Studio in a 112m^2 Room

Hello everyone! I just finished the first basic plan for a 112 square-meter room. The room is 11.69m x 9.73m with a 2.62m ceiling. It has 12 columns, but only 2 of them are really in the room, the rest is on the walls. Anyway, I oriented my design partly on those columns, but no part of the construction will be attached or fastened to them. The room will also serve as my bands practice room, but the main purpose will be tracking and mixing of bands from around here. Some details about all the rooms, please see attached sketchup file: Entrance: Single Leaf design. I placed an entrance area around the entrance door. It should act as an air-lock to prevent sound from outside from leaking in. There is another bandroom behind the wall where the entrance is. Locker: Single Leaf design. The door left to the locker room is not used anymore. This room should provide enough space for mic-stands, cables and the mic-locker. Control Room: Double Leaf design. I tried to go with the classic room design that I see everywhere. Hangers are planned behind the rear wall. Should I go with hangers or with massive basstraps? I thought about soffit mounting the speakers (focal solo's), but I read that they are not intended for it. Also, I think they might be too far away from me when I'd do this. I plan on making the surface behind them absorbing with bass traps behind. There are 2 windows in the CR, one with sight to the vocal booth, one to my left. The ceiling will be sloped, but it's not in this floor plan. For the CR walls I thought of slats on the sides, 703 behind cloth at the rear. Plus an absorbing couch at the rear :) Vocal Booth: Double Leaf design. The booth is in a diamond shape and the door has a window. I went with polys on one wall (plywood with glasswool behind), slats on the other. Walls: The north wall (except entrance) will be first covered with 703 (or our equivalent here) and 2 layers of drywall to reduce sound leakage from and to the other bandroom behind it, then I thought of an angled slat wall so that the cavity behind it will vary. Basically I'd like to make all the walls facing the live room slat walls over 2 layers drywall. (including CR and Vocal Booth outer walls). Ceiling Live Room and vocal booth: I thought of a sloped fake-ceiling, either absorbing (703 behind cloth), slat or a mixture of both. Hangers behind ceiling where possible. Ceiling CR: Sloped to go from 2.0m above the front window to full room height at the rear. 2 layers Drywall with 703 behind cloth. Hangers behind fake ceiling where possible. Floors: Laminated wood would look great :D Everywhere, except locker and entrance (carpet). My Budget will be around CHF 12'000.- (we're about 1:1 with the aussie dollar) but could be stretched in either direction. So, what do you think? Am I totally out of step with reality or does this sound like a good plan? Any comments on the design and materials used would be greatly appreciated! Thanks and a nice day, Frank

Hey guys I just came up with an improved layout. It features a bigger lounge and locker at the wall where the other band plays behind. I placed the vocal booth in front of the CR for better viewing contact and the live room is now to the left of the CR, also for better viewing contact through the 2. window. All the material choices stay the same in this plan, also everything written about ceilings/walls. cheers and a nice one, frank

Hey folks I'm now done with the sketchup plan. I purged all the unused items, but it's still around 6mb, sorry for that! http://www.cruelnoise.ch/stuff/stoersender.skp This is mostly the room/wall design plan - I didn't include all the basstraps, especially in the live room! All the walls inside the room are two leafes: 2layers gypsum, 2x60mm insulation in 2 woodframes spaced 120mm appart, then again 2 layers of gypsum. The website of rigips (the gypsum supplier) advises taking metal studs instead of wooden studs - does this really matter when the gypsum is going to be attached to metal profiles (the ones with holes in it)? I'd much rather work with wood instead of metal. Well, I'd be happy to get one or two comments :) Thanks and greetings, frank

I'd suggest that you change the orientation of the ceiling joists in your control room, so that the run across the room rather than along it. The span is very long the way you have it now, plus you have a major problem with coupling between your leaves that will be very much easier to solve if you continue the slope at the front of the room until it gets past that cross beam. It will be hard to do that without changing the direction of your joists. Also, you seem to have forgotten to put an inner-leaf at the rear of the control room! :shock: The rear goes straight to the outer leaf! :shock: Those two issues need to be fixed, I think!

does this really matter when the gypsum is going to be attached to metal profiles (the ones with holes in it)?

