Need your Control Room Insights and Treatment Ideas???

Hey Guys, I am embarking on a project of creating a control room out of a 30'L x 30'W x 8'H room above my live room in my house. My Live room is 26'L x 25'W x 18'H, which actually sounds pretty great after applying treatment (clouds, traps, diffusion, etc.) but I'm a little perplexed when trying to apply Louden ratios to the potential control room, primarily bc the ceiling height is only 8'. It was an 11' peak ceiling but the city made me drywall in an attic space for fire or some other ungodly code requirement. So, alas I think I may be stuck with 8' for height. The Live room is on the other side of the South wall of where I'll be putting the control room. The control room will look down onto the Live room. My friend pointed out that is how Abbey Road is. I laughed... really hard. Anyway, the Live room is made of 8" concrete and a decoupled interior wall that has 3 layers of sheetrock. Needless to say, no sound escapes it. The proposed control room is not so lucky. It has typical wood construction with drywall already in place and sits over my garage. Its a decent size space at 30' x 30' but I will be adding a bathroom and closet space leaving me with 24' for width (3.5 of which is currently an open staircase from the floor below which I'm not sure how to deal with acoustically) [i]see attached drawing[/i]. I will also be using an oddly shaped room off of this room as the iso booth. Since I will not be cranking it in the control (no louder than normal loud mixing levels) I'm not concerned with sound escaping or coming in necessarily since I will be tracking in the Live room or Iso booth. Not to mention the neighbors are across the street to the East and that is where the bathroom and closet will go. I have no neighbors on the 3 remaining sides. The floor in the control room is Bamboo over Insulayment over 2" particle board. Walls, as I mentioned, are typical drywall hung on 16" wood studs. My budget for acoustic treatment and room modifications (excluding bathroom, closet, sliders with lam glass, fixtures, etc.) is around $3000 unless there is some magic pixie dust I can buy. Question 1) Am I totally screwed due to the 8' ceiling height? What are my options?? Should I just rip out the drywall ceiling to get an 11' peak and risk going to city planner jail??? :cop: Question 2) Is there a room dimension I should go with if I am stuck with the 8' height? I shouldn't have a problem getting it over 2500 cu ft of volume but I'd like to have a great sounding room not just a passable one. I considered a 20'L x 12'W x 8'H (1.00, 1.50, 2.50) but that seems a little small and definitely under the 2500 cu ft. Question 3) What and where do you suggest I place my mixing space, couch and treatment in this control room based upon an optimal dimension? Do I need to create angled walls, etc, etc.? (keep in mind this is my house so misuse of space is frowned upon by my wife and domestic use is rewarded :-) Also, I won't be mounting speakers as I'm more of a nearfield, NS10's or MicroMain 35 kind of guy. Question 3.5) I used a ton of Ready Traps bass traps in my Live room along with building some broadband absorbers and a bunch of diffusion tiles. That room is quite nice right now. Big but tight. However, I spent a ton of cash on them. Any cheaper but effective alternatives??? Thanks hugely in advance for your thoughts and advice. I did search the forum before posting. Amazing how many millions of results you get when you put in 8' ceiling. Please hit me with any questions whatsoever. Thanks again!!! Cheers, Dan

Sorry, for some reason attachments didn't work first try. Re-cropping and attempting to attach drawings again. Dan

where is the live room relative to this? also, if you're only intending to use near fields, why not consider the smaller control room with good ratios for your ceiling height and then use that left over space for a nice isolation booth?

Hey Glenn, thanks for the quick response! A piece of the live room is to the right in the drawing. There is a spiral staircase down to it. Sorry, its entirety is cropped off so you can see the control room better and to stay within the forums pixel restrictions. I've attached a better view of the live room for you. I actually have 2 iso booths, one large one (drums/amps) off of the live room (which you can't see in the original drawing) and one small right next to the control room. I definitely like your smaller control room idea. Though, when I did a calculation with some of the Louden ratios with an 8' height I ended up at only around 1920 cu ft., which concerned me. What do you think would be good dimensions for a smaller room like you mention? We actually considered a small bedroom for touring bands/engineers that could double as a booth but then thought that 3 booths might be overkill. Also, wanted to get your thoughts on this idea: One studio designer/engineer I talked to said that he'd learned that some of the conventional wisdom with regard to perfect control room dimensions kind of fell by the wayside if you mixed near field as long as you dealt with offending modes. He suggested keeping a large room for client/user satisfaction, because it would be a space you would want to stay in longer (avoid the get-me-out-of-this-little-room syndrome). Is he an heretical lunatic or is that accurate? I look forward to your thoughts. Cheers, Dan

is it possible to get the floor plan without the studio as you designed it? it might be easier.

Hey Glenn, Sure! Here is a drawing of what is there now. Just the raw floor plan. No bathroom, etc. Is this what you were looking for? Its really just a 30' x 30' room with a staircase coming up to it from the garage beneath and a spiral staircase from the already built out live room. The triangular room on the right is already there due to the way the house was architected. There are no walls existing in the 30x30 square area. There is HVAC ducting beneath the floor with floor vents as well as electrical in the outside walls and attic space for lighting etc. That's pretty much it. Just a shell made of typical construction. Let me know if you have any other questions at all. Cheers, Dan

how about the entire space? it looks like some odd angles between the rooms and it would be good to know what all the parameters are including placement of the live vs control room, stairs, plumbing etc etc

Hey Glenn, Here's a revision hopefully with what you were wanting to see. Bear in mind that the Live room is already finished, treated, etc. There is HVAC ducting already existing where indicated but no plumbing (yet) where indicated. Electrical is all in place through attic/walls in control room area. Also, any walls indicated are where they currently are now. Nothing in the control room in this drawing is "design" it is actual. Let me know what questions come up after seeing this. Thanks tons! Dan

How does that triangular booth in the live room sound?

It actually sounds really quite good surprisingly. It's fairly treated (attached a photo of it for you) but I can also pull the oriental rug I have for some room vibe. I've used it for voice, drum kits, loud guitar amps and acoustic guitar and it does quite well.

And here's a couple angles of the Live room just in case you need it. Cheers, Dan

Anyone have any thoughts?

i'll try to pull something together this weekend. day job is busy...

Ah. Totally understand man. I thought maybe someone else might chime in to relieve you :) Cheers, Dan

Just realized there is one element I did not figure into the total volume of the room. The staircase. It is 20' in length and rises about 9'. If I don't close that space up I figure that is around another 300 cu ft to factor in. db

here's one idea. a large CR with the sliders aligned with the existing ones to allow visibility into the live room. a small booth/airlock off the stairs. plenty of space for bass trapping so the ceiling height can be preserved as much as possible. clouds on the ceiling as needed unless you have the option of opening the ceiling above the CR and changing the isolation ceiling to something higher.

Hey Glenn, for some reason I am just seeing this. I guess because it went onto page 2 I missed it. This looks really great! I like how you made the most of the space. I'm going to talk it over with my contractor and see what I can do. Thanks tons!