Advice on creating a Pro studio

I can say unequivocally that you're gonna want a mic. Possibly multiple.

Most semi-pro studios at first spend a lot of of money on audio equipment.
They then proceed to set this up in a bedroom, living room, basement, or garage
with a set of speakers on stands or on top of a desk and some soundproofing on the walls.
We've all done this and wonder why the mix doesn't translate well and our ears play funny tricks on us.
I think the most important thing to do first is to spend the money on a professional to design an accurate listening environment.
Once you have that, you can hear what equipment is needed. Y.M.O.

$20,000??? Seriously? My studio has over $50,000 in cabling alone. Pro, but not top-end by any stretch of the imagination.

20K will not go far. $500 Large would be a better number to work with.

I'm in the process of putting a studio together with some friends and 20k gets eaten scarily fast, and between the three of us we already have most of the gear we want.
We've dumped just about all of our money into construction to retrofit a preexisting space (that has unfortunately low ceilings).

I'd say proper room acoustics takes you further than anything else. A microphone is only going to pick up the reverberations of the air in the room. If the room itself sounds bad then no microphone or outboard gear in the world can change that (obviously you can eq to compensate, but the more tracks you mix the more compounding problems you're trying to fix) . The same goes for your listening environment, you're listening to what playback sounds like IN YOUR ROOM, and better monitors are all relative to how good the room is (that being said, the Arc 2 system has been a godsend for my apartment).
I once heard that for recording, the closer something is to the source, the more important it is. Get good musicians in a good room with some good mics and you're 95% there.

OK...I'm gonna take a little different view than some other RGO members.  Unless you already own a room or space that's perfect for recording I would begin by investing in the core gear that will allow you to make professional sounding recordings.  This would include computer, interface, mics and pres etc.  You don't have to buy that $8000 dollar tube pre--but do your research and buy gear that you won't grow out of within a year.  If you can set up your gear so that it's portable, all the better.  If you become good at what you do, THEN you can start to figure out the real estate part of the equation.  But investing first in a room with full cabling, iso rooms, etc etc?  That's not the way I would approach it.  It starts with good gear and your ability to master it.  20K will get you well on your way.  

Let's rephrase the question. How would you spend $20k on a studio from ground up?

But we need to know how many channels you need, what the intention is (is it for recording drums, bands or just overdubs?)...how many channels you need vastly changes the advice we could give.

Buy a nice soldering iron and your money will go further.

You could build a nice Hobbyist studio for well under 20K, but it will only give you Hobbyist results. That's where I'm at in the game.

Depends alot on what you want to do and what last not least your skills are.
Speech recordings? Jingle studio? Professional demo recordings for semi pro or noncommercial newcomers? I would not say there is nothing pro possible with 20k of gear...

I feel so dirty now... like I've been condescended upon...

This is the truth. But fuck it, you work with what you have.

The real question is whether a studio is there to attract outside clients, or to produce in house recordings. These days a lot of great stuff and a lot of crap happens in the latter category.

So many boring records made in top notch studios and drum rooms. So many great albums made in relatively small rooms with skilled players.

I wouldn't let the low ceilings get you down. To me this is not such a big deal, and also genre dependent. I think it's better to have an okay room with a vibe than a perfect room that is boring.

Get a pair of KM84s or M160s for overheads or use underheads and you can get great results. You can also hit a mic placed down the hall with a compressor for sustain, and blend that in as your room sound. Get a nice reverb plugin like phoenixverb.

My sense is it's more about how hard or out of control the early reflections are in the room, anyway, not that it has high or low ceilings per se. And treating areas where build up is creating an uneven frequency response or reverberation.

If the reflections are under control, then you set up drum set to play into the room or where it sounds best (not often in the middle of it). After that, I've found using thin cymbals, tuning/dampening a drum kit properly and for every single damn song, using fresh remo ambassadors, and choosing mics with nice rejection and off axis response all makes a big big difference.

(I think the same is true for a mixing room. Just don't get speakers that are too big for the room, don't monitor too loud, avoid a square room, check for cancelation dips and adjust monitor distance from wall, and use bass traps where necessary. Then learn the room and speakers with reference mixes, check your mixes in car, on laptop speakers, earbuds, etc.)

\

Anyway, 20,000 goes a long way these days. No it's not enough but it's a great start. And the lunchbox format + laptops means you can build a great mobile rig and track in nice/cool rooms if you don't have access to one on home turf. Or simply do your drum recordings in a real studio and do overdubs and mixing elsewhere.

Plus it sorta depends how much gear a person is starting with. If they're already a guitar player, or drummer, chances are they have some things. That could shave off up to 10,000.

Let's see. The essentials to me to acquire over time would be:

8-12 ADC, Logic/Cubase =3000ish
Capi preamps and perhaps one 1073 type = 7,000
Couple Warm audio pieces and/or 550as = 2,000

&
2 KM84 or Josephson E22S. 2200-2600
2 Royers or M160s or Coles. 1200-2100
Beyer M88, RE20, SM7. about 1000
2 LDCs when you can afford it, or one fancy looking tube mic for show, take your pick. Lots of options there. People seem to get the most mileage out of having one 47 and one CK12 type.
But 2x C38 or UM70, or 1 U87. 3000ish
Then some cheaper mics when you need them.

1 used of each:
D18 or Gibson, 1500
P Bass, 800
Fender Silverface, 800
Marshall/high gain, 800
Les Paul, 1000
Strat, 600
1 Tele, 600
1 Rhodes or Wurly = 800
Drum Kit and a couple nice snares and cymbals = 2000

Bunch of K&M stands = 1500
Cables = 1500 or more

= 33000 or so

+ monitors.

Used KH120a or Questeds or whatever. Something under 2000. You can got a lot of nice speakers used.

I mixed a project that Emerson Hart (Tonic) and Gary Louris (Jayhawks) did with a couple of 57's, a clone C12, Apogee Quartet and a Focusrite Octopre. It was freaking amazing. So, while I DO think great equipment gets you there quicker and generally sounds better, I think sometimes we lose the forest for the trees.