New Studio buildout into older building in Hawaii

Aloha From Hawaii, Well its allmost 5 am here and Ive been up all night reading and reading.. I decided to post because I may have a unique set of circumstances. When my son (who wants to be a musician like me) came to live with me after failing 9th grade and summer school, I had a small recording studio built into my house, and, he came to occupy that room when he moved in so we made a deal,.. I promised my son a recording studio if he got good grades. So, I moved the studio to a commercial center in town and it has since gained a life of its own.. In the process of trying to make the studio pay for itself by going public it was upgraded with a better board (40Ch SoundCraft Vienna II) and friends who are in the industry helped us put together a nice little place cappable of decent demo and EP work. Recently, our lease expired and we were offered; "buy the building for a Million Dollars, or find another place" I cant turn that kind of buisness here on Maui, were just too small. So I found another place that was in a storage wherehouse, but it needed to be completely gutted. (Mind you, I have no budget for this..) So I came up with 1K and started the demo work myself. and I am MID-Build.. First its a "T" Shaped Area that I aquired in a commercial industrial area (so Negbors are not an issue) that had to be Gutted down to Bare walls. My Ceilings are 10' and concrete, my floor is concrete, and my back wall as well. Given the space was 90' long and 16 feet wide I have Divided it into two studios (studio A and Studio B) Studio B will serve as a Rehersal studio to help offset the over all cost of the rent. Studio A will be my Recording studio (if all goes well) The Demo is complete and the framing is up, insulation (R-13 and Rmax, which is a 3" thick, Rigid foam material that comes in 4'X8" Sheets) First I would like to hear some of your thoughts in regards to the "Layout" My thought was that Line of sight with the drummer on ether side of the room was important, as was Vocal booth line of sight, as was the front door. :cop: Central placment of the controll room divides the two spaces and keeps the drummers at oposet ends enabling the studio to be used as rehersal space for two bands simultaniously (obviously not recording while rehersal is going on mere feet away. The hope is that the reheral aspect will help sustain the studio between recording porjects and give back to the community a place where serious musicians can practice without disrupting a negborhood. I am a Live sound Technition with 15 Years Experiance and some recording experiance. I am not an acoustitition, and I am only scratching the surface in that area with any knowlage I might have. there are so many opinions out there.. yours seemed to be on the, "more educated" side. After reading quite a bit of your articles I would be honored to hear your collective wisdom brought to bear on my current project. Gentlemen, this is the space that I have to work with and Im trying to make the best of it. After my previous buildout I was Plagued by Mixes that sounded different outside of the studio and I have been reading your advice and hope to put some of that to practice during this buildout so as to minimise that tragic effect that has sucked away so many hours of my life. I have allways listened deep into recordings, played music with Heart, Depth, and etherial insparation, I belive I have a Good ear, I just need what I hear in the Controll room to reproduce itself everywhere else.. I hear Alan Parsons, Brian Eno and Butch Vig in the controll room and Garage band in the Audi.. Id like to do my best to work with what Ive got to produce the best result I am Cabbable of. Thank you for your time Sorry for the typo's, Im not sleeping much these days. Peter A Lago mauiwavestudio.com

I hear Alan Parsons, Brian Eno and Butch Vig in the controll room and Garage band in the Audi.. funny! Update your profile :cop: personally (and i hope it's not to late) your control room looks a little small, square and short. the 3 S's this forum tends to fire the monitor down the long wall. helps with the bass. I'm confused about the entry? Does that come out from the building or is it still inside

In addition to what Lil said, your control room looks to be not symmetrical, square, and has doors and furniture in the places where acoustic treatment needs to go. For example, you have a door in one rear corner, and a "something" diagonally across the other corner, but those corners are the best locations for large bass traps, which you will need. It also seems like your mix position is at the 50% point of the room, in all dimensions, which is theoretically the worst possible place for it. I noticed that you have your speaker axes intersecting at 90 degrees,too. Is there any reason for that, other than the very short, square shape of the room? What ratio is your room based on? My suggestion would be to make the room longer (from front to back), make it fit a known good ratio, move the furniture around to make it symmetrical, move the doors around to leave space for the bass trapping and other acoustic treatment that you will need, Finally, you only seem to have a single leaf around your control room. Maybe that's just a rough plan that you have there, and you are not showing both leaves, but you do need massive, fully decoupled, two-leaf MSM walls around that CR. - Stuart -

15 x 20 is all the layout of the building will allow.. The place is sort of in the shape of a "T" the entry door is at the bottom of the schematic and as you walk in you are facing the engineer at the board you then go left for the rehersal studio, or right for the recording studio. Its not an Ideal layout but it allows for a rehersal studio and line of sight with the drummers in both locations at the ends of the space. the 45 degree walls have windows in them allowing for line of sight to the vocal booth. The furniture is movable bass traps will most likely be an issue as the door to the CR is in the only place it can be without sacrificing the ability to see the drummer. Yes those are single walls that will get a float wall infront of them packed with ridgid foam, R-13, and alternating studs with a dual layer 5/8 drywall shell covered in a gypsum acoustic tile. and Im afraid thats all the material I have money for at the moment as I have no partners and Im funding the project personally with what little extra money that I have left above my cost of living and supplementing with Credit cards that are towards their limit. Yeah, I know.,. Im a sorry case.. dont get me started.. Im just trying to make the best out of what I have. and I am a Man of Means, by no means. Just self sponsored. I will try to provide more pictures so you can have a feel for the space.

