Chris' control room and rehearsal rooms space dilemma.

Hi there. Been watching this place for a long time, as I've always dreamt of the oppertunity of being able to build a studio. Well this week that dream will start to come true. Some freinds and I are taking over the rehersal place we use in Stourbridge, England from Wednesday next week. Very exciting! But here is wherein our problem lies. We need to keep running it as a 2 room rehersal business to be able to afford the place. We'd love to tear everything down and start again, but it's not possible while keeping at least one of the rooms running while we rebuild the other. I'll cut the blathering and post some pictures to help explain our situation. Here is a really really basic plan of what we have at the moment. Total area of this level is 1100sqft, but I haven't had a chance to run round the place with a tape measure yet (sorry, will do so on Tuesday.) The walls of the rooms 1, 2 and the storage are made of these boards. We have a stack of 100 spare ones left for us. They are wooden framed with plasterboard on one or either side. The ones in the rooms have had carpet tiles glued to 'em :roll: Here are some shots of the stuff on that diagram. Room Two : The entrance area : The storage area we want to expand in all directions to be a control room: Room One : Hallway leading to kitchen and toilet: And down the other end of the building by room 2 is this space leading to upstairs: Upstairs there is about 600sqft, but due to the sloping roof is pretty much unusable for the general public. I'll be using it for office space and a bit of an area to chill out in. I've got a bit of experience recording bands (had stuff my band has done ourselves get good reviews in national music mags, stuf like that) that we've done in my bedroom, so I've got a bit of recording equipment, and we have a budget for a bit more but no desk. I hope to have enough room in the control room to have a Control Surface in there eventually. Here's our (also basic) plan for changes. (I know that sqare rooms are stupid, these are just rough area plans!) The budget for materials for building the rooms is around 800 quid, and considering we have 100 of those boards and a whole bunch of other timber being left there it's a small budget, but not really small. Our biggest problem is time, as we take over on Wednesday, and would like to work on it flat out to have both the rehersal rooms rebuilt 2 weeks after that. I know it's pretty much impossible without the measurements of everything, but any layout ideas are extremely welcome. I will answer all questions as quickly and clearly as possible. Thanks for your time.

Hi Chris - I can't really comment until you give us some exact measurements.

And here they are as promised :) All measurements are in Inches, and the walls are 4.75 Inches thick. The rooms are 90 Inches tall, and cannot go up any further, as the main girders that support the building are directly above these. The 100 panels we have a frame thickness of about 2 Inches, so we have plenty of framing timber and boards. Thank you for your time.

Here it is to scale - you really can't fit a control room in that tiny space. You are going to have to take space from one of the other rooms.

Can we try taking a small space from both room rather than loads from one? Extend the room to the right of the control room by about 40 inches towards the gap and the wall, and bring the wall next to the control area in by 20 inches, and take the room to the left of the control area in 10 inches? That should leave a space of 91 inches for the width of the control room, and anywhere up to 150 inches long, which is much better than at the moment! One problem I foresee is the need for the only door in and out of the control room to be on the wall opposite the monitors, which is less than ideal. Has that been done in sketchup? I'm trying to get my head around that programme right now.

HHMMMMMMM Dingy, but exciting, me likes!!

something like this Chris.

Yeah very much something along those lines. My laptop charger has konked out on me, so gotta wait for the new one to run up before I can get on with sketchup, so I'm working with paper and pencil for the next week! I'm going to scan in some drawings, and I apologise if that's a pain in the ass for everyone! I think the rooms will need to be independent of each other (doors wise) as it's enirely probable that both rooms will be in use by rehearsing bands, and i'll be in the control room doing something completely different. Here's what I have so far. They look like they were drawn by a five year old!

