Single, open room design

Hi guys, After spending an hour searching for any threads on single/open room studios I've decided to start my own thread. Its been a point of discussion with my clients for some time now. It seems most of my client prefer to be in the CR with me when they track. It seems logical then to design a studio that incorporates this as a main feature. What I'm after is a live room/control room thats acoustically fit to mix in? Is it possible? What compromises are made? How do I set it up? Many questions. I want to point out a few studios and artist that use this technique. The obvious one is Peter Gabrials studio. Also Joe Camaleri's studio in Melbourne Australia. I also believe George Juke producers his stuff in this fashion? Any comments or suggestions? Or should this question go in 'Studio Design'?

Yes it is better in studio design. But this is not the first or last thread in the wrong are. :D The acoustic treatment follows the same principles. In some ways it becomes easier with the larger area in the studio space. The earliest I recall with such a design was Pink Floyd's studio in the late 70's. The biggest thing that comes across my mind is if your market can support such a specialized, as in unique, studio. Good luck and keep us informed on the progress! Andre

Drumdrumdrumdrum wrote:

What I'm after is a live room/control room thats acoustically fit to mix in? Is it possible? What compromises are made? How do I set it up? Many questions.

I've had a large one-room studio in my current home for 15 years and I can't imagine working any other way. This is very simple. You set up with the monitoring at one end, so the speakers fire the long way down the room. Then you put stuff you'll record in the rear of the room behind the mix position. Easy, yes? You'll treat such a room as always - bass traps in as many corners as possible, and absorption at the mix position reflection points. You'll also need some amount of absorption or diffusion elsewhere, especially on surfaces close to instruments and microphones such as on a low ceiling over the drums. --Ethan

You might do into the LEDE room mixed with RFZ.. other possibility is to do a room with variable acoustics.

Great! 1st - Ethan. Thats what I'm talk n bout. I have my desk set up with the speakers firing down the room too. Some other studios I see have the desk near the middle of the room. I prefer the later. Also If the room is very large, what then with the 1/3 rule. You cant sit 1/3 of the way down a large room and have the desk near the wall. You dig? AVare. Pink Floyed did it too. Ah ha. If its good enough for them. Tell me, do you know if they mixed in that room too? It's also very interesting that you made the comment about the effects/acoustics being easier to treat too. That is what I was thinking. If you put the same 'flat sound spectrum level' effort into a large CR then used it to record it stands to reason you will have a 'flat sound spectrum level' acoustics in the live room too but maybe not so 'live'. Which brings me to andrebrito. If one end of the room was 'live' and the other end using CR type acoustics it will be a winner errr? How do we do that? I'm still a bit worried about the 1/3rd rule. I'm also interested in the reverb time of a larger room to mix in especially if one end is 'live'. Most of the clients who track with me mix with me too. After all..... mixing is the most fun part, for me anyway. I've made a simple SketchUp of a 5m by 8.1m room (using the golden rule principal). I've started the main taper of the wall towards the SOFITs at the 1/3 length of the room I'm sure John will move this to 'Design' if need be? Thanks guys

you dare to compare yeself with the Floyd? :roll: whoh! :lol:

No no! You must have got me wrong Ro In Australia we have a saying that goes "If it's good enough for (Insert the name of someone really talented) then it's good enough for me (someone not so talented). The only comparison I would make between myself and the Floyed would be. Floyed: Superstar, success story of rock and roll epic proportions! Me: local muso makes a living doing what I love. No comparison!!!

hahah, okay 4xDrum :) ...be careful with that axe, drum.

Let me be more specific. has anyone got some links to topics or info on single room studios? Can anyone name some studios around today that have website, pics etc? Ethan, do you have more info or links to your studio? Also, the SketchUp was that anyone who had the expertise could possibly show me where one might put the mixing desk, speakers, clouds. bass traps , defusers etc. Thank you

Ok, first off DDDD - How ya' doin buddy? Right - I'm fascinated with this too. Don't get me wrong, I'll always be a seperate room man when I can but, I like the fact that Ethan wouldn't work any other way!:wink: From personal experience, my 'sweet spot' is the nuts - (trust me, and no jokes please! I'm talking acoustics and NOTHING else), however there is an obvious dip in accuracy at the back of what is after all a much smaller room than you're planning. I wonder therefore if there is any merit in taking your basic drawing, designing two different areas within, (front to back), and leaving out the dividing wall? You'd still have a great mix position, you'd be able to talk to the muso's without foldback, you could monitor through cans whilst tracking, and you could get all around the area without opening doors! :lol: What I mean is total nerdness throughout but no walls in between the action! I hope this makes sense, and you've got the govenors on this already! :wink: Good luck mate, just a thought! :oops: Regards, Lou. 8) (P.S. Mr Gilmour is one of my heroes!).............and, there's no 'e' in FLOYD :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink:

Drumdrumdrumdrum wrote:

Ethan, do you have more info or links to your studio?

