STUDIO DIY - FIRST TIME - can't soffit mount, what now?

Hello everyone, I am from Europe and just moved into a new house where I have a nice 45m2 space reserved for 5x6m control room with a smaller 3x4m recording room (not for drums). I have a dilemma now. Should I start learning the science of studio DIY and design the project myself or would it be better to get someone who is expert already to take care of the studio planning for me? IMHO, important information at this point would be - I am not making a highly commercial studio, but would like to have studio acoustic results as found in most medium sized commercial studios around the world. Why? Cause I am on a low budget. House construction eat 99% of the money we had. Does it make sense? :D It doesn't hurt to ask :) Is anyone here willing to help me with the project (detailed drawings) for free or for a smaller fee? I just can't afford to pay full price for a professional studio designer although I would love to :(

Should I start learning the science of studio DIY and design the project myself or would it be better to get someone who is expert already to take care of the studio planning for me?

Either way will work, and hiring a recognized expert will guarantee that it is done right, . . . but you also say:

Cause I am on a low budget.

So that probably rules out hiring an expert! It looks like you'll hace to learn all this stuff yourself. :) But the good thing is that it is a fun., fascinating subject, that ALL you need to know is right here on this forum, and if you take your time, reading over the forum several hours per day for several months, and also buying and reading Rod's book ("Home Recording Studio: Build it like the Pros") and the "Master Handbook of Acoustics", then you should be fine, and you'll understand sound and acoustics much better than 99% of recording engineers I've ever met! - Stuart -

Also the problem is I don't have months of free time to learn all tricks ... don't laugh please :? I think I have just made a reasonable deal (in rates) with a local sound engineer (my friend) who knows how to design a studio :D I still have some questions which I would like to ask here to get a second opinion. Where to place the monitors, inside the wall or on the stands? I have Twin 6Be Focals as main monitors, extra Dynaudio BM6A MKII and small Avantones. I am leaning towards to have all 3 pairs mounted inside the wall. Does it make sense to do this?

I think I have just made a reasonable deal (in rates) with a local sound engineer (my friend) who knows how to design a studio

So how many studios has your friend already BUILT (not designed, but actually BUILT) that are operating highly successfully, and with great sound?

I would like to ask here to get a second opinion.

I'm curious as to why you would need advice from this forum on whether to soffit mount your monitors, if you already have such an expert. How come he can't tell you whether it is better to soffit mount your main monitors or not, when a simple thing like that is pretty basic?

Is anyone here willing to help me with the project (detailed drawings) for free or for a smaller fee?

I honestly don't understand what you are saying here, since you are contradicting yourself: You say that you cannot afford professional advice, but then you say you have already hired and are paying for professional advice. But then you say that you don't trust that professional advice (that you are paying for), and have to ask us for a second opinion (even though you are not paying us for it). The only conclusion I can reach is that you don't have any confidence at all in the "expert" that you hired (even though you are paying him) and would prefer to get some RELIABLE advice from this forum, which you do trust, even though you are NOT paying for it! Curious... Then you say you want to hire someone ELSE, for money, to ALSO help design your studio!!!! You also ask if you can actually learn it all yourself, in which case you won't need the advice of the guy that you already hired, or the advice of the guy that you still want to hire here in order to help the guy you already hired that you don't trust very much... And finally when someone says that yes, you can learn it yourself, you say that you actually can't do that, because you don't have enough time. Building a studio on a limited budget is going to take you months in any case, maybe years. So how is it possible that you don't have time to do it? Strange situation.... Sorry, but I don't get it. It seems to me that you are very, very, very nervous about building your studio, that you have no confidence at all in the guy you already hired to do it, that you aren't even sure if ANOTHER guy to help the first guy will be enough, and that you might have to learn it all yourself anyway, so that you can check on the other two guys (that you are planning to pay), to make sure they are doing it right! Hmmmmm... Maybe you should re-think this plan. It doesn't sound like a good way of building a studio at all. - Stuart - PS. But seeing you asked: Yes, by all means your main speakers should be soffit mounted. As everyone here knows (even folks like me, who are not paid experts), soffit-mounting your mains forces them to radiate into half space, with the soffits acting as infinite baffles. That greatly increases the bass response of the speakers (by 6dB), tightens up the bass in general, improves stereo imaging, eliminates comb filtering off the front wall, and has several other benefits too. You definitely should soffit mount them, if the speakers themselves can be mounted like that. And provided that you do it correctly, of course, with the speakers at the correct height, and the correct geometry for the speaker angles and the mix position, at the correct position in the room, with correct splaying of the walls and ceiling, with correct treatment of the first reflection points, correct bass trapping, correct room acoustics, and correct adjustment of the speaker response. But since you already hired an expert, I guess he already told you all about this, and what all those "correct" things are...

