Smallest useable space for a control room

[smash]

Hey Lads and Ladies,

So, by day I'm running a post facility, and we are discussing bringing in a large chunk of our sound mixing in house.

As fun as it would be to build and fit out a mix room, I'm worried about losing an edit suite, and the loss of revenue that is attached to that. We've been throwing around the thought of cutting an existing suite in half, and having a very small edit suite, a small vo booth, and a small mix suite, but I'm pretty sure that this won't work out.

My question is, what is the smallest room size that can realistically be used for mixing?

This is for TV, so the final product won't be going via a mastering house.

NB - Rick, if you read this, the room will be the existing suite that we're putting the VO booth in, i.e that room will be divided into three and have a VO booth, a Mix Suite, and an Edit suite... I'll call you if the mix thing becomes more solid.

Cheers,

Simon "Smash" Ashby

[Chinagraf]

I personally think you need the sort of space it will be heard in. We do post (audio) and it really doesn't translate so well when you are shoved up on the front of the speakers, lounge rooms and TV's just don't operate that way.
I guess the other thing to consider is client comfort. If you're going to have people there and it's really cramped, they are not going to want to come there too often, which can mean lost work.
My partner here occasionally does some fill in sessions for an agency here that setup their own sound room.
The VO booth is the size of a telephone box. They can't do more than 10 minutes without having to give the talent a break as it gets so stuffy in there.
If you're working on your own you can get away with a pretty small space. I have an edit setup in one of my spare bedrooms at home and it's maybe 3m square but works fine when I bring stuff back to the studio.

[rick]

I have made two micro mix rooms at my home
First one which i posted up her a year back sounded pretty good and was a rwo man deal only
But it got reassigned to something else recently when we reshuffled the house to make my bedroom have city views and so the micro studio has shuffled into something little bigger .

Look any size is doable if you spent money on treatment
Which is cheap cost they as so small

I surprised my self with the first micro one
The next one is a amall bedroom size bout the size of that space
Ill treat it over the next little while

The main thing is small is small
Its a compromise .