Sonolink Studio Project

I have been working on my sketchup plan and I have come up with this: I'm about to begin in a day or two so I would sincerely appreciate all comments regarding the layout and design, especially if you see anything wrong. Green is absorbent. Purple panels are cloth with no acoustic purpose I also have a couple questions: 1) Should I fill with rockwool/fibreglass up to the purple panels or can I use the depicted superchunk only and use the rest of the space between the trap and the purple panels as a closet for i.e. mic stands, microphones, cables, etc? 2) Can I replace the second resonator on each wall (nearest to rear wall) with shelves/closets or maybe a combination of both? 3) Is the ceiling height/inclination correct? Thanks for your time and help.

Well, I'm trying to understand what your intentions are, but really I can't see the acoustic purpose of they way you have it laid out. I see several issues there: 1) Your speakers are too high! The acoustic axes appear to be about 1.450 m above the floor, but they should be 1.2 m, or whatever height your ears normally are above the floor when you are seated at your mix position. For most people, it should be around 1.2m, give or take a few cm. But 1.450m seems excessively high to me. 2) You seem to have huge wood-backed absorbent panels right below your speakers, where the soffit panels should be. What is the purpose of those? And right behind those is a large empty resonant cavity: What is that for? 3) What is the purpose of the purple panels next to the speakers? That's where your soffit panel should be too, but you say that purple means just a cloth panel with no acoustic purpose. Why are you doing it that way, with a non-functional piece of cloth where your soffit panels should be? I can't see how that is going to be useful. 4) Why did you make the speaker soffit boxes so small? It seems like you have enough room to do them large and effective, but they look very small to me. In fact, it looks more like you are not planning to do soffits at all, and instead just put your speakers on shelves inside those boxes. I honestly can't see that working out. 5) You have hangers above your inner-leaf ceiling! :shock: How are they going to work up there? I really don't see the point of putting hangers in your air gap, between inner and outer leaf. At least, I assume that the place where the hanger are is your air gap between the leaves, and that you are going to put drywall on that framework... In fact, I don't even see your isolation at all. What is the white wall that surrounds the entire room? Is that the inner leaf, or the outer leaf, or both at once? It's hard to figure out from the model. 6) You don't seem to have any absorption at all at your first reflection points. There is nothing on the walls, and the clouds are way too far back to work for that Sorry, but I'm just having a hard time figuring out what it is that you are trying to do, since nothing seems to make sense. Or maybe it's just because the model isn't finished yet, and you still have to add many parts to it? By the way, I do like the way you fitted the superchunk in with the door! That looks like a neat idea, if you can figure out a way to keep that section attached to the door (shich shouldn't be too hard). Nice! - Stuart -

Stuart, Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry that my post is a bit confusing. I will try to clarify things :) Here's an updated file for you, with some elements that were missing: The posted sketchup is ONLY ABOUT TREATMENT. I have finished all the isolation works (thank god). So, on the sketchup file the WHITE walls are the drywall inner leaf. The ceiling hangers are underneath the inner leaf and are covered by a plastic sheet (to avoid fibre dust) and then a cloth (in black). There is nothing else between them and the room. The huge absorbent panel below the speaker is John's design. AFAIK, under the speaker the absorbent panel avoids reflections from the console going back at the engineer and the hangers at the bottom (not depicted) are the bass trap. In the updated file it might make more sense. I apologize again but I'm still a bit of a newbie with Sketchup. You might be right on the height of the speakers. I usually place nearfields at ear height (tweeter), so I was going to check that after being sure about their position in the room. I downloaded John's "components.skp" file and basically copied the elements from there without changing them. For now, I would be happy knowing if their position in the room is correct. The way I designed my room is as follows: first I determined the engineer's position by calculating the 38% position on the longest axis in the room (roughly 215m from the front wall). Then I copied the "spider" scheme from John's file (the crossed lines that tell you where the speakers go) and I centered it on the mix position. Then I copied the speaker units from John's file and placed them on their correspondent axis, against the front wall, without changing their dimension (the speaker units dimensions). Then I placed the superchunks, resonators, hangers and absorbents. The big black rectangle on the front wall is a future 32" screen. I have a couple of doubts left: -The empty space between the superchunks and the purple panels should be filled with fibreglass or can it be left empty? If it can be left empty, can I use that space as storage for mics, cables, mic stands, etc? In either case, the purple panel instead of cloth should be a continuation of the speaker bezel, right? (it should be solid) -Before placing the treatment, should I cover the room perimeter and ceiling with fibreglass like in John's "small studio" file? -Are the 2 resonators at the rear wall a good idea? Can I build some closet/shelf in the middle of it? -Can I replace the second resonator on each wall (nearest to rear wall) with shelves/closets or maybe a combination of both? -Is the ceiling correct? Any other suggestions before I get into it are most welcome as usual :) Thanks again for your time and help

