New Space Help Me Use It

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losthighway
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New Space Help Me Use It

Post by losthighway » Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:10 pm

Hi-

I've been recording in the same space for years. I've got a pretty modest sized live room, but I've gotten some good sounds out of it. For a minute I thought I was going to give it up to move in with my girlfriend, but it is looking more and more likely that we will buy the house together from my landlord. This means room mates move out, and my basement which has doubled as studio and bedroom, will become studio only: more space!

I have come up with what I believe are the most common sense ways to expand into my additional space. I have never done any drafting so you will have to use my cartoony photoshop to see what I'm working with. I am pretty sure it is almost to scale.

A couple notes: this doesn't show room treatment, or speaker placement etc. I'm pretty sure I will double up the wall next to the stairs and make it slightly off kilter to avoid some flutter. First I will post the studio's current layout then my two ideas for remodel jobs.

Image

Image

Image


Here's the pros and cons as I see them:

Design 1:
Pros:
1. Greatest space in live room overall.
2. Room mics for drums will sound bad ass from other side.
Cons:
1. No visibility from control room to live room (how it is now as well).
2. Relies completely on the big room's acoustics, which are slightly impeded by the fact that it is only twelve and a half feet wide.
3. New control room location will be less comfortable atmosphere. About fifty percent less natural light (small window to the outside).

Design 2:
Pros:
1. Visibility between live room and control room.
2. Two live rooms to choose from, one could be more live, the other a little more dead.
3. Window looks pro.
4. More comfy live room w/ natural light from a big window.
Cons:
1. Window costly.
2. New additional live room only marginally bigger cubic footage then the one I already have.
3. While the same size, the control room will be boxed in to where it is now with the addition of a wall. This could create acoustic problems, and the room might feel really small once the fourth wall is up.


I came up with a couple odd-ball alternatives, neither seemed horribly practical.

In one I would take out the door between where my bedroom and live room are now, as well as part of the wall coming down from the staircase. This would create two partially connected rooms with stairs coming from the top of the ceiling. I am not sure how two connected rooms would interact acoustically and what the losses for soundproofing into the stairwell would be.

The other would remove the door and part of the wall between the storage room and the current live room. Again two rooms partially joined. Don't know how well that works, the furnace would always be an eye sore.....


Thanks for taking all of this in, your opinions are terribly interesting to me. Thanks again.

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Post by dynomike » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:36 am

Design 1, for sure.


I'm a big fan of "putting all your eggs in one basket"... you can use the storage room for iso anyway.

Also the control room will sound WAY better with the speakers firing into the long direction of the room
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Post by losthighway » Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:20 pm

Thanks Dynomike. You've already got me redecorating the future control room in my mind..... but, I'm wondering what some others think.

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Post by losthighway » Mon Sep 01, 2008 8:19 pm

Anyone else have some feedback on these silly drawings of mine?

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Post by trodden » Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:06 pm

Design 1. That's almost EXACTLY how my studio (also in the basement of a house) is, even the dimension are very close. I love having as much space in the live room as possible. gives the sound a place to go, and lets bands track all together in the same room.

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Post by losthighway » Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:12 pm

Sounds like a good plan.

I'm almost thinking with some good moveable gobos, I might even get away with having amps in the same room on opposite end from the drums, with adequate separation. I've seen it done in smaller spaces.

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Post by trodden » Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:19 pm

losthighway wrote:Sounds like a good plan.

I'm almost thinking with some good moveable gobos, I might even get away with having amps in the same room on opposite end from the drums, with adequate separation. I've seen it done in smaller spaces.
totally. i put the drums at one end and the amps at the other end facing away.. there's bleed, but not enough to be a problem. Got some moveable gobos as well.

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Post by dynomike » Tue Sep 02, 2008 7:41 pm

trodden wrote:
losthighway wrote:Sounds like a good plan.

I'm almost thinking with some good moveable gobos, I might even get away with having amps in the same room on opposite end from the drums, with adequate separation. I've seen it done in smaller spaces.
totally. i put the drums at one end and the amps at the other end facing away.. there's bleed, but not enough to be a problem. Got some moveable gobos as well.
Man some of the time I have amps pointed AT the drums and its still usually fine... the other day I had bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and clarinet, all live in the room, no headphones... it can work great if you're careful with mic placement / pattern / being conscious of the off-axis, and getting levels right in the room.
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Post by losthighway » Wed Sep 03, 2008 7:23 am

I have started to believe this kind of set up can get a much more intimate performance. What you lose in separation you gain in having comfortable musicians.

I think my favorite thing I ever recorded was a rock band with acoustic guitar, electric guitar, male vox, female vox, typical rhythm section. They had a two minute intro which was just duet with the two guitars. We had been recording for hours with headphones on and hadn't done any singing yet. They took off their headphones and I opened the door to the iso room so the electric could bleed in just enough to hear and they cut their vocals and guitars live the old fashion way. The guy and girl are magnificent singers and it felt like a special moment. The bleed added to the ethereal quality of the song, I left the door open to the control room, turned off the monitors and just listened in the headphones while watching them through the doorway.

