Have I built myself into a hole? (newbie first post)

Hello, Thanks for putting up such a great resource. I wish I had found this forum about 1 year ago when I was in the design phase of a new addition I'm building myself. Perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference as I never thought I would be using the space to put my studio in, but it turns out to be the case. I am still reading this list very heavily, but think I may have already built myself into a hole as my proposed room for control is roughly 10ft.x10ft. I just have one quick inquiry for now. Please let me know if the room will be too problematic to pursue further as a control room. I understand that I've violated 2 fundamental concepts on the website: 1. line of sight to the recording area 2. building a tiny control room in a more spacious studio Having done a lot of recording without a proper iso room (one room studio), it'll be a great step up for me already just to have a control room. Video feeds and a vid projector in the main room will have to suffice for now. Presently, framing is complete on the structure and all windows are in. I have no problems covering up windows in the control room. No electrical or HVAC as of yet so I have flexibility there still. I will post a couple of follow up pictures to attempt to orient you to my space. Lemme post my roof plan and a section before replying to this. Thanks for taking the time to look at my project. I'll keep posting drawings and refining ideas 'til my work warrants feedback. Excuse my first time computer drawings. . . they made us use pencils in Architecture class. -'Chung

Section w/ control room location. . . it's a hip roof w/ cathedral ceilings in the control room. Roof slope in the drawing is wrong. . . Architect drew it as 12/4 pitch, but the existing roof was 12/5 so I built the new addition at 12/5. Wall height is 7' 5" in the small room.

Trying to get a bit more specific in my thinking. The one question I still have is: Is this worth pursuing or is the room destined to fail by virtue of its dimensions? I'll keep chugging away at it. . .

If you don't mind my comments... well... one comment :D Assuming your drawing is to scale, it looks like your console and monitors are spread across the length of the short wall - as a general rule all things else being equal, you'd want have your console across the width of the shorter dimension, so you have the length of the room (as much as possible) behind you. Also, you'd want to sit further forward, if you can. I realize in smaller rooms its tough to achieve such a sitting position.

I oriented it this that way because of the roof. . . Hey! Any comments is better than no comments :lol: Here's a quick section and roof plan of the control room. I think I'm getting the hang of this computer drawing thing a little. . . perhaps a CAD program someday. I'm not sure if I have enough space to use hangers in the ceiling. . . if not, I can change to full-range absorbers like the back of the room. . . but I didn't want to dead down the room over-much. Mabe a panel bass trap.

Hey Chung, first of all welcome to the board - you've obviously done quite a bit of homework (beyond your obvious architectural training, unless you trained at "studios R us" - One thing that will help keep the "air" in your sound - those side splayed walls, if they keep reflected sound from either speaker from being reflected to the mix position, can be live and don't have to be balanced at lower frequencies - in other words, you could leave the one to your left the way it is for bass trapping and (if you want to keep the window) replace the one to your right with glass - the large air space depth and the splaying should put any early reflections above maybe 300 hZ to the rear wall, which should be heavy absorption (like 3-4" 703 spaced a few inches off the wall) - you'd want to do a crude ray trace from each speaker to the splay and back to ensure this is true, but it looks like it would work. The 10 x 10 isn't ideal - and if your ceiling is ALSO 10', I'd recommend either making two assymetrical iso-boths out of that space and looking elsewhere. Otherwise, as long as you're aware of the problems they can most likely be dealt with. Your splays on the sides will go a long way toward solving most of the problems, with the possible exception of the lowest modes - that would depend on the stiffness of the splayed sections as to whether the splays become the new boundaries or not at low frequencies. to fix the parallel floor-ceiling thing, unless you're able to angle a false ceiling you'd need a reflective floor (brightness) and an absorbed ceiling (flutter control mainly) Is that room on its own separate level (I'm NOT an architect, I just "play one on TV") if so, the video thing probably makes the most sense. Great start, and again welcome... Steve

It looks like what you have built or designed is a great solution for your circumstances. I see nothing inherently wrong with your design. I assume you are building soffits. Your placement of bass hangers is good, although I would insert one or two in the rear corners behind the insul if you can. otherwise. great. Finally, personally I'd place The semi rigid Mineral wool in place of the 703 at the rear of your control room. Cost wise it is way more economical and then cloth cover it. Bryan Giles Sorry, one last edited thing. :) The ceiling where you have the bass ahngers, I'd make sure I had some AFB or other Insul mounted flat at the angle you have dashed lined below the bass hangers. I hope that made sense.

