Mastering Room

Hello, I go to a school and we have this spare room and a budget of $2000 and the music tech program is interested in converting it into a mastering room. The room is not exactly square but is all 90 degree angles, meaning no splayed walls. Instead of giving the dimensions I will just put up my sketch up model. Because it is a school and the budget is low we are currently looking for a solution that does not demolish existing construction but instead adds treatment to the existing space. The setup we were looking to create in this room would be a small video editing area and then the rest of the room dedicated to surround sound mastering. My thoughts on where the video editing desk should go was near the brick area in the bottom right of the sketch up picture, but I am very much open to any suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I have been working on a Control Room and Vocal Booth setup in my own house and have found this site invaluable in every step of the process. I had the opportunity to build from scratch (room within a room) in my setup but this one with its odd dimensions is stumping me, and so I come to my online mentors of studio design for help. My questions are: What is the best listening position in this room, and where would the mastering desk go? What treatment would you recommend for this room? Finally given the low budget, what treatment do you see as most important, and that we should use our initial budget of $2000 dollars on?

for a mastering space, tall ceilings would be ideal. covering the issue of first reflection points - floor, ceiling, front, back, and side walls. proper speaker placement including dual subs, very small console to avoid diffractions and reflections. good power conditioning to avoid any extraneous electrical noise.

You have a huge challenge ahead of you with that space to develop a mastering room for (even) simple stereo imagery - never mind surround sound. For simple video editing - you can pretty much make the room relatively dead - you'll need plenty of bass trapping in a room this small to make it work - and you can use wall to ceiling corners to help with that........ you should be fine with the budget you're talking about. Bass trapping is in addition to what gullfo mentioned above. DO a search on this site for "bass traps" and you'll find the info you need....... But for a mastering room you need very good sound control as well as imagery - and I do not think (even with all labor donated) that you can get there for 2 grand - in fact I doubt if you can get a "mastering environment" for surround in this room at any cost.... Rod Gervais GIK Acoustics Director of Education http://www.gikacoustics.com (USA) http://www.gikacoustics.co.uk (Europe) Tel.(US)[removed] Tel.(UK)+44(0)20.7558.8976

Hello, and thank you for your responses. I do understand I am in a tough place to do mastering. I was asked to come up with a model to show the rooms potential (nothing permeant, just to get the dean to bite on initial funding), and this is what I came up with: The Overhead View: The Mastering Seat View: And a shot of the video editing station: Here is the sketch up file: http://files.me.com/tallt33/bjd779 The green filled corner bass traps I was thinking of super chunks. there is a 4' X 4' X 4" Ceiling Cloud over the mix position. There are 2' X 4' X 2" ceiling corner broadband absorbers, and the ones one the rear, front, and left wall, as well as the ones behind the rear speakers are 2 2' X 4' X 2" broadband absorbers. In the back left tri-corner there should be a broadband absorber in the tri-corner over the door, I just was not proficient enough in sketch up to accomplish making one, and I couldn't find one in the 3D warehouse. I need to include the subs in the model, I do realize that. Also, the 2000 dollars is just for treating the room, additional funds will be found for equipment and furniture, but I do know that even with my labor free making all that treatment is going to be very difficult for 2000 dollars. My Questions based on your responses are: Is this deign a good start, or should I "go back to the drawing boards"? Are the panel Ceiling Corner traps going to be enough or should I make them super chunk style (would require more budget). Would an alternative to super chunking be making the panels as drawn and filling the rest of the corner with fluffy pink insulation? Are the wall panels and panels behind the rear speakers thick enough at 2" or should they be 4" like the cloud? Did I put enough on the walls or should I aim for almost completely covering the walls? If the above answer is to add more panels, should I make some of them hemiholtz resonator or panel aborbers so I won't also absorb all the Hi and mid Freq? Or do I want it completely dead? Are the corner super chunk traps big enough? Should I completely panel off the video editing area? Would it be an option to ceiling mount the speakers, I fear they are too high and need to be tilted, or is there a way to tilt them on stands? If we did dual subs would they go in the front of the room in between the left and center speaker and in between the right and center speaker? As you said Glenn the desk should be small, so should I make the silent equipment racks Modular and place them more off to the side? Again thank you Glenn and Rod for your responses, and your further help would be greatly appreciated!

I would really like some feedback on the design I posted for the room. Please let me know if I am going in the right direction. Thank you Sincerely, Tyler

overall it looks like a good plan. maybe take the large square absorbers and make them into smaller rectangular absorbers and spread them around more - first reflection points but also opposing parallel surfaces including the doors, behind the front speakers and overhead. one the clouds consider angles on them to increase the range of absorption as well as suspending them down from the ceiling 4"-12". putting some absorbers on the front of the desk/cabinets can be very helpful as well. to save some money, make the corner absorbers a layer of rigid insulation spanning across the front and pink insulation batts behind it. on the angled absorbers you have over the ceiling-wall corners consider moving them out and down around 4"-6" so they span the corner but have an air gap around them. more work but also more absorption.

Thank you very much Glenn, your help is vey much appreciated by both me and my school. I will use your suggestions. We are still getting the initial paperwork in to get the money. There is a lot of red tape to get money at a community college with all the budget cuts in California, but having reliable help from people like you and Rod and this forum will help to prove that what we are doing is worth it to the heads of those the paperwork is going to. Again thanks for the help and I will post any further questions I have once we get past the paperwork stage. Sincerely, Tyler Page