Need just a little design help..

This is an old garage that I'm converting in austin, TX. The walls with staggered 2x4s on 2x6 top and bottom plates. 1/2" OSB and hardiplank siding are on the outside, and every exterior joint is silicone caulked. Ceiling has 5.5" of insulation and 2 ply sheetrock with green glue. Inside of exterior walls will start with one layer of sheetrock. Another will be added if necessary. The entrance door to the studio (bottom left of pic) is a very nice 3'x7' ets-lindgren high stc rated door that I purchased used. I'm sure it will be a more than sufficient without needing a sound lock. I plan on finishing it with engineered hardwood flooring. There are currently no interior walls. I have purchased two 5 ft. X 7 ft. sliding glass doors for the iso booth entrance (behind keyboard in pic). Interior Dimensions: North and south walls (vertical walls in pic) are 24.5' long. East/west walls are 17' The east wall is 7.5' tall, the west wall is 8' tall. The roof pitches up to its highest point 10.5 feet from the west wall to a height of 9'. The ceiling will have bracing at the apex, so that 9' height will extend approx 2' on either side of the apex. Again, all dimensions are interior. I've attached a very rough sketch of what I have in mind. 90% of the time I would be working alone. The other 10% would have a vocalist or other solo musician that would either record in the control room with me, or in the iso booth depending on whether or not they need to be mic'd. I record guitar direct through an axe-fx, and like to have my v-drum kit and midi keyboard within easy reach of mix position. Occasionally I'll have a couple of people in the control room with me, collaborating. It is a quiet neighborhood and I'm not recording anything mission critical so noise getting in isn't an issue. No live drums or excessive volume late at night, so the neighbors should be fine with my modest attempt at soundproofing. The storage room will hold 'garage' type stuff (tool boxes, work bench, etc) as well as my computers (with vga and usb connections through the wall into the studio) and Ifigure that area needs about 80-100 sq-ft. The exterior door in the upper left of the pic provides the only access to this area. The idea behind my configuration in the attached .jpg is that HVAC supply and return ducts to the studio and iso booth can be short runs from the hvac (with plenums) located in the storage room. I plan on purchasing the Mitsubishi PEA-series ducted mini split. I emailed the manufacturer to confirm the unit can handle a fresh air vent/return to keep oxygen in the room. My monitors are focal twin 6. I'm interested in possibly soffit mounting them. They currently sit on primacoustic recoil stabilizers, and I bet these would work well in a soffit mount to decouple the speakers from the wall. Where I need help: -Room design. Where the interior walls should be placed to ensure good sound and maximized space. I haven't even toyed with the idea of having good HxWxL room ratios. -Room treatment. Placement of slot resonators, bass absorption, diffusors, etc. My current bedroom studio has a number of panels I've built from 703 and rockwool that work very well. -HVAC, duct design, and placement. I have a HVAC guy that seems to know what he's doing, but any guidance is very much appreciated. Please let me know what you think. My budget is $20,000 (not including labor), and I don't mind spending some of that on some expert design help. Again, only the outer shell is set. Everything else is my non-expert opinion and wishes. Apologies in advance for my horrible sketchup skills...

