Editing and sound studio

snodart

snodart

Veteran
So, my wife and I are having a new house built (her dad is a general contractor :thumbup:). At any rate, I will be setting up an editing room and sound recording studio. The purpose of this post is twofold... First, I will be looking for advice along the way as to the design and set up of the rooms; and second, to document the info and progress for others to pull from.

The framing is being finished up on the house sometime next week. My hope is to do as much of the wiring as I can before the drywall goes up.

I will be posting pictures and such along the way of course. I just wanted to get this thread started now (yea, I'm a little excited). I will be posting drawings and dimensions of the rooms in the next week to get this thing rolling.

*By the way... yes, I know that I am one lucky sob :).
 
Hiya Snod,

Firstly congratulations on a new place. My first suggestion, even without seeing the floorplan, is see about installing conduit in the walls where you can pull cable as needed after the drywall is up. My home theater and music recording rooms were set up this way and I am sooooo glad we did it that way. I have only had to pull more lines twice in each room but it was a breeze and having the conduit kept everthing clean and organized. As a side note everything from the theater and the music room is routed into a central media closet that holds our home/work servers, network router and switches, cable television distribution etc. Having everything centrally located has let us do things that we never even thought about when we first put things together like being able to record sound in any room. Just a few thoughts, again congrats and post up some pics of the layout.

Bob
 
snodart said:
*By the way... yes, I know that I am one lucky sob :).
Click to expand...
That's not exactly what I was just mumbling, but close enough ;)

How much room you planning on allocating to this studio?
 
Hi,

What plans do you have as far as sound attenuation in the construction of the room? If you're using it for recording it may be pretty important. You might want to think about this before the framing is too finished.

Tony
 
Last edited:
One really big deal is to have your computer (and other noisy equipment) in another room. This is really key to having great sound and also working efficiently. In my previous house I had an equipment room and a control room area. I only had a small glass top desk with 2 computer monitors, keyboard and mouse. My 3 computers were in the equipment room. I could access all three computers from my 2 monitor/kbd/mouse setup through a combination of KVM, KVM extender and long cables. KVM extenders are nice because they let you send several signals over one cable--a standard CAT 5 cable. I didn't like the monitors going through the one I had so I sent those cables more directly over 75 foot long VGA cables. Yes you can do 50 to 75 feet with little problem.

My KVM allowed me to switch between four computers (but I only had 3) via a keyboard sequence. I regularly used one computer for sound recording work using Sawstudio, another larger dual Xeon computer for my Newtek Video Toaster and a third computer for admin, email, web browsing, huge file server for common files, photos, stock footage, animation, sound effects, etc. The 3 computers were also tied together with a network to make file sharing easier too.

It was so much quieter this way and I could easily do voiceover work while editing since I also treated my control room area for not only effective mixdown use but also for recording great sound (using sound/studio foam, sound diffusion panels and even some well placed curtains.

I had my old big screen 42" TV mounted higher up in front of my control desk so I could use it as a huge monitor and had various video that could be distributed to that. Just some ideas...
 
i'm justin's brother-in-law and will be helping design and build the room. from what we've talked about, it will actually be two separate rooms. the first will be a theater with an LCD projector and 5.1 surround system that will be used for editing, sound mixing, and will also serve as their home theater. then there wil be a separate sound room that will be used to record music, voiceovers, foley, etc. there will be a window between the two rooms. when music or foley is being recorded, the theater room will act as the control room, where one of us will sit behind the mixing desk and operate the recording software and mixing console. the 2 rooms will be connected by an intercom system and they'll be wired to easily route audio signals from the recording room to the mixing desk.

obviously, we'll want both rooms to be acoustically treated, but unfortunately i don't know much yet about how to do this. do i want both rooms to be as "dead" as possible? it makes sense to have the sound recording room deadened with foam or the like (and then be able to add reverb, etc. to sound effects and such later), but do i want the same for the theater room? the goal for the theater room would be to have it as close as possible to the listening environment in a real theater, so i'm guessing it should just be treated the same as a commercial theater. if anyone can give us some info to start us off on the right path concerning this, it would be much appreciated.

oh, and about computer noise, i know this is going to be an issue based on my experience doing the sound mix for our first two shorts. we both have powermac g5s, and they can be pretty darn loud, which doesn't work so well when i'm trying to hear subtle room tone and ambiences. we were considering going to an all-laptop setup, because justin has a macbook pro and it's a heck of a lot quieter than our powermacs. putting the powermac in another room might be a nice alternative, though.
 