Yo Chunger, This could be a possibility. Use the extra ceiling space for large hangers, 703 grid and fabric -- making the ceiling "air", as John would say. I take it sound getting out of the small control room is not a major problem? If so, this can work to your advantage on the rear wall. Leave the rear membrane thin enough to pass bass frequencies easily to the stairwell behind that wall.. How thin? Not sure. Good question for Knightfly. Use 703 spaced off the rear wall plus fabric to get the highs and mids. Floor kept live. Ceiling should work well to round out the room’s response due to the small front to back distance. Soffiting really helps the bass response of the speakers. The splayed sidewalls for a RFZ, slotted to get the mid highs and with the floor should provide a lively enough sweet spot. Best, Dave

Ahite! Good feedback to wrap my head around and start tweeking things! Thanks guys. I'm so under the gun on this project that it feels like I'm frantically laying tracks down as fast as I can w/ a train comin' my way. . . 'cept I haven't decided whether the train's 'sposed to go to California or Washington yet because there is another room in the house that might work as control. . . it'll just be a lot more $$$ as i'll have to move the existing kitchen. I will draw that and post it though after I have a reasonably decent plan for this room and pick between the 2. . . within the next 2 days. DAH! I'm going to die. As for architectural training. . . I'd say I learned nothing of any practical applicability whatsoever in my undergrad studies at Berkeley :shock: just learn to BS better and make up excuses for the things you draw. Also, 100% of what I know about studio design comes directly from this forum after discovering it 48 hours ago. . . so I'm more oblivious than you think. To make things worse, you guys will laugh when you hear the dimensions of my console. . .. it's an old Quantum quadra-phonic console I stole from a movie studio in San Francisco. . . it measures 7' - 9" in length and 3' - 8" depth. . . BUT, only has 2 real aux sends so I'd still have to run my Allen and Heath GS 3000. I was rolling on the floor when i drew the 2 consoles in this small room. Needless to say, I'm not planning on running the vintage console in this room. :evil: Steve, my understanding up until this point was that for proper stereo imaging, I needed to keep my treatments symetrical. To be safe, I dew everything as symetrical as possible. . . did anyone notice my special "bass trap doors" setup? Your post suggests that I can get away with assymetrical bass trapping in a room and still maintain a decent image. What is the frequency cutoff point? I do have a space that is not drawn in the pics that I can "steal" for substancial bass trappage if this is the case. The other issue is the boundary. A mid-freq slat trap I take it is not able to fool the bass into thinking the room is splayed if the rear walls are still symetrical, correct? So I have to permanently splay at least one of the walls with a heavy membrane. . . 1/2" or 5/8" sheetrock? Also, clarification. . . the roof follows the red dotted lines in the drawing directly above the room section. It's a hip room. No parallel areas between ceiling and floor. I'll draw up a section from the other side to clarify. Brian! what brand and model of rigid mineral wool. My lumber supplier has been surprising in terms of his access to industrial and other "strange" materials. I will find a source. . . and when i do, I will share it for all you San Francisco Area folks. Dave, I have not explored soffeting in a large portion or all of the ceiling yet because of the low wall height. . . 7' - 3" . . . minus 3 inches for the floating floor and I'm down from miniscule to sub-miniscule. I'll explore it. Mabe 1' up from the wall height or so. Alright. . . back to the drawing board. . . more to come in a bit. -'Chung

Roxul RHT-40 is the semi rigid i am speaking of. I Know Thermafiber has a similar product. they key thing is the PCF. It says 4.0pcf or 3.5pcf. Depending upon the thickness. Bryan Giles

