A Small Studio

Hello :) First of all, please take a look at this old thread: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9427 Quoting the important stuff:

Hello, I'm an electronic music artist from Israel, currently doing everything in my (ex)bedroom converted into a studio. Horrible. ... The room will be a control room - I'll be doing my mixes and entire composition in that room. Insulation from outside is not important. Fortunately there are no neighbors close enough to hear the thing and the family doesn't care (mostly).

Anyway I've moved to the new house and I can do everything much more accurately now since the room is 3 meters away from me. So the room is like that: L- 345cm W - 298cm H - 270cm The walls are made of Ytong bricks. The desk will be on the front of the room, a sofa in the back and 2 drawers one each side of the room. I took some photos so you can see them. Sorry for the bad quality - my camera-phone is all I have. What I'm thinking so far is to put 2 superchunks in the two front corners of the room for a start, and then to put absorber panels on each side of the working chair. My father (who owns the house) doesn't want rock wool anywhere in the house, but he may accept glass wool if I convince him that it is safe. So I guess glass wool will be my building material. So the question to begin with is: how big should the superchunks and absorbers be? And what dense should be the glass wool? I'll post a sketch of the room soon so it will be easier to see what I'm talking about.

Sorry for my lousy Sketchup skills :? :oops: I can upload the sketchup file if it's needed. If possible, I'd like to keep the furniture where it is now, and put all the basstraps/panels/absorbers/whatever in between.

What I was describing earlier about what I want is in the attached image. Forgive me hand drawing on it, it's much easier for me ;) So this is what I want to do as the basic must-have treatment before advancing any further. Any opinions please?

in addition to the front and side, something on the ceiling will be needed and on the back wall behind the mix position.

I'll do the ceiling and back wall after I finish this - I'll do the front of the room first. Easiest and most important I guess. What about my other questions? What density should be the glass wool? And how do I make sure that it doesn't break apart to dust after a few years? How thick should the corner superchunk be so it will be effective in the low frequency range (below 250hz)? Thanks!

you can use chicken wire on a frame covered with cloth for the rock wool. on the corner super chunks, the definition of which means they will the entire corner. make them at least 24" wide and wider if you can. run a couple of strips of 2x2 on each side to tack on the cloth.

Got all the gear in there now. Next - superchunks! Hopefully this or next week.

Glass wool is here. made by izocam, a turkish company. 120cm x 20m x 2.5cm density is 24 not as thick as i wanted, but couldn't find any better. now i need to get the wooden frames for it and stuff it all inside.

you can also just stack it in the corner - plastic and all. duct tape rolls together, put up some picture wire at the top to keep it from tipping. build a frame to hold up a cloth cover or use curtains to mask it.

nah, i'm doing it the fun way. here are some construction pics. again, sorry for the quality. a nokia 6070 is all i have. raw materials: :oops:

putting it all together:

final result:

For some reason none of the comments I put in made it there, So I'll explain it again. I'm making the entire thing modular. Portable frames, in case I change my room/house or sell it to someone. The legs of the triangle base are 60cm each (around 24inch) and the frames are 130cm tall. I use screws to put it all together. I added a bit of thin plywood in the middle of it to make it more stable (without it, it wobbles too much). In the last 2 pics you can see two of them standing one on top of the other just to see that it won't fall over and in the last pic is one frame put in the studio corner to see that it fits. The black thing is my Dynaudio BM6 monitor. :)

Superchunk 1 out of 4 is almost ready! I started with putting white fabric in the back, putting it in place using staples and glue. Next was cutting the glasswool to 60x60cm triangles, and putting it inside. Last pic is with the front fabric almost there.

First superchunk in place! 3 more to go!

superchunks ready next step is broadband absorbers. :) any tips on how to do them? 10cm thick will be ok, but what density should be inside? 24? 36?

48kg/m3 works on the porous absorbers as well.

What do you mean by porous? Are you talking about the broadband absorbers? Anyway, since I have more bass problems and I have no place to put basstraps in the back side of the room, I'll be making 15cm thick 24kg/m3 absorbers on each side of me. 120cm wide, 150cm tall. Hopefully this will help tame the low frequencies, more than they are now. Much better with the superchunks, but it's still far from a flat frequency response.

yea porous - broadband. i'm just concerned about the density - maybe you can make a frame and compress the insulation x2 (ie put 30cm in and squash it to 15cm). if you made the suprtchunks out of the same material, you might consider doing the same thing - squashing it down to increase the density (when it was in the roll it probably was the right density...)

no need to squash - i can buy higher density fiberglass. the thing is that i still have too much low frequency problems, and for that i need a mass of low density material. squashing it or putting higher density material wouldn't be as effective as low density. or am i wrong?

Well, while I decide what to put inside the absorber frames, I need to make them first. I took a few doors from an old closet we no longer need, and had fun with my jigsaw :)

Mike A wrote:

no need to squash - i can buy higher density fiberglass. the thing is that i still have too much low frequency problems, and for that i need a mass of low density material. squashing it or putting higher density material wouldn't be as effective as low density. or am i wrong?

48kg/m3 (3pcf) in the superchunk arrangement is best for most situations. going to 96kg/m3 (6pcf) may have some benefit at very low frequencies but if you have low frequency problems at specific points, panel traps may be more effective for those (start with broadband first).

I will. I'll be using 15cm think broadband on both walls, since I seem to have many broadband problems, hehe.

so here are the broadband absorbers. 15cm of 24kg/m3 fiberglass. 150cm tall, 120cm wide. virtually eliminated all problems i had above 85hz. :) the bass sounds so much better now. BUT! the 55hz-80hz range still sounds not as strong as it should be (30 to 50 is good - i was actually surprised the BM6 can go that low).

So here are the untreated parts of my room: Back right corner, ceiling and back wall. I put some random fabric sheets I found around the house as a temporary solution. Question is - how do I get rid of the 55-80hz problem? I don't have any more room left here for huge basstraps, as this room is small as it is. I was thinking about putting regular basstraps (not DIY) on the back corner. it may not solve the problem completely but it may help. Besides, this is way too much work and very soon I will not have the available time I had so far (getting a job). What about the back wall and ceiling? Should I put something there as well or just leave it alone? I'm also planning to use a condenser microphone in this room. Any advice will be greatly appreciated :)