Already some great info and ideas. Thanks!

Yea, I forgot to mention that Tim is in on this with me.

We are going to go check out the framed rooms this weekend and I'll be back with some exact measurements and maybe some drawings. I was going to build the rooms in Maya so I could play around with the design some, but I think it would be a little overkill. Anybody know of a decent 3D home design program?
 
I used 3D Home Architect once and thought it was great. I really would encourage subdividing the "control" room into a control room and a walkin closet with an extra large air conditioning vent coming in there. Laptops won't give you what you really need for power. Dual screens are the way to go so you'll want a desktop and at some point you may have two or three computers like I did. Trust me, a dedicated machine room is really necessary to do this right.

On the subject of sound treatment. What you basically want is diffusion behind where you sit and absorption in front in the area where your speakers are. You've got to break up reflective surfaces where walls face each other. Thats how things start to sound bad. Its one reason why recording studio rooms are often odd shaped -- so walls don't directly face each other. As for ceiling to floor, you want some diffusion on the ceiling.

You don't want it too dead in my opinion. Then it just sounds muddy, whatever you record there. You want something not too live and not too dead. The perfect in-between.

For diffusion, I use these T-Fusors from Auralex. I had four of them behind me. They are hollow though and need to be stuffed with fiberglass insulation for the best results.

http://www.auralex.com/sound_diffusor_tfusor/sound_diffusor_tfusor.asp

They look nice too. Of course, the poorman's solution of a large bookcase placed behind the mixing area works well too. The random surface of many books of different sizes works very well.
 
Last edited:
Snod, before you do anything I urge you to take a look at www.johnlsayers.com for advice and ideas. Specifically, check out the design forum and the Recording Manual part of the site. Although the site is focused on audio recording studios, I think you will find it an important resource in your efforts. John and others on the site are very helpful.
 
Ok so I have a few comments to make regarding you control room. First off you do not want to deadin' it all the way. The room itself needs some reverb, it is what allows a natural listening environment. Here is a decent articel explaining what to focus on

http://www.soundcontrolroom.com/guidelines.htm

IF you have the space it is a great idea to study wall angles, this will help elimate room modes. The idea is to angle your walls 15 degrees or more to allow the frequencies to bounce around without cancelling each other, or doubling each other. I built my studio and had the limitations of a basement so I couldn't get away with it, but I sure wish I could have. Believe it or not the two best listening enviroments are first outside due to there being no structures for noise to bounce, or a car due to its various angles. So anyhow my point is do your homework and find out what the best mixing room dimensions and wall angles are and you'll be sittin' pretty. At the least avoid at all cost identicle room dimensions an example being 10x10x10. You will encounter the most problems in a room like this. without getting to technical you will face all the sounds disasters that will ensure an inacurate mix. You do want to double you walls as well. Build one wall with two layers of 5/8th dry wall, making sure you seal each seam with calking (the best method for sound proofing is to make it as air tight as you can)then measure out six to eight inches and build another wall. the dead air inbetween the walls dampens the energy of the sound and reduces it immensly . This is not as crucial for the mixing room as it is for your tracking room. the worst thing is when your tracking and the sessions going great and then an plane or truck goes by to ruin the moment. If you build your rooms the right way you can save yourself alot of money by not having to buy studio foam, diffusers etc... belive me it's easy to drop a couple grand or more on this stuff, but if you do end up going that route go through foam by mail. They are identicle in performace to auralex but are alot cheaper. Ok so there's my thoughts for now, maybe more to come later. Good luck with the project.
 
Well, Tim and I worked on a few design ideas this weekend... and spent some time reading through http://www.johnlsayers.com as well the other links posted. We have a good deal of research ahead of us.