Im by no means at all an expert on any of this stuff, but if the doors are a problem why dont you use sliding doors instead of windows. that way you still have line of sight to both drum booths and you solve your problem with the bass traps?!?

Maybe this is going to sound a bit harsh, but it isn't meant to be. More like constructive criticism. I just call things like I see them, and diplomacy is not my strong point, so please don't take this the wrong way! It's intended in the spirit of trying to help you, not trying to bring you down: I'm wondering what exactly your question is, and why you are asking for advice here at all. You say that you want advice on your layout, but you also say that the framing is already up! That doesn't make much sense, unless that means you really are prepared to take that framing down again, and move it to more optimal location, and re-build it the right way? Or is that not the case? If you are not prepared to re-do your framing correctly, then why are you asking for advice? You also say that your mixes from your previous studio did not translate well, and that, above all, you want to fix that with this studio. However, at the same time you don't seem to be interested in doing what is necessary to the design of the new studio to make that happen. As it is now, my guess would be that your mixes from the new studio will translate equally badly, maybe worse, and the inside of your car will see many, many future visits... Folks here have pointed out what you should do to fix that, but your response is basically that you are not prepared to change anything, because things are the way they are. To summarize: your speakers are firing across the short axis of the room, instead of down the long axis, your mix position is in the worst conceivable location (right in the center of every possible null for every possible mode in the room), your room is not symmetrical, your room is not designed around a known good ratio, you have no provision for bass trapping in the four best positions, your speaker axes intersect at 90° instead of 60, you don't have plans for proper decoupled two-leaf MSM walls for your rooms, and you are talking about floating three-leaf walls and using other construction techniques that are not usually recommended by the experts here. I don't see any provision for HVAC either. Unless you fix at least some of that, your mixes are going to be no better here than in your previous studio, and probably even worse. You also seem to be far more concerned about sight lines than about good acoustics. Good sight lines won't help at all to make your mixes translate any better. Good room acoustics most definitely will.

I just need what I hear in the Controll room to reproduce itself everywhere else..

In order to do that, you need a fully isolated control room that is symmetrical, longer than it is wide, based on a good ratio, provides for excellent bass trapping, correct speaker positioning, correct mix position, and is treated for totally neutral, uncolored acoustics with a reflection free zone around the mix position. Anything less will not give you what you are hoping to get, which is good mixes that translate well. There are many ways that the above can be accomplished by simply re-designing the studio, knocking down the frames you already built, and re-building them correctly, in the optimum locations. The basic question is really whether or not you are willing to do that. - Stuart -

Dont worry Im not taking offence to anything your saying. and I understand the format for the CR you are describing is the best senario for sound, and I agree with you. but have you looked at the schematic? the opening, my one and only opening is smack dab in the middle of a 90 foot run the building I am renting has this problem first and foremost. you open the front door and your in a 10w x 15L hallway that openes up to a 90X16 space this space is at the back of other buisnesesswhich face forward. I am behind them. so the layout is finite. the depth of the CR is dictated by the width of the two 36" Doors leading left and right into the two studios. I wish I could make the room deeper but I would be building the controll room right into the entry way blocking the only access to anf from the outside. the only other thing I could to would be to build the CR right into the other studio which means no practice studio. Give me at least the benifit of the doubt that I have done my home work on all possible configurations and looked into other places to rent so I could build the studio into a format other than what it is. Trust that I have Absolutly maximized the SqFt of the controll room given the building I am working with and its foot print cannot be made any differently than the way it is. If I had a large wherehouse and not just two intersecting hallways I woud not have come up with this design on my own, its a nightmare. which is why I am hoping for tips and ideas on how to best work with What I have. The furniture is movable, bass traps will be going into the corners and that includes the door which is why it swings into the room I can buildthe basstrap right on to the door itself and modify the door handle to be reached at the edge of the bass trap. The point is I cant knock out a load bearing concrete wall behind the mix position into a part of the building Im not renting. I cant extend the front of the controll room into the entry way cutting off both studios. So this is what it is. and I know its not perfict. I am only seeking help making it be the best that it can be given that we know the room dimensions are not ideal and theirs no other way to build it and still facilitate two studios and fire code, you have a copy of the layout. show me how you would configure it to acommodate a two studio 1 CR set up in the same space.