"for proper stereo imaging, I needed to keep my treatments symetrical" - That IS the absolute SAFEST way - however, lower bass frequencies are so long wavelength that they start causing a small room to act as a Pressure Room instead of sticking to wave theory - for example, it takes almost 10 FEET of path length DIFFERENCE for a 30 hZ wave to completely cancel itself out (1/4 wavelength), and that's only if there are no other boundaries to confuse the issue - Plus, with the side walls splayed like that any early reflections will end up at the rear of the room, where they can be absorbed, trapped, maimed or mutilated... In addition to that, flush mounting your speakers will lessen the low frequency chaos in the room too - the combination of all that should allow you to enjoy that window if you want to - just make that portion of the splayed wall glass, and only use one other layer of glass at the outer perimiter of the outer wall, that will give you maximum sound isolation AND a view. Here's an approximate performance graph for a 40 x 80 window with closest spacing of 12", using 1/4" and 3/8" glass - Of course, if you can "steal" a bigger control room with better ratios, far be it from me to suggest otherwise :wink: ... Steve BTW, you can always use the REST of that wall for bass traps...

Ok, Taken some feedback into account and came up with this scheme. . . please excuse the sideways section. Steve, for this revision, I tried to splay the non-window wall w/ a stud/sheetrock wall to attempt to give that bass a boundary layer. I was not sure about de-symetricalling the mid slat traps when I started the drawing so I tried to maintain a 6" depth trap on the left side. I have a pass-through under the window that is needed for attic HVAC access. . . I tried to steal some bass trapping from that space. I hope you can tell from the drawings that I intend to use removable panels and require removing the hangers to crawl through the access hole or now bass trap tunnel into the attic. I didn't know if I could put slats in front of that low-mounted hanger trap to even out my high frequency room symatries. From what I understand, slat traps need to be sealed to work right. . . hangers and wide-frequency bass traps don't need to be sealed to work right. Also took a look at the ceiling and played around with the idea of soffetting more of it in to accomodate some more triangular hangers. This perspective gave me a better look at those dimensions. I also tried as best I could to shade in some of the walls on my previous section drawing to give a better sense of what the walls and ceilings were doing in the room. . . my kingdom for a pencil #$!~! Thanks for all the help so far. If this is a solid solution for my space, I will draw up my 2nd control room option and flesh out the live room treatments a bit. I do not have a very good intuitive feel yet for how sound moves thorugh the room so please keep me on track and make sure my details will work. I tried to be as specific as possible with the drawings.

Hmm. . . that didn't work too good. . . lemme try to zoom in a bit.

Brian, I forgot to put some more hangers behind the insulation in the rear of the room. . . can I make those parallel to the wall? Or do they have to be perpendicular for them to work right? I wasn't sure about how they work so I copied applications from john's online portfolio. I do have some space there. If it's enough for hangers. . . great! -'Chung

I can' find a cse for them not being parallel to the rear wall. The main issue i believe is for them to hang freely. So I see no reason why they will not work as planned. John can fill in the blanks. Bryan Giles Plan looks great perhaps I can contract you to illustrate mine. LOL

Hey Chung, I didn't realize that your ceiling was was a hip roof. The way you have drawn your hangers they look like 6"- 1 foot long hangers. I don't think they will do much if they are that small. If it was me, I would stick some 703 or even R19 up there and cover with burlap or fabric of choice. I think a 7' ceiling would be fine; you should see mine at 6' (yikes!). Are you taller than 7'? I can relate to the console dilema. Luckily my Trident 80C barely fit in my small control room 11x15 :shock: Knightflys recc of keeping the window could be cool. Maybe you could track a vocalist on some scaffolding outside -- kidding :D If you can swing it, go for a larger control room if you are able - with two consoles! Best, Dave

Hello again, Just sitting down today to get some more drawing done. . . thought I'd post what I'm starting with on the 1st floor of the house. Lots of spaces are up for grabs if anyone feels like toying with it. I'll have an idea up tonight. Keep in mind, I have a good sized live room upstairs. I also am wiring in mic jacks into all the rooms "just in case". I like working in the same space that I live so having a living room that's also a live room is fine. In fact, my wife is kind enough to have our main bedroom in that little loft upstairs that's completely open to the main live room. Go to town, Dave. . . you've got a clean sheet to start. Byron, I'll draw plans for you good trade for good input. . . I just need drafting software :) and a couple days ramp-up time to familiarize myself. They told me not to learn CAD in school because then, I'd become Cad-fodder at some Architecture firm. I ended up just recording music out of school though :) 'Nother drawing coming tonight. Thanks for all the great help so far. It's really saving my butt.