Bump

Ok. Just to let you know that despite no replies, I will go ahead. I would have liked someone to check the plan for me, but well, nevermind, I understand people are busy. So at least wish me luck when you read this :)

Stuart reads like he gave you a lot of information directly to your current concerns. Consider what he said to be as accurate and effective a remedy as you will get here.

sonolink wrote:

Ok. Just to let you know that despite no replies, I will go ahead. I would have liked someone to check the plan for me, but well, nevermind, I understand people are busy. So at least wish me luck when you read this :)

Stuart is handling your design analysis wonderfully. Many, if not most, of the professional class designers here will not disrupt a topic with distracting information when one expert is already handling the thread. There are world class studio designers that provide input here because they love studio design. If you want answers to your questions on your timeline, then pay for service. You have received hundreds of Euros worht of design consultation already at the right price. If you need more background on the build process, study my signature line. Good luck! Andre

I appreciate your advices gentlemen and thank everybody for their time and help, especially Stuart.

Sonolink wrote:

-The empty space between the superchunks and the purple panels should be filled with fibreglass or can it be left empty? If it can be left empty, can I use that space as storage for mics, cables, mic stands, etc? In either case, the purple panel instead of cloth should be a continuation of the speaker bezel, right? (it should be solid) -Before placing the treatment, should I cover the room perimeter and ceiling with fibreglass like in John's "small studio" file? -Can I replace the second resonator on each wall (nearest to rear wall) with shelves/closets or maybe a combination of both? -Is the ceiling correct?

xSpace wrote:

Stuart reads like he gave you a lot of information directly to your current concerns. Consider what he said to be as accurate and effective a remedy as you will get here.

Understood. I didn't realize my questions were asking for too much accuracy...please accept my most humble apologies, sir.

AVare wrote:

Stuart is handling your design analysis wonderfully. Many, if not most, of the professional class designers here will not disrupt a topic with distracting information when one expert is already handling the thread. There are world class studio designers that provide input here because they love studio design. If you want answers to your questions on your timeline, then pay for service. You have received hundreds of Euros worht of design consultation already at the right price. If you need more background on the build process, study my signature line. Good luck! Andre

I apologize again. I didn't realize this was about money. I probably naively thought that my donation would have made up for my questions... Anyway, I will post reports and photos when I'm done (if that's of any interest to the studio design lovers here, of course). I managed to hang my 120kg homemade doors yesterday, my body is broken, but the weekend is giving me some recovery :) Good day to y'all Thanks

"I didn't realize my questions were asking for too much accuracy...please accept my most humble apologies, sir." It's all about accuracy, as you have already recognized from using the accurate properties of Sketchup and having gathered much information in reference to the specific placement of specific materials to specific locations ;). In any event, no apologies required but thanks for it anyway. It's all good, and your work looks good excepting the speakers "look" high, but until these things get built it is difficult to tell without real world views. Good luck,

