on a happier note - I've got some flooring installed! I bought some 12mm (1/2") laminate flooring that I'm quite happy with.
The underlay was a 'premium' product that also served as a vapor barrier and sound/impact absorber. Seemed pretty good....
Cutting the angled pieces for the edges was a bit tricky at first until I got the hang of it. Other than that, installing this flooring is super easy since it just clicks together and 'floats' - no glue or nails.
The pic of the finished product doesn't look so hot due to all the dust and the glare but it is going to look fantastic when its all cleaned up.
onpurposeproductions, you have done great work! The laminate flooring is with hand scraped surface? There should be min 8mm gap between the wall and floor.
onpurposeproductions, you have done great work! The laminate flooring is with hand scraped surface? There should be min 8mm gap between the wall and floor.
Thanks Mikelol. Being a laminate floor it can't be hand scraped (otherwise they'd scrape off the laminate surface). I used cedar shakes as spacers around the outside to keep a 1/4" gap.
I'm really pleased with the flooring. I would have liked to put down an engineered hardwood but I really like the look of this stuff. So far it seems really scratch resistant and locked together really well (I've seen some laminates pull apart). I think getting the thickest stuff you can is key.
Construction has been officially complete for about a week now! The seals on the doors between booth and Live Room are still outstanding (I've been ignoring them a little, I'm afraid) and I still need to get some small pieces of trim to finish off between the door thresholds and the floor....but its pretty much done.
I had a setback in getting equipment installed though. I had thought that I would be purchasing a Control24 and Argosy 90 series desk from another local studio owner at the end of October. When the time came however, he decided he wasn't quite ready to make his upgrade :( . So I've been scrambling to find another mixer and desk. Finding a Control24 is not that difficult but finding a 90 series Argosy desk for it is. But it looks like I've found a seller with both so hopefully I'll be setting them up within a few weeks! Woo Hoo!
In the meantime, there's still work to be done anyway. I set up a system to do some RT60 testing in the control room. I've got an Earthworks mic and preamp that I use for analysis along with an LE system and SpectraFoo (running in OS9! :shock: ). As you can see in the pic I set up everything on a desk with the mic approximately at what will be the mix position, but I quickly realized that the laptop makes way too much noise to get a good reading so I ended up moving it and the 002 into the booth.
I was reading an RT60 of somewhere around 1.00 second, give or take. I didn't do any testing in the Live Room - I'm really just going to treat to ear in there and hopefully mount panels in such a was as they can easily be removed to adjust liveliness if desired.
703 is really difficult to come by (if at all?) here in Canada so I set out to look for a supplier of Roxul's industrial product - RHT. There are apparently only two suppliers in all of Ontario. I put in an order of 2 bags of RHT80 at 2" thickness and 4 bags of RHT80 at 4" thickness. The 2" stuff comes with 6 24"x48" batts per bag and I plan on cutting them in half to make 24 12"x48" panels to go on the walls. The 4" stuff has 3 batts per bag and I plan on using them in their full 24"x48" size for ceiling and wall corner treatment.
I'm really eager to get some treatment going up as the rooms are predictably unpleasant in their current state - every surface is reflective.
You can see the speakers I installed in the Live Room. I'm pretty excited about these as in my experience artists often want to come back into the control room to hear what they've just performed rather than just listening back through the headphones.
I hope to still install a faux-stone product eventually from floor to ceiling on that wall with the mic input panels and the window to the CR. There's a company called StoneSelex around here that makes a really fantastic product.
Hello Greg!
Looking really good :D Thanks for the very informative and interesting thread! My liveroom, which I've been desingning lately is almost the same size as yours. Was it in finished 8'x8'4"x16,9' as per your first post in this thread? That speaker installation in live room is very good idea. I think I'm going to steal that to you :lol: I like also that flooring and neutral colours of your walls and ceiling.
-Janne
My liveroom, which I've been desingning lately is almost the same size as yours. Was it in finished 8'x8'4"x16,9' as per your first post in this thread?
Hi Janne,
Thanks for the kind words! My Live Room's finished dimensions are 8' 6" wide at the narrowest point (9' 6" at the widest) by 7' 9" tall (track lights and ceiling panel absorbers will eat up another 4-6 inches) by 16' 4" long. They're not the most ideal dimensions but the whole design was a major exercise in compromise. I'd sooner have more volume than ideal dimensions in a live room.
I actually just picked up my special order of Roxul RHT80 insulation bats. I got 4 bags of 4" thickness and 2 bags of 2" thickness which should provide most of what I need for treatment. As soon as I got them home I put the bags up in the corners (as pictured) and wacked away on the drums for a bit to check out the impact. The bass was totally sucked out of the room! Pretty dramatic.
Now I have to figure out how I'm going to mount them. These bats are nice and rigid - I think they'll be perfect!
I've decided to go with a wall panel design that achieves the look that doublehelix went for;
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=78721#78701
I'm going to do two different sizes for the walls, 1'x2' and 1'x4'. I wanted to keep them narrow as I think this will help keep the room feeling spacious, which has been a consideration in everything I've done pretty much.
For lumber I decided to go with the pricey tonge & groove boards (what I should have used for my door jams :roll: ) to make sure they stay true and good lookin'. I'll stain them the same dark walnut that has gone everywhere else. Still haven't found a fabric that I'm happy with. I'm thinking I'd like to use linen for my fabric (or a faux-linen which apparently is cheaper) and our local fabric store doesn't generally carry it! Can't anything be straightforward with a studio build?! I'll probably have to head downtown to the 'fabric district'.
