Victoria Studio UK - Treatment - Advice Request

Hi Guys! Great forum. We are looking for some help and advice with acoustic treatment for 3 rooms in our studio. Following forum guidelines we’ve put as much info in as possible, so thanks in advance for trawling through it all! We join the forum mid-project: the 3 rooms we want to treat are: Control room, live room and a small band practice room. Most of the construction is complete: 2 of the rooms have been framed, boarded and insulated using standard double layer stud walling, resting on 5mm neoprene strips. One room (the practice room) has not been touched yet and is part of a pre existing build. Here’s a bit about the building: -Approx. 1800 sq ft in total across 3 floors -Mixed industrial and office space -All neighbors are industrial buildings (noise is not an issue either in or out) -Ground floor – Entrance -First Floor – Control Room & Practice Room (completely separate) -Second floor – Live Room (attic space/mezzanine deck above control room – good separation between the two with substantial air gap – no common surfaces) Below are some pics of the rooms in their current state along with some very basic sketch up models. Practice Room The practice room is sheltered from external noise due to its central location in the building. In here we would like to create a fairly dead space to contrast the larger, brighter live room. It must also be a comfortable listening/practice space for a 3-piece blues band. We would also like to use this space as an alternative recording room with a fairly dead sound to contrast the live room.Live room Due to the unusual dimensions of the room, we would like advice on getting the most even response possible. We’ve considered constructing angled walls along the door wall and the wall to the right of the door as you enter the space, possibly with hanging traps behind, but our knowledge in this area is very limited. Control Room In the control room we are having the usual problems associated with a room of this size. We are most probably going to go with John's suggested design http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm . We would like to know if everyone thinks this is the best way forward?Treatment Construction Questions: We would like to build our traps and slot/slat resonators using MDF. Is this an acceptable material and will it affect the resonant qualities etc? In the live room we want to build a series of traps for each surface. Where would be the best positions for these and how many would be recommended for this shape and size of room? (We also want to build a series of movable screens, similar to these – great design and build by the way!) http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13047 Budget: We currently have enough budget to buy timber (MDF at a very good price through a local contact). We also have the means to buy enough RW3 Rockwool to get the job done (probably 160 sheets @ 1200 x 600 x 50mm – also through a local contact at a good price but we are very open to suggestion – we don’t want to spend money on the wrong materials). Problem Frequencies Although very amateur in their execution we have tried to take some frequency sweep measurements in each of the rooms. We have enclosed pics of the waves captured in each. Equipment used: Shure KSM141 (Omni) in the control room listening/mix position and in the approximate centre of the other rooms, mono ADAM A7 sweeping from 20Hz to 1000Hz. We also experimented with an additional ADAM SUB8 in the control room where it is referenced during mixing (and very much enjoyed during late night dub reggae sessions!). We should like to point out that the sub isn’t used during regular mixing before anyone pulls us up (I’m sure there will be plenty of other details to pull us up on!) We don’t know how much use this info will be or how accurate our capture was but we thought it was worth putting it in anyway ;) Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys. Mike & Gaz.

John uses a lot of built in absorption in his inside out walls and brings it back to life with the slats. I like the idea of using a corner broad band frequency absorber like he uses. In your room(control room) that still has far too many open hard areas, I would opt for something like his work but without the hard surfaces, thinking of the super chunk bass trap here...at first. Given that I didn't get room dimensions to work with for your control room, I wouldn't want to speculate further. I will say this, if you spend the maximum amount of energy on your control room it will be time well spent. The reason I suggest this is that whatever you are hearing out of the tracking room...it's being colored by what ever distortions the control room is having. A reflection free zone is required in such a small room as what it seems you are in for monitoring...you got it close, but the front wall is bare and surely must be getting involved in the mix early on. And if the back wall isn't damped in some way in respect to a reflection free zone...its just as guilty. Hops that helps,

Thanks Brien, I'm sorry the dimensions weren't so clear in the Sketchup diagrams. The control room is 5.95m x 2.82m with a height of 2.77m The practice room is 4.08m x 2.98 x 2.66m The Live room is a bit trickier because of the sloping ceilings: 5.77m x 5.55m with a 0.18m wide apex sloping down to 1.30m on one side and 2.20m on the other so the ceiling is obviously not symmetrical. The sketch up model is available to download near to the stat of the thread - hopefully that makes it a bit clearer. It also shows the placement of doors etc. The practice room also has an oddly placed window which can be seen in the sketchup model. Although this looks like an exterior window, it is in fact an interior window opening into a small store room. I'm currently working on another rough model which will show the relative location of each room on a floor plan. I'll get this posted as soon as its done. Thanks again. Mike

I agree with Brien, too little absorption and given the height and width are close in size means you have a lot of reinforcement going on in the control room. If you are staying with stands for the monitors, I'd still build slat resonators and an angled cloud for the front of the room to get as much angle and mode interference as you can. Line the ceiling and walls with spaced absorption and use hangers or super chunks in a set of back wall absorption. If you can make the ceiling analysts with hard backs and hang down a bit to act as wave guides.