Molecula Studio design phase

Hi John, This is my first post here. I'm reading the other posts and the forum is amazing! So thanks to John and everybody for your support. I'm preparing to move to a new house in Montevideo, Uruguay. The house has a separated garage with a bathrooom and a bedroom. The garage is 7meters long x 3,1meters width x 2,55meters heigth. The bedroom is 3mx3mx2,55m The bathroom is 2mx2mx2,55. Neighbors house is aprox. 3 meters to the rigth of the garage. The studio is recording rock and heavy metal bands (drums, bass, guitars, keyboards,voices) So I prefer not to put the studio in the neighbor side My idea is to put the controlroom in the garage, the bedroom in the garage too, and divide the bathroom to have a direct passage to the control room. So I will be glad to see your opinion before doing modifications to the actual building. And if someone has a better use of the space please give me your ideas. Here is the actual plan: and this is what I think will work. Thanks!!

Just to make it more abstract, here is the floor plan of the building. So you can play with the available space.

Hi, I'm starting to sound like a broken record but: your live room has a couple of issues. It is going to end up very square and very small after double walls and treatment. tell you something I did during the design phase, I took some rope and stakes and laid out my studio design on my lawn. I put a table inside, a couple of chairs, then started changing dimensions to make the room actually work. I ended up making my control room bigger than I had originally intended. I also made my building bigger. I then transfered the design back to paper, checked my ratios, altered things again etc. by the way, how high is the ceiling going to be? How are you going to lay out the control room to keep symmetry and treat first reflections and still have a usable window? How many musicians do you need to track at once? Do you have to keep the bedroom? Is it a guest bedroom or a full time room? Regards, Steve

Thanks for your interest. I had a conversation last week with my wife and we decided to make a difrent plan for the new studio. The idea is to use the actual building for the control room. It's not more necesary to keep the bedroom. The studio will be in a new room.( will have to build it from zero) Like this:

by the way, how high is the ceiling going to be?

The actual ceiling has a soft inclination: 2,7 meters in the highest part (rigth of the picture) and 2,5 meters in the lowest part.

How are you going to lay out the control room to keep symmetry and treat first reflections and still have a usable window?

The picture above shows what I think the design could be.

How many musicians do you need to track at once?

Actually the drummer tracking in the studio. The bassist, the keyboard and the guitarist in the control room. The singer in a vocal booth. Tell me what you think. David

Why do yo have the rear part of the control room narrowing down again? At best it should stay the same width as the halfway point, and preferably it should continue to widen, but it should not get narrower. - Stuart -

another idea. one of the two live rooms doubles as "another room" :)

Soundman2020 wrote:

Why do yo have the rear part of the control room narrowing down again? At best it should stay the same width as the halfway point, and preferably it should continue to widen, but it should not get narrower. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, thanks for your help!! The main reason is for placing the sourround rear speakers mounted on that walls (sofit mounted). This year I have started to work in video production too.There is no other real reason. But I could place the rear speakers in some kind of stand each time I need to use it. If this way I can have better acoustics then I will go back to the normal shape. Thanks, David

Hi Glenn, thanks for your support. It's very important for me.

gullfo wrote:

another idea. one of the two live rooms doubles as "another room" :)

One of the first things I noticed was the control room final area. Actually the most part of the recordings are made inside the control room. So, normally there will be 4 or 5 persons plus me (and some times the band's friends, girfriends, etc.) So, we decided to make the control room bigger. For that reason we are planning to build an extra room to use it for the main studio. So, the actual idea is something like this:

i think part of the challenge will be to identify all the details of the space (load-bearing walls, doors, windows, plumbing, hvac, etc etc) in order to really define access between the rooms and sizing etc.

Ok Glenn, after some training with Sketch Up I'm here again. Here you can see the doors to access the control room, the iso both and the main studio. Next I will be working in the control room. I'm planning to have angled the soffit mounted monitors (reading about the correct angle in the forum). But don't forget that this will be a 5.1 mixing enviroment. So I will try to put a center speaker over the window to the studio. And the other challenge is how to put correctly the surround speakers...I will try to get a soffit mount for them too.

you need to take into account the necessary isolation walls, and if you're going to commit to extending the building, you should consider room heights etc. as well because with this kind of investment you'll want that CR symmetry better balanced, plus your isobooth may be a bit small. how will equipment for the live room be brought in? does someone have to go through the isobooth into the live room or vice versa to get to the bathroom? what type of monitors are you planning to use in the CR?

+1 Glenn. I really don't get all the angled frame walls. - especially when you can not afford the space. There is absolutely no way to figure what your modal activity might be or if the operator will end up in a pile of standing waves. The angles are excellent for eliminating flutter and creating an RFZ, but this can be accomplished with treatment - thin panels or slats with trapping behind. Have a look at some of John Sayer's slant/slat absorbers... there are many ways to do this. - Also his inside out walls are good for this - but again, I do not recommend splaying the hard shell. - Use that otherwise wasted space for trapping. (yes, increased air space in a wall cavity will increase STL, but it must be uniform. The wall STL will be reduced to the STL of the wall at the minimum air space in a wall assembly.) In your drawing, the CR is basically a cube. Splaying the walls will not eliminate modal issues. Nice work, btw, nice sketchup. ;) Cheers, John

Ok, before I submit the correct shape with working ratios, let's talk about isolation, so this way I will know the space it will take. Look at the picture and tell me if this is the ideal construction, or is there somthing better for getting more isolation.

No. That's a three-leaf wall. Bad isolation. That's also a very badly floated floor. Even worse isolation, not to mention major resonance issues for the entire room. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8173 What you should do for the wall is a standard two-leaf fully-decoupled hermetically sealed MSM structure. Two leaves of mass, separated by a single large air space, filled with insulation. For your floor, since this is a garage I'm assuming that the floor is a concrete slab directly on the ground? If so, that's perfect. Just use that for your floor. Do not try to float it. That would most likely be a mistake. - Stuart -

Yes Stuart, you are talking about this: so, the only way to improve this is adding more gypsum layers? Is there something else I can do to improve the STL?

Yes Stuart, you are talking about this:

No, that one is a two-leaf wall. Very different. The inner leaf is built inside-out, and has a slot resonator on it, but it is only a two-leaf wall. They look similar, but there is a major difference. The one you showed first is a three-leaf wall, the one you show here is a two-leaf wall. By the way, both diagrams show a floating floor, which you do not need. I would lose that, if I were you. - Stuart -

Thanks for the tread about the floor! (it will save some money!!) So, the correct way to go is:

So, the correct way to go is:

Yep! That's it! I would probably put two layers of drywall on there, for extra mass, but that's the correct idea. - Stuart -

:yahoo: but there is still one thing I don't understand. You said

Soundman2020 wrote:

What you should do for the wall is a standard two-leaf fully-decoupled hermetically sealed MSM structure.

How to get it "fully-decoupled" from the existing structure?

How to get it "fully-decoupled" from the existing structure?

What you show there already is fully decoupled! Except for the floor, but your floor is a concrete slab on grade, so you should be fine there. "Decoupled" just means that there are no hard mechanical connections between the inner leaf and the outer leaf. The only thing in between them is air (and insulation, of course). As long as the floor is your only point of contact between inner leaf and outer leaf, then you are doing fine! - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

How to get it "fully-decoupled" from the existing structure?

What you show there already is fully decoupled! Except for the floor, but your floor is a concrete slab on grade, so you should be fine there. "Decoupled" just means that there are no hard mechanical connections between the inner leaf and the outer leaf. The only thing in between them is air (and insulation, of course). As long as the floor is your only point of contact between inner leaf and outer leaf, then you are doing fine! - Stuart -

you've just explained sound isolation - thank you Stuart :) :thu:

Stuart, Thanks for the explanation! Now, back to shape and size. This is a 5.1 control room, but I'm not shure of what measures to take in count to calculate the the room modes. jhbrandt said that my previous design was a cube...

This is a 5.1 control room, but I'm not shure of what measures to take in count to calculate the the room modes.

OK, so what are you actually showing there with that outline? Is that the inner-leaf, or is that the frame that will have treatment inside it? If that's the inner leaf, the calculating your room modes is extremely complex. It is only easy to figure modes when you have three sets of parallel surfaces (floor/ceiling, front/back wall, and 2 x side walls) As soon as you start angling those appreciably and breaking them up into additional surfaces, you need far more complex methods to calculate the modes. In fact, if that's what your blue line represents (inner leaf), then that would not be a good shape at all for your room: you are cutting off the corners where you should have bass trapping and soffits. On the other hand, if the blue frame is showing your treatment outline (bass traps, soffits, slot walls, etc.) then its not clear where your inner-leaf is. If it is just going to be a simple rectangle, then things are a whole lot easier! So please clarify what it is that you are showing. - Stuart -

Is the frame that will have treatment inside it.

OK, so then that isn't part of your isolation! Can you post something that shows how your inner and outer leaves will be? That's what we need in order to figure your modes. - Stuart -