Final sketch (he begs hopefully :wink: ) All input is welcome as usual. Cheers

Final sketch

Not quite!!!! :) That's an improvement, and you have fixed a few of the issues, but there are still several more to go. Let's start with the big ones: It seems like you still haven't got the concept of the speaker soffit: Its purpose is to act like an infinite baffle, which basically means that it extends the baffle (front panel) of your speaker "infinitely" in all directions. Where "infinite" means "really, really large, as compared to the longest wavelength of sound that it must work with". Assuming your speakers have good response down to 100 Hz, that means the soffit should ideally measure 3.44 meters across (11.3 feet) each side! Of course, it is impossible to achieve that in any realistically sized room, but the point remains that the soffit panel needs to be BIG! In reality, as long as you get an area of somewhere around the dimensions of a quarter wavelength of the lowest frequency sound that it will have to deal with on each side of the speaker, then you are doing OK. A quarter wave of 100 Hz is still 86 centimeters, or 33.9 inches. So ideally, your soffit should have at least 33.9 inches of flat wood extending out to each side of the speaker. Once again, that is really hard to do in an average home studio, but the point is still that you have to make them as large as you possibly can. You are doing fine with the panel above your speakers, but the tiny dimensions that you have to the left, right and below each speaker are pitifully small, compared with what you need, and you are wasting huge amounts of space with the arrangement of the slot walls and the front wall. In other words: try to make your soffits BIG! I'd suggest that you concentrate on getting the soffits right, along with getting the geometry for the speakers and listening position right (it all goes together), then design the rest of the room around that. If you do that, then everything else should start falling into place. If you think about it, the speakers kind of are the single most important item in getting your room to sound good: start with lousy speakers, and the room will sound bad no matter what you do to it. So start with good speakers, then work your way forward from there. They are the focus of the entire room, to my way of thinking. It makes sense to start with those, and design the room around them. IMHO. - Stuart -

Dear Stuart, I'm glad you're back 8) My speakers are Yamaha HS80M. The speaker unit I had in mind was the one on John's "components.skp" file. This unit's baffle doesn't seem to be decoupled from the speaker stand. I was thinking of decoupling the whole unit from the walls, though. Btw, I thought the speaker unit and the baffle joints didn't need to be sealed airtight (at least I seem to recall reaqding a post by John on this). Also, the ceiling is just hangers and cloth (the hangers are not depicted. Sorry, forgot to mention that). Anyway I've gone back to square one after reading your last post and decided to follow your advice and redesign the whole thing following the original idea based on the anonymous Control Room on John's site. I have placed John's original plan on the floor of my room's sketch as a guide. I hope to be now a little step ahead ;-) Here's the corrected sketch: If the plan is now ok, I would like to ask: -should I leave the center front as it is? I would have liked to place a 32" screen on that wall... -Is it ok if I place shelves/closets in front of the green absorbents on the side walls (I'd cover the closet's doors with absorbents) -shouldn't I fill the empty cavities inside the front wall corners with rockwool or fibre glass? Thanks for your time and help Cheers

My speakers are Yamaha HS80M.

Uh ohhh! Isn't that a rear-ported design? As far as I know, there is no way to successfully soffit mount a rear-ported speaker. Sorry to be the bearer or bad tidings, but the issue here is that the HS80M has its bass port on the rear panel, which means it would be firing into the cavity behind the soffit, instead of into the room in front of the soffit. Unless somebody has a plan for dealing with that (soffit mounting rear-ported speakers), then either you are stuck with putting your speakers on stands several feet away from the front wall (which screws up your entire room geometry), or you might have to think about using different speakers that can be soffit mounted... - Stuart - PS. FWIW, your new design is much better! Bitter-sweet victory.... :( :?

Stuart, thanks for your prompt answer. I am aware that a rear port speaker might mean some problems when soffit mounted, BUT, after taking into account that my speakers do have bass compensation controls, and after reading the following posts:

John Sayers wrote:

student - the rear port on many speakers is there to support the low end response. Soffit mounting ALSO supports the low end response. IMHO they balance out in the low end but the soffit mount also supports the rest of the response by making the stereo imaging much tighter and more accurate. cheers john

Soundman2020 wrote:

My Yamaha monitors (HS80m) have a rear port. Does that automatically disqualify them as a soffit mount candidate?

Perhaps, but not necessarily.

John Sayers wrote:

I have the 50M and I love them - the 80M would be even better IMO

(John doesn't say if his HS50M are soffit mounted or not, but I would assume so coming from him.) So I have decided to give it a go and try them out soffit mounted. I have a feeling they will sound great, and hope they will. If they don't I'll change monitors... In any case I'm immensely glad I am a step ahead with the room design 8) Nevertheless, and excuse my insistance, I would still like to ask you to answer my previous questions, please: -should I leave the center front as it is? I would have liked to place a 32" screen on that wall...is that possible? How -Is it ok if I place shelves/closets in front of the green absorbents on the side walls (I'd cover the closet's doors with absorbents) -shouldn't I fill the empty cavities inside the front wall corners with rockwool or fibre glass? Again, thanks a lot for all your help mate :mrgreen:

Updated design. I have answered my own questions :) Cheers

Updated design.

