Professional Recording Studio Design App

Green Incrat · Saturday, 20 November 2021

Thumbs up any ideal software(s) for control room & studio design ?

Hello everyone,

I'm searching for a graphic design software to create my new studio complex (control room, studio A, vocal booth, drum booth, separated mastering suite), 200 m2.

I've already designed 2 DIY studios in the past...with eyes, intution, pencil, paper... Those studios of the past were rather experimental but I really learned a lot with all the mistakes (and improvements) I made during those years ! Also studied basics acoustics theory thanks to numerous readings, measurements skills, etc.

Now it's time for me to build something better, more refined, and with serious drawings, and consulting (but staying in the DIY way because of budget limitations).

With the time I also went quite skilled with photoshop (noticely for sleeve graphical design), but this soft is certainly not the best one to work with dimensions, lines...and this is not a 2D/3D software.

I tryied few months ago google sketch up, found it quite intuitive in some way, but didn't liked at all the way it works with dimensions too. It could be nice to make a preview, but for real designing, I'm not sure it can do the trick. The dimensions cannot be exported, no way to modify numerically, seems to be hard to modify angles of walls afterwards, the drawings cannot be exported to other formats such as cad, etc (which I never used but it seems to be a must, noticely if you want to make some calculations and simulations on several acoustic softwares).

So I wondered if by fortune there wasn't any specific software which was sufficiently well-conceived to create directly, accurately and """easily""" control-rooms designs, and who knows, which could embed some acoustical calculations abilities...

Or at least the best software you can suggest to do such task.

Thanks a lot in advance for your precious advises.

Regards from France (and sorry for my english in case of mistakes...)

Fred

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JWL's Avatar

I'm not aware of any custom software for studio design. I use sketchup for 3D drawings, pen & paper sometimes. Newer REW has some interesting acoustics simulation features that might also be useful.

Well...I'm searching for a software which could switch from 2D drawings (acoustical conception, dimensions for building) to 3D (visualisation, esthetics).

All seems to be very interesting, but expensive, indeed.

There is also these one :

CATT-Acoustic / The FIReverb Suite / ReflPhinder

It looks likes an old windows 98 updated program...
but known to be efficient and very advanced in terms of acoustic calculations and simulations.
Have its own drawing interface, but ALSO newly compatible with AutoCad & SketchUp. Intersting ? Price ? Yet, no idea...
There is a demo version.

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jhbrandt's Avatar

Boys,

The only one of the softwares mentioned that actually qualifies is CATT... the rest is NOT for small room acoustics.

I think the best software for this is between your ears. That and a stack of books and time.

The best software that I have found is AutoCAD. With this you can model ANYTHING and also export it to various formats to use in other analytical software. But note that most of that kind of software usually is not for use on a Mac.. best on Windows or Linux.

There is MSC Actran, and AnSys Workbench... But like AutoCAD, there is very long and dreary learning curve.

Any of this software requires the knowledge of physics in order to use it, so you still need the schooling and experience.

Soon, perhaps in 20 - 30 years, we'll be able to simply download any knowledge from the cloud. See Ray Kurtzweil and his books and youtube videos. But at that point, intellectual property will cease to exists or be at least devalued extremely, since it is a non-scarce good.
THEN, we'll be able to say to the cloud, as in the Matrix, "I need a 3D physics program to detail boundary element modeling in this space"... your eyes will blink a few times and then you've got it! Full and complete. (I hope we make it to that point!)

Until then, we're stuck with sitting in class and discussing the techniques with our mentors.

All the best!!
Cheers,
John

Lives for gear

Kyle P. Gushue's Avatar

Good to know.

There just seems to be this enormous "grey area" once the solid fundementals are understood. the application of the principals seems to be evasive. It'd be great to see a book or documentary that outlines the process from scratch. what would be the steps involved to design and predict a rooms response at a listening position. I've been building and reading for 8 years, and the fundemtals have taken me a long way. But there's no way I could really guarantee the sound or footprint of a room. calculating the estimated response of certain frequencies, at listening position just doesn't seem to be in any of the many books I've read. I'm guessing perhaps there is no recipe. No step by step.

