Pole Barn Studio

Hello, My name is Ryan, I am writing from Michigan, USA. This is my first post, thanks to John Sayers and moderators for offering this excellent resource. I am heading up the design and construction of a recording studio for my church and have been reading this forum for ideas and info. We are still in the design stage and I am hoping someone here could answer some questions or point me to threads that address our needs. Our aim is to have a big enough space for a large group of people (7-10) to be comfortable doing live recording, mixing, and relaxing in between work sessions. Given this wish we would like to have good* isolation, visibility between musicians and engineer, and well acoustically designed and constructed rooms. The music taking place in this studio will range from solo songwriters, string quartets, jazz combos to rock bands and more; the studio will be in conjunction with a local arts school supporting music from many genres. We have one neighbor 45.72m/150' away, and another at 60.96m/200'. I have attached an very rough Sketchup of our current floor plan ideas and I will update as I become more familiar with the application. This is only a reference for layout, and not for design of room shapes. - We are putting up a 12.192m/40' x 14.6304m/48' pole barn to house the studio. It will be 3.048m/10' high at the sides, with 4.2672m/14' ceiling peak at the trusses inside. The pole barn will act as a cold frame, the studio itself will be rooms within the barn, separate from pole barn walls. It will have a poured, insulated, concrete slab. Our budget after pole barn construction is $40,000. Currently we have the sand foundation prepared and are slated to begin construction of pole barn in the coming week. -We plan to have a live room, control room, and entrance/kitchenette area, with a drum room and vocal booth in the live room space, and a mechanical room and bathroom that will share the space with entrance/kitchenette area. -We are planning the live room to be 7.3152m/24' x 12.192m/40'. We are planning to use voc booth design from forum and are currently searching the site for a semi-live drum room design. -Control room is currently slated to be built within a 7.3152m/24' x 6.858m/22.5' space. I would like to use John Sayers design from his website for our control room. -Entrance/Kitchenette is 5.334m/17.5' x 7.3152m/24', with a 1.8288m/6' x 1.8288m/6' mechanical room and 1.8288m/6' x 1.524m/5' bathroom. We plan to insulate heavily both for sound and energy efficiency. The outer walls will have a shell of 5.08cm/2" cellulose foam board and R-19 fiberglass between the frames. All rooms with exception to mechanical room and bathroom are planned to be separated by double wall construction, also with R-19 fiberglass between frames. Above trusses will have blown insulation(not sure quantity or material at this time). * -- I am researching the necessary degree of isolation we will require. Questions: 1. Is our alotted space an appropriate size for use of the control room design from John Sayers website? 1a. If not, what is the ideal size?( I have found room ratios from the forum but am wondering if there is an ideal size for this design) 2. How to deal with the ceilings; our idea is to tie only the live room and entrance/kitchenette including mech. room and bath ceilings into the trusses, and for the other rooms (control, vocal and drum) to have their own ceiling joists. Is this a good option? We have a clear slate at this point, any design ideas or information is welcome, helpful and much appreciated. Thank you, Ryan

Hi Ryan, I have to admit I am jealous with the amount of space you have to work with. Couple of thoughts. You have enough space to really do this well with less compromises than many people have to make. I would do a corner control room design ( I do have a bias for them), because it would make for better sight lines from the control room to the live room. I would also try and design the vocal booth so it had doors from both the control room and the live room. I would also make sure the sight lines from the drum room are good to the control room, the live room and the vocal booth. Start with musician comfort and work your way out. Steve

Ryan, It looks real good. Two things; 1. Your control room wall angles aren't necessary for controlling flutter echo and definitely will not help modal issues. You would be better off using that wasted space for bass trapping. 2. Use a larger area for the drum room - try angling the wall of the booth so that the drum room is more or less triangular shaped... not symmetrical but triangular. :wink: -- especially for 'live' drum room, you will need more space. Cheers, John

Hello, Thank you for the feedback. Have had some set-backs hence the delayed response, have taken the time to do more reading and research. I have attached the recent design, w/out drum and vocal booth. Trying to firm up the dimensions for the control room currently; this is based on John Sayers design w/ 6degree angled walls. I also looked into a corner control rm. design but I haven't been able to make it work while maintaining storage space and necessities like mechanical rm. and bathrm. Any comments appreciated- Thanks! Ryan V