I got lots o' links. :) My studio is described here: http://www.ethanwiner.com/music.html Scroll down to the end of the above page. Then there's this article from EQ magazine: http://www.realtraps.com/art_studio.htm This explains the reasons I prefer to avoid small booths and instead use one large room: Do I really need a vocal booth? --Ethan

Hello again folks! While finalizing the basic construction of my single room, I quizzed the group here and do owe a response. The OP here may find this helpful too.. It’s 90% finished and is everything I had hoped for and then some. First, here is the background info copied from my original post called ‘Control Room with Cellulose left in bags? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello folks, I'm new here and am requesting opinion regarding the use of cellulose bags - not blown or sprayed. Regal Industries sells a rectangular bag that measures 12"x16"x29" weighing 25lbs. That figures to 7.76-lb/cf density. The bags would be stacked (at 12" thickness) wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling - surrounding and almost flush to the monitors. I wish to damp a somewhat problematic (measured) 48.6 hz 3,0,0 mode, and this stack could be located quite close to the null at that frequency. The monitor wall is multi-splayed, of 2x12 framed construction, moveable fore/aft and houses 3 large monitors. Other than the monitor openings it is 100% faced with (cloned) RPG BAD panel. For this application, one inch of 6-lb/cf Acousticotton backing was substituted for 705 fiberglass the panel would normally use. Currently, all of the monitors are positioned flush with these panels, and the main L/R monitors are positioned at 20% of the length and width of the room. Incrementally moving the wall (towards the boundary) from 80.8" (the 20% point) to 70" placed the monitors in the 3,0,0 null and provided mixed results. To be sure, these monitors are currently neither freestanding nor soffited. It is possible to face and seal the front wall with multi-layers of drywall, etc, to realize a true soffit but I thought to investigate this idea first. No EQ is the goal, and some storage area would be welcome. The room's boundaries are 14.4' x 23.1' x 33.6' (1/1.6/2.33) of frame construction with RC holding two-layers of X-code drywall. The ceiling is cathedral (peak running longitudinal) and the 14.4' height figure is an average. Drywall is also wrapped around each ceiling truss (width-wise) forming varying depth unsealed cavities. These cavities are faced in the same manner as the monitor wall except for panels being bowed into poly shape. Sidewalls use same curved technique as Sony M1. The floor slab is isolated and covered with 1" hardwood. The rear monitor wall houses two monitors and has not been built yet. For evaluation I functionally duplicated the front monitor wall. The rear boundary also has a large full-width cavity extending 13' beyond the main rear room boundary, and begins at 12' elevation. In the middle of the room this cavity has a 4' high opening and reduces to 16" at each side. This is intended to be a passive bass trap, and is now partially filled with various absorptive junk materials. The face of this cavity along with an additional portion of the main boundary wall will be covered with rather deep diffractal diffusors. When all is said and done, the diffusors will be flush with the finished rear (monitor) wall. For a test I bought some 30+ bags and surrounded one of the front monitors, placed directly behind the Acousticotton surface - with the bags extending floor-to-ceiling, sidewall-to-center monitor. Result was much tighter bass (regardless of the walls for/aft position), and brought up questions such as: 1) How close am I to a true hard-baffle effect? 2) Could this be a path to the best of both worlds - freestanding vs. soffit? 3) Estimated absorption coefficient of bags at 50-100 hz placed in a null? 4) How closely do I really need to package the bags? 5) Would these bags be as effective as 703/705 for this application? 6) How close could the 'bagged' monitor walls be pushed toward the boundaries? 7) Would some bags placed in the bass trap cavity at selected 1/4 wavelength intervals work well? Cost-wise, closely packed bags are the same as 4" of 703 covering the same surface area, but the bags offer 3 times the depth. The modularity of the bags is a big plus and I don't have to cut/contain glass. If anyone feels I am way off here please say so! Comments please, your time is appreciated.... and sorry for long post too. Thanks, Steve ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your still here – good, here’s my ‘final’ configuration: The movable front and rear monitor walls ended up being positioned so that modes/nulls hit on sharps and flats - like F# and such. I started with 100% of the wall surface covered, and found removing a few bags here and there did wonders, finally ending up with a worst case peak-to-null of 4 db at the listening position. There is a huge area that I can roam around in before the peaks/null delta raises to 7db, which is quite near the inner boundaries. The measuring was done using a sine generator and a RS meter - what a pain! I concluded that 100%-bagged walls were too much, making too much of their own boundary and resultant modes. I don’t know how those results compare with other rooms, and don’t think that much better results could be had here, I spent a lot of time playing with position of the monitors/walls/etc. The best listening position was found about 2 feet behind the middle of the room (ref: outer shell), with the L/R monitors placed very close to the original 20% point. The rear wall monitors had to be closer to their outer shell boundary than the fronts - so that all the monitors were equidistant to the listening position. The Bad panel knockoffs (with acousticotton of varying thickness attached) cover the entire front and rear walls. The sidewall panels (more Bad panels of mostly 4” acousicotton) eliminated the 48hz bump when placed at ¼ wavelength. Actually, they curve out to reach the ¼ wave point near the halfway point of the room and retreat back toward the outer shell and merge with the front and rear monitor walls. The inner ‘room’ is a bunch smaller than the shell now but it sure sounds good. More than 150 bags were used not including the passive bass trap. The best part of all of this was hearing the nature of sound change as treatment was added and adjusted. What an education! Totally live to totally dead and back to in-between. There is a lot of room both behind and in front of the console to do things; and it sounds good wherever you go. My favorite recording method is with everything 100% direct; monitoring live jamming is simultaneously ‘rough’ mixing too - usually about 96-100db. The room stays tight. It’s not live, not dead, and quite diffuse. I’ll get Smaart sooner or later and report. Cheers..