Here's what I've come up with for another control room alternative. Sorry about the quality of the previous pics. I found out that Photoshop optimizes much much better than free version of smartdraw. I'm starting to get a little mad at that little program, but it's free. I know there's errors in the wall treatments. . . please set me straight. -'Chung Edit: Uh oh. . . I've got an angle problem, don't I? On those doors. I don't know how to do a ray trace, but looks like sound from right speaker can hit left side entrance door and return to mix position. Can i fix it with an angled treatment mounted on the door itself? Really don't wanna touch that section of the wall 'caus it's got a post that's holding up the upstairs control room. Time for sleep. . .

New Control room Looks good. Tons of Bass Trapping in the Back. Great....The more the Merrier. Yeah your machine room door i'd place perp. to the wall not at an angle and absorb it well. The Entrance door.. Not like you can move it huh? I'd place 703 or equiv on that door to reduce mid/high reflections. And it's close to the kitchen. my Favorite. Smell all the good food round the clock. Bryan Giles

I'll try to move the doors.. . Dah! Might as well get it right. . . if I'm going to have to rip out the kitchen, why not? Was thinking about putting a window into the kitchen so you could see what's cookin' as well. -'Chung

Looks good to me:) Your drawings are excellent btw. One other thought I had, not sure if practicable. Maybe the loft space is a control room possibility? Good sight lines into the live room. No walls to tear down. Wife might get some sleep. Just a thought. Dave

I'd have to agree with Bryan, those rear doors either need good absorption or different angles. Otherwise a good dose of early reflections is in order (not too tasty) Also, the speakers are a bit close to the outside edge of their respective flush mounts (some horn effect, narrower sweet spot), although other than widening the whole room I'm not sure how you'd get away from that without a smaller console and a closer mix position. Definitely lookin' better... Steve

Hey guys, I made a revision that changed the angles of those 2 doors. Lemme know if it's looking solid now. I'm leaning heavily towards building the downstairs CR. Lemme know if i'm doing good. I have a couple questions about what needs to happen in the soffit mounts. . . can I bass trap behind them? Or do those walls need to be solid? Can I bass trap under them? Anyone have a good link? I'm sure the topic has been covered already here. Thanks again for all the help. -'Chung Sidenote: I calculated my loads for floating the floor on the upstairs and am ending up using Mason Industries pucks. . . EAFM 16114 Green Durometer 40 0.5"x1" pucks rated at: .025" deflection at 17lbs. load 23.6 Hz natural frequency .050" deflection at 33lbs. load 16.7 Hz natural frequency .075" deflection at 50lbs. load 14.6 Hz natural frequency .225" deflection 105lbs. temporary overload I'm loading them in my live room at 22.23lbs. static and 50.012lbs. max w/ 30 people in the room. that's with 16"x20" spacing along flat 2x4's with 2 layers of 3/4" subfloor and 3/4" purpleheart hardwood floors. I have to get the floor in while the electrician and HVAC guys are doing their thing so I can get drywall layers up and sitting ontop of the floated floor.

Have you seen Johns Soffit Design??? It has bass trapping under neath it and is stuffed with insul above. Bryan Giles

Hi Bryan, I haven't seen his design, but I'll look for it again. . . actually, I vaguely remember seeing a picture of a soffitt with hangers on the bottom. . . Here's my understanding. Lemme know if I'm on the right track. The speaker sits in a 1" thick MDF box. The speaker itself is surrounded in fiberglass within the box. The MDF box is surrounded by packed "pink" insulation. The front of the box has a solid panel with a carefully fitted hole that reveals the speakers to the room. The entire front face of the soffitt enclosure is solid on the top side. The speakers sit flush with this front face. On the bottom, you have open framing with rigid fiberglass covered in cloth at the face. Behind this, you have hangers. My wife bought me a student version of Graphisoft Archicad 8 for X-mas. . . No more frustrating Smartdraw, and hello "uber-frustrating" full-featured 3d modelling :) -'Chung