What I would do is to forget all about trying to have direct sight lines into the practice space, and concentrate my attention on getting good acoustics for the CR instead. To do that I would rotate the CR 90° so that it faces the live room, and install a cheap video camera and monitor for covering the practice space. That would allow me to make the room longer than it is wide, and to re-shape it to match a known good ratio. It would also be bigger in terms of dimensions), which is good. That would also allow me to get the mix position out of that huge disgusting dead null in the middle of the room, and put it somewhere around the 38% mark, where it belongs, as well as to get rid of the 45 degree front angles that are eating up the space for the front speaker soffits / bass traps, and also to get rid of the glass in those angled walls that is causing terrible reflections at the first reflection points (not to mention eating an enormous hole out of the budget too!). I'd leave just one smaller window in the center front panel, directly facing the live room. Doing all of the above would give me a roughly rectangular shaped room, oriented sideways across the page, where the dimensions of the rectangle match one of Sepmeyer's or Louden's good ratios. That would be my starting point. I would then design a proper 2-leaf MSM wall and ceiling for the CR, based on that rectangle, but splaying the side walls by 6 degrees each, and sloping the ceiling up from front to back at 12 degrees. I'd design the speaker soffits (or just the front wall, if I decide not to have soffits) to have the speaker axes intersect at 60 degrees, instead of 90 which tightens the sweet spot considerably. I'd put a pair of back-to-back sliding glass doors in the side wall that faces the entrance, and that would be the main entrance to the CR. I'd also either put a pair of back-to-back doors out of the center rear of the CR into the practice room, or forget that door altogether to save lots of money, and just go out through the sliding glass doors into the entrance area, and from there through the double back-to-back doors into the LR or practice area. Either way that would free up both rear corners of the CR for bass trapping. I'd then think about where to install the HVAC system and ducts, as well as the special technical power, wiring and switches for the lighting, and also routing for the mic, line, and other low voltage cables. I'd also think about treatment for my first reflection points at this stage, and probably other basic treatment for the room. That's what I would do, it if were my room. That would at least give me a fighting chance of my CR being a successful room where I actually could mix well and expect the mix to translate well. If you post your detailed accurate SketchUp model of your rooms, then I'd be happy to show you what I have in mind. - Stuart -

That looks like a great space to work with. I would like to point out that being able to do a voiceover session while a band is practicing in the next room requires some considerable isolation, and therefore considerable $. I'm not really sure what your question is so I'm going to tell you what I would do if it were my place. I would build a large, comfortable, excellent sounding control room on one side of the space. It would be a freestanding, room-in-room structure. I would build a single leaf, floor to ceiling wall between the control room structure and the rest of the space. I would treat the rest of the space for flutter echo. Add some electrical circuits with an isolated ground. Add lighting. Paint. Done. I would expect that to cost me around $10,000-$15,000 for materials.

stuntbutt wrote:

That looks like a great space to work with. I would like to point out that being able to do a voiceover session while a band is practicing in the next room requires some considerable isolation, and therefore considerable $.

Never planned on recording while the rehearsal side was going..its just to keep people out of my personal gear and supplement the rent. I understand "In a perfect world" scenarios where I can afford to build my CR in the other half of the studio with a 15K budget. but heres where the :horse: becomes a part of the pavement.. Maui has 80K full time residents and less than 1/2 of 1% play music professionally. Even fewer have money to spend on recordings. their are 7 recording studios active on Maui Not including Bob Rock's Haiku house recording studio where Metallica recorded their "Black" album and the Secret SONY studio built for high end clientele. Not ONE place on the island offers REHERSAL SPACE for bands. Commercial space on this island averages $4.50 per SqFt. + Cam fees, every where else is residential & you get the cops called on you any time of day if you have a drum set going. Truthfully, We don’t have enough of a population here to support a stand alone recording studio in a Commercial property where drummers can play till 4AM. (so why am I doing it?.. I know! Save it! Ill get to that!) EVERY RECORDING STUDIO ON MAUI IS A HOME STUDIO because commercial property is just too expensive and their aren’t enough people to record here to pay the rent on recordings alone. thats just our demographics. I even own a Delivery Truck and a PA capable of handling a crowd of about 800 which I rent out allong with myself to buffer the cost of the studio, work as a stagehand whenever large enough acts come to town, Fix Computer's, and Remodel businesses and homes as a G.C. just to afford this... Surviving here is all about diversification. I know, Ive been here a Decade!.... back in Vegas LA and Seattle.. Specialization THE only way I can have a recording studio here is to offer that much needed rehearsal space for bands on days that Im not recording to make the most building utilization possible so I don’t collapse under the cost of RENT. The Walls are up and I cant afford to move them. I cant afford the space, I cant afford the time, I cant afford the materials. The A/C has already been installed. the glass is in. My credit cards are Maxed out. It is what it is. Which is why Im HERE asking how to make the best of it. that room. what method can I use to mitigate just "some" of its short comings given its size and placement are mandatory to secure my studio backline. and supplement my rent by providing the only available rehearsal studio on the island. Im not being stubborn because I have any amount of PRIDE involved. I would hope you would have just a few ideas on how I might make THAT space just Marginally better. I made a promise to my son, I cant keep it if I’ve got a Bad Ass studio that closed because I couldn’t do enough business to pay the rent because we only have a handful of working bands on the island.. Badly needed Rehearsal space will pay 2/3 of the rent. the placment of the front wall of the CR was dictated by the Width of the Acess Doors to both studios. I cant have the CR to be the path to the outside Kihei is WAY to Dusy (were down wind of Cane Fields) the risk of damage to the board and other outboard gear is too great to have musicians carrying drumsets thru it as a way to get to the other studio. I like your Idea about putting the back wall on a 6 degree angle and also the cealing at 12 degrees. thats good stuff! I am planning bass traps for both corners of the real of the room infact my Door was part of that plan. Im going to make a "door knob extender" and turn the Door itself into a wedge. somehow... anyway, its nearing 6am and I have'nt slept yet. thanks for the advice.

