newbie needs help with unusual project in triangel rooms

control room current setup without most of gear. double doors with mirrors are large built in (soon to be built out again) wardrobe This wardrobe is directly over the live room door (upstairs downstairs) at the bottom of the stairs. and narrows into a point about one metre behind the doors.

Archway from outside in conservatory looking into live room

Did you post your SketchUp model of this room? I looked for one on the thread, but didn't notice it. - Stuart -

Hi there, Yup the skp files are on the first page of the thread. but just for convienience sakes here they are again. cheers df

Hi there. Folks i would really value some input here. If anyone has any ideas at all however insane they might seem i would love to hear em. I am hoping to clear the rooms this weekend and with my brother, come up with a pretty comprehensive plan on what to do. I plan then on posting these plans on this thread to seek opinions and get a finalised design to work to. If there is some genious out there with an exceptional idea for this space i be needing to hear it soon!!! :) I am starting to get a feel for what needs to be done to make the space somewhat workable and just gotta say a big thank you to all involved in the running and upkeep of this amazing resource. :yahoo: i would still be scratching my head and asking random questions if this site wasnt here!! big respect. DF

That's a really small, hard to use space. There isn't really much you can do with it. I came up with the following four possible ideas, but none of them is good. Maybe one of them can be adjusted to fit better. - Stuart -

Hi again. So in the last few days i have managed to destroy my knee (while sober!!!) and am now on crutches. I think its jahs way of slowing me down :shock: All things being in there right place and all that... Thanks for taking the time out here stuart, i really appreciate it. I do realise the size of the rooms is going to be an issue but then its not like i am expecting to fit abbey road in there either so :wink: :wink: My plan so far is shaping up somewhat like the third model you proposed. I was thinking about a soffit here in the same position that you have it. But as we know the rooms are pretty small so i dont think the side walls and rear walls will be an option. When i weigh up the space i will lose, it just doesnt make any sense to me. especially with the walls being splayed already, (more than reccomended i know but splayed none the less) I had also considered building a huge "cloonensemble" type bass trap here instead of a soffit and building it as a very solid double door so as not to lose the benifit of this storage area. As bass trapping is going to be a huge issue for me here this option is weighing in heavily at the moment especially as it leaves me a huge storage space. I changed my desk and speaker setup around a few weeks ago roughly into this position and the difference even this made was huge. For a long time i had a HUGE rise in bass level in the area around low c sharp (dont know exact freq) and just this move has almost completely gotten rid of it :D In this position it leaves the window to my rear left and i was thinking of building a large dispersion unit to fit into the window that could be on a hinge and used as a drop down desk when not needed. i was also planning on some huge superchunk stlye traps all round window floor and ceiling corners in this area as in bass trap skp. and building them to literally catch the reflections from the dispersion unit. Also planning on building several 8'x2' 4 inch broadband traps for along the side walls. I am hoping between doing this and fixing the floor/celieng to the room below and isolating the booth that i will have a decent enough space to get started working with. I been looking a lot at the stickys on traps and what a goldmine of info wow!!! Beannachti na feile phadraig le gach duine ar an site sin. or the blessings of saint patrick to all on the site. (yup todays paddys day, my first one sober for many many years.. (Painkillers) :cry: ) cheers df

Hi again. So here is a sketchup of the kind of trap i am talking about "cloonensemble" design In this model its in the correct place. I see a heavy duty piano hinge on the left side to allow it to open. cheers df

hi again folks. Anyone got any thoughts on how well this trap/press will work?? i think it will be ok but i aint sure if it will be efective or not. cheers df

I don't see any problem with your bass trap, except that you did not show the deep, thick absorption that you will need in there. You will need a lot of mineral wool or fiberglass in there, since it is the only bas trap you have at the back. I'd say fill it up completely, floor to ceiling and front to back. The entire triangle. That would be a good start on your bass trapping. But I do see a major problem with your room: It is not symmetrical. It MUST be symmetrical, or you will not have usable stereo imaging, and your mixes will not translate. Draw a line down the center of the room, and the left side MUST be an exact mirror image of the right side. - Stuart -

Hi there. I had thought about filling that whole area with rockwool or fibreglass but also considered building it into a bass trap come press. Probably will go with the whole area full though as the need for trapping is huge. My brother is calling later today and i hope to draw a final plan with him to include some kind of rear wall to bring about symmetry in the room. not exactly sure how this will be achieved yet but i do understand the need for it. I had toyed with the idea of building another large bass trap near to the window area to match the protruding shape of the vocal booth, but not sure yet. I will talk to the bro and post again later this evening, should have a better idea then of whats gonna be do-able with my budget as he is very talented designer/cabinetmaker who knows very well the cost of materials and i value his opinons highly. The sun is finally shining here for the last few days (very rare occurence in ireland indeed) :roll: and i am stuck indoors hobbling about with an injured knee, hope everone is well and happy. DF

