Treatment for very small control room

Hi all. New to this list. Hope that I can share some insight from experts like you all. I have a home studio, and I'm thinking of redesigning the control room, cause I'm not happy with its sound. The control room is 3,5m wide, 2,9 long, and 3,2 m high. On the 3,5m wide wall, at the center, there is a sealed window to the main studio room. When I'm monitoring, I face the window, so the control room layout is wider to the side instead to the front. Hope you get the picture. The treatment is just foams on every walls, and carpet on the floor. Any suggestion of treatment, considering how small this room is? I read some articles about good proportion room for music, and I'm thinking of lowering the ceiling, so the height would be 2,6 m, and the room proportion would be 1:1,14:1,39. Is it a good idea? Thanks in advance. Ari

Ari - your main problem is that you have no low end absorption in your room. The foam will absorb down to 500hz if you are lucky - below that nothing. Check out the SAE site http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html and check out absorbers - low-mid and low. Your ceiling height is good so I'd look at maybe putting some hangers in it. cheers JOhn[/code]

Thanks John. I checked that site, and download the absorbers articles for reference. I'm fairly new at this. Could you describe what hanger is, what is it look like, how to install it, how high from the original ceiling, etc.? Ari

You can see them as they were used in left bank here: http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Pages/update_4.htm That's how imagine you could use them in your ceiling :) cheers john

Thanks. I already checked the update 4, and it seems that the hangers were placed above the ceiling frame, so it will be covered with some sort of ceiling panels if I'm not mistaken? So if I'm going to use hangers, the ceiling would be lowered, right? Ari

Here's the drawing of the control room. As you can see, the room has double brick walls. And the right side of the control room is a wood frame with 1/4" plywoods attached. Then every walls are covered with vinyl covered foams, standard industrial foams, not specialised foams for acoustic treatment. All floors are carpeted. I'm thinking of putting diffusor over the sofa, and probably some absorbers on the side walls, but still not sure. Any suggestion of treatments are welcome. Ari

bolehnggak wrote:

As you can see, the room has double brick walls. And the right side of the control room is a wood frame with 1/4" plywoods attached. Then every walls are covered with vinyl covered foams, standard industrial foams, not specialised foams for acoustic treatment. All floors are carpeted. I'm thinking of putting diffusor over the sofa, and probably some absorbers on the side walls, but still not sure. Any suggestion of treatments are welcome. Ari

Ari - the treatment you have is effecting the high end only, except that the 1/4" plywood would probably be acting as a low frequency panel absorber. You basically need some low-mid absorption to balance out all the high freq absorption. BTW industrial foam and acoustic foam are two different products. One wall you haven't mentioned is the ceiling - in small rooms the ceiling is a good place to get some absorption going without effecting your floorspace. cheers john

The ceilings are 3.18m high, made of 1/4" plywoods also, but without acoustic consideration. The room was made with minimal knowledge of acoustics, although the double wall construction really blocks the sound. I'm thinking of redesigning, but since the brick walls are hard to tear down, and not to mention more money involved, probably the only adjustment I can make is the inside of the control room, and moving the 1/4" plywood wall on the right side of the control room. Here's a drawing of my trial design. The green lines are going to be slot absorbers, and the pink lines, are just cloth. What do you think? Ari

With a 3.1m ceiling I'd use some of that space for hangers. cheers john

Thanks for your comments, John. I really appreciate them. About hangers, the SAE site doesn't provide infos on hanger's size, materials, how many and where to place it in, in this case, my control room, etc. Do you know where can I obtain those infos? And, just a thought, what if I use bass traps instead of acoustic hanger on the ceiling? I read an Ethan Winer's article on bass trap which are mounted on the ceiling. Ari

you can use either Ari - the main thing is to get an even reverb time at all frequencies so some form of bass trapping will be required. cheers john

Ok. What do you think about the layout design I sent, with the slot absorber? Any suggestion for better treatment? Ari

Your layout is fine - I'm not sure what you mean by 'just cloth' for the pink lines. I assume you mean cloth over 703 type insulation. cheers john

Yes, with 703 insulations, if I can find them, it's rather scarce here. If I can't find the 703s here, what substitute can I use for treatment? BTW I'm still thinking of another design, which might be cheaper and doesn't waste a lot of space, it's already a small room. What do you suggest? Ari

If you can't find a rigid fibreglass equivalent then you can use rockwool. What different design did you have in mind?? cheers john

Here's my other design. Dunno if it would be cheaper though. :) Anyway, it's based on the wall units article. Ari

Yes - but is there any chance of turning the room around - like this - do you need a sound lock?? cheers john

Unfortunately, the soundlock is actually the entrance to the studio. Here I post the whole studio area. Actually it also need some suggestion of treatment, but I thought maybe I concentrate on the control room first, but if you have any thoughts, I would be very thankful. :) The studio is not only for recording, but also for rehearsal. And lately I often record the people who rehearse there live to multitrack, so there are many leakage between instruments, which is tamed by running all amp direct, guitars using amp simulator, and the amps are turned down so they won't leak into the drum mics. Ari

Well, actually the soundlock is needed for security purpose. Because the room is for rental use also, it's better to divide the control room, so everyone who is using the rehearsal room won't have to go through the control room, which may cause some unresponsible people to play or steal some of the gears in the control room, which was already happened. Also, they can use the rehearsal room, and I can still use the control room for some purposes, maybe tracking or partially mixing some stuff, or just looking for inspiration. :) Ari

I see - OK I understand. Then what you said :):) cheers john

Well, maybe I will go back to my previous design. Here's the drawing. (I posted this drawing in earlier post actually, sorry for inconvenience) The pink line is insulation (don't know which insulation is good, is glass wool ok?) covered with cloth, and the green line is slot resonators. Any suggestion? It's only a rough design, I need help on how big is the air cavity behind the slot resonator. Also more inputs are welcome. Thanks in advance. Ari

...John, I notice you put the rigid fibreglass at the "leftbank" so that the black side is facing outwards. Any particular reason for this, or does it matter at all which way you turn it? Thanks John

The black side is a cloth cover for the isulation fibers so it's used with the black facing out so the fibers don't get into the room. cheers john