OK, better! Your soffits and room geometry are making more sense now, but you still seem to be missing the point on a couple of things. The hangers in the front corners are pointless. They are behind the speaker soffit, and behind the slot walls. Room sound has no way of getting to them, and therefore they will have no effect on the room. You don't need them, and they aren't doing anything useful. Related to that is the large "box" on the back of your speaker soffit panels: It also isn't doing anything for you. Yes, one approach to a speaker soffit is to have a box around the speaker itself, but if you do that then it needs to be a tight fit. In your case, you have a large empty air gap around the speaker, inside the box. So you can either tighten up the box, or lose it. Once you have done that, then fill the entire space behind the soffit panel with insulation: it acts as a damper inside the soffit, much like the insulation inside your speaker itself. You do not want that cavity to resonate! It needs to be damped, but with insulation, not hangers. Yes, you can use hangers as part of your soffit, but do it like John does: Below the speaker, behind the soffit panel, in a sealed box that is only open to the room, through a large opening down near the floor. Two more points on the soffits: the area between the soffits is fine for mounting a flat panel. No problem with that! But you should also decide whether you are going to make that front center panel hard or soft: reflective or absorptive. Personally, I think absorption makes more sense in a small room, but if you want to make it reflective, think carefully about how to do that without causing yourself reflections of the front wall, and comb filtering... Next, your slot walls: need to get rid of part of that slot wall, right where the first reflection points are, since those need to be treated with deep insulation. Regarding your question on the shelves: I don't think it would be a problem to have shelves in front of the rear side absorbers, as long as you don't clutter them and stack them with too much stuff! Shelves with small items on the, like mics and headphones, should not be a problem, I reckon. But I wouldn't store large boxes and things like that on them! - Stuart -

Stuart, Thanks a lot for checking out my plan and for your comments :)

Soundman2020 wrote:

Related to that is the large "box" on the back of your speaker soffit panels: It also isn't doing anything for you. Yes, one approach to a speaker soffit is to have a box around the speaker itself, but if you do that then it needs to be a tight fit. In your case, you have a large empty air gap around the speaker, inside the box. So you can either tighten up the box, or lose it.

The "box" is a copy of John's "speaker unit" in his components.skp sketchup file. My speakers are inside an MDF box covered with a layer of 15mm drywall. The fit is so tight the only way I can extract the speakers is by tilting the box. So much so that I'm now trying to find an easy system to pull the speakers out for when I'll need to i.e. adjust parameters on their back (as I won't be able to tilt the soffits:)). If you hide the soffit to see the "box" you will see the mdf and the drywall boxes. the speaker is represented by the 2 white circles (that correspond to where the woofer and tweeter are placed on the HS80Ms). Btw, inside the box there is no insulation depicted.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Once you have done that, then fill the entire space behind the soffit panel with insulation: it acts as a damper inside the soffit, much like the insulation inside your speaker itself. You do not want that cavity to resonate! It needs to be damped, but with insulation, not hangers.

I will fill the boxes with insulation and the cavity between the drywall and the soffits too (loosely)

Soundman2020 wrote:

Yes, you can use hangers as part of your soffit, but do it like John does: Below the speaker, behind the soffit panel, in a sealed box that is only open to the room, through a large opening down near the floor.

Actually, that's another mistake on my sketch. I intented to do exactly that, following John's pic on what to do with amped speakers, and the bass port and trap are drawn behind the soffit, but I forgot to draw the cloth bit :roll: Sorry about that :oops: So in reality the soffit part under the speakers to the floor is cloth and absorbent to avoid the console reflections. Also, the speaker bass trap hangers are not depicted. I will correct that asap on the sketch.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Two more points on the soffits: the area between the soffits is fine for mounting a flat panel. No problem with that! But you should also decide whether you are going to make that front center panel hard or soft: reflective or absorptive. Personally, I think absorption makes more sense in a small room, but if you want to make it reflective, think carefully about how to do that without causing yourself reflections of the front wall, and comb filtering...