I'm not sure I understand the question: what "metal profiles with holes in them" are you talking about? In any event, working with wood is just fine, if you do it right. I'd suggest 2x6 framing, 24" OC for the walls, and whatever your building code and structural engineer require for the ceiling, with two layers of 16mm drywall on it. I'm also wondering why you are not soffit mounting your speakers when you clearly have the space to do so, and the benefits are so good? What is the layer marked "Röhren" in your model? It seems to be some kind of ductwork that passes through your MSM walls! :shock: You'll need to figure out how to build soffits around that, and how to decouple it form the walls as well. Those would be my initial suggestions. - Stuart -

Stuart, thank you so much for your answer! Yeah, the ceiling joists (at this point in the plan) where more or less just there to indicate that there IS a ceiling in the CR. The metal profiles I was writing about are called z-channels in america, I think. Basically metal channels that are attached to the framing. The gypsum then is attached to that channel, so that it's not touching the wood framing. It's supposed to decrease sound leaking through the wall. The Layer "Röhren" are some pipes that come through the north wall. I laid out the locker so that the space where the pipes pass through is IN the locker. Although we will take special care for that spot, I thought it might be a good idea to have the locker there, just to be sure. The blueish square thing that comes out there with the white pipes can be ignored. We will have those lines built into the wall by an electrician. Now for soffit mounting: At first I was determined to do it, but then i came across this article: http://www.mercenary.com/howdoitknbmo.html It just sounds a little overwhelming with trial and error to do it really right (at least the way they write). I would still love to have them soffit mounted but that article really turned me off :? I think I'm going to spend the afternoon browsing this forum for more soffit info. Also, I'd like to add that we're kinda in the "hot phase" now. I will be given the room keys by the end of the week and on monday we'll be starting with the north wall :D Thanks again and have a nice day, Frank

The metal profiles I was writing about are called z-channels in america, I think. Basically metal channels that are attached to the framing. The gypsum then is attached to that channel, so that it's not touching the wood framing. It's supposed to decrease sound leaking through the wall.

You seem to be confusing "Z-channel" with "resilient channel" (abbreviated "RC"). It is not the same thing. Unless you specifically get proper RC, then it isn't resilient and wont help at all, acoustically. And you don't need it anyway, in your case, since you are already building separate stud frames for your leaves. RC does not "decrease sound leaking through the wall". What it does is to decouple the drywall from the frame, so that vibration cannot be transmitted from the drywall on one side of a wall through the frame to drywall on the other side. But you are already fully decoupling your two sides, since you are building separate frames, so you do not need RC. It will not help at all. It will just waste your money. Forget it.

The Layer "Röhren" are some pipes that come through the north wall. I laid out the locker so that the space where the pipes pass through is IN the locker.

But there is also a white rectangular thing on that layer that passes through the rear of the control room, touching all of the leaves and thereby short-circuiting all of your isolation! That's the one I'm talking about. Is that an HVAC duct? Whatever it is, it needs to be decoupled form the leaves and encased in its own "leaf", to prevent sound transmission.

Now for soffit mounting: At first I was determined to do it, but then i came across this article: http://www.mercenary.com/howdoitknbmo.html It just sounds a little overwhelming with trial and error to do it really right (at least the way they write). I would still love to have them soffit mounted but that article really turned me off :?

