Building The New Recording Studio

    After seven years of recording bands on a part-time/hobby basis, I received a rather rude shock.  Space Telescope Science Institute, where I'd been employed for 20 years, informed me that they could no longer fund my position; I was being laid off.  After a long soul search (oh, several nanoseconds at least) I realized that I'd never be able to hold down a "real job" anymore.  Astronomy had always been my first love but the chances of landing another position in that field were pretty much nil. 

    So, what to do?  Well, my second love has always been music.  At the time of my being laid off I had owned and operated Orion Sound Studios for eight years.  The vast majority of the income at Orion had always come from our 30 rehearsal rooms.  Most of the profits (such as they were) were spend acquiring recording gear, so we already had a pretty well equipped studio.  

    In fact, recording bands had actually supplanted my astronomy jones as my favorite way to waste time.  There was this rather nicely sized bit of warehouse space that was opening up across the parking lot from our current office that had "recording studio" written all over it.  Maybe I could turn this layoff into a liberation and do what I really wanted to do!  So with little more than that desire, my severance check from STScI, and a wallet full of plasticized fiscal procrastination, I signed the lease for the additional space and began reading books on studio design  and room acoustics.

    The links at left will take you through a chronological account of how Orion Sound Studio's new recording facility came to be.  The studio is the result of many long and often sleepless days and nights, 80 to 100 hour work weeks, and represents the financial gamble of a lifetime.  Not exactly the recommended course of action for a 50-year-old ex-astronomy geek, but I've never been one to follow convention too closely!

    Now, as you read all the descriptions of how this or that was designed, etc., please realize that none of this is new, and none of it is any great revelation on my part.  Most of the ideas came from H. Alton Everest's book "Sound Studio Construction on a Budget".  Other ideas came from discussions on the 'net with people far more knowledgeable in these subjects than I am.  I especially benefited from discussions on the rec.audio.pro newsgroup, the Studio and Room Acoustics section of www.recording.org, as well as suggestions from several people locally who are involved in either designing, building, or running studios.  I steadfastly ignored the one piece of advice I got from all of them; I went ahead and built it anyway.