studioporn

some things have been bugging me about the first studio design for a few weeks now--all the HVAC stuff is in the furthest corner of the house, there's a lot of dead space and awkward space, there'd be inadequate space for moving in and out of the vocal booth once the console and monitors are in place, and the main room seems a bit small.

i've been struggling with this for about a week now and i've made some changes and compromises to arrive at this design:

pros:

• more cubic footage in the main room


• easier access to vocal booth


• HVAC stuff now over by existing furnace and more detached from studio space


• 2 fewer doors


• less strict adherence to room-within-a-room design gives more simplicity and flexibility to the vocal booth and storage room


• better use of space


• not having to worry about the sliding glass door in front of the console means i can soffit-mount the main monitor speakers, as shown in the plan. (oh, in case you're wondering about the dotted lines going from the speakers to the chair, those are guide lines for speaker and listener placement. basically, these 3 need to form an equilateral triangle for optimum listening.)

cons:

• room dimensions are not ideal in terms of minimizing room mode problems (L > 3*H). i've heard mixed opinions on how problematic this might be. some people say that for small (for a studio) rooms like this, it's more important to increase room volume than to get the perfect ratios. other people would say split it off into 2 separate rooms, which will allow getting more ideal ratios for each room. my take on this is that the laid-back-ness and big-ness of the 1-room design are what are most important to me and i'll deal with any room mode problems as best i can once the space is built and start doing room analysis and tuning.


• main room is no longer symmetric. this is a bonus for tracking, but for control room purposes it's imperative to have left-right symmetry in the mixing position so that you get proper stereo imaging. i've maintained the symmetry as far back as i could given the other constraints. not ideal, but given the constraints of the space i think this is a reasonable compromise.


• no more line-of-site from the desk to the vocal booth. i've been toying with the idea of installing a window on the booth wall that faces the desk. it's kind of suboptimal having all musicians behind me when recording, but on the other hand i really don't like staring at people when they're recording and under the microscope enough as it is.


• storage room is now a double-captive room. i'm in the process of trying to determine whether this violates any building code. probably not, since it's essentially a closet. worst case, i can move the door to go into the main room, but this will violate L-R symmetry in the mix area.


• less adherence to room-within-a-room wall framing means the soundproofing won't be quite as effective. but as with many other things in this space, i've decided to stop pursuing "perfect" and be content with "good enough".