James Ivey hasn’t been seen on the blog for quite some time. The reason he’s been so busy is revealed in this article in which he shares the details of his ambitious new studio…

I started planning my 3rd studio (as in the one I’m sitting in as I type) about 10 minutes after I finished moving into my 2nd Studio (and they say some people are never happy), but I knew that there were places I had cut corners and things that I would do better, or at least differently next time.

This article is not going to be a blow-by-blow account of my latest studio build. Instead, it is going to be a rough guide to the highs and lows of building your own creative space. By that, I mean a work area that suits your specific needs rather than those of others or the needs that others think you need, and there is quite a difference.

Back Story

Jivey studio Mk1 was not much to write home about. It was a 4m x 3m wooden shed in the back garden of my first flat (apartment). However, studio number 2 was a serious workspace that many of you will have seen in Production Expert articles and videos over the years. I have lost track of the number of recordings and videos made there, but it must be up in the thousands, as my family were in that house for over ten years. 

However, in the 18 months that we have been at our new house situated about 30 minutes north of London, I have been honing and crafting the plans for Jivey studio version 3, which was, as of about two months ago, christened D.A.V.E.  by my daughter Lucy. D.A.V.E stands for Daddies Audio Video Emporium. 

Following The Code

I’m not going to go into all the legalities of how you go about getting permission to build a sizable 55-square-meter outbuilding on your property in the UK as it is not relevant to around 50% of the people reading this article. However, I did get permission to build D.A.V.E. and it is entirely within the rules, regs and tolerances of what we were given permission to construct. It is built to comply with all the UK building control rules and regulations relevant to an outbuilding, as D.A.V.E. is “Not a dwelling.” Right, ‘nuff said.

Getting It Right At The Start – Know What You Want From Your Space

Has anyone ever designed and built the perfect studio for everyone? No, I didn’t think so and this is simply because everyone’s idea of what a studio should be is different. As the theme to the classic 80’s TV show Different Strokes (yes, I am that old) once said, “What might be right for you might not be right for some,” and in my case, this was very true. My new room needed to fulfil several very different roles:

• Recording Drums

• Recording live bands

• Mixing and mastering

• Video production

• Live streaming

While there is quite a bit of crossover here, a room that sounds great for drums is often not a good mix room and so on. The layout of the room also needed to be thought out. My previous studio had a separate Drum room, and while this was great for tracking bands, it did limit the “size” of the drum sound I was able to achieve. I also like the process of a band and producer working in the same room at the same time. Plenty of big acts work like this Coldplay and Paul Epworth to name but two. 

Getting Caught Out – The Base

I have watched enough episodes of the Channel 4 show Grand Designs (check it out on YouTube if you have not heard of it) to know that you spend far longer and far more money in the ground or under it than you ever think you will. D.A.V.E. started out as a rough sketch (as all the best creations do), and my first builder (not the company I ended up using) said that a 150mm concrete slab base would be fine for a garden shed studio. I allocated around £8000 for this as we also needed to clear the space where D.A.V.E. would be located of 2 old rotting outbuildings and about four overgrown Ivy bushes. To cut a very long story short, we took over six weeks to complete the base. The hole that my new builder Lester and his team dug with the mini digger took fourteen 6-yard skips to remove. It is 800mm deep at the edges, rising to 600mm away from where the walls would be built. This, I am told, is called a Raft Base.

It contains over two metric tonnes of steel rebar and mesh and took just over 60 tonnes of C35 concrete to fill. This was partly due to a change in the spec for D.A.V.E. but also down to the fact that behind my property is a large weeping willow tree, which has a root system the size of a small moon. I’m not going to tell you the final cost of the base or foundation as I now like to think of it, but it was well over £20K. Short of maybe the next biblical flood, I don’t think it is going anywhere anytime soon. 

Sound Proofing - Not Acoustic Treatment

Often when we start designing our dream workspace we can get acoustic treatment and soundproofing mixed up. While one can and often does affect the other, they are two different challenges. As someone who will be playing drums in the new room, I needed the soundproofing or to give it another name, the acoustic isolation to be very good indeed. I live in a residential area, and I don’t want noise complaints from my neighbours. 

The main construction of the room is 100mm 7 Newton high-density concrete blocks, over 1200 of them. The flat roof is built upon 400mm Eco or Metal Web joists.  The inner shell is then constructed on a floating floor to create a “room within a room” and hence is completely acoustically decoupled from the outer walls and roof.  The timber frame inner wall is 100m in from the outer walls creating an all-important air gap. The 100mm timber frame is then in-filled with RW5 high density insulation, lined with a 15mm plasterboard, 5mm of acoustic mass loaded vinyl, then a 12.5mm plasterboard, and finally finished with finishing plaster. 

