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[Thomas Lester]

Hi all -

I've decided to turn my "office" room into a music production room.  I'm a freelance engineer and go to studios when I'm working on projects, but lately I've been venturing into production.  I've been working it where the client pays me a lump sum and I have to pay for everything (including myself, studio, engineer if not myself, etc).  OR it's an artist that I'm developing, in which it's all coming out of my pocket or the artist's pocket.  

So..  I've decided to build my own "production" room where I'll develop songs, work out arrangements, editing, overdubs (like guitars, keys, etc).  Also..  a room where I can save my engineering clients some money by doing edits and pre-mixing (or maybe even final mixing) at my house instead of having to buy studio time on top of my time.  

I'm attaching my empty room plan in hopes that I can get some ideas of those on this forum.  Right now, it's a carpet floor, a closet at one end, a window at the other, 8' ceiling.  I can do whatever I want to the room.  I own the house and my wife says, "It's your room".  So..  I can change stuff like flooring, the closet can be altered/removed, I could probably even change the ceiling to follow the roof line at an angle, etc...

How would you do it?  It'll be DAW based without console.  I'll probably have a couple of racks of gear, two displays, a 5.1 set up.  I'm not necessarily looking for accustic treatment advice, but more like where you'd position the desk, speakers placement, rack placement, etc...  Construction ideas, etc...

Thanks,
Thomas

[ted nightshade]

That's an awfully small room with an awfully low ceiling for what you want to do with it...

[Thomas Lester]

ted nightshade wrote on Fri, 26 November 2004 14:27

That's an awfully small room with an awfully low ceiling for what you want to do with it...

For what I want to do?  I don't want to track drums or even do full mixes.  I'm looking for a room to edit, produce (i.e. work out song arrangements, orchestrations, etc), pre-mix (or final mixes for demos), etc...  I'm talking about a room to write song in, program, etc...  

Here's the way I work (when I'm producing).  I'll usually spend a couple of weeks with the artist watching them live, in rehearsal, etc...  I'll observe the audience for key parts of the songs, etc...  I'll record many of these performances (crappy recordings off the desk or even just a open mic in the room).  I'll then go into a studo's "MIDI" room (or "producers' room) and create the skeleton of the songs via samples and myself playing most of the instruments through a POD or something.  Once I have the skeleton of the songs done, I'll start to futz around with the arrangment, orchestration, harmonies, etc...  Once all the parts are worked out, I bring the band in and we tweak some more until we are all happy.  Then, we rehearse until we are ready to go into the studio.

Then, we go into the studio (a real studio) and track the parts live and finsih any over dubs.  We then edit, fix, overdub, etc...  and mix in the studio.

The room I want to put together is for the first part and editing...   I'll still cut the band in the studio and mix in the studio.

Does that help clarify?  That's why I am not asking specifically about acoustics.  I'm asking more about ergonomics of setting up a audio workspace in this small room.

-Tom

[lord]

In that case, design the room around the couch. Not kidding.

The 5.1 system will probably be a pain in the balls. Are you doing video work?

[Thomas Lester]

Yep...  video, video games, etc...

-Tom

[j.hall]

i'd center my "desk" with the front window.  

if you plan to have clients all the time i'd ditch the closet, if you don't, i'd keep it, storage space is always a plus!!

if you don't want acoustic advice, then that's it from me.

[ted nightshade]

OK, I get it now- but I can't understand trying to set up a surround system in there, I really can't.

Either you need to hear what you're doing, in which case the room is way too small, or you don't, in which case you don't really need a whole surround set-up do you?

Anyhow, good luck! I just thought it might be a good thing to be aware of the impossible sonics of a room like that *before* setting it all up, if sonics matter at all...

I could see how for some work, they really wouldn't matter, as long as you could tell where you were in the song and all that.