Like a lot of stuff on the internet, there is some truth in that article, mixed with a lot of hype. The basic concept of soffit mounting is simple: you build an "infinite baffle", which is just a fancy name for a very large flat, rigid, massive, surface that extends the front panel of your speaker in all directions, as much as you can. That's it. Not complex. What it does is to make the speaker driver radiate all of its sound in only one direction: straight ahead. High frequencies do that anyway, but low frequencies don't. Low frequencies (bass) try to "wrap around" behind the back of a speaker, where they muddy up the sound and cause all kinds of strange issues. All that the "soffit" does is to stop the bass sound from "wrapping around" behind the speaker, and force it to go where it should be going anyway. Simple concept. What it does for you is to tighten up your bass, making it much clearer, more focused, and allowing you to hear details that would be lost otherwise. That's the basic idea, and it isn't hard to understand, or to do properly. All that you need is some kind of large flat, heavy panel, such as plywood, MDF, HDF, or even concrete, and you make a hole in the middle of it, just a little bit larger than the front face of your speaker. Then you position your speaker so that the front face of the speaker is flush with the front surface of the "panel". You fill the area behind the panel with something acoustically absorbent, such as pink fiberglass insulation, or mineral wool, or old socks ( :) ). You mount it so that everything is decoupled mechanically, and you are done! Easy. The only other thing you need to take into account is that you have to "roll off" the bass response of the speaker itself by 6 dB, since it will be radiating into "half-space", instead of "full-space". That's not a big problem, because many studio speakers have built-in controls to do exactly that. There is very often a switch or potentiometer on the back of the speaker that you simply set to "-6 db", and you are done! It's not nearly as bad as that article makes out.

Also, I'd like to add that we're kinda in the "hot phase" now. I will be given the room keys by the end of the week and on monday we'll be starting with the north wall :D

Are you SURE you are ready to start building????? Looking at your sketchup plans, there are a LOT of things that could be improved still, and some things that are just plain wrong! I'd really suggest that you slow down a little, get your plans totally correct first, and don't start building at all until everything is absolutely right. - Stuart -

Hey Stuart! Thanks once more, that was very informative! :) Great thing that I can save the RC, that would've cost another 1'800 bucks! The white rectangular thing that passes through the rear of the control room is not going to stay. There's some cables in it that we can transfer into the wall. The only thing that stays are the 4 white pipes that are going from the top wall to the left side. Would it be a good idea to use speaker stands inside the soffit? That way the speakers would be completely decoupled from any surface other than maybe the floor.

Looking at your sketchup plans, there are a LOT of things that could be improved still, and some things that are just plain wrong!

I'm really interested in your opinion about what is plain wrong and what could be improved. As I said, I'd still love to mount the speakers flush, so I will look at Johns plans with my carpenter buddy. The rear of the control room is where the column stands in the building (the red thing at the rear. turn on layer "Raum -> Säulen" if you don't see them). They're built halfway into the wall and they're massive. So I think I could use them to attach the inner leaf of the control room directly onto those columns and the outer leaf onto the wall. The stuff in the "Röhren" layer is not going to affect any leafs, so I wonder what there still is wrong in my plan. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to hurry things. But the "north" wall has to be done anyway to calm down the band behind that wall. It's going to be 10cm rigid fiberglass and then the wood frame in front of it (not touching the columns or the wall), then 2 layers drywall. Thanks a lot for your help stuart! cheers, frank

The rear of the control room is where the column stands in the building (the red thing at the rear. turn on layer "Raum -> Säulen" if you don't see them). They're built halfway into the wall and they're massive. So I think I could use them to attach the inner leaf of the control room directly onto those columns and the outer leaf onto the wall.

That's one of the "wrong" things. :) You should not have any of the building structure inside your inner leaf, nor touching it. If you do, then any vibration at all in the entire building will be transmitted to your walls, and make them vibrate like the cone of a loudspeaker... Those beams and pillars can be in the air gap, but the cannot be part of your structure, and you cannot use them to support the ceiling or walls. So you should build your rear inner-leaf just inside of those beams/pillars, on its own frame, and not touching. If you still want to use the depth of that space between those beams for bass trapping (as you show on your model, and which is a good idea), then you can build your inner-leaf structure so that it fits around the beams, but without touching them. the same is true at the front of the room: you need to disconnect those beams from both the inner and outer leaves (because the "outer" leaf of the control room at that point is the "inner" leaf of the live room).

