616083/

Should the booth be square, not rectangular? Perhaps take up more space in the room?

If this is not workable, there may be a possibility I could get another adjacent or nearby space which I could connect or tie video lines into to make into a remote booth.
 
Last edited:
An ADR recording booth should be big as possible but enough for at least 2 actors to comfortably work in with a medium size monitor, good eyeline to the producer and dead quiet aircon. Try not to have any exact parallel walls and get some help for the acoustics. Keep it away from your machine room.

Once you soundproof the booths, suitable aircon is another problem. It's best to call in an expert or call a local aircon shop and with the expectation of a sale, they might help. I've seen a 'weatherwall' feeding the control and ADR booths with the air fed in on round plastic ducting. Keeping the airflow silent is the trick.

Diverting the aircon in your rented building will bring its own bag of problems, eg: if it only switches on 6am-8pm and not on weekends.

And you should research your immediate neighbours to see where any exterior noises might come from. And maybe from new folk moving in, I know of an established rented 1st floor sound studio, which had a noise making printing shop move in on the ground floor, despite protests from the studio beforehand.
The first floor offices didn't notice it, but the very low rumble of the printing presses caused havoc for the sound guys.

Arrange to visit other studios in your area and ask discrete questions. Foley is so specialised today, to save time you need all the tools on hand
and Foley artists who are comfortable working at your place. The tools for Foley take huge amounts of space.

Sorry this reads so damn negative, I hated writing that, but it's best you know all the possible pitfalls asap. I'm going to have a Scotch now.

Cheers anyway.
 
Last edited:
Square spaces sound terrible. Parallel walls in a small space sound unpleasant and in any room are best avoided if you can. You can treat the surfaces to reduce them, but these tend to be thicker materials and eat up the space even more. Small booths with windows also introduce a large flat surface with significant surface area, compared to the rest of the room. If you remove 90 degrees corners, it helps no end!
 
Some of this goes back to who is going to be using the space. If you have to look like a high priced space your options get a lot more expensive.

Our room was about 8X8. It probably started out mostly square but the ceiling was slanted and we had a number of surfaces in the floor. It had a very large double paned window that looked at the main mix room and the 60" monitor could be swung on an arm so you could get a clear view of it in the booth. We also had another monitor that we could put low outside of the wall that was mostly a big double paned sliding glass door for when you needed to work on the floor.
All of the plaster walls were covered with packing blankets and the two large ones were then covered with egg-crate foam. If could be VERY dead if you were close to the egg-crate corner and pretty natural everywhere else and sliding the door open doubled the space and added a bunch of hard surfaces.

This could look nice enough, but it certainly was not a slick looking booth. We had a number of pretty big name Foley artists work the room and other than it being a bit small for some things and having to take breaks to air it out (no AC) they liked it a lot.

This was designed for Foley since we did Foley all the time and only occasionally ADR. For post in general I would put Foley WAY higher on the list than ADR. If you want to be a place the folks come to do ADR that's different. But for most post work you will use a room to record FX and Foley 90% of the time.

We didn't put in any ventilation. That was an oversight, kind of. It certainly gets stuffy if your in there a long time and it's hot (SF Bay Area so never gets LA hot) but we don't tend to be in for long stretches so... Getting AC that would be quiet enough would have been VERY expensive. If I had to do it again I would put in some way to really air it out that could be sealed off when you seriously needed the isolation. Most "vocal booths" that I have seen don't have any ventilation either. If your space doesn't get too hot the temp in the booth shouldn't either, but it does get stuffy after an hour.

All the walls and ceiling were double sheet rocked and the wall connecting to the mixer was a double studded wall so the two sides don't actually connect. The room was pretty much dead quiet unless we got a helicopter directly over head. We built it in the first place because the place was too close to the subway (went overhead 5 blocks away) and the train tracks. Also in the afternoons we would get a fair amount of small prop planes. All of that made recording with out a lot of soundproofing a nightmare.
 
asterix2k10 said:
What is the best plan of action here, all things considered?

Any advice? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Actually, working out a business plan should be first on your list, is this venture going to return enough to be viable and make it worthwhile.
Start a list with costs and I'd be adding to it to get a total costing before I paid for anything. Other info is available on the web,
and advice from a good tax accountant won't go astray.

http://www.startups.co.uk/business-planning

Cheers.
 
I am getting an acoustics guy to come in and check out the space next week. Then I will hopefully be better prepared to make my decision about taking on the lease.

I did make a list of costs for gear and next will be construction. I am thinking about what services I can offer (mixing, sound design, editing, music editing, ADR and foley recording.) The space is adjacent to my friends film studio that caters to low budget productions. It is pretty busy and so I'm hoping it will bring in clients.

AC is a big concern as this is LA and it gets very hot. The building has no central AC. I am going to have to get a quiet mini split system, and build a ventilation system for the booth.

