A lot of people feel completely lost when it comes to how to correctly design a recording studio, and understandably so. There's a pretty wide scope involved in recording studio design because of the amount of factors that need to be taken into consideration: what type of instrumentation you'll be recording, what kind of sound treatments need to be done to the room(s), the width and depth of the walls and door entrances, etc...
Design a Recording Studio? |
It can be confusing trying to prioritize everything if you're trying to design a recording studio on a budget. Like most things, there isn't necessarily only one correct way in planning to design a recording studio. And as usual, everything comes back to your budget.
(If you can afford the price tag, Home-Studio-Recording.com highly recommends the following book on how to design a recording studio because of its in-depth detailing of acoustical sound treatments and setups. It's expensive, but it very well may end up saving you money in the long run if you're setting up sound treatments through trial and error. If you think this book has a lot more info than you need for your home studio purposes, the next article in this section outlines a more affordable book that is also a great resource for recording studio design.)
Unfortunately, most people are in such a rush to run out and get gear and recording equipment when they're first preparing to design a recording studio that they end up spending a lot of money that doesn't need to be spent, and in turn, usually end up not getting a lot of things they actually need. The recording needs of hip-hop and electronica artists are oftentimes very different from jazz or rock artists. If you're recording a genre of music that deals primarily with electronic devices like samplers, synthesizers or workstations, you're able to modify all the typical rules about how to design a recording studio; most likely you won't have to worry about acoustics or sound treatments, various expensive microphones and preamps, and you probably won't need to bother with soundproofing since you can run everything directly into the recording interface. (Of course that's somewhat contingent upon whether or not you'll be doing playback sessions primarily through headphone monitors.)
If you're recording acoustic or amplified electric instruments, how you design a recording studio can unfortunately be a bit more complex and expensive. As mentioned earlier, you have a few more considerations, all of which sort of creates this snowball effect which forces you to re-evaluate your budget. Miking amps, cabs, and drum kits all add up to one thing: soundproofing. Of course there are exceptions; if you're going to design a recording studio where you know crashing cymbals and distorted guitars aren't going to be a bother to anyone, (like in a garage,) you may be able to bypass having to soundproof your studio. And also, if you're using quality studio recording software like Pro Tools or Acid, you have the choice between miking electric instruments or running them directly into the mixer or recording hardware interface, which eliminates the middleman- the amp.
But even if you don't plan on miking amps or amplifying electric instruments, you'll still most likely be recording acoustic instruments and vocals. And when you design a recording studio that you'll be using for recording acoustic instruments and vocals, sound treatments have to be considered carefully at some point.
Will You Be Recording Vocals or Spoken Word?