Basements and garages are not the best locations for home recording studios.
Whether you are a musician, voice artist or an aspiring sound engineer or producer, having a home recording studio can be a convenient career asset. As Recording Engineer's Quarterly notes, home recording equipment has come a long way from the 1970s, when you needed a boatload of bulky, expensive devices to create quality recordings. Today, thanks to computers, you achieve the same results without spending nearly as much or taking up as much space. If you are considering building a home studio, there are several design ideas available.
Choosing a Space
Your home recording studio should be as far away from foot traffic and other sources of domestic noise as possible. According to the University of California, Santa Cruz, a good idea is to choose a room that does not adjoin a bathroom or kitchen, as both feature noisy fixtures and appliances. And while many consider basements and garages to be ideal spaces for studios, both have their limitations. Basements are prone to flooding, which could damage or destroy your equipment, and they often have low ceilings, which make for poor acoustics. Garages, due to their big doors and large interiors, are difficult to ventilate and heat properly. Instead, you should try to set up your studio in a room on the back corner of a house, away from the street.
Dividing the Space
If your recording studio room has ample floor space, you may want to divide it into several different functional areas. As Recording Engineer's Quarterly mentions, these could include a large studio area for recording bands, a smaller area, or isolation booth, for recording vocalists and solo performers, and a control room for setting up computers, mixers and other equipment. You may also want to consider setting up a storage room for unused instruments, stands and stools or chairs.
Soundproofing
According to professional voice artist Andy Neill, one option for creating a completely soundproof space in your studio is to purchase a prefabricated sound booth. Alternatively, you can turn your entire room into a large soundproof booth by building another "room" within it. As the University of California, Santa Cruz notes, this requires adding an extra layer of gypsum board on top of all the room's wall surfaces. Just keep in mind that these new walls cannot come in contact with the old ones, or the floors, so you will need to use two-by-four framing to create separation.
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