What it costs to build a recording studio depends on the kind of project. Hanging panels in a finished room and building an isolated studio in a garage are different jobs, and the budgets are more than ten times apart.
Below are the project types we've proposed over the past year, with the budget for each. Valley Acoustics designs the rooms and builds and installs the acoustic treatment: panels, clouds and fabric track. Licensed contractors do the construction, electrical and AC.
Recording Studio Build Costs by Project Type
| Project | What's Included | Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Panels for one room | Built to order, with or without installation | $2,000 to $25,000 |
| Home theater, panels | Wall panels and corner bass traps, small to large room, installed | $4,000 to $18,500 |
| Home theater, fabric track | Fabric track on the side and rear walls, small to large room, installed | $9,000 to $34,000 |
| Fabric track, full room | Fabric walls from a finish over existing drywall up to walls framed to depth with bass traps built in | $20,000 to $50,000 |
| Classroom or commercial room | Ceiling cloud array with integrated lighting | About $30,000 |
| Large home theater | Built-out front wall with bass trapping, velour curtains on the side walls | About $40,000 |
| Room upgrade and treatment | New glass, sliding door, AC, electrical and a full panel package | About $54,000 |
| Isolated listening room | Room-in-room walls, double drywall, isolation door, electrical, speaker wiring and calibration, no treatment | About $54,000 |
| Full garage studio | Isolation, raised subfloor, AC, electrical, studio doors, flooring, a full acoustic treatment package and audio wiring | $75,000 to $175,000 |
| Two bedrooms to a studio | Control room, vocal booth and live room, with construction, AC, electrical, treatment and wiring | About $107,000 |
| Commercial studio finish-out | Control room, live room, booth and air lock, with electrical, low voltage and finishes | About $131,000 |
Treatment Only
If the room already exists and the problem is how it sounds, not who can hear it, you're in the first few rows. A single room done right starts around $5,000 installed. A medium room of 250 to 300 square feet is usually $15,000 to $20,000.
Fabric track costs more than panels because it's built on site, wall to wall, and a fabric wall that's built out and properly treated costs a lot more than fabric stretched over an existing wall. More on this in how much acoustic treatment costs in Los Angeles and what a fabric track wall is.
Home Theaters
A theater usually needs less acoustic treatment than a studio. A control room is held to a short decay and tightly controlled reflections at one seat, while a home theater has a looser decay target and leans on multiple subwoofers, placed so the bass is more even from seat to seat.
More of the budget goes into finish: fabric walls, curtains and lighting. See home theater vs. recording studio acoustics.
Isolation Builds
Once sound has to stay in or out, the project becomes construction: the isolation, then the subfloor, AC, electrical, doors, finishes and treatment. That's how a garage studio reaches $75,000 to $175,000. More on what goes into one is in what a garage studio conversion costs in Los Angeles.
The isolation budget buys four things, as NRC Canada's research on gypsum board walls lays out: mass, decoupling, insulation in the wall cavity and airtightness.
In a single layer wall, each doubling of the weight per square foot adds about 6 dB of transmission loss (TL, the drop in sound level through the wall).
- Screwing a second sheet of the same drywall over the first is one doubling, about 6 dB for that panel on its own. On a real stud wall the gain is smaller: in NRC Canada tests, a second layer on one side took a basic wood stud wall from STC 34 to 36.
- Each octave lower in pitch loses about 6 dB, so a wall that stops 50 dB at 500 Hz stops only about 38 dB at 125 Hz, two octaves down.
That is why bass sets the design. Separate frames for each side of the wall cut the mechanical path. In NRC Canada data for decoupled gypsum board walls, insulation in the cavity raised the STC (Sound Transmission Class, a single number rating for walls) by about 8 points.
For airtightness, a leak of one tenth of one percent of a wall's area limits it to about STC 30, whether the wall is rated STC 40 or STC 60. That is why the doors, seals and every penetration get as much attention as the walls. See what STC means for the door math.
Converting rooms inside the house isn't automatically cheaper than a garage. The walls are already there, but a booth may still need a floating floor, the rooms need doors, and the AC usually has to be rerouted.
What Moves a Project Up or Down
- Isolation or Not: The biggest single factor. It's the difference between the top and bottom halves of the table.
- Number of Rooms: A control room alone costs far less than a control room, booth and live room.
- AC and Electrical: An isolated room needs its own cooling, and gear needs its own circuits. Ductwork that connects rooms can act as a speaking tube, in the words of NRC Canada's A.C.C. Warnock, so duct runs are designed so they never make a short, direct path through an isolation wall.
- How Loud and How Low: The isolation you need is the difference between how loud it gets inside and how quiet it has to be on the other side. Drums, bass amps and subwoofers need far more low frequency isolation than mixing at moderate levels.
- Finishes: Wood, custom lighting, trim and diffusers push any project toward the top of its range.
Sources
- Halliwell, R.E., Nightingale, T.R.T., Warnock, A.C.C., Birta, J.A., Gypsum Board Walls: Transmission Loss Data (IRC-IR-761), National Research Council Canada, 1998.
- A.C.C. Warnock, CBD-239: Factors Affecting Sound Transmission Loss, Canadian Building Digest, National Research Council Canada, 1985.
- A.C.C. Warnock, CBD-186: Office Partitions, Acoustical Requirements for Design and Construction, Canadian Building Digest, National Research Council Canada, 1977.
- EBU Tech 3276, Listening Conditions for the Assessment of Sound Programme Material, May 1998.
- Floyd E. Toole, Music, Rooms and Listeners: Science in the Creation and Delivery of Audio Art, Acoustics Today, Vol. 9, No. 2, Acoustical Society of America, 2013.
- Todd Welti and Allan Devantier, Low-Frequency Optimization Using Multiple Subwoofers, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol. 54, No. 5, 2006.
Where to Start
If you're not sure which row you're in, read soundproofing vs. acoustic treatment and 6 things to decide before building a home studio. Then send us the room through our free room review form or call (818) 217-1653. We work on studio design, sound isolation and acoustic treatment across Los Angeles and Ventura County. Reach out to us for design assistance.