Not bad for a 5 year old! :) One suggestion I'd make is to try to get your main door into the CR centered on the back wall. Right now it is off to the right, taking up the space where your rear bass traps would work best. Another suggestion is to check your room ratio, and make sure it isn't close to a really bad one, and is close to one of the good ones. And a final suggestion: work on the speaker geometry and soffits a bit. Right now those soffits are rather small, and the geometry doesn't look right. It looks like your room is big enough that you should be able to get the intersection angle closer to 60° than 90° (which is what you seem to have right now). - Stuart -

Yeah the speaker angle there is just an oversight on my part. Just put them in the sketch to indicate which way around everything is going in there. The door can go in the middle no problems. Working on a rough sketch for the control room now... I'll be looking to soffit mount the monitors(which are Wharfedale Pro Diamond 8.1A's incase you are interested).. I don't have a mixing desk, and do everything through the computer (through necessity not choice, but will be getting a Mackie Control Universal Pro when funds allow). There will be a work desk desk at that end for my computer monitors and keyboard/mouse all that jazz, and room for rack gear underneath. With the room modes... i'm using Bob Gold's Room Mode Calculator and I have little to no idea what to do with the mass of information it throws out at me! There's very little I can do about the size of the rooms, as I just don't have any more space available to make them bigger, and I can't make them any smaller as I need to eb able to fit a bands worth of people in each one! Cheers, Chris

There's very little I can do about the size of the rooms, as I just don't have any more space available to make them bigger, and I can't make them any smaller as I need to eb able to fit a bands worth of people in each one!

It's probably not an issue of huge size changes (unless your room has a really bad ratio to start with). More like nudging things here and there. And as long as you don't see lots of red, pink or yellow on Bob Gold's calculator, then you should be OK. Basically, you are looking for an even spread of room modes: you don't want several of them piling up together. What are your dimensions currently? - Stuart -

His room ceiling height is 7 feet which makes everything else moot. The ratios, not that they matter, are within sight of Louden's second best. The issue is two fold. the ceiling height and ratios are not scalable. As the height is reduced so is the relation to these optimized room dimensions.

Right, I've spent the afternoon getting to grips with sketchup, and this is where I am at now. The internal rooms walls are 5 inches thick, consisting of (from inside to out) plasterboard, timber frame, rockwool, air gap, plasterboard.. Considering at the moment they aren't that thick and have neither the rockwool or air gap this should make the rooms much more sound proof. They aren't terrible at the moment really, so this should help a bit! Again, any pointers on anything are greatly appreciated.

The internal rooms walls are 5 inches thick, consisting of (from inside to out) plasterboard, timber frame, rockwool, air gap, plasterboard.

You seem to be missing a timber frame for the second set of plasterboard! Your second leaf kind of does need something to hold it up.... :) Also, a total wall thickness of 5 inches doesn't make any sense! It implies that you only have an air gap of 2 1/2 inches! :shock: Minimum recommended air gap is 4". Any less than four inches and the resonant frequency of your MSM system getting too high for the wall to isolate properly. For a good isolation, you need a total wall thickness of about 10 inches, as follows: Leaf one: (two layers of 5/8 drywall) = 1 1/4" First stud frame = 3 1/2" Gap between stud frames= 1/2" Second stud frame = 3 1/2" Leaf Two (two layers of 5/8 drywall) = 1 1/4" By using the "beef up between the studs" technique on both leaves you can shave off a total of 1 1/4", getting you down to 8 3/4". Building one leaf inside-out would improve overall floor space by narrowing your air gap to exactly 4", but the "wall" would still be the same total thickness. Even if you do a staggered stud wall, with 2x4 studs on 2x6 plates, your total wall thickness is still going to be at least 7 3/8", and probably 8". Even if you went with only a sngle layer of drywall on each side of a staggered stud wall, it would still be 6 3/4" thick! I just don't see how you can possibly get a usable MSM wall down to just 5" thick! - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Leaf one: (two layers of 5/8 drywall) = 1 1/4" First stud frame = 3 1/2" Gap between stud frames= 1/2" Second stud frame = 3 1/2" Leaf Two (two layers of 5/8 drywall) = 1 1/4"

Right, so the gap between the frames is only 1/2" there, not 4". It also has no rock-wool. Was this an oversight? I don't quite understand what you're telling me to do, other than 'more'!

Right, so the gap between the frames is only 1/2" there, not 4". It also has no rock-wool. Was this an oversight? I don't quite understand what you're telling me to do, other than 'more'!

