Sonolink Studio Project

Thanks Glenn, I think by now I must owe you way more than just a few cold beers!! :D I'll do some reading on clouds these days while I finish building the soffits and slat walls and I'll attempt a sketchup too, so don't worry, I'll most probably be back with some more questions ;-) Thanks again mate Cheers Sono

i have some cloud components in my google 3d warehouse so you can download and use those to get started.

Man, you got lots of components there!!! Nice!! :mrgreen: Thanks a lot mate

gullfo wrote:

for the space between the baffles, i tend toward solid over soft. it's a good spot for slots to add diffusion.

Glenn, is this central slat wall the same all the way down to the floor, or would the lower part at floor level be a bass trap? Something like this (2nd photo) but not angled: http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Pages/Sproductions_3.htm Cheers Sono

yes, match it up to the baffles so the lower part is absorptive.

Cool, thanks for the confirmation :mrgreen: Busy with the hangers...while having a break I had a go at the Harman Mode Calculator and ended up with this: I'm not sure I really understand those figures as I can't figure out if the modes are evenly spaced or not :oops: The measures I used are without the soffits. What do you reckon? Is there anything bad I should worry about?..... Cheers Sono

Sorry to be a pain, but I have a few questions regarding the slat walls... :oops: Here goes: -If I'm not mistaken, John says to use 100mm,50mm and 25mm wide slats. What about thickness? Is anything between 20 to 40mm ok? -What about sequence? Would it be something like 100mm slat, 2,5mm slot, 50mm slat, 5mm slot, 25mm slat, 10mm slot and start over? -The wool is supposed to be next to the slats or glued to the bottom (wall)? If next to the slats, would it be ok to staple thin plastic (garden bag like), then put the insulation, then staple the cloth and then screw in the slats? -For the central slat, is 26cm total depth from wall to inner side of slat ok? I apologize for being so inquisitive.....and thank you for your patience 8) Cheers Sono

on the slats, 20mm-40mm thick should be fine depending on your calculations. width and spacing, lot's of time randomly arranged and spaced to break things up visually as well as possibly increasing the diffusion aspects. no plastic for the slats. just some loose cloth behind the slats. leave air space from the slats to the insulation. you can lightly fill the cavity with pink insulation. not sure what you mean by the central slat. if you mean the total depth of the cavity being 26cm at a given point, if that is the depth required it should be fine. on the modes, let's assume a rectangular room, the positions of the nodes/anti-nodes will likely be consistently located. 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8 of your room dimension on each plane (ceiling, wall, floor). in your calculator you see a dimension and frequency based on mode (1st, 2nd, 3rd...). the first 3 modes on each plane should be targeted first using broadband treatments.

Glenn, Thanks for your fast reply :)

gullfo wrote:

on the slats, 20mm-40mm thick should be fine depending on your calculations. width and spacing, lot's of time randomly arranged and spaced to break things up visually as well as possibly increasing the diffusion aspects.

mmm.....ok...I haven't done ANY calculations whatsoever, except on the angle of the slat wall. I just downloaded John's "components.skp" file and read his Recording Manual. From that I had the impression that the 100mm, 50mm, 25mm slats width, and 2,5mm, 5mm and 10mm slots gap was sort of a "universal set" for broadband slat walls. The only doubt I had was about the sequence or order of the slats and slots. Isn't this so?

gullfo wrote:

no plastic for the slats. just some loose cloth behind the slats. leave air space from the slats to the insulation. you can lightly fill the cavity with pink insulation.

Ok, so the insulation can be glued on the wall side then. Cool 8) I was asking because on John's "components.skp" file, the insulation is next to the slats, whereas on the Rec Manual, as shown above, the insulation is not against the slats. It probably doesn't matter, but given my knowledge in acoustics (=none) I prefer to check things :mrgreen:

gullfo wrote:

not sure what you mean by the central slat. if you mean the total depth of the cavity being 26cm at a given point, if that is the depth required it should be fine.