Peter Lago wrote:

stuntbutt wrote:

That looks like a great space to work with. I would like to point out that being able to do a voiceover session while a band is practicing in the next room requires some considerable isolation, and therefore considerable $.

Never planned on recording while the rehearsal side was going..its just to keep people out of my personal gear and supplement the rent.

Sorry about that. I confused thread/builds.

The Walls are up and I cant afford to move them. I cant afford the space, I cant afford the time, I cant afford the materials. The A/C has already been installed. the glass is in. My credit cards are Maxed out.

That's what I feared. You came here too late, after some major irreversible decisions were made. Unfortunately, the laws of physics are also major and irreversible, too! :) They wont go away, or make an exception for your studio just because it is too late to go back. Sound waves will act, in your studio, in exactly the same way they act in all other places in the universe, and that is the problem. You cannot wish away the laws of physics. It would be great if we could, 'cause there are quite a few wishes that I'd like to impose on them! But unfortunately it doesn't work like that. So, the bottom line is that your question about what we think of the layout is a moot point, because there is nothing at all about the layout that can be changed. Or rather, it could be changed but you are unwilling/unable to change it (even though it wouldn't take a lot of time, and need not cost you much money): So basically, the layout is immutable, and all that can be changed is acoustic treatment and furniture position. Well, based on that, you certainly don't have a lot of options left!

Badly needed Rehearsal space will pay 2/3 of the rent.

Then my first suggestion would be to finish the rehearsal space FIRST, before worrying about the CR or LR! If that is going to be your bread and butter, then it seems logical that all your efforts should go in there. Forget the rest until that is finished.

the placment of the front wall of the CR was dictated by the Width of the Acess Doors to both studios.

Well, yes, but only because you oriented the front wall to face the entrance! If you would have done what I suggested (too late) and rotated the room ninety degrees clockwise, then the front wall of the CR would face the LIVE room, not the entrance. Under that scenario, it would be the left side wall that faces the entrance, which is where you could have used the double glass doors. That would have let you make a longer CR, with a decent ratio. It would also have let you get rid of the angled corners in the front of the CR, which serve no acoustic purpose at all, and in fact interfere with the acoustic treatment of the room. The only reason why the front wall faces the entrance now, is because you designed it that way. And since you say that you cannot move those walls (even though it looks like it should be possible, with a bit of effort), then I guess you are stuck with what you have.

I cant have the CR to be the path to the outside

I don't think anyone suggest that you should! What I suggested is that you just rotate the room 90 degrees clockwise. That does not make the CR a path to the outside. It just turns it sideways, to face the LR. Everything else remains the same. You would still have the entry hall between the rooms. In fact, rotating the room would have given you a LARGER entry hall, not smaller. So I'm not sure why you thought that the CR would have to be the path in and out.

I like your Idea about putting the back wall on a 6 degree angle and also the cealing at 12 degrees. thats good stuff!

Nope. You do NOT want the back wall at a 6 degree angle! You want the side walls splayed by six degrees EACH. Which means that the rooms gets a bit wider from front to back. It starts off slightly narrower at the front (where the speakers are) and gets slightly wider towards the back. This helps to keep first reflections from getting back to the mix position, and also helps to reduce flutter echo, among other things. Ditto the ceiling: It starts out lower over the speakers, and rises slightly towards the rear of the room. Same reasons. The side walls are splayed 6 degrees each, for a total of 12 degrees, and the ceiling is angled 12 degrees all by itself. The above assumes that the speaker acoustic axes intersect at 60 degrees, but that is NOT the case with your room. In your case, you have them intersecting at what seems like 90 degrees, so you'd need to splay your side walls by 9 degrees each, or more, instead of 6 degrees. But you do not want to splay your rear wall! If yo did that, you would mess with the room symmetry, which is very important. The rear wall must remain parallel to the front wall. You can lean it forward or backward as part of the treatment, but you do not want to change the angle otherwise. In any case, you say that all the walls are up already, so the above is all moot. You can't change it. You are stuck with what you have, so there can be no splayed walls or ceiling.

