A Studio of One’s Own
We’ve all posted that photo on the Internet. You know the one: we convince a friend to sneak up behind us while we’re recording, maybe crouched under the heaviest blanket we own like a five-year-old playing hide-and-go-seek or maybe jammed into a closet… also like a five-year-old playing hide-and-go-seek. It’s silly, sweaty, and only kind-of effective when it comes to sound treatment.
Most Multitude episodes aren’t recorded under sheets — imagine Mike and a guest every week making a blanket fort. But we were recording in our various bedrooms and it just wasn’t cutting it. The mics were picking up each other, making editing annoying at best; finding an already established studio was expensive no matter how lo-fi we looked; and we just felt weird bringing guests we didn’t know into our bedrooms.
So when we found an office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with a surprisingly large walk-in closet, this was the opportunity we were looking for. We turned to our Head of Production and all-around sound guy Brandon to make it all sound right.
And through some carpentry know-how and savvy asks, it wasn’t as expensive as you might think. We’ll share our build journey and maybe it will help you make your own space, or at least answer some looming sound treatment questions you might have.
The Closet Wasn’t Perfect
It’s a closet! Unless we made some changes, we’d be back under the blanket again, just in a big echoey office this time. We knew we’d have some problems to start with:
- The closet shares a wall with the hallway! And that hallway had loud dogs! And loud children!
- We found a hole in the ceiling that connected our office to our neighbors. A literal hole.
- Footsteps, both in the hallway and our office, were really loud. Everyone not recording can’t just freeze for an hour.
- The space is still a closet (12 ft x 6 ft) and it’s too small for an engineer to be in the room too.
- The walls are sheetrock, so our voices bounced all over the place.
- There were no lights. You can’t record in the dark. Can you? [beat] I have confirmation that you cannot.
- We couldn’t do new construction, which was forbidden in our historic building’s lease. Luckily, two of the room’s walls were new construction on the inside of our space, meaning we could modify them to control noise.
- We couldn’t add soundproofing INSIDE the existing walls, ceiling, or floors, because demolition would have been a big ol’ mess.
We had a bunch of tasks in front of us. So what to work on first?
Let’s Make a Budget
Our target spend was $15,000. We had that amount of money set aside from a client project. It may feel like a lot, and we’re lucky that we had set that aside, but we couldn’t go any higher. While that was a huge amount of money for us, it’s an absurdly small amount of money for commercial studio construction.
Amanda started doing what she did best: reaching out to vendors to trade stuff other than money. Many businesses — from microphone makers to plant nurseries — are fledgling small businesses just like you. They know the value of ad spots on podcasts, or are a little bit socialist and down to trade. Always remember, you can just ask! (We’ll have a budget at the bottom of this article with a break down of what we spent and didn’t spend money on).
We realized that running ads on our podcasts for the vendors we work with could get us stuff for zero dollars; it wasn’t free, but it didn’t count against our fixed budget. We partnered with Acoustic Geometry, Stedman, Warm Audio, RME, and Sweetwater to outfit the studio, and made our office cheery and welcoming with plants from Tula House and a neon sign from Lite Brite.
Next we had to figure out what we needed to have a professional level studio, and what would just be neat:
The Gear
- Necessary: A dedicated computer and interface just for recording, mics, chairs to sit on, headphones, mic stands
- Nice: New speakers for the engineer, and a big honkin’ computer monitor to record on
The Sound Treatment
- Necessary: Acoustic absorbers and diffusers to tailor the sound, a door seal to… seal the door
The Pretty Stuff
- Necessary: lights, coasters, mugs
- Nice: plants (we love plants), a USB hub, upgrade regular lights to ~~aesthetic~~ lights
Can We Build It? Yes We Can (Eventually)
I know that Bobby from Queer Eye has everyone convinced that a build takes a few days and then it’s done, but we couldn’t do that. Bobby has 1) eldritch carpentry magic and 2) a whole crew to finish on a deadline.
We also couldn’t shut down everything to build for a whole week; we had podcasts to record. And some sound-proofing in a closet in an office is better than our bedrooms, so we had to keep that up. We used the homemade acoustic panels from Brandon’s bedroom to keep the studio functional in between rounds of construction.
