Need Help With "Bonus Room" Studio Design

Hello! Long-time lurker here. I finally registered. This place is clearly a HUGE wealth of knowledge, and I'm hoping those more experienced might be able to offer me some guidance. I'm about to go to closing on a new home, and will be putting a mix room in the bonus room above the garage. The room is approximately 19'W x 22'L x 9'H (including the open staircase up to the room). I have every aspiration of making this a fully-professional mixing environment, despite my somewhat limited budget, so I'm trying to plan as carefully as possible. I've had some fun with SketchUp. It's not really a technical drawing per se, but I think it gives a good idea of where I'm going with things. The dimensions are correct though. http://www.kylemann.com/studio_design/studio.skp About the design, the house is standard wooden construction with sheetrock. Since I'm not tracking in here, I'm not terribly concerned with sound-proofing. Once the electricity situation has been addressed (star-grounding and separate 20 amp circuit to machine room), I intend to add second layers of sheetrock and subfloor with Green Glue. I was planning on doing 2-foot-deep hanging bass traps for the walls, and 4" of Rockwool suspended in the false ceiling. And I figured on RPG's Hemiffusor QRD diffusors on the back wall at the staircase. I'll also have a ton of questions to ask about the soffits, but I have much more reading to do before that. So, any thoughts? Is this looking doable or am I headed in the wrong direction? Would I be better to bisect the entire room with the front soffit-wall, or should I leave that space to the left and right for more trapping, like in the current design? Thanks very much for your help. -Kyle

Hmmm. No responses. Have I forgetten to include some relevant info? Or is my mockup with the Westlake monitors and the Otari tape machine a discouragement to any would-be help? Pretend the Westlakes are JBLs and the console is an old Neotek, and you'll get a better idea of my setup. Oh, and can anyone recommend a good way to mount the fabric-wrapped frames in front of the bass traps? I'd like for them to be mounted tightly, but don't want screws exposed at the edges of the frames. And I was thinking that hanging them on hooks might be a tad too loose (though I suppose being able to get behind them easily might be a nice bonus).

A number of things pop out: 1) Trying to figure out the purpose of the "doorway" in the center soffit panel, and the "arched thing" on the wall behind it? 2) The speaker axes intersect way back in the room, looks like around 70% or maybe 80% of room depth. That should probably be fixed! 3) The "doorway" thingies on the side walls appear to be at the first reflection points. But that should change anyway when #2 above is fixed, so it shouldn't be an issue. 4) Why does the room widen out suddenly at the rear, at such a large angle? Not sure, but that doesn't look like a good idea, acoustically. 5) It doesn't look like you have anywhere near enough space between the mix position and the rear wall for a diffuser to be of any use. The room is too small for good diffusion anyway, according to they way some folks see diffusion. 6) "2-foot-deep hanging bass traps for the walls"? Do you REALLY need that much trapping in the low end? What kind of problems do you anticipate that you think you'll need that much tuned trapping at that frequency? 7) The speaker soffits don't seem to have much solid area at all below the speakers: Is that just an optical illusion, or do the soffits really end just a couple of inches below the speaker? That's the things I noticed, anyway. FWIW. - Stuart -

First off, xSpace- Thank you. I had wondered about employing a system like this, but never knew the name for it. Soundman2020, I hugely appreciate your input. Thank you. I work every day in studios and I can see how some things are implemented, but it's difficult to get any perspective on why things were done a certain way. I really just have no experience designing rooms. Anyway, to address some of the issues you mentioned; I think the images I uploaded did not give a clear picture of the space, so I've made some that should show it better. The doorway at the front of the room goes to the machine room. I have amps and computers and power supplies that I would definitely like to keep out of the way, and cut down on their noise. The reason for the placement is that one, it seemed like unused space, and two, I like the idea of keeping cable runs as short as possible (especially considering that my console's connections are mostly unbalanced). The arched thing is a window at the front of the house, and the glass door is to let in whatever kind of natural light I can get. Regarding the placement of the soffit-mounted speakers; I do most of my listening on my nearfields, and reference on a pair of MixCubes. The Big monitors exist for checking low end, blowing-back client's hair, and just general fun listening. So I thought they should be aimed with consideration for both the mix position AND the couch - hence the intersection behind the console almost exactly between the two. Is this a terrible idea? Oh, and yes, I know they are d'appolitos and should be mounted vertically, but this was just a mock up - They will be JBL 4412s. The "doorways" at the sides of the rooms are cutouts in the bass traps for outboard racks to slide back into when I need more space for say, multiple clients or synths. I *ahem* "borrowed" this idea from East Iris Studios here in Nashville (a Tom Hidley room). The room widens at the rear because the room opens up to a staircase, and people need to be able to get down the stairs. I think the new pictures give a better perspective of this. There is about 12' between the mix position and the back wall (and about 8' to the half-wall). The back of Omnisound's ICON room is a little closer than that, and they use RPG Omniffusors on the back wall (and that room sounds pretty good). The side bass traps ARE pretty deep, but if I have the room, will it hurt? The rooms that I love seem to have a good deal of bass trapping all around, and considering that I only have the traps on the walls, and the walls are not very high due to the sloped ceiling, I should utilize whatever space I can. Besides, the racks are already taking up wall space, I may as well take advantage of that. BTW, what affect will the extra space provided by the staircase have? The soffits were based on the design John posted in another thread (http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/download/file.php?id=69). Since it's an upstairs room, I can't build the soffits out of cinderblock, so I'll need to approach it with a lighter-weight ported design. And in John's design, it has wood above, and then fabric below for porting. -Kyle

Well, the house is mine. Glad to be over with that process. I took some pictures of the room with my phone tonight. They're not great, but they show some details my Sketchup renderings did not. I've also included a side-view of the room. In case it's important, the false ceiling rises at a 9º angle. First order of business is to pull up carpet and lay down a second layer of subflooring with Green Glue, and then a second layer of drywall. Can anyone offer any more input into why this room might or might not work? I'm also wondering about the back wall. The area behind the room is attic, and I could potentially build a booth there. Is it possible to have a glass back wall if A, it's more than 12' from the listening position, and/or B the glass is angled enough (up or down?) so as to deflect sound away from the listening position? Thanks again for all your help. Kyle

Kyle - check out this thread - similar shaped room with window. http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 11&t=13069