Small Studio in Grenada

Hi, I've been put in charge of overseeing a small studio build in Grenada, West Indies. The studio is part or a larger project of a music shop and school, with an already established Music café/Jazz bar. The plan now is to finish a single room studio/control room, adding an iso room at a later date. (September/October) There are some unique considerations and differences with regard to building here. Building codes are .. erm... non existant. If it doesn't fall down, it's a building. Exception being an electrical inspection from the electricity company so they don't get sued for places burning down. However once the power is on, any additional work is on the same basis as the building codes.. if current flows, it's all good. One con is availability of specialist material. Like no 703/705. And some not so specialist, like insulation. When the temperature doesn't drop below 25 C ever, people aren't worried about their heating bills. However certain types of fiberglass are avaiable for marine purposes. There is also access to other things cheaply like tropical hardwoods. This means importing of all the equipment and specialist acoustic products. Import duty and shipping are a pain, so the idea is to order everything required from abroad in one shot. The budget is essentially limitless. EC$10,000,000 (About US$3.75M) has already been spent on the project as a whole to give you an idea. General construction here is concrete blocks and rebar with cast columns/beams/floors. This project is no exception. Right now the walls and floor are bare concrete, the window gap is unfinished/unplastered on the top. Unfortunately I met this project with the building already built, as there are some issues with the initial design. The space is 134" x 134"/ 111sqft inside. Inside this room anything can be done, the only thing is the walls, ceiling and floor can't move. You'll notice a large hole where a "window " would go. I can only assume that the original designer assumed all studios have a big window in them. For now, the goal is to get the studio up and running for basic vocal recording and sequenced music. This is to get some artists recorded for carnival this year, and to get something ready for the opening of the music school. This area will later on act as the control room, with an iso room built outside, with the window connecting the two (or an iso room + small vocal booth). The location is near a road, but it's quite far back. Noise to the neighbours isn't a problem due to who the owner is... lets just say pretty high up in the justice system :) Montiors wise we are using Blue Sky International  Prodesk 2.1, so that cna give you an idea of the SPL. Link There is a drop ceiling in place right now, purely because the current contractor is a little forgetfull, so most likely it'll be torn down, and replaced with a peaked ceiling. Attached is a sketchup file of the current state. This is on the first floor. I don't have the thickness of the ceiling and floor, however I'll do my best to find out/meausure tommorow and update the thread and the sketchup. On the acoustic treatment side what we have ordered already is Auralex D108L Roominators kit Link, and realtraps' pvb [url=realtraps.com/p_pvb.htm]Link[/url] I have read a fair number of post, as well as the SAE site and other stuff. My current idea is something along the lines of "Control Room.gif" in the sample floor plans thread, adapted to work with what is already there. I've attaached what I think might be the right sort of approach, although this is why I'm posting! I'm not too hot on construction, but I'm trying to get myself up to speed by reading all the relevant reference material I can get my hands on. So essentially my questions are: HELP!!?!? What further information would be usefull? I understand that parallel walls == bad, for various reasons , but angle wise are there any minimum/maximum/optimum angles for non paralles walls? Would it be ok to frame up the window gap similar to the pic shown below, and block the rest with ply/build in a bass trap, or would it be better to block it up? Any other suggestion/questions/comments? Obviously I've not gotten very far yet with the design, but do you think I am on the right track? Thanks Fins

These folks spent About US$3.75M and all the room you have to work with is 135" X 135"? 11' 3" X 11' 3"? I'd get out while the gettin' is good. All the real money has been spent!!!!

Well, the $10M was for the land (prime part of town for the bar), 2 builings from scratch, everything inside, etc. The room was unfortunately designed, however there will most likely be another chance to build a studio B, as there is further construction still.(Some practice rooms). It may also work out making a somewhat modular system for the entire thing, ie the drum practice room is also miked up and appropriately constructed and treated for drums, same for vocals/piano, all running through the main control room. There is still plenty of scope to rescue the project!

Just measured the floor/ceiling thickness, it's 5 1/2" I am going to try to get the wall knocked down and rebuilt 26" further out, giving a 1.00/1.14/1.39 ratio, which should be an improvement, also blocking up both the doors, and build in 2 sliding glass doors on the new wall. see the attached jpeg/skp. Also, I had an idea for using/abusing the current doorframes. See the othe attached jpg/skp. I want to know whether: a) Doubling up the layers of rigid fiberglass helps or hinders b) there is a 1/2" deep gap around the doorframe, allowing for 1/2" ply to be flush mounted to the outside. Would this be thick enough, or would adding another couple of layers of 3/4" on the inside help? c) Would being pourous to the outside improve things, or completely screw up everything? As for additional treatment, what would you recommend beyond these traps? I'm leaning toward mirroring them against the back wall, and adding further traps in the corners above. Diffuser in the middle between the two traps. Thanks

"and replaced with a peaked ceiling" /quote In such a small room, why would you do this? It can wind up being another place that can produce reflections you will already be run over with :) "I understand that parallel walls == bad, for various reasons , but angle wise are there any minimum/maximum/optimum angles for non paralles walls? " /quote No good no bad just some things are more preferred over others. When people splay walls a total of 12 degrees is usually sought for opposing walls. You never, never did say what your ceiling height is, but based on your ratios it must be somewhere around 10 feet? A lot of builds are done similar to this in size, like a small bedroom. Thing is, your bedroom has a door on either side at the back. This is going to be an area that most likely will require bass trapping. Unless, of course, the doors are left open, which is pretty good trapping as well:)

I understand that parallel walls == bad, for various reasons , but angle wise are there any minimum/maximum/optimum angles for non paralles walls?

Read this. Andre

Thanks Andre, cleared it up somewhat. The current drop ceiling is going to get ripped out anyway, as they did such a poor job of it! It's not like a standard tile drop ceiling, its random scraps of ply nailed into a grid. There are some gaps that are up to 1/2", so it's gotta go. The ceiling height is 9ft4, I forgot to label that on pic, but it's in the sketchup. I got the go ahead to knock the wall and move it, and put in the glass doors. Hopefully get that done within the week. So the new (internal) room dimensions are going to be: Height: 9ft 4 (112 in) Width: 10ft 7 (127in) Length 12ft 11 (155in) Which I beilieve is in one of Sepmeyer's ratios. Now, Iim wondering about treatment for the rest of the room. My dimensions are virtually identical to the control room in this post. Would adding slat resonators in the same sort of position with the backwall treatment as in the previous sketchup with a cloud over mix position? Or do you think more tratment will be required? Thanks