Yeah, you are correct, I am very very nervous about this project so it sounds all very stupid, doesn't it :oops: I am in a very stressful situation, have to make the studio ready in a few months to the degree so we can start tracking with the band. Fine tuning can be done later before it's time to mix. I am used to work in much less than perfect conditions but still getting great results. So money is limited but it's still doable to some degree I think/hope. I thought I could get away without spending extra $$$$ for the project. I have a friend in Australia who is willing to guide me through the build but with slightly different solutions, monitors on the stands and so on, cause it's easier to build it without being present in the studio scene. My other friend here is in a recording/mixing business for more than 20 years. Has lots of knowledge. He is helping people here with studio construction. It's not that I don't trust the man. I am sure he knows a lot but I still like to hear from others. For example he said the same thing about the soffit mounting as you did. To me this was always the best sounding plan for mounting the monitors. The only doubt was, does size matter? Should smaller monitors be mounted on the stands or it doesn't matter? My main monitors are not that big really... the other speakers are even smaller. I would prefer to0 have them all soffit mounted aesthetic wise, but does it make sense sound wise? But you already answered this question so i will go with soffit mounting option. Thanks!

Reading your posts, the problem is a lack of confidence IN ANYONE. You mentioned a time restriction in therms of wanting to track in a couple of months. What is the time restriction on your researching to gain confidence in what you are told and at least one person so that you will not be constantly second guessing? My suggestion, in addition to what Stuart has already written, is that the easiest to do for you is spend spend several hours and read the last 100 or posts in the Studio Construction and Studio Design forums. This will give you a taste for what is involved in good and great studio building, and an appreciation for some of the great people here who help. Stuart is one of great people. Read and absorb my tagline. Good luck! Honestly, Andre

Thanks! Maybe I sounded wrong but I do have great faith in all what is said here on the forum. Otherwise I would not be asking you for help :thu: Will do my best and try to grasp as much as possible along the building process. :wink:

I wrote to manufacturer of my main monitors Focal Twin 6 Be ... just in case :roll: And they wrote me back: The twins are not designed to be flush monted. You have to keep them on stands. If you put them inside the wall you will damage the low mid spectrum and endanger the cooling efficiency of the electronic. Kind regards So I guess I have no choice but to forget the soffit mounted monitors, right? :cry:

... endanger the cooling efficiency of the electronic.

I hate to say this, but that comment kind of shows that they don't know much about soffit mounting! Part of a good soffit mount IS the cooling ducts, which should be carefully designed to provide the cooling that the speaker needs. A soffit mount without a cooling duct would be a really poor, foolish soffit. The fact that they didn't mention it suggest that they don't know much about good soffit mounts. It is also hard to see how a soffit could "damage" the mid-range response. It migh improve it, but I'm not sure how it would "damage" it. Yes, a soffit sure will "affect" the low range (which kind of is the entire point of soffit mounting), which is why you need a method of rolling off the bass response of the speaker to compensate for the boost that the soffit will give you, but once again, this isn't "damaging" the response: it is improving it. Yes, I'd agree that a badly designed, lousily constructed soffit certainly can make a good speaker sound bad. But a well designed soffit should only improve the sound, if you ask me. The only time you might not want to soffit mount speakers is if they have rear or side ports. (Or drivers that fire sound out the side or back). As long as it is designed to only produce sound out the front, then soffit mounting should work great, provided that the soffit is designed and built properly. But anyway, if you can't soffit mount the speakers you have (or don't want to), then my suggestion would be to get speakers that CAN be soffit mounted, since the benefits to soffit mounting out-weigh the negatives, in my opinion at least. (Others might not agree) - Stuart -

Stuart, they have HF and LF controls in the back... might still be worth to consider the soffit mounting :roll: To buy other monitors is out of the question for me as I love the Focals too much. They are really great monitors. :yahoo:

Got more information from the Focal company. Replay: Anyway what i would like to highlight is that twins are not really designed for flush monting. If you want to do so you really have to get un touch with an acoustic engineering company to ensure they will properly design the cooling system to make sure the électronic has enough air to cool it down. Then soffit usually affects low mid area (150 to 300 hz). So When installed in a properly designed soffit system you have to measure the fréquency response curve using pink noise and then probably eq the system. Kind regards Nicolas debard

Stuart, they have HF and LF controls in the back... might still be worth to consider the soffit mounting

Ahhhh! "LF -6dB"!!!! That's exactly what you need for soffit mounting! 6dB roll off in the low end. So it looks like they ARE designed with soffit mounting in mind, since there aren't a whole lot of other reasons why you'd have a 6dB LF roll off. As the man says: Design it right, with proper cooling, and you can do it. I guess the first message was just meant for people who try to stuff a speaker in a wall without having a clue what they are doing. The second message makes more sense. So I'd say that you can do it, and the benefits will be worthwhile. Since it looks like your speakers are designed to mounted horizontally, you'll need to have enough room available to do that, as they will take up more space (side to side) than for vertical mounting. And you'll need to have proper venting and air flow across the rear speaker panel, which isn't hard to do. Take a look at John's basic layout for soffits, and you'll see how it should be done. In your case, your slots and ducts will be wider, since your speakers go horizontally, and that's good: more airflow. The other thing that some people do is to take out the electronics from their speakers and mount it separately, outside of the wall, leaving just the speakers (inside the cabinet!) mounted in the wall. But the good news is that you CAN do it with your favorite speakers! - Stuart -

Huh, wow that is a relief, hehe :yahoo: Otherwise these speakers can also be positioned vertically. It's shown in the manual. Might be even better to mount them vertically regarding the construction and sound-wise, dunno :)