You are once again right. It will be absorbent, from ceiling to floor. The flat screen will be bright enough.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Next, your slot walls: need to get rid of part of that slot wall, right where the first reflection points are, since those need to be treated with deep insulation.

I thought the point of soffits and slot walls was precisely to eliminate reflections :shock: That's why I didn't put any first reflection point absorbers, because I thought the slot wall would absorb low mids and reflect the rest to the back of the room, not the mixing position (because of the splay). So I need to calculate the mirrors of the speakers on the side walls and place absorbents there? ONE little question (only ONE.... :wink: ): -The ceiling, made of a timber frame and cloth: shall I fill it with hangers or rockwool/fibreglass? If it's rockwool/fibreglass should I fill the space inside the frame or everything between the drywall ceiling and the frame? Thanks again for saving my life. :mrgreen: I can't even imagine what I would have built without your help :cen:

My first attempt at Ray Tracing... I have erased most elements in the sketch to keep the file size down. The dotted lines represent the speakers sound (duh!). I drawed one line every 5º, covering a horizontal dispersion of 120º. I know it gets much more complex but I'm trying for now to get an idea about what angle should the slat walls have. The diagonal lines along the side walls represent the slat walls. The black lines coming back at the rear wall are the first reflections from the slat walls. The slat walls are angled at 25º. The rest of the room (including ceiling and door) is absorbent. Am I correct in thinking this angle should be ok? Please don't forget my question about the ceiling :mrgreen: Cheers Sono

sono, 1st: if there's enough place between your real ceiling and your cloud you could use hangers. but it isn't that easy. it's not just hanging sth somewhere in some manner under your ceiling... somewhere is a more or less detailed thread in which john explains how he arranges the hangers but I can't find the bookmark...must be on my main machine (which only works for five minutes due to tons of gyprock- and mdf-dust on and in everything) 2nd: you want to fill only your frames. air between your cloud and ceiling is good! quote taken from f. alton everest - the master handbook of acoustics, 4th edition, page 191: "Low-frequency absorption can also be improved by spacing the absorbent out from the wall. This is an inexpensive way to get improved performance—within limits." greetings, carsten

Carsten, thanks for your tips and for chiming in (not that I get bored with Stu :mrgreen: ) I read that thread about John's hangers some weeks ago (or was it months?) and now I can't find it either :shock: Anyway, I think I'll go with insulation and pass on the hangers because A) my ceiling is 2.35 after soundproofing and B) I need to get ready to mix asap. So I'll do something like the Da Silva Studio, only my ceiling will have 12º tilt at the front (instead of 6º front and rear like Da Silva). The reason why I was wondering about filling the frames or the entire fake ceiling, was because I was comparing it to the difference between a Superchunk and a corner panel (i.e. like Ethan's). Filling the ceiling would be like building a massive Superchunk. Filling only the frames would be like building a massive corner panel. Isn't this so? And if it is, money aside, I guess the Superchunk should be a go, am I wrong? Best Sono

yeah. you're right. sorry, I haven't read between the lines. I thought it was more like a "how to" question... cheers, carsten

carsten_d wrote:

yeah. you're right. sorry, I haven't read between the lines. I thought it was more like a "how to" question... cheers, carsten

Of course not, dear friend, keine probleme ;-) Actually all your input is very welcome indeed (and probably well needed...) Now for a "how to" question, I am worried about the first reflection points that Stuart mentions earlier. In my previous mixing room (in a flat, free standing monitors, treated following essentially Ethan's guidelines) I used to have absorbents at the mirror points, but after reading John's Recording Manual, I liked the idea of slat walls, not only because (in his own words) it looks nice, but because I'm sure it'll sound more natural. So when faced with designing this new room, I assumed I wouldn't need absorbents if I had slat walls... :? By trying to Ray Trace the room (assuming I did it right), I can't find problems with reflections with a 25º slat wall...but of course, I am no acoustics expert, hehe. Anyway, if you (or anyone else) could shed any light on this matter, I would be very interested and grateful :mrgreen: btw, your doors are impressive. I made mine as well, following a modified design by Ro and they weigh about 120kg each, but the union hinges/door, hinges/frame looks lousy compared to yours :) I used a teakwood spine for the screws. And also, I'd like to say, very nice music you make, reminds me of so many things I love :mrgreen: Cheers Sono

I thought the point of soffits and slot walls was precisely to eliminate reflections :shock: That's why I didn't put any first reflection point absorbers, because I thought the slot wall would absorb low mids and reflect the rest to the back of the room, not the mixing position (because of the splay).