Hi Mark, and welcome! Some suggestions to get yo on track, no particular order of importance: It looks like you want to do just one big room, rather than separate CR and LR? If so, you should probably at least separate the gear out into two areas, one being your CR area, the other your LR area. Symmetry: For the "control room" (CR) area of your room, you need to have symmetrical construction around you, and a reflection free zone (RFZ) is a good idea to have around your mix position. An RFZ needs to have the ceiling sloping up and away from the speakers, and the side walls splayed by at least 6 degrees each side (12 degrees total. Also 12 degrees for the ceiling). So I'd suggest that you move your console and speakers up close to the wall at the top of your diagram, and center them on that wall. Now figure out your speaker soffits: You want each speaker mounted in the middle of its soffit, about 1.2m above the floor (standard listening height). You want the soffit panels as wide as possible, 48" if you can spare the space, or as close to that as you can get, and they should be angled such that the imaginary acoustic axes of the speakers intersect just behind your head at an angle of 60°. The speakers should be the same distance apart as they are from your head. In other words, the speakers and your head are at the apexes of an equilateral triangle. It looks like that door towards the front of the left wall will have to go: it is in the way of everything. Basic treatment: Deep absorption at first reflection points. Heavy bass trapping in all corners. Hard floor (concrete, laminate flooring, ceramic tiles, etc,), soft absorbent ceiling (or large clouds). I'm not certain about using diffusion n that room: It is almost big enough that diffusion would be workable, and it will be both a CR and LR in one, so maybe diffusion would be worthwhile... Hmmmm HVAC: Long duct runs, multiple 90 degree bends, ducts line with acoustic duct liner (or plain old 703). You'll need silencer boxes in-line with the ducts. Calculate your air flow and cooling requirements carefully (high volume, low speed flow), and dimension your system, and ducts accordingly. Take care to neither over-size nor under-size your air conditioner unit: it must be like the three little bears: "just right", never too big, never too small. :) That should at least help to get you started! - Stuart - (Edited to fix spelling errors! :oops: )

Thanks for the info, Stuart. A couple of questions: I'm not sure what you mean by "separating the gear into to (sic?) areas". I like to have the TD-12 electronic drums and keyboard nearby so I can swivel my chair and reach them. The computers would go in the storage area. I've been thinking of my design as separate control room/live room, except that the live room is the size of an iso booth. The upper left door can be easily moved (the lower left door is a beast so please don't make me move it...) :shock: However, perhaps it isn't clear, but the upper left door leads to my storage/HVAC area. Another option (see attached) is to move my tools to a shed and free up some room. Remove top left door and move console to the middle of the room. I'm not sure where I could put the HVAC and ISO booth in this scenario, however. I'd also need some kind of closet or cabinet storage for mics/cables/pedals, etc. My interior lines are just a rough idea of where walls might go, to give me an idea of the layout of the room.

I'm not sure what you mean by "separating the gear into to (sic?) areas".

Ooops! That's what I get for posting late at nigh, and not reading it through... I just edited the original to fix the embarrassing spelling errors. Thanks for pointing that out. Anyway, my point was that since you didn't show any CR / LR dividing wall, I figured you just wanted one large space that doubles as both a CR and LR, all together. Personally, I'm not a fan of having an acoustic kit drum kit in the CR (to me, drums are basically large tuned resonators that tend to hum along with certain frequencies, and "color" the sound in your CR), but other folks don't seem to to mind, and if you have limited space or just happen to like having your drums close by, then whatever works for you! In your case, you now clarified that you use electronic drums, so it isn't even an issue at all! (But on your original diagram they sure didn't look like they were electronic...) Anyway, if you are going to divide the room into a CR and LR (or CR and booth), then that doesn't really change things much in the CR design: You still need the RFZ up front, speakers in soffits, bass trapping in corners, first reflection point treatment, etc., so it isn't a big deal.

The upper left door can be easily moved

Great! That gives you much better options for placing your speaker soffits.

Another option (see attached) is to move my tools to a shed and free up some room. Remove top left door and move console to the middle of the room. I'm not sure where I could put the HVAC and ISO booth in this scenario, however. I'd also need some kind of closet or cabinet storage for mics/cables/pedals, etc.

That looks like a better layout to me. The console is centered, the room is symmetrical, and you have a rough layout for your speaker soffits. Maybe you could put the iso booth / closet at the back? Run a wall across the rear of the room (taking into account ratios!), and make one half your booth, the other half storage. But since you say you cannot move that door, it looks like that might force you to have to walk through your booth to get to the CR, though, which is not a good idea if you can avoid it.

My interior lines are just a rough idea of where walls might go, to give me an idea of the layout of the room.

The lines on the floor that mark the rough position of the soffits seem to be angled way too much. At that angle it looks like the speaker axes would be intersecting somewhere in the middle of the console! You probably need to flatten those angles out a bit. - Stuart -