I am planning bass traps for both corners of the real of the room infact my Door was part of that plan.

I don't see how that can be: the door occupies the entire space where the bass trap should go. In such a small room you will need lots of bass trapping: superchunks in both rear corners is the only way to go, to get a start on your bass trapping. In order to be effective, superchunks need to measure 36 inches across the front face (the diagonal face that runs across the corner), and then need to run from floor to ceiling. That places one of them in exactly the same location as where your door is.

Im going to make a "door knob extender" and turn the Door itself into a wedge. somehow...

I can't see how that would work: there is no space for the door to open into! Probably the only solution that you have is to build a suerpchunk on wheels, and just wheel it in and out of the corner every time you open and close the door. What a PITA! Unless you want to move a few studs around, and get the door out of the way...

you get the cops called on you any time of day if you have a drum set going.

So you are going to need some major isolation then? Or are you in an area where the cops don't care about noise? You did say that it was in a "commercial industrial area", so I guess that's why you don't need isolation: your commercial and industrial neighbors don't mind drum sounds, and the musicians that will rent your place to rehearse don't mind the commercial and industrial noise that can be heard inside your rehearsal room?

It is what it is. Which is why Im HERE asking how to make the best of it. that room. what method can I use to mitigate just "some" of its short comings

Once the rehearsal space is finished and making money, I would suggest that your second priority should be the CR. You say that you don't intend to record at the same time as someone is rehearsing, but knowing Murphy as well as I do, I bet that will change. So I would still suggest that you build a proper MSM wall around your CR. It will eat into the space, sure, so build it inside-out. Or alternatively, consider what you already have framed as your "inner-leaf", and build your outer-leaf on the outside of that, so that it eats space out of the live rooms, not the CR. But whatever you do with the walls, you really do need to need to get your mix position away from the 50% mark. Theoretically, it should go at the the 38% mark (38% of the distance from the front wall to the back wall), or somewhere in that region. Never at 50%. Every single mode has a null at the center of the room, as does every single second-order harmonic of a mode. It's the worst possible place to put your head while trying to do a mix. Your EQ will be all over the place, and your mixes will translate terribly to the outside world. Move your console closer to the front wall, or get a smaller console, or cut a hole in the wall, or move the wall, but do SOMETHING to get your head out of that null. that will be one of the major issues that prevents you from doing a usable mix. If you do nothing else, then at least do that. Next: Do nothing with the floor. Just leave it as plain old flat cement for now. That will be your final avenue of treatment, if the room still ends up too live after doing everything else. If you absolutely HAVE to do something to it, then just lay laminate flooring on it directly. But leave it hard and reflective for now. Next: Measure the response of the room, as a baseline to compare against later, and also to see what special treatment you might need. Measure it accurately, with something like ETF, and keep careful records of exactly where and how you took each measurement, so you can repeat the final measurements using the exact same locations and methods. Next: install copious amounts of bass trapping. The room is short and fat, nearly square, and small. It will need voluminous bass trapping in as many corners as you possibly can. There are twelve corners in a normal room, but you already eliminated two of the best ones by chopping off those strange diagonal shapes at the front of the room, so you are down to ten possibilities. Your door kills another one, so you are down to 9. The sofa and console take up the front and back floor-wall corners, leaving you with 7. The rectangle "thing" (keyboard?) opposite the door seems to be taking up another one, so you are down to just six possible bass trap locations. :shock: So your bass traps will have to be HUGE! All that you have are the four ceiling-wall corners, the right rear corner, and the floor-wall corner next to the door. That really isn't much space. Make them even BIGGER than huge! I reckon you might need to do your entire ceiling as a bass trap, and include the ceiling-wall corners as angled additions to that. If you build your ceiling inside-out, then you can do that easily, and you wont' waste any headroom. Next: Install good absorption at your first reflection points. You seem to have glass at some of your first reflection points, so this is going to be a major problem. If you can't get rid of the glass, or move it to a better location, then just hang absorbers in front of it. Either way, it kind of defeats the purpose of the glass, and its a shame that you seem to have wasted money by putting in thick expensive laminate glass at your first reflection points, only to cover it up again with the treatment that absolutely must go in that location if you hope to get a decent stereo image. But you say that you can't change it now, so you will just have to cover the glass with the absorbers, and do without the incorrectly positioned sight lines. You can probably figure out a way to hang them from above the frame, or maybe put them on stands. Next: place absorption behind your speakers, on the front walls and the strange angled walls. It would have been better to build soffits instead of those angled walls, so unless you are willing to convert them into soffits (which would be relatively easy and cheap), then you are stuck with having your speakers right up against them, so just slap some nice large, thick absorption on them, right behind the speakers. It might help a bit. Next: Place absorption on your rear wall, above the couch, at least four inches deep: You do not want reflections from your speakers coming back at you from that wall, and muddying up the direct sound. Next: Measure the response of the room, to see what other treatment you will need. The final treatment will depend on those measurements. That's about all you can do, that I can see. Maybe someone else has other suggestions. What I'm suggesting here might help a bit to mitigate the problems with your room, but I'm not hopeful that you will be able to produce world-class mixes in there that translate flawlessly. You might get lucky, but the chances aren't good, I'm afraid. - Stuart -

