2nd floor project studio layout preparation

Started by haarbol on 12 June 2009. 1 reply, 2009–2010.

Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 13162.

Hi all, I just bought my first house (yay) in Almere, the Netherlands, and i would like some advise on some simple studio construction. First of all, it is similar to this house (the one on the right): http://deverwondering.nieuwbouwcentraal.nl/src/showphoto.php?photo_id=239 I want to build a freelance project studio someday but because i just bought this house, i can only do a few things right now: sketching out and building the walls, basically. A constructor will do that fortunately, i have two left hands. The room i want to use is situated on the top floor (attic) of my house, has concrete floor and the house is still being build atm so it will be brand new. The house that joins mine on the left has no attic, the house on the right will have one. My roof is curved. Here are some pics: side
External image, not preserved — original: http://i42.tinypic.com/2i8w4ra.jpg
attic
External image, not preserved — original: http://i42.tinypic.com/sb25bp.jpg
All measures are in meters, millimeters (so the room is basically 5m10cm by 10m98cm). Because its a lot harder to build walls after the floor is finished, i would like to do that already in this stage. Which, of course, means i have to have a layout that is suitable for monitoring and mixing (larger room) and a foley/vocal booth for foley recordings, some acoustic guitar recordings and voices (smaller room). I have made a sketchy layout for what i have in mind, could you guys please give me advice by answering these questions? First of all, i made a very rough sketch of where i think the walls should be:
External image, not preserved — original: http://i44.tinypic.com/169j2f5.jpg
the upper part will be used as a storage room. Orange = doors, blue = window The wall with the window would be actually two seperate walls to minimize contact bleed, with two windows probably. Is that the best way to do this? Building a booth from scratch like the one found in the links section on this forum would probably be better - but i hope to get reasonable results with just placing these walls and the optimize it with rockwool and / or auralex panels from the inside. Is that naive? It is in a reasonably quiet neighbourhood and it's a new house - or will that get back to me with a vengeance? Second question - is the booth big enough for the purpose i want to use it for? Does it make sense to build an extra wall on the left side, basically building a cube of walls, maybe filled with rockwood, maybe with little holes in the wall to act as an extra absorber maybe? What kind of effect with the curved roof have (theoretically) on the sound of the room? And the metal bars that are also visible in that same drawing (dotted lines - 'spant' in the drawing)? I think it should be nothing i can't fix with absorbing material, but i'm no acoustic expert :) Any advice about anything that looks supsicious is of course welcome as well. Thanks and please let me know if I missed something. Lucas.
We build the walls pretty much according to the pictures (although the wall in the back (parallel to the one with the window in it) is just before the second iron bars, for obvious reasons). I just painted some walls today and made a few pictures.
External image, not preserved — original: http://i41.tinypic.com/ezpblw.jpg
The wall adjecent to my mixing room - two walls with isolation material between them, and two windows slightly tilted behind each other.
External image, not preserved — original: http://i42.tinypic.com/1zqpk3q.jpg
The wall in the back, just in front of a second iron bar (as seen in the previous picture) The room is roughly 2 meters (width) x 3 meters (depth) and as you can see has some interesting problems i need to solve, mainly the huge iron bars. I did some testing and the bars can be heard resonating in specific circumstances. I am not planning to record very loud sounds in there, mainly sound design foley, acoustical guitar and some voices, but it will still end up on some of my recordings. Basically, i was hoping some of you guys could give me some pointers on how to start treating this room. Especially: what would be the best way to cover up the iron bars and evening out the numerous extra corners they cause? I thought about creating a lowered ceiling - either just below the iron bar on the ceiling, parallel to the old ceiling, or maybe create a ceiling that starts just under my original ceiling and connects the other end approximately at the white 'bar' you can see on the long side of the wall (second picture on the left: in the middel of the white 'wall'), so slightly tilted. Is it wise to build something around the iron pillars, like a box filled with rockwool, or to just build a construction against the long wall parallel to the wall as you see it now - and fill that up? Any suggestions on what i should do with that nasty corner on the right of my window? I could make something there as well, a construction filled with rockwool, but it's such a small corner, approx at the same distance from the window where a mic would usually stand, so i would assume that would affect the room as well...