Sorry for being unclear...by central slat, I mean the slat wall you suggested I build between the soffits. This wall is not angled, so the cavity will have the same depth all along its width. As I'm going to build the frame that will support it, I wanted to know if 26cm deep is ok...

gullfo wrote:

on the modes, let's assume a rectangular room, the positions of the nodes/anti-nodes will likely be consistently located. 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8 of your room dimension on each plane (ceiling, wall, floor). in your calculator you see a dimension and frequency based on mode (1st, 2nd, 3rd...). the first 3 modes on each plane should be targeted first using broadband treatments.

mmm, let me see if I get this right: The Calculator says: Height: 74, 147 and 221 Hz Width: 41, 82 and 123 Hz Length: 31, 62 and 93 Hz So this means that my clouds, absorbers and slat walls should be tuned to kill all these frequencies (31, 41, 62, 74, 82, 93, 123,147 and 221 Hz) and placed at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8 of my room dimension on each plane, right? If that's so, that's basically all the low end, everywhere in the room that I have to save from being cancelled!! :shock: :shock: :shock: Sorry for this post a little long... Cheers Sono

the picture you show is John's inside-out wall design (which I think you are not doing?) the components file contains freestanding components which are build like cabinets and the slats are attached to those. the insulation sits inside the cabinet... not attached the wall - exception is the baffle framing you're building. for the center section, as long as it lines up with your baffles you should be good. if that is 26cm, very good. in the case of your treatments, you are making broadband absorbers using slot resonators and cloth covered rigid insulation. they don't need to be tuned per se and your layout is already placing the traps into the corners, along the wall and reflection points etc. your question was about modes... the actual layout of treatments for your room is basically already correct per your previous drawings. --- breathe ---

gullfo wrote:

--- breathe ---

Ok, I'll breathe and stop over worrying, I promise :)

gullfo wrote:

the picture you show is John's inside-out wall design (which I think you are not doing?)

Well actually, it all began with the inside-out wall for me:) Then, for a number of reasons (long boring story) I decided to use metal frame to sustain the inner leaf, so I got stuck with building a standard wall instead. Nevertheless my idea was to follow John's idea and began planning my soundproofing under Stuart's guidance, coming up with this: The drywall and inner insulation are sustained by metal frame. On the room side there's a 50mm thick wood frame to sustain the rockwool of the treatment. On this frame I was going to put the slats of the picture (wherever I needed slats). Then things changed again when I bumped into the "components.skp" and the "small_studio.skp" files, encouraging me to add soffits and angled ceiling. Then the idea evolved one more step with your suggestions and help :mrgreen: All this just to explain why I assumed the slat and slot sizes in John's inside-out diagram were a generic set of measures applicable to most slat walls. Also, I discarded using random values after reading this:

Soundman2020 wrote:

Euphioq wrote:

just trying to make the slats somewhat random and aesthetically appealing.

Probably not a good idea! You might end up duplicating or triplicating your coverage of certain ranges, and totally missing others.... Far better to just go with John's standard slot wall, since he has already done all the math for you, and oodles of those walls have already been built, very successfully. You might get luck with a random arrangement.. but then again, you might not. And your chances or randomly hitting on a BETTER design than John's, are about the same as your chances of winning all fifty State lotteries on the same day, then getting struck by lightning, shot, drowned and suffocated all at once, by accident! :) - Stuart -

Anyway, the thing is that I'm still stuck with deciding width and spacing of the slat walls, and what sequence....any ideas on how I can determine that? Thanks a lot for your help, mate. Cheers Sono Some photos :mrgreen:

if John has a specific pattern for laying out the slats then i would go with that. i assumed they were pseudo-random placement of a given set of slat sizes and a fixed slot opening to achieve a proportionate amount of opening per surface area...

Excellent! I'll go with this sequence then: 100mm slat/2,5mm slot, 50mm slat/5mm slot, 25mm slat/10mm slot and start over, top to bottom :mrgreen: Regarding your Google components, I downloaded the one called Recording Studio Ceiling Absorber (Cloud). That thing looks veeeery nice. Thanks for sharing that. What does 1" MDF 1 1/2" @ 4 1/2" oc mean? I only understand it partially, sorry... :oops: Would you use 20kg/m3 Fibreglass or 40kg/m3 Mineral wool (or none of these)? Building the resonator frames now....I still need to choose a color scheme....and do some cabling before I forget hehe... Thanks a lot.. Cheers Sono

the slats are spaced on o.c. "on center" (like you do with wall studs etc). they are strips cut from 1" MDF sheets so when you turn them on their side they are 1 1/2" deep. i'd go with the denser insulation. effectively leaving 3.5" spaces between each (conveniently the size of a 2x4 in the US so you can easily space them as you glue and tack them (drill first) to the frame.)