"you do NOT want the back wall at a 6 degree angle!"

" But you do not want to splay your rear wall! If yo did that, you would mess with the room symmetry, which is very important. The rear wall must remain parallel to the front wall. You can lean it forward or backward as part of the treatment, but you do not want to change the angle otherwise."

I was thinking of incorperating an 8' radial diffuser for the back wall.(just a 4X8 sheet of CDX with a bend to it and R13 packed in behind it) among having absorptive material installed around it from floor to ceiling. Given the short depth of the room, should I be making my back wall "Dead Dead" or Dead with some sort of low band breakup pattern incorperated? additionally the entry door was drawn opening in the wrong direction, (my bad) the one installed is a LH inswing to the CR so my hope was to build bass traps in both rear corners of the CR including a floor to ceiling two peice that would run the height of the door and then connected to the wall continue at the same angle to the cealing. at a width of about 47 inches, packed with R13 RMax 3' rigid foam with 2" 3" and 4" slots cut to a random pattern behind a cloth covering. the furniture is totally moveable and that thing in the back corner opposet the door on the back wall was just a shelf and mini fridge, also completely movable, I was just drawing, and got carried away with ammenities.

"The above assumes that the speaker acoustic axes intersect at 60 degrees, but that is NOT the case with your room. In your case, you have them intersecting at what seems like 90 degrees, so you'd need to splay your side walls by 9 degrees each, or more, instead of 6 degrees."

that 90 degree angle will be corrected to 60. I have the owens corning 703 peices that will just pop into the window frame of those two 45 degree windows. I have Lots and Lots of commercial grade carpet some donated some bought. (all dark grey, at least its consistant.) I was thinking of using it on some of the walls and floors. You had mentioned concrete then glue lam. should I not carpet the floors? that is a question I have that I have not found a consistant awnser to in my search around the net. opinions seem to be divided and of course room size, intended purpose, and acoustic treatments are all factors that rarely get much indepth attention within the articles, it seems that they dont vert often go into specifics (not on this site, just in general when I was looking for information)

"So you are going to need some major isolation then? Or are you in an area where the cops don't care about noise? You did say that it was in a "commercial industrial area", so I guess that's why you don't need isolation: your commercial and industrial neighbors don't mind drum sounds, and the musicians that will rent your place to rehearse don't mind the commercial and industrial noise that can be heard inside your rehearsal room?"

The Area is Zoned A1 which means all noise levels all hours. Hours of operation will be from 5pm on, when the area turns into a ghost town (maui is Very 9 to 5). all ajacent units to ours are in front of us very small and empty after 5pm. they also have the added benifit of being our 10' buffer from noises outside as they make up the outside wall and our back wall and cealing are part of a load bearing Concrete structure that is 4 storys tall and full of storage units. the storage units are "in" the concrete shell of the building that is shaped like a giant square within a square. A pocket facing out away from the building was created to give a commercial storefront to the building. this concrete pocket was 250' by 30' which was divided into little 10'X30' shops. A Previous manager decided to wait till the units became empty, then cut in behind them and make a hallway spanning 9 of the origional 10x30 units cutting them in half, he then walled off the front spaces turning them into 10X10 mini whatevers that were not to code and they soon became storage units, with one or two of the units actually being occupied by small buisness owners who just needed an office away from home. My find was the 16'X90' area behind all those 10x10s, sorrounded by concrete, tucked away in a quiet corner of the complex. So, isolation is to keep the random Harley, or big truck from bleading into a recording is 70% their allready I just have to wait till 5pm for it to become dead quiet and chance it or come up with what Im doing now, which is to build an extra double wall against all of the 10X10's not only for fire code, but for more noise isolation. Regarding the back wall what materials do you reccomend to get that 4" of absorbtion. Thanks again for your time and advice Stuart. Peter

I was thinking of incorperating an 8' radial diffuser for the back wall.(just a 4X8 sheet of CDX with a bend to it and R13 packed in behind it) among having absorptive material installed around it from floor to ceiling. Given the short depth of the room, should I be making my back wall "Dead Dead" or Dead with some sort of low band breakup pattern incorperated?