I want to be able to provide just about everything a low budget production will need for their project - at least without 5.1. I don't think there will be enough space for lots of foley props. I am wondering if having a good sound library will work instead for most sound effects beyond things I can record in the booth like footsteps, cloth, and paper sounds.
 
Last edited:
asterix2k10 said:
The space is adjacent to my friends film studio that caters to low budget productions. It is pretty busy and so I'm hoping it will bring in clients.
Click to expand...

That's a good start, that could be the 'sideline' I was talking about in post 5.

You'll need a sfx library on DVD, there's plenty on the web, be careful of auditioning web based fx in front of the client, that can be time wasting.

And contacts for good Foley artists, don't let just anyone do it, it never works.

Planning a rate card is important, you'll need day/weekly lockout rates to quote for movie gigs. But be careful of taking on your friends clients movie jobs before you're fully set to go. Don't get panicked into starting to soon, things will go south .. you've got enough on your plate.

Cheers.
 
ZazaCast said:
This is a great resource for designs and information: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3
Click to expand...

Ha yes it is! I worked with John Sayers here in Sydney at Natec Sound, John's been around as long as I have. There's plenty of info there but it can be confusing
(and costly) for newbies.

You really need to join John's site and send your exact description and requirements, he'll reply post with specific answers.

Here's another buddy, adv producer Paul Goodwins studio, which is basically a one room, studio and booth and it sounds great. It's in a free standing house on ground level with basically no outside interference except occasional airliners overhead. Paul recorded mostly voice tracks and some small music groups.
He had unlimited street parking.

Paul sold and has retired to the Sunshine Coast now. http://johnlsayers.com/Pages/Hello_Testing.htm

Cheers.
 
asterix2k10 said:
I want to be able to provide just about everything a low budget production will need for their project - at least without 5.1. I don't think there will be enough space for lots of foley props. I am wondering if having a good sound library will work instead for most sound effects beyond things I can record in the booth like footsteps, cloth, and paper sounds.
Click to expand...

Two things. First if your going to be working in film then you better learn it's Foley not foley. Always capitalized.

Foley Police.gif


Second you don't seem to understand the difference between Foley and FX. Footsteps and cloth are the majority of what is done in Foley on a major film. To actually be Foley you need to record the sound in sync to picture. We use our space for actual Foley but also for lots of FX recordings. If you record it not in sync to picture it's an FX.

And YES you want to get some libraries off the bat and then build your personal library ASAP. You will also need some way to catalog that library. You can build your own in Filemaker or something similar or buy one that is designed for sound. The "best" one out there is Soundminer. There are others that are probably good also, but Soundminer is close to a standard for film post. It will save a huge amount of time because after finding the sound you want it can spot that sound to your timeline.
 
What a great thread!

I'll only add that if you want ADR to match the location audio, using the mic and preamp that was used on location helps. That won't be a TLM 193, that is otherwise a pretty nice mic. What you will see on sound reports are:
MKH 416
MKH50
MKH60
KMR 81
Schoeps CMC641
CS-3e

I'm a fan of recreating as closely as possible the original situation. So booming from above (unless the scene was shot differently) would be my approach. Your 9 foot ceiling will help there. Get the mic too close and you get into its proximity effect range. Maybe that'll match with some EQ, maybe not. Anyway, with booming, you can hope to capture more similar sounds and body resonances. Having said that, the human body can produce remarkably different sounds on different days due to allergies, sleep deprivation, hydration/dehydration, stress and what you had for lunch.

If they are using lavs, you'll need some of them as well for best matching. Maybe even record two channels; boom and lav. Sometimes in post one person's track is a mix of boom and lav. This will give you that.

Maybe a simple Sound Devices USBPre 2 for preamp/mixer/computer interface. That way you can go right into the computer (which as mentioned earlier in this string, will have to be sequestered away in a closet or other room to keep the noise down. My Mac tower, bought 3-4 years ago is pretty darn quiet, actually, but YMMV. You'd need to use a powered USB extender cable, I'm guessing, to make it to the computer.


The all-in-one room versus control room/studio conversation is a good one. I'm all in one. I prefer the collaborative mode rather than the "us and them" mode. That's a communication style/skill level situation. If you NEED the separation or more importantly, if your client needs it, then there you are.

Having said all of this, you might find the low budget indie stuff so poorly shot that figuring out how to distress your audio to match may be the challenge. (Not all low budget suffer from these problems, btw.)

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
Not to be the stick in the mud, but I have never been a big fan of "If I build it they will come".

My thoughts, take it or leave it.... If you do not have a business plan, a clear sense of direction, or clients, then you do not need to lease a building without central air conditioning to open a yet to be determined audio facility in an already over saturated LA market.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top