Any help welcome!
Ok…I’ve been allowed to convert an old room/building at the back of our house into a studio. Wooohooo!!!
The place has been boarded up for years, although it is actually part of an old extension onto the property.
The walls are sound, but the room is in a VERY bad way, and the building is VERY old, so major work needs doing.
It’s going to be a long and laborious project, as I’ve only got nights and Sundays. First step is a clearout and damp proofing…
Pictures explain better (brace yourselves):
From the outside:
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums…dow.jpg
Inside:
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x155/spreadercraig/Corner2.jpg
Inside 2:
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x155/spreadercraig/Corner1.jpg
Doorway:
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x155/spreadercraig/InternalDoor.jpg
…and there is an extra joined on smaller room that would make for a great vocal booth!!!
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x155/spreadercraig/VocalBooth.jpg
Mind if I do a diary on here?
That’s excellent, Craig, what are the dimentioms?
Approx 3m x 3m wall to wall, and the vocal booth is around 1.2m x 2.5m.
I’ve got some nice ideas…like cutting a hole to make a large window into the vox booth, making the existing window opening bigger and fitting a door. I can’t wait to get stuck in.
Wow, I love this room. What was it used for originally?
How old is the building?
The room has always been known as ‘the wash-house’ and the large square stone thing is a huge sink, and next to it is a shallower sink…uses unknown!
The house is around 350 years old but this particular room is part of an extension.
Looking at the way its been built I’d say it was added 100 - 150 years ago
Ha! Our house is 85 years old, and around here that’s ancient. You live in an old house, Craig!
I’m not an expert on the subject but I can tell you having a treated room makes a big difference. Here’s a link to the studio kit I bought for my studio, It should give you some ideas on what you might want to do for yours.
http://www.primacoustic.com/london.htm
Also creating a small room for vocals, although sounds like a great idea, adding a large window to a small room might produce unwanted standing waves from the glass itself. Prime has some smaller booth type traps that might better suit your needs while at the same time adding even further treatment to your room, here’s another link to what they call Flexibooth.
http://www.primacoustic.com/flexibooth.htm
Good luck on your project.
PACO
Awesome Paco thanks man Something to peruse and consider!
You are a braver man than I!
What’s the floor? Can’t tell from the pics.
that joiner room looks like a good place to set up an iso cab.
this reminds me of a band I sang and wrote songs for in Nashville back in the 90’s, Giggle Hole, our practice place was a closet we fit two amps a mic stand and a drum set in that sweat box.
just for the love of music!
dontcare
that joiner room looks like a good place to set up an iso cab.
dontcare
My thoughts exactly DC
Bill the floor is large flagstones.
the floor is large flagstones.
Ouch!
Well on the plus side, a sub-floor is an excellent route for wire snd since you're likely going to have to install one anyway might as well take advantage.
It'll likely prove too costly but you may want to investigate radiant in-floor heating (you know, the tiles with heat cable embedded in them) on top of that sub-floor. Likely the floor would be less resonant with the tiles installed and at 3m X 3m it might not prove that prohibitively expensive.
I’m getting inspired here to sort out my other room. Just need cash now.
Hey, Tom how’s things going with that Fiverr drummer guy? I’ve been thinking I might be able to raise a bit of cash offering to do guitar or bass tracks on Fiverr.
well, he figured that 5 bucks was too little for what he was doing, and got out of the business. Dunno if people would take you up on bass or guitar, but it is worth a try!
well, he figured that 5 bucks was too little for what he was doing, and got out of the business.
Dunno if people would take you up on bass or guitar, but it is worth a try!
Well, yes, it's not enough cash but I wondered if I would make some contacts or get some ongoing work. There are some other sites out there that allow you to charge more so I'm wondering about those too.
I am certain that you could use it to make some contacts. although mostly people doing this are looking for drum tracks.
I have designed -sort of - a small studio approx. the same size or smaller a few years back. It was located at an university in an excisting building and it was going to be used for recording spoken vocals.
As the architect, I was responsible for the layout of the spaces and overseeing the construction design. The customer brougth in a specialist for the room treatment. The vocal booth was dampened with an amazing amount of mineral/ glass wool, on top of which was placed a resonator (?) or diffusor (?) made out of narrow strips of wood. I guess they were going for a dead room.
I asked an aqoustics expert about the room dimensions. The main thing was, that no two dimensions, including the heigth, should be the same or have a common multiplier. This to avoid standing waves. So I think you are going to need serious dampening at one end of the studio.
The window between the studio and the booth should have two dB-rated thick panes that are angled to one another, also the thickness of the panes should not be the same. This to avoid resonance and standing waves in the window itself. Also, a small window will be better ,acoustically , than a big one.
Apart from dampening, sound insulation is another thing to consider. Doors should be dB-rated, double, and on separate frames. You might have to do something about the walls as well, depending on thickness and condition. Sound will sneak through even a hairline crack.
Also, old buildings can have “health problems” At least get rid of anything growing on the wall. There are all kinds of stuff that can be not good apart from that, but I dont want to sound too depressing.
Good luck!
I:-T
Looks like a big project Craig. Still…a bit of renovation ain’t gonna phase a spreader is it By the way one of your hometown boys is in Dubai this week. Mr Cocker no less (and I don’t mean Jarvis)
It can be a big project, it all depends on what kind of requirements one sets out to achieve.
In my own small bedroom studio I went for a much much lighter approach than the one outlined in my earlier post in this tread.
I mounted a big bookshelf on behind the loudspeakers, filling up most part of the wall. I’ve got a few lined mineral wool panels from the hardware store there as well, but the main acoustic treatment is the shelves themselves filled with books, binders and magazines. These supposedly provide good dispersion and dampening.
And small leather couch under the bookshelf provide more dampening, and also acts as an extra bed. This is the guest room, as well. An old cupboard filled with clothes and stuff in one corner in the back is my bass trap. Nothing fancy.
Its primarily a mixing studio, recordings are done using earphones, DI’s, amp sims and so forth, so I haven’t bothered with a vocal booth. Consequently, sound isolation (insulation?) is not really an issue either, as long as the neighbours don’t get violent.
It’s somewhere between near- and midfield monitoring, so I’m guessing the most important thing is placement of the speakers and the workstation. Standing waves, resonance and reflections will be less noticeable if the positions are right. That should be the case with this project here as well.
The point with all this is that you can start with something modest and add more sophisticated acoustic treatment later on as needed. The same goes for some of the construction. Got an old door you want to use? You can always swap it for a new if it turns out to bleed noise. Or add another.
I suggest getting the spaces and the surfaces done first, also proper ventilation and electrics, and build from there. Just as long there is some kind of outline of the finished project to work with.
I:-T