In such a small room, you probably don't want a diffuser at all: Experts here will tell you that you need at least 6 meters or so between a diffuser and your head in order to avoid "lobing". A panel diffuser doesn't really exhibit lobing (like a skyline would, for example), but in a small room any kind of large flat reflective surface is probably not a good idea anyway, if you can avoid it. I think I'd rather use the space for absorption, or maybe for some of John's great slot resonators, or maybe a combination. But you also don't it entirely dead. You want the bass traps to totally throttle the low end, but not kill the top end. In order to not absorb too much of the highs, one common recommendation here is to wrap your mineral wool or fiberglass in plastic. That will keep the highs in the room while still absorbing the lows. Worst case, you could even put thin laminate in front of the wool, for the same purpose, but then you have the danger that it might act as a panel trap, which you probably don't want. But you should only do that once your room is finished, and tested. The plots from your testing (and your ears!) will tell you if you need to return some highs to the room or not. So make it easy to be able to get access to your wool even after the room is finished, so you can wrap some of it in plastic, if needed.

the one installed is a LH inswing to the CR so my hope was to build bass traps in both rear corners of the CR including a floor to ceiling two peice that would run the height of the door and then connected to the wall continue at the same angle to the cealing. at a width of about 47 inches, packed with R13 RMax 3' rigid foam with 2" 3" and 4" slots cut to a random pattern behind a cloth covering.

I'm trying to get the picture of what you have in mind. Maybe you could do a quick 3D SketchUp model of it, to get an idea of how it would look? That would certainly help! Pictures are better than words for describing things like that, and 3D models are even better still.

the furniture is totally moveable and that thing in the back corner opposet the door on the back wall was just a shelf and mini fridge, also completely movable, I was just drawing, and got carried away with ammenities.

I'd suggest that you put those somewhere else, like maybe in the entrance hall, both for acoustic purposes, and also because the room is so small to start with that anything additional beyond "spartan" is just clutter and will get in the way. There is also the issue of the heat put out by the fridge, and the noise it makes.... And a shelf will reflect sound around the room in unpredictable ways....

that 90 degree angle will be corrected to 60. I have the owens corning 703 peices that will just pop into the window frame of those two 45 degree windows.

It really wouldn't take much to turn those into proper soffits. Even at the 90 degree angle, mounting your speakers in soffits would make a huge difference to your acoustics, especially in tightening up the low end. And I don't see how you can change the angle to 60 degrees in such a short fat room: If you did that, the mix position would have to go even further back than it is now, towards the rear wall, or the speakers would have to be so close together as to leave you with practically no width to your sounds stage (stereo image). It's a toss-up, but I'd say that you will probably have to live with your 90 degree angle in order to keep your mix position close to 38% with a decent sized sweet spot, and also have decent speaker separation. 90 degree intersection is actually OK, provided that you understand the consequences and are prepared to live with them: I'll be using a 90 degree angle in my room, but I'm doing that knowingly, not by accident. It squashes your sweet spot into an oval shape, instead of circular, so you need to be careful to keep your head in it. As long as you understand the limitations and don't mined working around them.

I have Lots and Lots of commercial grade carpet some donated some bought. (all dark grey, at least its consistant.) I was thinking of using it on some of the walls and floors.

That's not a good idea. Commercial carpet is a selective absorber. It absorbs different frequencies in differing amounts, and unless you can identify the exact make and model of carpet, and obtain accurate acoustic absorption coefficient charts for that exact make and model, you'll never know what you are getting. It might absorb frequencies that you need to keep, or not absorb frequencies that you really want to get rid of. Thin carpet absorbs mostly in the very high end, and doesn't touch the mids or lows at all, which is the opposite of what you want. Thick carpet does a bit better in the mid range, but still doesn't get anywhere near the low frequencies that you need to treat in a small room. Carpet and egg crates pretty much belong in the same category: acoustic myths and legends. In reality, and contrary to popular belief, true "acoustic carpet" (just like true "acoustic cloth") ,is designed to be transparent to sound, to NOT affect it, and allow it to pass through without changing anything at all, neither absorbing nor reflecting, refracting, or diffusing. Many people think that "acoustic carpet" must be good at absorbing sound, or good at blocking it. Wrong. It is good at not affecting sound at all! Skip the carpet, and either go for proper manufactured acoustic treatment, or build your treatment yourself, based on the numerous recommendations and examples that you can find all over this forum.

You had mentioned concrete then glue lam. should I not carpet the floors?