The stuff in the "Röhren" layer is not going to affect any leafs, so I wonder what there still is wrong in my plan

There are several other places where you have similar issues, with hard connections between leaves. Those all need to be fixed. For example, the inner leaf of your vocal booth seems to be directly attached to the outer leaf on the right hand wall, and also on the wall with the door in it, where it joins the wall for the closet. You could also simplify construction, save money and improve acoustics by slightly altering some of the live room inner-leaf walls around the pillar. And you are completely missing two entire sides of the inner-leaf wall around the live room! :shock: I haven't checked your control room geometry yet, but it looks like there are a couple of things that you could tweak in there too. Right now you clearly have first reflections coming back at the mix position from the window to the live room: you could fix that by moving the window backwards a bit. One thing that I did notice is that the computer monitors are blocking most of the view through the window into the vocal booth! If that is the actual console, desk and monitors that you are going to use, then you could save money by making the window smaller, since you won't be able to see through half of it. Or you could re-design the desk and monitor locations to give you a better view. I think I'd also move the CR door a bit further forward, since it looks like traffic in and out of the room is going to be hampered by the sofa: To me it would make sense to put the door much closer to the window. There are probably other things that could be improved, too. Maybe others might notice things that I haven't mentioned, but at the very least I'd aim to fix these ones.

But the "north" wall has to be done anyway

Which is the "north" wall? - Stuart -

Hey Stuart, thanks again!

Those beams and pillars can be in the air gap, but the cannot be part of your structure, and you cannot use them to support the ceiling or walls

Alright, got it! I'll build the inner leafs around the pillars. Makes perfect sense, thank you! The Vocal Booth will get another inner leaf at the top and right-hand wall, so that it doesnt touch the locker or the outer wall on the right (I'm always talking perspective from the standard camera "on top" in sketchup. Cmd+1) The Desk and Monitors in the CR is some component that I downloaded, it's not accurate. My Monitors will be standing directly on the desk, not as in that component. After all I will be looking at the singer standing, while I am sitting. I will change it and put the upper end of the glass to a height of 1.80m and instead of 90cm x 80cm I will shorten it to 90cm x 60cm. Is that first reflexion from the side window still an issue when I soffit mount the speakers? I can't see a direct line between speaker/window/me when I put the soffits where the corner traps used to be. Anyway, I'll move it around 20cm to the rear to have a better view of the live room. Re: the two live room leafs. Do I really have to have these? I assume you're talking about the left-hand wall and the wall on the CR rear. There is nothing behind those walls, just concrete and then earth. Plus the power box with all the fuses and stuff is on the downside wall between the two pillars where the CR door is. The "north" wall I was talking about is the upper wall where the entrance is. It has to be covered anyway, so I could take the time until that happened to correct the plans for the other room. If I need more time than that I sure will take it, but that wall has to be done anyway. Thanks for all your input, it's mucho appreciated! Frank

Stuart, here is a new file with only the leaves, windows/doors and the soffits. The Leafs are 11cm thick each (8cm x 6cm studs, 3cm Drywall) with a 5cm space between them. The measuring point in the CR (1.8m from the front wall, 1.14m height) is my actual listening position. It's pretty close to that 38% spot into the room (10cm in front). I wonder if the angle of the speakers could be made a little wider, I normally don't have them angled that much. However, they are now 60° each. Soffit looks like a better and better idea the more I read about it! I still wonder if that could benefit from mounting the speakers on stands, I have some heavy duty ones that I recently bought. Otherwise I will stick to Johns plans on soffit, including the air vents. I also adjusted the windows so that the front window starts where my eye-height is - I have to look up to the standing singer. Also the left window is now 10cm behind my head, this should give me a good view of the liveroom :) Thanks for your advice! Frank