We broke everything into bursts on weekends or Fridays to keep our production schedule rolling. We also had friends and family donate labor for the big jobs. We’re lucky that we had that available, and we know many don’t have that luxury. We also know that not everyone needs to put a window in a wall, which we decided to do to let in light and give the engineer a look into the studio.
To cut other costs, we used what we had. For example, the previous tenant in the office built the walk-in. When he was telling us about the spot, he off-handedly said he wanted to rip out the closet as a fresh start for the next tenants. We threw ourselves at his feet and begged him not to, so he didn’t. He’d also bought a door for the closet that he never installed. It’s a cool and solid door, very 1950s-detective noir, so we modified the existing doorway to use what we had instead of buying a new one.
But it wasn’t all easy going. Even though we scheduled a few bursts of building, we had more and more to do, and the project stretched over months before it was complete. Not only that, we kept underestimating how heavy things were.
We knew we had to make the small space feel roomy for the people recording the podcasts, so we wanted our mic stands to extend from the sides of the studio instead of from a central table or bulky floor stands. Okay, we said, scrolling through Pinterest, let’s have cool floating shelves. That’d be sick. We built the shelves, attached them to the walls, and clipped on the mics. A day went by, and we heard a crash from the studio. That was a resounding NO from the shelves. We ended up going with C-tables instead, drilling holes into the tabletops for the mics to mount into and securing the C-table legs with plumbers’ pipe straps.
The Results
In November, six months after we moved into the space, the studio was finally ready. Here’s how our initial challenges shook out:
Footsteps from the hallway
- We covered the existing floor with Acoustik underlay that dampens vibrations.
- We laid wooden snap-on flooring on top of that, sealed with acoustic caulking on the edges to “float” it and absorb some of the vibrations made by passing dogs and kids.
The hole
- We filled the hole with acoustic insulation, but not without laughing a lot.
- To keep as much noise from other offices out, we acoustic-caulked all the ceiling gaps we could find and dug out the plaster around the sprinkler pipes, replacing it with caulking.
- We built a new ceiling with sheetrock and filled the gap between the existing ceiling and our new one with acoustic insulation. Again, we caulked the border between sheetrock and walls to reduce noise from the hallway.
- We got a door seal kit to seal the door from noise inside the office.
The size
- As we learned, C-stand tables attached to the walls were the best way to hold mics that could swing out to be used, then fold flat against the wall for storage.
Bouncy voices
- We got acoustic paneling and diffusers from Acoustic Geometry on an ad trade. While those were being shipped, we continued to use homemade panels that we had from Brandon’s apartment studio.
It’s dark
- That window!
- Now, you think we could just plug in some new lights. But that new ceiling meant we had to move the box where the former tenant plugged in his lights, so we had to rewire. We hired an electrician for two hours to do that part because, quoth Brandon, “I am no electrician and I don’t wanna die.”
- The lights we got on sale are pretty but not overly bright, so we added a lamp for homeyness and additional brightness.
We did it! We ended up with a great sounding space without a lot of sound bleed, nice aesthetics, and we ended up under budget. We only spent $10k instead of the max cap of $15k. Our biggest savings were labor, from our team working weekends and our families’ donated labor. Without that help, there’s no way we could have built the studio on this budget.
It’s not perfect — we can still hear those dogs and kids and it gets warm in the summer — but we’re really proud of it. We built our studio from scratch, turning a closet with no door into a professional podcasting studio that Multitude and the greater NYC podcasting community can use.
The Budget
Our full budget is here, with screenshots below, for you to copy and use. If you have questions about our build, budget, process, equipment, or general deal, tweet us @MultitudeShows or shoot us an email. We’re here to share what we know and keep learning along the way!
— Eric Silver
Head of Creative, Multitude
Multitude is an independent podcast collective and production company based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Our original shows make niche interests accessible by bringing enthusiasm, nuance, and inventive formatting to topics we love. We also help clients of all sizes make and market great shows; perform and give workshops at podcast events; rent out our NYC studio; and publish dozens of free resources for creators.