The thing that I keep getting hung up on is the fact that the control room (for the recording room) is the same room as the sound design, theater, and editing room. I guess the big question to answer at this point is if each type of room would be treated the same acoustically.

Here are a few grabs from sketchup. Keep in mind that these were done while knowing little to nothing about acoustic treatment. I'm sure that the recording room will need some mass-spring-mass type walls (and probably the control/edit room as well). Again, we are just getting started with this mass of info that sits in front of us.

The image below shows the overall layout of the modified "garage". Half of the building is taken up by the actual garage. The other half is split into the editing/sound control room, a bathroom, and a recording room.

1.jpg


Another angle:
2.jpg


The images below show how the editing room MIGHT look. Everything will probably change once we learn more.

This editing room will serve several purposes (I hope):

1) Editing, working on special effects, and other video needs.
2) A home theater room (two birds with one stone right).
3) Sound editing/design room for working with score, sound effects, 5.1 mixes, etc.
4) The control room for recording live audio taking place in the tracking room.

3.jpg


The square closet that pops out into the garage area would be a media locker (as suggested). It would contain computers, the projector, etc. We are planning to do something to make sure that the media locker stays nice and cool in the summer... just haven't got to that point yet.

4.jpg


Below shows a view of the editing room. The window in the wall at left would allow the person in the control room (editing room) to have visual contact with people across the hall in the recording room. I'm not sure that this is 100% necessary. maybe somebody with some recording experience could chime in. We talked about maybe just using an intercom and web cams. It all depends on how much of a challenge the windows are in relation to the acoustic treatment of each room.
5.jpg


Below is the reverse view: from the recording room, across the hallway, and into the control/editing room.

6.jpg


This last image is just another layout idea. It would require removing some already framed walls (ie: hallway), and moving a couple of doors around.
7.jpg



Right now our biggest concern is to learn as much as possible about acoustics and what each room would need. One concern that we had with the editing/control room is that the person listening to the audio might be too far to the back of the room. We discussed working out a way to set up some sort of hide away workstation in the coffee table to allow the person to be more centered in the room. Maybe this wouldn't be necessary with proper room design and speaker placement. Not sure at this point.

I will try and post some pics of the actual rooms as they are being framed soon.

Thanks again for the great leads and input.

EDIT: I left the actual doors out of the drawings to keep things simple. I'm sure Tim and I will arrive at the door portion of acoustic room treatment at some point soon....
 
Last edited:
Unless you're using near-field monitors, you actually do need to be far back from the speakers. I'm not even sure that the distance you have will be enough to be efficient. It's one reason why so many people prefer near-fields.

The media closet isn't big enough probably. You need room to be able to go in there and work on computers and connections as necessary. You'll really be kicking yourself later if it's cramped and you have to take a computer completely loose from its connections and outside of the closet everytime you need to go in there and do something. Also you may have several computers in there over time. And for sure put lots of airconditioning into the closet.

Windows are a pain in sound studios. You really need two windows with one of them at an angle from the other. Then you have to do all this sealing and calking around the glass. The webcams and intercom will sound really great when you look at all the work to be done there.

Just some initial reactions to what you said...
 
A couple things I'd like to throw out if I may. I didn't see a vocal booth in your sketches and since your building from scratch I highly recommend squeezing one in. Doesn't have to be huge, just big enough for someone to step in and do adr work or to scream their head off when tracking music. Plus you can also use it for foley work as well. 4'x6' or 6'x'6 are pretty standard sizes for a booth. And if you go with a booth, and depending on where you place it, you will need to either pipe a video feed and a monitor of some sort (I use a regular t.v. in mine) for doing adr and foley, or a good view of your projection screen. Just my .02 in '07.
 
Nice Snod, I'm jealous. That garage space will make a nice "live end" audio recording area too...
 
I'm no expert, but the window from the recording room to the outside makes me nervous, as does the lack of carpet. Having the recording room door right next to the main entrance door seems likely to cause headaches, too. I like that you have the plumbing on the wall away from the recording room.

It's just a pet peeve of mine, but I don't like hallways. They just seem like wasted space to me. Couldn't you put the main entrance into the garage, then access the control room and bathroom from the garage? That way the recording room has to be accessed through the control room (better sound isolation) and you gain an extra 54 sq.ft.

