New studio design in Virginia, USA

I am soon about to move to a new location and build a new studio. It's in an old factory which is basically now just a brick shell. We are going to be on the third floor and we have 1000 ft2 to design and build exactly what we want. Here is a picture of the basic plan we like. The dimensions are difficult to see: The entire studio is 29ft X 35ft. The left and top walls are outer walls, i.e. they are brick. The bottom and right walls will be sheetrock and there will be other small businesses to the right. I have been reading and searching through this forum for over a month now, and learning so much. At our studio, we mainly compose and record music for film/advertising. But we also record bands every now and again to pay the bills. Nothing "real" loud. Our budget for the build is around $28,000. I have about a million questions, but i'll just start with a few. We'd like to have our control room a reasonable size, the one in the pic is just over 18' from front to back. How high is a good height for a control room? 8'? 12'? What about the live room? We have a lot of space in the vertical department, so for the size of our live room (about 20' on the longest side), how high is a good height for that? Are the specific angles of the walls in the control room important? I modeled the shape after some of the floor plans i found on this site, just not sure about the exact ratios/angles of the walls. Is a vaulted ceiling a good idea in the live room? That's all for now. Thanks in advance. -Trey

Hi Trey. Quick answer, I am on my way down for the night. 12-14 foot is a good height for ceilings. Taller is always better because you can get a real room ambiance, actual reverb times that are meaningful. Large volume rooms, always better, seldom achieved in this world of home recording wiz guys and dolls. Splaying walls is also recommended, 6 degrees or one inch per foot run, bout the same. Trying to adjust the reflections to move them out of your way, each others way, reduce flutter, it's all part of it. You already know upstairs has it's own challenges, so I'm not even going to bring up the weight factor. Seems like "yes" is the right word. But if a blanket yes is incorrect, someone will come along and fill in what I have been known to leave out. See ya, Brien

Yeah, i was planning on splaying them a bit. The program i used would let me splay them. I'm still learning Sketchup.

"Are the specific angles of the walls in the control room important? I modeled the shape after some of the floor plans i found on this site, just not sure about the exact ratios/angles of the walls." A control room area wants symmetry, balance in the design, as much as possible. Ideally you could draw one side and then use that to "mirror" for the opposite side. I am looking into building the control room side of my project room like the cab of my Ford truck :) It has the right amount of soft and reflective material, a splayed overhead, rear end trapping area behind the listener... I'm kidding, but the balance is highly regarded. We humans have two ears and anything you can do to control what the individual ears hear will help you to make better decisions while mixing. Looking up information on RFZ (reflection free zone), control room layout might move your ideas along.

Hi Trey: Welcome!

Are the specific angles of the walls in the control room important? I modeled the shape after some of the floor plans i found on this site, just not sure about the exact ratios/angles of the walls.

Like Brien said, 6 degrees for your CR walls, and 12 degrees for the ceiling, all angled away from the speakers. That assumes that you are using the normal layout for speakers (60 degree intersection angle). If you go with a different angle, then you should splay your walls more. If you do a 90 degree angle for the speakers, then you'd probably be better with 12 degrees or more of splay on your walls. Are you going to soffit mount your speakers? It's hard to see on your diagram. About ratios: search the forum for "room ratio", and start reading! But do make a large pot of coffee, first! There is a stack of info on that, more than you can get through in just a couple of hours. Basically, the idea is to find a set of ratios that roughly fits the space you have, then adjust your walls nad ceiling to fit that ratio. The ratio determines the "spread" of the room modes around all three types of axis (longitudinal, tangential, oblique). The idea is to get to a ratio where the modes are spread out as evenly as possible across the low end of the spectrum, not all bunched up around a couple of frequencies with gaps in between. That would make the room very resonant in that part of the spectrum, and "dead" in other parts. You'd have hugs dips and valleys across your room response (in both the frequency and time domains), and you want to avoid that, at all costs. There are various sets of ratios that various people have calculated over the decades, as being "ideal", and giving the most even spread of modes: Choose a good one that is close to your room's existing ratio, and nudge your walls and ceiling around until you hit that ratio. Things get more complex if you room is non-rectangular (ie, if it has splayed walls, as in your case), but the best plan then is to figure out an imaginary "best fit" rectangular block that kind of averages out the splaying of the walls / ceiling, and use that as your "ratio". It isn't very accurate, but close enough for the long wavelengths at the bottom end of the spectrum. But search the forum for these concepts, and follow any links you find to off-site pages. It's an interesting voyage! That's for your CR of course. Your LR you can make irregular, if you want, with non-parallel walls, vaulted ceiling, whatever makes sense. Just try to avoid obvious traps, such as curved walls, tight angles, parallel hard surfaces, etc. You'll be treating it acoustically anyway, so you can minimize problems, but don't make things harder for yourself than they need to be! In general, keep the floor reflective (concrete, wood, etc), and the ceiling absorptive. You can always use throw rugs if you need to deaden the floor later, but it's hard to rip up fitted carpet if it isn't live enough! Like Brien said, if you have vertical space, then use it! You are privileged few among us more humble home studio builders, who can squeeze out maybe 2.5 meters of height with a lot of luck. You have the luxury of plenty of vertical space, so make use of it. (A side note on CR room ratios and vertical space: Normally you see the first "1" in the ratio as referring to the ceiling height, but you can turn that around and use the "1" for the width too. Don't use it for the length, though, since that would imply that your speakers are firing across the short dimension of the room, which is not a good idea. Your speakers should always fire down the long dimension of the room, not across it.) One thing that might be a concern: You said you are on the third floor? How tough is that floor under you? What is it made of? Did you get a structural engineer to inspect it yet? You are going to be piling on several tons of additional weight, so you need to make certain that it can handle the load! - Stuart -