Looks good so far! How about adding in the room layout, to see how it all works together (speakers, desk, mix position, basic treatment, etc.) - Stuart -

Ryan, Looking good. yes, equipment & operator placement is needed. - don't do the corner CR thing. What you have now, looks like it could develop into a very usable studio. Cheers, John

Hello, and thanks again for the feedback. I've attached the minimal progress made on the sketchup design thus far, with desk, speakers, sofa. I've placed the mixing desk roughly at the 38% of length of room position, but it ends up being much farther from the LR/CR window than I hoped, and I'm not sure how to place the speakers in relationship to the desk yet; I am going to continue researching as I know the topic is thoroughly covered, though any thoughts are welcome of course. We have decided to not have a drum room and instead have more space for the live room, and the vocal booth is not final dimensions just wanted to have something in there. Based on what I've read so far I think we will not splay the walls in the live room and instead will treat the room as needed. Thanks for the support in this learning process! Ryan

I've placed the mixing desk roughly at the 38% of length of room position,

It's your ears that you want at the 38% point, not the desk! In any event, that number isn't carved in stone: it's just a good starting point, and you can vary slightly.

and I'm not sure how to place the speakers in relationship to the desk yet;

About 1.5 to 2m in front of you, and at 30° angles to the room centerline, on the corners of an equilateral triangle that has your head as the third point (or rather, a position about 15 cm. behind your head, more or less. And do soffit mount your speakers if you possibly can! Major positive effects...

Based on what I've read so far I think we will not splay the walls in the live room and instead will treat the room as needed.

Are you going to design the room as an RFZ room? - Stuart -

Hello Stuart, Thanks very much for your reply! We aim to design the control room as an RFZ room, but for the live room so far it seems it is not necessary(?) Though since doing more reading it does seem that splaying the walls in the live room is good... " in a live room, using different angles for each wall (no square corners) kills flutter, prevents parallel returns to source from square corners, and thus allows you to choose wall treatments based more on reverb time balance than on reflection problems. " (maybe this is another way of saying RFZ?) From a post by Knightfly. I am not sure what those angles should be, and I suppose I would need to decide a vocal booth design first if we want it to be in the live room, so I'm going to get going on that. Thanks again! Ryan

woops! sorry about the triple(now quad) post...didn't seem to be loading on my end. Ryan

woops! sorry about the triple(now quad) post

No problem! I deleted two of them, and just left one. (So now your comment and this reply looks kinda strange... :) )

We aim to design the control room as an RFZ room, but for the live room so far it seems it is not necessary(?)

Exactly. RFZ is only for your control room, to keep your head clear of first reflections.

Though since doing more reading it does seem that splaying the walls in the live room is good...

Yup! Angle at least two of the walls (more if you feel like it), and it seems like the general rule of thumb is to angle at least 6°. Although you can go more than that if you want, for aesthetics or other reasons. I'd also suggest that you soffit-mount your speakers (also called "flush mount"), since you are going to be angling your front walls for RFZ anyway, plus all the other benefits of soffit mounting.

(maybe this is another way of saying RFZ?)

Not really. RFZ only really applies to control rooms. Like the name implies, the idea is to get your ears in a Reflection Free Zone, such that they only hear direct sound from the speakers, and no first reflections within 10 dB of that level. That's exactly what you need in a control room, but in a live room you can't really do that, since you never know where things are going to be set up, and where people are going to be. And in a live room, you most likely do want some ambiance, and perhaps even some reflections, depending on what it is you are trying to achieve. So in your live room, you can just angle your walls as in that quote, to deal with flutter and make treatment easier.

I am not sure what those angles should be,

Use the search feature on the forum for things like "wall angle", and you'll find more references than you know what to do with! Rad through some of those threads, and you'll start getting the idea of how angles work.

and I suppose I would need to decide a vocal booth design first if we want it to be in the live room,

Search for that too! John has actually posted a design for a booth quite recently. I don't recall where, but I'm sure you'll find it with the search feature. I'd also suggest that you re-work your Sketchup model to put the speakers in soffits, angle the walls, and set up your basic control room geometry, then post that again. - Stuart -

Hello, I'm working on an updated Sketchup of design, is still pretty crude have a ways to go but checking in for any comments on: - how the soffit speaker set-up looks - the angles in live room - any thoughts on the dimensions of the small room, at corner of live room; to be used as semi-live iso room for vocals, drums, strings Thanks much! Ryan