Also, centering the media closet on the control room makes poor use of the space left in the garage. I would suggest moving it over against the external wall, which will also make venting it easier (no holes in the roof).

Just my .02
 
miracom said:
Unless you're using near-field monitors, you actually do need to be far back from the speakers. I'm not even sure that the distance you have will be enough to be efficient. It's one reason why so many people prefer near-fields.
Click to expand...

my reasoning for wanting to be closer to the center of the room was that i thought this would be the optimal place for mixing in 5.1, which we plan to do eventually. is that not the case? i thought that if we left the mixing desk in the back of the room we'd be too close to the surround speakers and too far from the mains, so we wouldn't be getting an accurate representation of the surround mix. isn't the "sweet spot" of a theater supposed to be the center? i have some decent near fields as well. would it be a good idea to have near fields on the desk in addition to the surround speakers?

Also, centering the media closet on the control room makes poor use of the space left in the garage. I would suggest moving it over against the external wall, which will also make venting it easier (no holes in the roof).
Click to expand...

we thought about doing this, but we wanted to be able to enclose the projector in the media closet as well, so we would isolate its noise as well as the noise of the computers. justin made a little window in the wall above the closet door (not sure if you can see it), but we're thinking of placing that in the door itself. this would be the window that the projector would project through. as far as the media closet taking space up in the garage, we did think that was less than ideal, but were willing to deal with that in exchange for isolating the projector. i have a projector on the ceiling in my living room and it can be pretty dang noisey. and we're planning on making the media closet all shelves, so you wouldn't be able to actually walk inside it. you would open the door and the shelves would be right there, taking up the entire space of the closet, like a hall closet where you would put towels. the shelves would go all the way up the wall, and there would be a shelf for the projector, one for our powermacs, one for the surround amp, etc.

we really, really appreciate the comments. please keep them coming, as we really have minimal knowledge about doing this, and your suggestions are great.

the vocal booth would be a great addition. would it need to be framed in or could we wall it off another way? i wonder if the bathroom could somehow double as the vocal booth. i know it would need to be really dead though, and bathrooms tend to be live because of the flat walls, so probably not. i guess another of our issues is that justin isn't planning on settling in this house for good, so we're keeping in mind that it could be resold in a few years, so we're a little more hesitant to do things like frame in a vocal booth.
 
Well if you're in the center (I forgot about 5.1 mixing you wanted to do) that might be better but definitely would dictate the use of near fields then. Larger speakers (to be most effective) need to be placed quite a ways from the spot you'll be monitoring from. So if you're in the center then you want near fields around you. A stereo pair at the desk might be convenient too so you don't have to be moving them around.

I also just noticed the projector in the closet thing. Remember those add quite a bit of heat too. That closet could get quite hot in no time. I never had this problem because I dedicated a whole room to this kind of stuff so there was plenty of air in there and the machines could have as many fans as I wanted since I just closed the door and you couldn't hear any of it then.

What are you going to do about air conditioning for the tracking room? I didn't remember a comment about that. Some just turn off the air while recording thus keeping from having to treat the subject which can be expensive. If you choose that route, I would have zones in there so that you can keep air on in the control room and media closet and cut it off temporarily between takes in the tracking room.

The comment about cutting the hall out seems wise to me also. May just be wasted space.
 
Here are couple good ideas for you guys to explore for a booth. One way you could go is to frame up another closet similiar to the media closet just a little bit bigger for a person to fit in. When you move out, take down the foam, hang a closet rod and you have a nice size coat closet. Another route you could go is after the house is complete, pick a corner, frame up two walls, screw it together, add 3/4 of a ceiling (1/4 exposed so you have airflow and it doesn't turn into a sweatbox) and shove it in said corner. I've built the latter in the past for a buddy of mine and it worked out great. Under 200 dollars in materials (4'x4'), it's modular so you can take it with you when you move, and it took less than a day to build. If you wanted to go one step further, you could build a full free-standing booth, but kinda pointless if you already have a finished room and corner space. Not to mention increased cost in materials and more stuff to move around. Hope these ideas help you out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top