No, because you will have to have an absorptive ceiling due to the small size of the room, so you want to keep the floor as live as possible. In general, opposing surfaces should be opposites in treatment, too. Since you must have an absorbent ceiling, they you must also have a reflective floor If you find that the room is still too live after you have done everything else, then scatter around a few thick throw-rugs or something like that on the floor, as your last resort. But if you start out by carpeting, and the room turns out too dead, then it would be very sad to have to tear up good carpet in order to fix it. In any event, as I mentioned before, the acoustic properties of your carpet are most likely unknown (and unknowable), so you have no idea what effect the carpet will have, unless you specifically purchase carpet with known published coefficient charts, and find that the numbers match what you need to do to your room. But you won't know "what you need to do to the room" until right at the end anyway, when most of the treatment is done and you take your final measurements...

that is a question I have that I have not found a consistant awnser to in my search around the net. opinions seem to be divided and of course room size, intended purpose, and acoustic treatments are all factors that rarely get much indepth attention within the articles, it seems that they dont vert often go into specifics

Very true! You'll also find a lot of "opinions" on the internet promoting egg crates, drapes, mattresses, and many other kinds of acoustic myths. Not to mention the garbage promoted by some acoustic snake-oil vendors, such as mail-order acoustic foam, and suchlike. There are more than a few of those around on the internet! My general answer to all of that is: get real numbers. If you cannot find published numbers from reputable acoustic labs, with actual tests done on the product ou are considering, done under controlled conditions, then forget it. Dump it. Forget that "advise", and move on. Only go with real products that have real numbers associated with them. Otherwise you are on your own. It might work, but chances are that it wont. Do you really want to be a guinea pig? In general, you can safely skip over any place that recommends things like carpet, egg crates, drapes, cushions, mattresses, furniture stuffing, and such like as being good, valid acoustic treatment for studios. If you see that, then you know you are reading advise from someone who doesn't have a clue, doesn't understand acoustics, and is mostly likely either trying to sell you some acoustic snake oil, or is just parroting what he heard from his uncle's friend who once knew a guy that was dating the sister of the second cousin of the husband of the lady who swept the floors at Studio XYZ, and that's what she learned.... You get the picture! Listen to advice that comes with solid science and numbers attached, like you will find here. Ignore "advise" that comes from unknown sources and comes without anything to back it up.

I just have to wait till 5pm for it to become dead quiet and chance it or come up with what Im doing now, which is to build an extra double wall against all of the 10X10's not only for fire code, but for more noise isolation.

Once again, a 3d SketchUp model of what you are planning to build would be useful. If you build it wrong, you can actually make matters WORSE, instead of better. For example, building a three leaf wall by mistake, instead of a two leaf, means that your isolation in the low frequencies (such as the rumble of Harley's and trucks, as well as kick drums and bass guitars...) will be WORSE than if you had built it correctly. And if you build a four-leaf wall, it will be worse still. This is not intuitive at all, but is solid, sound, hard scientific fact. If there are already two leaves there, and you build something that adds a third or fourth leaf, then you will REDUCE your isolation, instead of making it better. Most people don't realize that any time you have an air gap with mass on both sides of it, you have a tuned circuit. If you change anything, such as modifying the size of the air gap, or the amount of mass on one or both sides, then you change the resonant frequency of the system. If you add another mass and air gap next to it, the you also change the resonant frequency, and no matter what you do, in that case the resonant frequency will go UP. Meaning that the wall not only becomes transparent to sound at a higher frequency, it also BOOSTS transmission of sound through the wall at the frequency of roughly 0.714 times (reciprocal of the square root of 2) the frequency where it is merely transparent. Simple physics. MSM: Resonant systems. etc. So, building a wall the wrong way in the wrong place can indeed make sound get through BETTER than it would otherwis, since firstly you might drive up the resonant frequency of the existing wall into the normal hearing range, when it was down below that before, and secondly you might actually now be boosting those frequencies, instead of attenuating them... Food for thought. Acoustics is mostly science, but it isn't intuitive at first glance. Things might not react the way you expect them to, but only because your expectations are not based on the underlying principles.

My find was the 16'X90' area behind all those 10x10s, sorrounded by concrete, tucked away in a quiet corner of the complex.

If it is surrounded by a single leaf of thick concrete on all sides, then you probably already have good isolation to the outside. You might not need to do much to that. But you still will need to isolate your rooms form each other, and that needs acoustic design, not guesswork, to get it right.

Regarding the back wall what materials do you reccomend to get that 4" of absorbtion.

Mineral wool or the usual pink fluffy fiberglass insulation are both good. You need something with a density of around 48 kg/m3. Any more and you are wasting your money. Any less and it won't be as effective. Forget things like polystyrene, polyurethane foam, packaging foam, furniture foam, and suchlike. They are closed-cell, which is practically worthless for acoustics. You need open-cell insulation. Unless yo know for a fact that it is open cell, forget it. Looks can be deceiving .... If you can get Owens Corning 703 semi-rigid fiberglass in your area, then you are doing great! That is excellent stuff for acoustic treatment. Another piece of advice: Order a copy of Rod Gervais's book "Home Recording Studio: Build it like the pros". It is the best book on the subject, bar none. Also order a copy of "Master Handbook of Acoustics", by F. Alton Everest. Read and understand both of those, build your studio accordingly, and you are practically guaranteed of success. - Stuart -