Scenario:

Producer and multi-instrumentalist Adam Ollendorff took a free-standing garage in his backyard and converted it into his dream home studio. Music City Acoustics originally came on board just as renovations to the studio were wrapping up, but after chatting with Adam about his goals for the space, MCA signed on to design the full acoustical space.

The goals and intentions for the studio were clear: Take the beautifully constructed shell with its natural light and clean lines, and turn it into a home studio that is accurate, focused, translates well for mixing, and makes a wonderful space to record acoustic instruments

The challenge

As with so many home studios today, they serve as one-room, all-encompassing studios for production, recording, and mixing.  These can be wonderfully creative, inspiring spaces that enable fast workflows, but they do require a well thought-out acoustic design. 

The main challenge with Adam’s space was determining how to take a 25’x10’x9’ room and turn it into a production/tracking room, mixing room, and still have enough space for the bathroom, and breathing room really. After accounting for the bathroom, acoustic treatments, instruments, furniture, AC and more the space could easily begin to feel cramped, messy, and too hectic to be the inspiring studio we were looking to create.

The solution

We worked closely with Adam on multiple versions of the acoustic design to ensure that we not only got the acoustics in the studio right, but that it also had the exact feel and vibe he was looking for.

After several iterations of the acoustic treatment design, they landed on a design solution that incorporated Music City Acoustics’ Bass Traps, Broadband Band Acoustic Panels, High-Mid Acoustic Panels, Scatter Faces, and Space Coupling Diffusers.

Treating the front half of the studio

For the front half of the room (where his desk and monitors were) MCA focused on creating a stunningly accurate monitoring environment for mixing and monitoring. The front corners of the room were outfitted with 7’ tall Bass Trap Acoustic Panels to balance the low-frequency response, and to help control the decay time in the room.

The cloud above the desk was made up of two Bass Trap Panels, controlling the floor-to-ceiling modes and preventing any early reflections from the ceiling back to the listening position. Notably, here, MCA installed a Space Coupling Diffuser below the Bass Trap Panels.  The ceiling pitches up to 9’ in the middle of the room but on the sides, it is relatively low at 7’. The Space Coupling Diffuser adds dimension, width, and depth to the monitoring environment making the room feel larger and more spacious than it is. 

On the front wall directly behind each of the monitors, Music City Acoustics incorporated Broadband Acoustic Panels to reduce speaker boundary interference reflections (SBIR) that would hurt the low mid response of the monitors.The side walls were also outfitted with Broadband Acoustic Panels to control early reflections, improve stereo imaging, and make the monitoring focused and clear.

Treating the back half of the studio

The back-half of the room was designed to be a focused, clear, and a natural-sounding environment for recording vocals and acoustic instruments. To accomplish this, MCA continued with Broadband Acoustic Panels on the side walls with the addition of Scatter Faces. The Scatter Faces keep the room sounding balanced and clear without becoming too dry and lifeless in sound.

 It was also important to accentuate the windows, natural light, and leave room for instruments in the space.  With this in mind, MCA spaced the acoustic panels out with enough room to allow for wall-mounted guitars and installed Space Coupling Diffusers that again, made the room feel larger and more spacious than it is, but also allowed for the natural light to pass through them. 

To finish out the room, Music City Acoustics installed High-Mid Ceiling Acoustic Panels and High-Mid Acoustic Panels in the back nook of the room. These were included to ensure there were no offensive flutter echoes between the parallel walls, and to prevent any specular reflections off of the ceiling. 

*Keep in mind, MCA discussed Gobos for the back half of the room that could double as rear wall Bass Traps when the studio is being used for mixing, but due to space constraints, the Gobos were set aside as a potential phase two. After a year and a half of working in the studio, the need for Gobos hasn’t arisen and the space has been performing beautifully.

From start to finish, MCA worked on this studio for about three months, most of which was in the design phase. It is a real testament to how working closely with clients allows MCA to create the exact space they have dreamt of, not only visually, but sonically as well.