everyone seems to mention about the fact that we are going to be on the third floor. it might be possible to get a space on the 1st floor. do you guys think that would be a good idea?

The concern with elevated areas is two-fold, at least to start. These are concerns to the builder and should be given due notice. The type and kind of isolation you develop requires heavy build materials, heavy in the tons. If you had an area 1000 sq. ft rated at 40psf liveload, it could carry (theoretically) 40,000 pounds spread evenly across this 1,000 sq. ft. But this number is misleading.* The 40 pounds per square foot is a number placed on the overall footage of the room. But the construction often required is not evenly spread across the entire floor. It is placed directly on top of stud walls that are directly on top of a considerably smaller footprint of the existing floor space. I think it is called point loading. So now you have a perimeter area equal to 130 linear feet, or 43.33 sq. ft. attempting to carry the same load that had been applied to a 1,000 sq. foot area! The structure will not take it. You would most likely not have it completed before the structure reaches breaking point and collapses. The other issue is not as disastrous physically but financially. The amount of effort and materials it can take to reduce the intrusion of your music into the surrounding areas can be prohibitive. These are the reasons that so many, whether they know it in fact or from having heard it said so many times, will tell you that building an elevated recording environment is almost always a poor idea. Granted there are exceptions, and they are few. The biggest exception is that isolation is not a requirement. This lowers the material combination's considerably and allows a reduced isolation concerned space to be developed while still attempting to maintain a good acoustic environment. Brien edit: * This is an over-simplification on my part. Even a 40psf live load does not expect a constant load to be present at all times. This is the reason a 150 pound person can walk across a 40psf live load rated floor and not have it collapse. The floor can take it :) What it cannot take is a static load at the boundaries of the engineered limits that never changes.

hmmm...you guys definitely know your stuff. i'm going to look into the possibility of getting the 1st floor space instead of the 3rd floor. Anyone have any ideas about whether or not $28,000 will be enough to cover a plan like the one i've suggested?

Some would tell you even at ground level a typical price to look at per sq. ft is about the same as high end residential building in your area. I think if a person has the want to, the cash, can get on the ground floor of an existing solid structure and realizes that your budget is going to double and is still ok with that, even though they will be doing most of the work themselves...it's as good a start as any :)

i'm going to look into the possibility of getting the 1st floor space instead of the 3rd floor.

That sounds like a smart idea! Ground floor, concrete slab on grade, is a great starting point.

I'm trying to get my CR ratio right. I used one of the suggested ratios from Rod's book: 1:1.4:1.9 with a ceiling height of 9', that gave be a length of 17' 1", and a width of 12' 7". So i made a sketchup file with those dimensions and then splayed the walls the suggested 6 degrees for the sides and 12 degrees for the ceiling, so the average (middle of each wall) would be at the ratio's suggested measurement. I think i did it all right, but would love a second opinion. Question: the 6 degrees that the side walls should be splayed, should i have done 3 degrees on each side? i splayed them 6 degrees on BOTH sides. sorry, but math isn't my strong point. any help would be greatly appreciated

Question: the 6 degrees that the side walls should be splayed, should i have done 3 degrees on each side? i splayed them 6 degrees on BOTH sides.