It's certainly a fascinating path. From physics lessons online, to construction techniques, to architecture, I had no idea what I was getting into when I sure "sure uncle J, I'll build you a home studio" and ordered that first book BTLP.

I like the artistic and unknowns, but it'd be welcome to me if there was a more clear curriculum or knowledge base outlined, for what qualifies someone as an 'acoustician' proper.

I've been recording bands for 17 years, casually and professionally, and I'm still not sure if I'm technically an 'engineer' yet. Lol I've always related to 'sound guy', maybe one day I'll graduate.

Thanks for you answers guys.

To be clear, I never pretend to have a high graduation of knowledges in terms of acoustics, even thinking myself as an acoustician. Not at all ! I said I made a lot of mistakes which helped me to better understand in practice what could be wrong in my previous studios. Noticely trying to fix bass dips and peaks through absobtion and placement, and fighting comb filtering in several ways.
But again, those studios weren't world class ones at all, rather DIY amateur...

I found some solutions to fix the problems I encountered, at the price of partial reconstructions and ugly transformations that I am not very proud of (aesthetics was always the last priority...)
These old studios also always started with rectangular walls, ordinary ceilings heights, and were adapted with wood, tissues, diffusers and lots of absorbtion. The EQing was doing the rest to get the right balance the best I could achieve with what I had. I had to deal with it a long time.

Now I bought a better place, not ideal again, but I hope to construct something significantly better. Not perfect, but better.
But never had any pretention to think myself as an acoustician. And that's why I am here...

If you want to know a little bit more about me (this is what you ask I think ?) I am first of all a sound engineer with 25 years of practice, working as producer and recording/mixing engineer, and more recently (for 5 years now) focusing mainly in audio mastering work, working as independant for a vinyl pressing plant, doing also audio quality consulting.
Had also the opportunity to work in the past at Czech Philharmony recording studio and getting diplomed as tonmeister in university of Prague + musicology master in France. Have also electronics baccalaureate in the pocket.
Sound, music and technique has always been a major part of my life.

As you said, since the beggining like today, I'm constantly learning every day, growing my knownledge, and this is what I'm doing again in acoustical domain with this new project. This is a new and exciting adventure.

For the moment, I only wanted to get some informations about drawing design softwares.
Maybe hoped a little naively to find information about some open source ones, in case of... But the software suggestions I got since are clearly demonstrate what I was expected : professional design softwares (which are useful for little rooms acoustical domain) are dawn expansive (and sometimes few times more) than professional DAW softwares. Those I had to buy because I use it every day, but as I am not conceiving recording studios everyday, I have to reconsider my ambitions a bit...

So I think I will take at first my pencil, eraser, and after will try to transfer it as I can with photoshop, and will probably asking advises on this forum when I will get something a little presentable.
I have a friend which have a complete AutoCad system at home, but I can't ask him to do it for me, and even if I was using his computer at night, as learning curve seems to be slow, I don't think this is the right way for me.
I temporarely reduced my amount of work to the minimum in order to get (I hope) a presentable plan in 2 weeks.

I already have lots of questions to ask, but this is not the good topic for. Will rather join another one.
Hope this topic will help other people to get answered, before starting their project, concerning drawing possibilities.

Whatever thanks for your advises concerning softwares and your interests concerning my project. This is a very nice forum. Tons of interesting and useful informations to learn here, for sure. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Sketch-Up is a very nice, powerful, 2D/3D design program.

It is commonly used on a forum dedicated to DIY studio design.

It will NOT do any 'acoustical' calculations. But the 3 rooms I designed [with help] was within 1/4" accuracy. [if you want and are so drivin']
But I 'saw' my room BEFORE I started to actually build it. I knew how many 2x4's, sheets of drywall, etc, to determine cost/budget.

There was a free version of Sketch-UP ... but I bought the Pro version along with some rendering plugins ... cause it looks so cool