So here are some pics of the first prototype going together. The fabric will of course only wrap around the Roxul RHT80 (which has a perfect amount of rigidness btw) leaving the framing exposed (to be stained). Then I'll staple the fabric to the back of the frame.
I think for mounting on the walls I'm going to copy Ro's triangular groove design, although I think I'll keep mine hidden behind each panel rather than running along the wall (I won't be repositioning mine just removing them if more liveliness is desired). The pic at the bottom is his.
Picked up some fabric today to give a try. Here's a pic of a completed prototype - I think I like it.
The fabric is a little bit more solid then I planned to go with but I can certainly breath through it so I think it should be acoustically transparent enough to work. This will work for the LR and booth at any rate. I might go with a black fabric in the CR. My local store had some black speaker cloth that could work.
Much catching up to do.....
I actually decided to go a different route with the look of the panels. Having the wood framing exposed actually ended up looking too busy, so I went with a fully covered panel. The work I had done staining the frames wasn't wasted though because unstained frames were visible through the fabric. So all frames built after I decided to fully wrap had the front face stained.
I also went with a different (and more expensive fabric). 100% cotton was on sale and the tone of the color was a good fit.
Some more pics of the wall panels up. I actually probably won't keep this many wall panels up permanently in the LR. The idea will be to achieve a balance between high, mid and low frequency absorption (these panels being high). Because of the dimensions of my LR, there is naturally a pretty hefty bass build up. More on that shortly....
In the CR I wanted to create a 'look' with the panels, keeping it symmetrical left and right. I went with a combination of red and cream fabric. These are the first pics of positioning but I end up changing them around a bit as you'll see later.
I bought a Control24 from a guy on the Canadian east coast and an Argosy 90 series desk from a guy on the American west coast, so I really did scour the entire continent for these items! :)
I was very pleased to see that the Argosy desk uses an assembly system essentially identical to IKEA. And the seller had thankfully kept the assembly instructions too! Very painless assembly!
To try to get some low frequency absorption I wanted to go with a triangular corner trap design. I went through a bunch of design ideas before settling on this one, which I'm very happy with!
The insulation sits behind the wood frame which means the fabric can be stretched cleanly across the frame (without insulation making bulges). Nice clean look!
Hey thanks - its so nice to receive so many nice comments!
limsa-terry wrote:
How does it sounds after acoustic treatments?
Well in short, not good enough. And I'd actually appreciate some input.
At some point I made the decision that I would build the rooms first and build/apply acoustic treatment as need afterwards. The problem with that is I developed a design that maximized square footage but didn't place enough priority on accommodating bass trapping. As an example, both back corners of the control room have doors in them.
There's actually more bass build-up than I would like in all three rooms (LR, CR, booth) so here's what I'm thinking;
Control room - I had built some corner tri-traps and moved two of the 2" thick panels right into the front corners, but that just wasn't taming the low end enough. So, I built two 4" thick panels (4' tall, 20" wide). Having those in the front corners actually makes a big improvement, but I'm hopeful that they may actually only be temporary.
I've started playing with designs for a massive bass trap that spans the whole front of the CR, between wall and ceiling (see attached image of rough idea). I'm not sure yet what material to cover it with, so I'd really appreciate any and all thoughts. I haven't been totally happy with the look of the CR so I'd like to do something that looks really good (obviously :roll: ) while controlling the low end at the same time.
In the booth, I think I'll fill the pictured corner with insulation (super chunk style), and also do the same with the pictured corner in the Live Room.
But again, I'm not sure about how I'll cover those. I don't think I'd want them to just be fabric wrapped - facing it with wood slats (helmholtz resonator) would probably look really cool, but I'm not sure I really want to tune the trap.......
The back of the CR is untreated as of yet but I'm going to deal with that after I get my loveseat in there in the next week or so.
Glad to hear your honesty - many people kid themselves after all that work. :)
I must say - I'd use more insulation on one wall of a room than you've used in the whole of the control room ;)
as Ethan keeps saying - the more traps the better :)
The problem with that is I developed a design that maximized square footage but didn't place enough priority on accommodating bass trapping. As an example, both back corners of the control room have doors in them.
Maybe you could do a large, deep horizontal one across the entire top rear wall, above those doors? It looks like you have a bit of space up there that could be used.
Maybe some "traps on wheels" could be rolled in front of the doors when needed?
- Stuart -
I must say - I'd use more insulation on one wall of a room than you've used in the whole of the control room ;)
But you do realize I certainly wasn't done yet, right?! :shock:
Soundman2020 wrote:
Maybe you could do a large, deep horizontal one across the entire top rear wall, above those doors? It looks like you have a bit of space up there that could be used.
Hey Stuart, thanks. I was thinking that too. My HVAC guy said the air handler unit there needs to be at least 6" below the ceiling though, so I wasn't sure if it would be good to build something right down close to it? May ask him about that.
Effectiveness of treatment aside - I've been feeling a little less than happy about the look of the panels in the CR, which is partly why I haven't been working at completing it recently. I think I'd really prefer panels similar to those used in movie theaters (generally 1" thick but covering a much larger surface area). I just didn't want to be purchasing something designed for that purpose at ridiculously high prices and never found a rigid product that I thought would accomplish the same look.
The church I go to actually meets in what used to be a movie theatre and they still have a lot of the acoustic panels the theatre used. They unfortunately gave away a whole bunch of them a few years ago :cry:. That would have been a nice score.
I think I'd really prefer panels similar to those used in movie theaters (generally 1" thick but covering a much larger surface area).
John - if I went this route, is there a particular product that you'd recommend? Owens Corning 703 seemed to be impossible to find (in Canada) when I looked earlier during my build.