Easily one of my top five moments recording.

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Post by trodden » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:43 am

dynomike wrote:
trodden wrote:
losthighway wrote:Sounds like a good plan.

I'm almost thinking with some good moveable gobos, I might even get away with having amps in the same room on opposite end from the drums, with adequate separation. I've seen it done in smaller spaces.
totally. i put the drums at one end and the amps at the other end facing away.. there's bleed, but not enough to be a problem. Got some moveable gobos as well.
Man some of the time I have amps pointed AT the drums and its still usually fine... the other day I had bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and clarinet, all live in the room, no headphones... it can work great if you're careful with mic placement / pattern / being conscious of the off-axis, and getting levels right in the room.
damn, CLARINET! recently did a drum, bass, guitar, cello, violin set up, all live in teh room... the bleed into the violin mic was ok, cause the player worked the mic very well, however, luckily cello was also going through an amp and DI cause the cello mic just didn't have enough cello, and too much drums in it... had i put the cello farthest away, may have helped... but yeah, the bleed is like glue.

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Post by losthighway » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:49 pm

See, that's the kind of band I want to record more of. I get so bored of hardcore bands that flip their lids when you make it sound 'heavy'. Quiet music can be recorded so much easier with a much greater variety of color. It seems like heavy rock bands, if you try to add much color it just pulls a brick out of their wall of rock.

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Post by signorMars » Tue Sep 16, 2008 9:00 pm

the other plus to design 1 is that it looks like you can set it up such that you can leave the control room without going through the live room.
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Post by losthighway » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:25 pm

Then it is decided.

Do I really need a structural engineer to tell me if I can put three layers of drywall between all the ceiling joists....really? I mean could I really die from this.....really?

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Post by Seamonster » Sat Sep 20, 2008 5:42 pm

You're decided... still, I'll throw in a few last-minute thoughts. The basic layout looks quite similar to the basement studio I had when I lived in Seattle.

Whatever you do, keep the large room large.

By your design #1, it looks like your control room wouldn't have sight-lines into the tracking room(?). Don't underestimate the value of visual communication, or of actually being in the same room. Have you considered an "open-room" concept, such as advocated by Daniel Lanois and others? Unless you're tracking full groups just about every day, you may not need or want the control room separated. If you spend a lot of your time in mix mode (who doesn't?), you'd want to be doing that in the large room too, long-ways.

What I would do: set up mixing and monitoring in the large room. You could integrate those functions on a desk with wheels, so that when tracking you could place it roughly where you have it in design #2 (but without the wall/window in between). When mixing, spin it around 180 degrees so that your listening position is in the 37% zone, roughly where the squiggly line in "current layout" is. Or try leaving it in the mixing position and put up a wide rear-view mirror ("baby mirror") so that you can look up at the players behind you. If you're concerned about having enough isolation to get the drum sound you want, for instance, I s'pose you could use a dedicated headphone jack in an iso room for a quick confidence check.

This would leave you two iso rooms, which could help if you ever go for a clean drum sound when tracking multiple players; keep the players in the main room and put their amps in the iso rooms. You could also use those other rooms for storage of all the goodies you don't constantly need in the control room -- your open room could remain streamlined.

When using gobos, remember a few things. You're really recording the whole group at once with only enough separation for some subtle nuance in the mix. And recall that sound travels at roughly 1 millesecond per foot, which means that often you will want to keep instruments as close together as possible, with just the gobo in-between, to keep the bleed focused. With sources at opposite ends of your long room, your bleed could have 30+ms of audible smear.

Maybe put a couch area in one of the iso rooms so players have an alternate space to hang or work out ideas while you're working in the main room.

On the drywall/ceiling joist question, yes the load could be a serious issue. I imagine you've read Gervais' book, which has some discussion of that. Personally, I think that book does have a lot of good stuff and is worth reading and referencing, but is not quite so definitive as many people seem to think.

I hope I haven't rocked your whole boat here, or if I have, then in a good way.

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Post by losthighway » Sun Sep 21, 2008 3:09 pm

THanks. I like your challenge to what the status quo has been on this. Your suggestions are especially awesome because I could still proceed as planned, and test your method, without having to alter my construction plans at all. All my audio gear is already on wheels, so essentially I would just have to get a computer desk on wheels and I am as mobile as you suggest. The only thing I'm thinking is this:

I have never had a line of site in seven years of recording at this little studio. It has really been ok for me. I keep a talkback mic ready and put the room mic through and communication is no problem. For this reason I might even try wheeling in to the large room for mixing but keep design 1 with an isolated control room until I switch into mix mode with the magic 38% in effect.

Whatever happens, thanks for throwing some new ideas at me, they have certainly opened my mind to some new possibilities.

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