Slot walls don't eliminate reflections: they have large hard reflective surfaces. Paradoxically, they are broadband absorbers, too, but that doesn't mean that they don't reflect anything. They absorb certain frequency ranges since they are tuned traps (Helmholtz resonators, basically), but they only really absorb in the slots and the areas right around them, while the slats themselves are reflective. Yes, from one point of view you could say that the entire slot wall acts as one giant broadband absorber, but it is a selective absorber, in that it treats only a range of frequencies in the middle of the spectrum. But it still reflects, diffuses or diffracts all of the other frequencies. So you still need absorption on your first reflection points.

So I need to calculate the mirrors of the speakers on the side walls and place absorbents there?

Yup!

My speakers are inside an MDF box covered with a layer of 15mm drywall.

That's the only box you need. You don't need the second, larger outer box shown on your diagram. Just the one that holds your speakers themselves is fine.

Actually, that's another mistake on my sketch. I intented to do exactly that, following John's pic on what to do with amped speakers, and the bass port and trap are drawn behind the soffit,

But your plan is nothing like John's plan! John only has hangers in a sealed cavity below the speakers, so that the hangers are not in the same air space as the cavity behind the soffit wall. But your hangers are way distant, tucked into the room corner behind the slot wall, and are part of the soffit cavity. That won't do much for you! How are you going to direct sound from the lower soffits to the hidden hangers?

So in reality the soffit part under the speakers to the floor is cloth and absorbent to avoid the console reflections.

That's not what John shows, either! John has a panel there, with absorption on the front and the hangers in the cavity behind and below the speakers. That cavity is sealed off from the actual soffit cavity, and is open to the room ONLY through a slot at the bottom, at floor level. Also, the absorption should NOT start right under the speakers: You need it ONLY on the part of the soffit panel where you will actually get reflections from the rear of the console or desk. As I explained before, the soffit panel needs to be as large as possible, so don't cover any part of it with absorption unless it really needs it. This is why you need to show your real console and real desk accurately in your SketchUp model, in order to determine exactly where you will be getting reflections off the back of it, so you can work out what parts of the soffit front panel need absorption, and what parts can be left reflective, to do the job properly.

Also, the speaker bass trap hangers are not depicted.

OK, so then what ARE those hangers for in the front corners, behind the slot wall modules??? If those aren't the hangers behind the soffit panel, then what are they? What is their purpose?

-The ceiling, made of a timber frame and cloth: shall I fill it with hangers or rockwool/fibreglass? If it's rockwool/fibreglass should I fill the space inside the frame or everything between the drywall ceiling and the frame?

I'm not really sure why you even need that "angled frame and cloth" ceiling at all. I'm thinking that a simple cloud would probably be just as effective, and would be easier to build. That cloth-covered frame isn't really doing much for you. If you think you might need more bass trapping in the room then you could do something like that across the front wall/ceiling corner for sure, but I don't think it needs to be that big, or extend that far back into the room. I think I'd drop that idea for now, build the room, put up a cloud, measure the room, and if you still have issues then you have that space up there where you can install additional treatment. I'd keep it in reserve, and my guess is that you probably won't need to use it.

Thanks again for saving my life. I can't even imagine what I would have built without your help

You are welcome! Folks here saved mine the same way: maybe you can return the favor down the line, and help out someone else... - Stuart -

Any chance someone would comment on my Ray Tracing file, please? Cheers

sono, first let me say that you made my day! thank you very much for your nice words! your ray tracing looks fine. but you can see that with your angle you will have a first reflection ray in front of your listening position. if your slatsangle will be 5 degrees more you can see (in my sketch) that the first reflection will be behind your head. and thats def better! your slat will become shorter...so less money for slats, too :idea: hope that helps. cheers, carsten