No, the gap between the FRAMES is 1/2", but the AIR GAP is 7 1/2 "! Two entirely different things. The air gap is the distance between the leaves, not the distance between the frames. Think about it.... :) What I'm saying is that it is impossible to have a proper fully-decoupled MSM wall that is only 5 inches thick, which is what you said originally. It cannot possibly be less than 8 3/4". So if your wall works out to be only five inches thic, then you are doing something major, very wrong... You said:

The internal rooms walls are 5 inches thick, consisting of (from inside to out) plasterboard, timber frame, rockwool, air gap, plasterboard.

But that only mentions ONE frame. Where is the other one? It also mentions "rockwool" and "air gap" as though they were two different things: they are not. They occupy the same physical space. For maximum isolation, the entire air gap should be filled with rockwool. Draw up a SketchUp model of your wall, post it, and let's see what is wrong with it. - Stuart -

Reading that I now understand what you mean. Wasn't getting it from the first post. I was not aware that it was impossible to have a proper fully-decoupled MSM wall that is only 5 inches thick, as it hasn't come up in any of the things I've read on here. I was also not aware that the term 'air-gap' from from leaf to leaf over 2 structures, not the gap of air between the two frames. Now I know :D

Soundman2020 wrote:

For maximum isolation, the entire air gap should be filled with rockwool.

Right, so you are saying we need to have a ten inch thick slab of rockwool between the front of one wall and back of the other? Our budget for the rooms construction is around £500 / £600. We couldn't fill one room with that amount of rockwool for that!

You are not making any sense! first you say that your wall is only five inches thick, but now you say that it has a ten inch air gap inside it!!!! :shock: [edited to add:]

so you are saying we need to have a ten inch thick slab of rockwool between the front of one wall and back of the other?

No, I'm saying that for maximum isolation you should fill the gap between the LEAVES of your wall with rockwool. Not that you should fill the gap between two walls. You shouldn't even have two walls next to each other anyway: ("front of one wall to back of other wall") that would be a four-leaf system! :!: It seems to me that there are concepts here that you haven't grasped yet: Between one room and the next there is only ONE wall, not two walls. That single wall consists of two leaves. Each leaf consists of a one more layers of drywall attached to only ONE side of a stud frame. So there are TWO frames that make up the wall. Each frame has several layers of drywall on ONE side of it. The drywall itself is the leaf. The frame is just there to hold it up. The gap between the two leaves is filled with rockwool. The entire set of frames, drywall, gap and insulation, all together, makes up one single wall. - Stuart -

"The internal rooms walls are 5 inches thick, consisting of (from inside to out) plasterboard, timber frame, rockwool, air gap, plasterboard." X 2 = 10

X 2 = 10

:shock: 4-leaf??? :shock:

Soundman2020 wrote:

You are not making any sense! first you say that your wall is only five inches thick, but now you say that it has a ten inch air gap inside it!!!! :shock:

You were the one that said air gap and rockwool occupied the same space, then said the walls needed to be 10 inches thick. Also you seem to have got the walls I described above back to front. Also, the 5 inch walls are what are there CURRENTLY. Not built by me. They are 5 inches thick, and consist of (from inside of room to out so we understand which way round I'm going) Carpet tiles > 1 layer of Plasterboard > frame > 1 layer of Plasterboard Carpet tiles. an inch space filled with carpet tiles. and then Carpet tiles > 1 layer of Plasterboard > frame > 1 layer of Plasterboard Carpet tiles. This is terrible, and not sound proof to any level. What I am suggesting is.... (from inside of room to out so we understand which way round I'm going) 2 layer plasterboard > frame w/rockwool > space/gap/nothing > frame > 2 layer plasterboard Which from what I've seen on here sounds pretty standard. Yes there would be rockwool in the outer frame too, but our budget does not allow for that to be the case from the outset.

Whatever

All I'm saying is, I said ho it is now, that I didn't build, and I'm looking to improve it, and looking for help on here for how is the best way to do that. I may have been confused by some of the terminology you've used, but I don't think that's any reason to be pissed off at me?

I'm here for help and advice, and I apologise if I've managed to annoy anyone.