The key to good sound isolation is mass and variation in mass which I think we have achieved. 

You can see in the pictures above my idea for the internal structure with non-parallel walls to create a kind of “Live End Dead End” vibe to the room. The Live End is where the drums will be and the Dead End is around the mix position.  This is part of the acoustic treatment of the room and has nothing to do with soundproofing.  The builders were challenged by the angles, but once they understood the reasons and importance of the design, they totally nailed it (in more ways than one). The plasterers said when they first arrived, “Mate, you do know these walls ain't straight, don’t ya?” I only think they were half joking. 

In my previous studios, I used homemade acoustic panels, basically a covered wooden frame filled with a slab of high-density Rock Wool. This time I wanted something smarter looking with a better finish, and after much shopping around, I chose GIK Acoustics panels. We have 12 plain white absorption panels and two diffuser panels to go behind the mix position. These all look great and give off the studio vibe without being too in your face. White works well for filming and you can change the mood and the feel of the room easily and quickly with coloured lighting. 

Special Design Features

As you can imagine, I had not only been planning the bigger picture elements of the studio build but also some of the more specialist features and some of the finishing touches too. 

Usually, the weak spot in sound isolation design is the openings, such as doors and windows. I doubled up on the doors and windows for this reason. Between the inside and outside world, we have a total of 6 sheets of laminated and toughened glass in both the double acoustic doors and the window. But anywhere you cut into or through the walls will be a point of sound leakage. I wanted the absolute minimum intrusions into the walls or ceiling for this build. What’s the point in spending thousands of pounds on multi-layer walls and ceilings when you then go and cut a hole in them for electrical power sockets or downlights? 

Power & Cable Management

Around the edge of the studio at floor level, we designed a trunking system which would be constructed from the same material as the floor. This would be a mounting point for the 20 double power sockets but also a way to hide the studio cables running around the room for mic lines and many of the multi-core cables which attach the desk to the outboard equipment. You will never eliminate visible cables on a build of this kind, but the trunking has helped to minimise the cables you can see in the studio. 

The Lighting Truss

To avoid having to cut holes in the ceiling I came up with the idea of mounting everything on 100mm lighting truss, which is basically a smaller version of the stuff you see above stages at concert venues. As well as holding up the Par 16 “Birdies” which act as spotlights to highlight different features in the room, the truss holds multi-colour LED Par 56 style heads which can be set to 1 of 256 colours. I have also installed LED light panels for filming, all set by remote control.  The other benefit of the truss is that it can also support cameras, mics and eventually speakers (Atmos anyone) and all the cables, both power and signal are kept tidy inside the truss. It’s an elegant solution and the industrial look of the truss works well in the studio setting. There is power, data (Cat6), four channels of mic lines, four potential speaker lines and four channels of SD for cameras. All together rather stocked. 

Guitar Necks For Door Handles

An old saying goes, “to steal from one source is plagiarism, but to steal from many is research.” Sorry but I can’t remember where I saw the idea for guitar necks for door handles, but I loved it and after a bit of searching on eBay I found some inexpensive necks which we turned into door handles. Don’t worry, no vintage 59 Les Pauls were harmed in the making of this studio. 

How It Sounds And How It Works

I said at the start of this article that I started designing this studio 10 minutes after moving into my last one. Well, it's not the case this time. Yes, we are over (and I mean well over) budget, partly thanks to the ever-rising cost of materials (timber went up 20% over a single weekend) and partly due to some changes in specification. However, I am ecstatic with how the studio has turned out. The drum sound in the room is perfect. I love how to kick drum blooms out into the space. The stereo room mic, which we hung from the truss, gives the kit a fantastic sound. The sound at the mix position is tight and controlled. Yes, I do have a Trinnov speaker management system, but if you look at the before and after graphs, it’s not working very hard to make the sound coming from my Focal 2.1 rig sound really, very good. 

The lighting is excellent. I have complete control of what goes where. The room has a really nice feel to it. The colour LEDs work really well to enable me to change the mood as I wish. I have 8 LED panels, so I can film from just about anywhere in the room. I have 4 Zoom Q2n 4K cameras permanently pointing at the drums, so as and when I need to, I’m ready to not only record drums audio to Pro Tools but I can also capture video and if the mood takes me, Livestream. 

This project was twelve months in the planning (from a legal standpoint). Six months of build, which I’ll be honest was not fun, and then four weeks of installation, which I mostly did myself. I already know the question you are asking yourself, “Am I happy with the new studio?” The answer is that I am beyond happy. The new studio is a dream come true work space. It’s got everything I need for now and the future. I have all my toys around me, I have space to move, I can bring in other bands, artists and producers to work with. It’s a space where clients can come for mix or mastering sessions. It’s perfect for what I want and need. And no, I’m not moving house any time soon.