Nice report Steve. Thanks. Andre

Awesome!!! Widrace. Thats great stuff. Can you please post a link to your original thread? Thats if it has more info? Lou. Notice I use bold on everyones names. Just like you. You really have had a big influence on this forum. Thanks mate. Ethan. I just realized your 'The' Ethan with the world famous YouTube overdubbed videos. Your a legend mate. Thanks for the link. I think I may have found a construction page a couple of years ago for your studio? It looks familiar. If I'm right, is that construction journal still around?

Drumdrumdrumdrum wrote:

I think I may have found a construction page a couple of years ago for your studio? It looks familiar. If I'm right, is that construction journal still around?

Thank for your comments. The only "construction" page on my personal site is my wood panel traps article from EM magazine: http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html --Ethan

Ethan. Thats the one! Great stuff. Thanks

Which brings me to andrebrito. If one end of the room was 'live' and the other end using CR type acoustics it will be a winner errr? How do we do that?

Just like you described, you create a RFZ in your room with absorption in the front and diffusion in the back. This creates a variable acoustical field in the room which you can use. You can always divide the space in the room with the curtain if you want. Another approach, more most costly is creating variable acoustics panels. But I don't see much use in such a room like yours.

Drumdrumdrumdrum... a bit of a bump here for ya mate. I'm interested as well as to what the heavy-hitters here have to say, so maybe I can provoke something. Considering that you will not get two people to agree on how to do a 'normal' room, let alone a single room, your going to have to decide for yourself. I found the only thing that people seem to universally agree on is: Diffusion (done correctly) is always a good thing, and needs to be combined with significant LF absorption. With that said, would not a proper diffuse Control Room, following principles suggested in a sticky link on this site (see below), make a superb live room? Some explanation as to why this wouldn't be the case is welcomed. Think about building a room that adheres to RFZ by having exposed LF absorption at required locations, and/or sufficient attenuation of those areas via diffusion. Works for Blackbird/Gateway, etc. The practical balance of your room surface would be diffuse (like Blackbird, but done more conventionally) with LF absorption behind. A couple of gobos, each with a hard/soft side is all you need to add/subtract ambience for live drums, etc. How can you go wrong? Fire away!! The link: http://www.grammy.com/PDFs/Recording_Ac ... _1_Rec.pdf

With that said, would not a proper diffuse Control Room, following principles suggested in a sticky link on this site (see below), make a superb live room? Some explanation as to why this wouldn't be the case is welcomed

Yes and no... A control room has fixed sound sources and listener's position so it needs located sound treatment. A live tracking room is less dependent on those factors. So you can use diffusion on both but probably not in the same way...

Hi, To take my questions any further here I think I need to get more specific about the space, size, layout, etc. I'm looking for a 35 to 50 m2 space on the Gold Coast in Australia. I still have not found a place and I'm frustrated that I can not find an appropriate place of this size. All the comercial space here is too big. I'm hopeing something will come up soon as my lease is up and I'm packing up my studio next week. Maybe it will go into storage for a little while? :cry: Anyway. When I find a place I'll put it up on the 'Design' area and hopefully all you 'one room' producers can join me there to design my new studio? Cheers Glenn :wink: