requesting help on studiolayout

hello, after intensive browsing this great forum i finaly dare to approach the design. any help and comments are very appreciated. i think my room is a little complicated, i don't exactly know how to design around this column in the middle. this is gonna be a studio for semi-pro use. normally i will not have to record live drums, (i'll get a midi-kit) and if necessary i can arrange with my wife to cope with some hours of noise. but anyway it has to be pretty soundproof because of the adjacent living area you see on the plan and also above the room. a question here: I can’t make a floating floor because of the heater is within the concrete floor. below the place is soil so maybe it’s no real disadvantage. Is this beyond the scope of this forum? – I post it in the construction forum then. when it comes to layout the available space, i would prefer a fairly big control room 'cause i often record myself directly there. a CR and a decent booth where vocals sound good wood be enough. if possible i also want to take advantage of the daylight from the 2 glassdoors and the window. also i will have to air the rooms through them - i don't intend to build in a aircondition-system. (or do you think i will regret??) the outside noise is low, sometimes a lawn mower or playing kids - let's say 90% during daytime it's pretty quiet. i attached a layout i thought will work out, maybe its a bit weird. the second attachment is the empty room in case my design is sh.... -maybe one could sketch a better solution. i have no clue if this whole stuff is to scale (not so good at that...). thanks for reading through my litany and more thanks for your response. dreamer

hi, a quote from knightfly in the construction forum: "If you don't get an answer in a couple of days, please feel free to "bump" your post. " so i subserviently do this now. 8) i know that you guys are really busy and have better things to do than to respond to questions of "acoustically blank people", but if your time (john, knightfly,....) allows, your help would be realy appreciated! thanks a lot. dreamer

Greetings! The design does look pretty complicated, but it looks good. I wasn't going to comment on it because all I have to say is that it looks good. *shrug* As far as floating floors go, if you're not going to have live drums in here too often, you probably don't need to worry about it so much. If you have to turn your guitar amps up to get the right sound once in a while, you might annoy your neighbors, but if you warn them ahead of time it shouldn't be too bad. Depending on where you live, leaving off a heating/AC system may be a mistake. You're not going to want to drop what you're doing every 30 minutes to open the windows and get some air, are you? At very least, you should put a vent system in to change the air, whether it be heated or not. If you have in-floor heating, it may be enough for you to just exchange air with another room that gets fresh air current from outside. Rod Gervais may have more thoughts for you on this one... Good luck! Kase www.minemusic.net

kase, thanks for your comments! i too think that my design is complicated. i just wanted to keep the stereo symmetry as ballanced as possible - i'm not shure if it's worth it. i'm not really happy with my design so if there are better options to divide the room it would be great if somebody could comment on that. the purpose of the two angled glassdoors in front of the CR are to deflect reflections of the surrounds away from the mix-position. in some other thread knightfly said that is important to make an absorbing frontend in a surround-CR so i thought this might work as well and also give me the opportunity to enter the booth. maybe the smaller booth should just be storage and machine-room cause it could happen that a take is disturbed by outside noise. as always every thought on this is appreciated. thanks dreamer

Hey dreamer, Just my 2cents.... I think the room is cool, but my concerns would be this. 1. I would hate to have my session going on behind my back. You have the couch by the window to the tracking room, so what you will get is interaction between friends and band mates, but you will be stuck in front of the room hunched over a console/DAW not in the loop. you wont be able to see body language or facial expressions. And sooo much of capturing what is in an artists heart is in their body language. :D Can you flip the room around and put the couch behind you and you next to the tracking room? Plus by turning around you can make that space that was going to be a booth a big bass trap.... bringing me to my next concern..... 2. I really only see one very small bass trap. Are you traping in the ceiling as well? If not, I would make that booth in the front of the room a closet and bass trap. (Hanging) How tall is the ceiling? You could make the trap the width of the room but in the center only hang your traps down about 3 feet, on the sides go for full length. This will give you a broader absorber plus give you room to make the closet as well. But, If you do all this, it leaves you with only one booth. What are you mainly recording? Can you live with one booth? if not maybe we can come up with some other ideas. John is great at coming up with perfect fit stuff in bizzar spaces. Hope this helps a bit, jai www.themixstudio.com

hey jai, thanks for responding. i'm not shure if i understand what you describe about the booth as a basstrap. btw, i do also plan to build panel-resonators to trapp the bass. my brainwires are burning - the whole day i tried to puzzle out a design. copy and pasted some designs from other threads and played a bit, also tried your suggestion to turn around the wohle thing. my problem is that - if possible - i want to keep the light coming in through the outer glassdoors. and when turning around the design it get's pretty narrow so i get a problem with a surround setup. a question in this concern: do you guys think it's worth it to go for surround in this space??? or is it to small anyway. how big should the CR be to have a decent sound-listening quality. i heard lot's of opinions on this, all are different. i could live with one booth if i gain a better CR. i mainly record popsongs, sometimes a little progressive-rock. the ceiling hight is 2,85m (i think it's 9,35') - but this is the bare cealing (25cm blastered concrete), so i will have to put an additional leaf of double gypsum on i think. i really don't know how to get the best out of the space available. it would be great if john could have a look on it. thanks in advance dreamer

Just to follow suit, i'd definitely rotate the control room 180, and enlarge that booth to your right. You could also segment that area and still have an ISO booth for vocals and possibly another ISO booth for Gtr's. You have a decent sized space to work with. What is the width of the exisitng booth plan to the left from the CR wall to the Door wall?? Is that to the outside world?? As it stands if you did What I suggest you'd have a control room of about 20' Deep which is more than adequete. Not sure about Optimum studio size, i know my tiny room is a serious What I mix is what I get room and the room is relatively flat from 40 to 16k. it interprets darn near perfectly in my humble estimation so the size you have will work well. Bryan Giles

hi bryan, thanks. what about this... (see below) i did a search for your studio-thread and found it. so this is your plan copied into my layout. i changed the rear of the CR to make it a little more spacious. what makes me think is the glassdoor to the right of the desk and the slat-resonator to the left....doesn't that destort the stereo imaging somehow? i know this is a stupid question cause it's reflected away...anyway it makes me think. what about mixing in surround in your room. i mean it's a pretty short radius...how does it sound? how do early reflections from the rear-speakers behave in your room. it seems to me that they have an almost direct reflection-path from the glassdoor and the slats????

Is that to the outside world??

look beside the floorplan....you see where's outside, living area in my house and solid ground (it's in a slope). actually i would prefer to make the CR without the rearwall at all. but i have no idea how to handle room-acoustics then. especially this glassdoor on the left side in the lower corner seems to be a problem. i could live with the one booth to the right of the desk. if anyone has an idea please share your thoughts. thanks. dreamer

Hello John, sorry 'bout Mr Zig. Recently I had to burry one of our cats - almost like a "kid" to me. But already got a new one- a cheeky, fresh little guy called Shanti, jumping on the keyboard while I'm writing all the time - so don't blame me for typos... :? :) I post 2 other plans here, maybe you or the other guys can tell me what you think is the preferable way to go. To the 1. one: The window on in the rearwall would be like a small tunnel in the middle of the trap. To the 2. one: Is it enough to have symmetry around the mixing area and an unsymmetrical room in the rear? What kind of acoustic-treatment in the rear? Repeat the question from my last post here as I had no luck: ....What makes me think is the glassdoor to the right of the desk and the slat-resonator to the left....doesn't that destort the stereo imaging somehow? I know this is a stupid question cause it's reflected away...anyway it makes me think. Thanks a lot. Dreamer

Dreamer - have you tried this layout?? cheers john

Wow...John, thank you for your donated time, I really appreciate what you and all the other guys here do!!! :D That looks great. It's a cool way to devide the space. I definitly consider to do it that way. Without the small booth and make a bigger live room. I could always make the booth later. What is your concern about the second layout from my last post? I like the idea of mixing (and recording) in one bigger room, and I could live with just one booth. I've always heard, that the bigger the CR the better for sound and image. Is this right? But there's still the problem of the rearwall acoustic treatment I don't know how to deal with. Maybe a diffusor on the wall but what about the glassdoor? And what about this "slat-glassdoor-stereoimage" thing I asked above? Is this neglectable? (I know I'm stubborn...just want to learn) If this is not practically orientated please let me know - I'll listen to the experienced folks.... :lol: ...and go with what you've layed out if you think that such a small CR will give me a decent sound. edit: Wouldn't I have the same problems like you told Fieryjack:

Jeff - a 5:1 surround in your room shape doesn't fit too well as I've drawn here. The two rear speakers narrow the spread of the front speakers considerably. I suspect you'll have to compromise the angle and distance of the reaqr speakers to make the front work better.

If so, do you see a way around in my available space. Thanks again. Dreamer

I don't have a problem with your last design - it just creates a very large room which is fine. I was just trying to utilise your space differently. Your 5:1 geometry is OK in your design, fieryjacks room was too narrow to mount rear surrounds correctly. cheers John

John, the more I think about your layout the more attractive it is to me. Just had to let go of old mind-concepts. I assume you think I can get a decent sounding CR, even if it's small, otherwise you wouldn't have layed that out. So let me try to figure out the absorbing part of it. 1. Slat Resonator on the rearwall with 703 in front of it to kill early reflections. 2. Small hangers below the front left-right and the surroundspeakers according to your soffit design. 3. A big cloud of 703 above the mix position. (or would a false ceiling with hangers be a better option? roomheight = 2,85m) 4. A few Panel Traps on the ceiling-sidewall corners if needed. (or would 705 across the corners do the trick?) 5. Absorbtive frontwall with removeable wooden boards to cover it when doing stereo. Would that be sufficient? I have the impression that I would get reflections from the opposite walls (glassdoors) of the surrounds? Am I wrong here? As always thank you so much for your patience! Cheers Dreamer

I'd use the front for bass hanger traps - also the ceiling can also be used for heavy absorption. This is where I'd start from. cheers john