Oh I see...well, I'll check it out in more detail when sketching it up. I'm not sure the standard sizes here are the same, but I guess I can adapt. I can't wait to get to that phase actually :) Cheers Sono

it's not critical. they don't have magical properties they just keep the cloud from becoming completely dead. you could use thin plywood and cut out sections to do effectively the same thing.

I see...those look cool too :mrgreen: But I thought you would want the "sky" to be "infinite" though, isn't that so? I think I read that at Winer's site a couple of years ago, I'm not sure though...

I think I read that at Winer's site a couple of years ago, I'm not sure though...

Ethan was talking about tracking rooms there, I think. Low ceilings, mics high up (EG: for drum overheads). That's where you want a nice dead ceiling, with thick insulation. Not so much for control rooms, which need to be balanced, neither too dead nor to "live". It looks like Glen is talking about control rooms here. - Stuart -

Ethan Winer wrote:

Although it is often desirable to alternate hard and soft surfaces on the walls, I often recommend covering the entire ceiling with absorbent material, especially if the ceiling is low. Besides eliminating floor to ceiling flutter echoes, full absorption can make the ceiling appear acoustically to be much higher. Most home studio owners cringe at the thought of making their ceilings even lower than they already are, but it really can help the sound. If you cover the entire ceiling with 2- to 4-inch thick 705, suspended with strings or wires to leave an air gap, the room will sound as if the ceiling were much higher. There's no difference between reflections that are reduced by the greater distance of a high ceiling and reflections from a low ceiling that are reduced by absorption. Using thick, dense fiberglass extends the simulated increase in height to lower frequencies. Where thin fiberglass makes the ceiling appear higher at midrange and high frequencies, using thicker and denser fiberglass with an air gap raises the apparent height at lower frequencies as well.

quoted from: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.htm ... 0or%20dead Please don't get me wrong. I am not trying or want to start an argument here. I remember now that at the time I read this on Ethan's site, I was treating my mixing room in a flat I used to rent, and found very interesting the possibility of "heightening" the ceiling. My present situation is totally different, but I'd still appreciate your comments on this, please. Cheers Sono

there are as many opinions as there are hours in a year... the control room listening space is fairly personal although there are a few common rules: little or no reflections which confuse the direct signal, proper balance of frequency response, and little or no coloration (timbre, etc) which distract from the material. having a room which is fully absorptive or fully reflective, if it meets those three criteria, then its all good.

I guess that's the wonderful nature of our ears to be so adaptive, right? Well for me it's a new lesson, and it's good to know that this absorbent ceiling concept is not carved in stone :mrgreen: Back to the slat frames now! Cheers Sono

Weekend is over, back on the road!! So, speaker stands filled with sand, central slat wall frame (in between soffits) nearly finished. Man, do I hate caulk!! :wink: Only one little question today :mrgreen: On this central slat wall, I will hang a 32" Screen. Screwing the VESA support thingy direct onto the slat is kinda dodgy, so shall I: A- Build a vertical reinforcement structure inside the frame, made of 50x40mm studs. This structure would be right behind the slats (like the frame). The slats would be screwed to it and then the screen VESA support would be screwed to the slats. B- Divide the central slat wall in three sections from bottom to top:1) bass trap port and absorbent indent covered in cloth (matching the soffits), 2) Either reflective or absorbent surface at aprox speaker height (where the screen goes), 3) slat wall on top. Something like this: Note that the top section will probably be, at least partially, masked by the cloud nearest to the front wall Any other ideas/suggestions are very welcome as usual Cheers Sono

B should work well. in general though, having a proper frame built behind the slats should be used to support the weight, not the slats themselves. this way if you find you need a larger monitor :twisted: then you have the structure in place to support it.

gullfo wrote:

in general though, having a proper frame built behind the slats should be used to support the weight, not the slats themselves. this way if you find you need a larger monitor :twisted: then you have the structure in place to support it.

Sorry for being unclear, but that's exactly what I meant to say in A :D The part of the slats behind the screen will be screwed to the frame. That's ok, right? Something like thisCheers Sono

should be fine, just remember the bottom is absorptive like the baffles...