That's correct: 6 degrees on each side, for a total of 12 degrees, the same as the ceiling. ( I guess you COULD slope your floor 6 degrees too, and leave your ceiling at 6, but it might be hard to walk on that! :) ). Also, 6 degrees is what you need if your speakers are set for 60 degree intersection. If you set them for a larger angle, then you also need to splay your walls more. At 90 degrees, you should have your walls splayed at least 12 degrees, but your ceiling angle does not need to change. I'm not sure where that 6 degree number comes from. I wish Andre were around, as I'm sure he would provide a whole bunch of reference material, with a dozen published papers that define exactly why. Maybe someone else knows the theory behind that number? - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Also, 6 degrees is what you need if your speakers are set for 60 degree intersection. If you set them for a larger angle, then you also need to splay your walls more. At 90 degrees, you should have your walls splayed at least 12 degrees, but your ceiling angle does not need to change.

Thanks Stuart. Here is what i came up with for the room and the speaker soffits. Don't they look too much in the center. It seems like they would be more in the corner. How would the front of the CR be done if these are my angles? I'm kind of stuck.

Hey Trey. I just want to check on something here: That SketchUp model you posted is the INNER leaf of your studio, correct? And you are building the walls inside out, correct? That's what I see on the model, but I do want to make certain that we are all on the same page here! - Stuart -

Actually, taking a closer look at the SketchUp file, there is a problem with your side walls: the drywall is superimposed on the studs, not attached to it, and has no thickness! In other words, the drywall and the studs are trying to occupy the same space. So you either need to move the drywall a bit, so it is ON the studs (instead of IN them), or if the drywall is correct, then you need to move the studs. The front wall seems OK, but there is no drywall at all on the back wall, so I'm not sure where the hard surface of the room is going to be. Maybe you can fix that too. You also have an additional layer in the file, called "skin" or something, that has a lot of garbage in it. I guess it was stuff that you tried out but didn't work. It would be a good idea to delete that, then purge your file so that it does not confuse you later. - Stuart -

OK, I had a few minutes free, so I cleaned it up for you, and re-positioned the speakers, based on the assumptions that this really IS your inner leaf wall, and the you really ARE building the front and back walls inside-out, and the side walls normally. The intersection of the speaker lines should be a few inches behind your head, not in your head. the lines should hit your ears, not your nose. So your ears go at the 38% position, not the apex of the triangle. The 38% is only a starting point anyway (not a hard rule!), but it is measured between the finished hard surfaces of the room (drywall) not the framing. That moves everything back a bit on your diagram, which also means the speakers can be set a bit further apart. They are roughly 2 meters apart right now, which is pretty much where you want them. I also raised everything to the usual recommended listening height, so your ears and speaker centers are now at 1.2 m. You might have to change that slightly, depending on the acoustic center and vertical size of your speakers. I was just guessing here, but the basic layout should be fine. You'll just need to nudge it a bit, here and there. Here it is: http://www.digistar.cl/studios/splayed% ... 02-S03.skp Hope that helps! - Stuart -

Stuart, you are awesome. Thanks so much. I'll check it out this evening when I get home from my current studio (don't have sketchup on this computer).

OHHHH, i see how that works. (the listening position ear thing) Thanks, for your help.

You are welcome! I'm just trying to give back some of what I got for free from this forum! Others have helped me immensely here, so the least I can do is try to help others where I can. - Stuart -

Should I build my control room inside out? Can someone give me some pros and cons.

Should I build my control room inside out?

I don't think you need to, in your case. It's a good solution where space is really tight, as it gains you a few more inches, but if you have plenty of space, as you seem to, then the extra construction difficulty is probably not worth it. It is harder to build, since you wont have good access to some parts of the wall where you need to seal, raising the walls will be a major pain as they will be very heavy (you have to put the drywall on first, before you raise them, as you won't be able to get into the tiny gap to put it on afterwards. etc. So construction is more complex. The other advantage that it gives you (apart from extra space) is a savings in building materials, since you can use the studs that are now facing your room to attach acoustic treatment, and make good use of the space between them, instead of building frames to hang your treatment on the wall afterwards. I'm not sure how much you could save like this, but it would probably be worthwhile, if your budget is really tight. But overall, if you have a reasonable amount of room and you are not on a shoestring budget, then you probably don't need to do it. - Stuart -