Hi there again. and so the saga continues After a bit more reserch i have found. No 1 the floor in my upstairs room is just that, it does not connect to any other rooms at all nor does it enter any part of the house so no issues with flanking. at the moment it is just a chipboard floor with no insulation in it at all. The joists are five by two wooden beams on an 18inch centre. fitted directly into one side of the concrete wall. They run 90 degrees to the wall that has the doors in it. I plan to remove the chipbord, fill with rigid rockwool and screw down a half inch sheet of boatbuilders plywood and then a one inch solid beech floor over that. I also will need to put in some cross beams in the joists to keep things from creaking and strengten it up a bit. this work will increase the mass of the floor by about four hunderd percent. (structurally this is safe we have surveyed it well.) My approximate cost is going to be about six hundred euro to do this work which is quite a bit less than i expected so :) (another mike maybe!!) cant use the resilient channels unfortunatly as taking down the celieng is causing quite a bit of worry to the other house owners. I think this should give me a decent amount of islolation from the room below. (enough to work with for the tme being anyway) A big problem (or not) i did find however are that the stud walls of the ensuite bathroom upstairs (soon to be vox booth) are built in on top of the chipboard floor. This is going to be fixed by just cutting the chipboard away from the base of the wall and leaving a portion in place under the wall as is. we will then put down the new floor around this so as not to cause flanking. If done well and correctly it should actually help the isolation of the booth instead of hindering it but it makes the new floor much more akward to put down. my thinking here is that the iso booth will then have a totally seperate floor not connected to the cr floor anymore. However it will still sit on two joists hat run into the cr. I looked into the idea of cutting these but the bro who knows a lot about these structural issues has said in the strongest terms possible NO! We also decided that to replace the entry doors to both rooms with soundproof ones would be very exspensive so we have decided to hang two more relatively cheap doors so that both of these doors will now be doubled to provide a primitive soundlock. I also plan on covering all sides of the doors with foam to deaden them and fitting very tight seals on them (hand made from car door seals) to try and bring about a little more isolation. Our local rehearsal studio has these seals on the doors and they are quite effective. I know some people will frown at these ideas but its not abbey road, and i am on a very thight budget here. i will bet once the job is done though that things will be significantly better than before. As far as bass traps go all ideas of presses behind have been abandoned in favour of some huge superchunk traps every where there is space to fit them. I am going to use the plans in the sticky for superchunks and for the cr room wall traps. for the live room i will use the cloon ensemble design slightly modified to be revesible trap/reflector. All going according to plan i will begin building in the next few weeks as soon as my injured knee allows me too. I will start a new thread in the construcion forum as i get going and keep plenty of photos posted so people can see the rooms. cheers df

Cool! Congratulations! To me it sounds like you have a workable plan in mind, it fits your budget, and you are aware of roughly what final result you will be able to get in terms of isolation and functionality. That's what its all about! And ake care of that knee injury! From experience, Id' say don't try to use it too soon, or your build might get delayed even more! - Stuart -

Hi again folks :D Cheers for the encouragment there stuart, Knee seems to be getting a bit better the last few days, I honestly feel that i have got a lot more info now than i had three months ago, My plan does fit my budget and i feel that the end result will be a much more workable studio for the scale that i plan, than what i allready have in place. And yup thats what it is all about at the end of the day. Big thank you to everyone who has read the post and added their valued opinion. I know for sure that with out this site i would still be scratching my head and dreaming, so also big ups to all concerned in the upkeep of the site, The proceeds of my first job will for sure be donated to the site for future preservation!!! thanks a lot df :D :D :D :D

Don't forget to post pics of your build as you go! You never know: someone might spot something important, and tell you about it before it's too late... - Stuart -

Hi there again folks. Donal here. So its been an eventfull few weeks since i been in here last. My leg is still pretty messed up and not showing any signs of healing at the moment. It seems ive damaged ligaments pretty badly as well as the inside of my kneecap. Two problems and one wont heal while the other is injured, so possibly i need surgery in the next few months. :shock: This has really halted any immediate work on my build BUMMER! :cry: However my schedule now is cleared completely for the next two months at least (time allocated for the build) Also the goverment body that was going to partially fund my build are only giving me a fifth of what they initially said they would, Anyone got any recession songs??? so realistically my budget is now only about €2500 ouch. But seriously :wink: , studio I need and studio I must build and studio I will build although I could really use some words of encouragment. Donal :shock:

Hi folks. Just to let people know, I am starting my build this morning (at last) Very excited now. I am going to open a new post in the studio bulids section and keep photos posted all through. I would really appreciate any advice or criticism of my plans. new thread called sprig productions studio build. cheers df