Small control room ideas needed.

Started by Hebster on 21 June 2011. 5 replies.

Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 16300.

Hi All, I got a new house so need to move my home studio into new space. This room is slightly problematic. It has two doors, three windows, closet and tile oven. I'm looking for good ideas how to make this room work. Room dimensions are W= 408cm, L=475cm, H=260cm Main purpose of the room is mixing, secondary is practise space for my electropop band and it will also be occasional after party place. I'm willing to put lots of money and effort to get the sound as good as possible as i'd like to be able to make final mixing in this room. I played around with SketchUp and created this floor plan with all current furnies i have. It has no any treatment plans yet and i need to find place for some shelves for books and boxes etc. + place for my Technics turntable+mixer. The chair is positioned around 38%, speakers are not in correct positions as i suck with SketchUp. My current desk is rather large for that space and i might do smaller one. I have 4 analog monosynths and stuff that i'd like to "hang" to wall instead of using the keyboard stand that is in the image. I can't remove the closet or the tile oven. Oven is the main heat source in winter. Also nothing can't be built directly to walls as the moisture would become a problem. But anything that is spaced off the wall is ok. I'd like to keep the closet as storage, but other options are filling with hangers so it would become basstrap, making it worlds smallest vocal booth or make it a echo chamber. Room is quite high being 260cm. It could be lowered at least 40cm and used as cloud/broadband. I don't like the style of Johns "bedroom" room with slot resonators. I want to keep all walls as "unified" as possible without anything "hanging" on it. Front wall could be taken in at least 20cm. Side walls 10-20cm and backwall 20-30cm. Windows can't be covered as natural light is really important. I'm not worried about the noise i make. On the right side of the room there is no door in place and that needs to be built. First i was thinking to do softit mounts for speakers, but i think its a bit overkill in construction for room this small. I'd stick with speaker stands. My speakers are Focal CMS65. Corners could be superchunks or corner slatresonators. Front wall: resonator or just 10cm of rockwool with 10cm airgap. Left side wall is problematic with the closet and oven. One solution could be movable "gobo" design that would come over the listening position and could be moved so that the closet door can be opened. That should be identical with the right wall. Backwall is "broken" with the door and two windows. Right back corner "superchunk" can come a bit over the window. Back wall could be covered with rockwool or so. I don't want the room to become too dead. I'll add also pics from the room so it's easier to see how the windows, doors and the oven are really placed. Here is link to the roomplan SKP file. All tips and pointer are welcomed. Btw, this is not my first post here. I used post as Maxx but when the forum was updated it lost my password and don't remember what email i used back in 2005 when i last posted here :D
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off the closet - build an extension wall to the end of your keyboard rack to equalize the symmetry on the mix position. then all the usual rules on first reflections, scattered absorption, corner traps etc all apply.
Yes. I will build 100x2400mm Gypsum board wall. That should be enough and then build some kind of absorbers or resonators. As this is small space is there point of trying to do angled walls? I got new feature & problem with the room. Behind the front wall is shower room that will be moved to other side of the building. Room door will be sealed and new door need to be done to the front wall of this CR room. Good thing is that i can build vocal/drum booth to that room, but the door will take space from the front wall and it will need access. I will draw new images soon. I should start to build this space soonish.
given the space you can probably skip the angled walls.
Hi, I have two options for the sidewalls. Both have 1200mm broadbandtraps and 1200mm slats, but it's splitted. First has the slates on the first reflections and the other has broadband traps on the first reflections. I think that the broadband is better, but slates version looks better. I'm gonna build it so that it begins from the leftside where i build the new wall and it will continue to corners, front wall and right wall until the first window. That would look good instead of having separate elements that are from top to bottom. Also i don't like studios where is brodband traps on the ear level as it makes room too dead. But if same amount of broadband are in the floor and ceiling level it wont make the room too dead, but will kill the flutter echos and floor-wall & wall-ceiling problems (not too low anyway). Broadbands would be 100mm insulation and 100mm air gap. Slats would be tuned around the problems that i will find with measuring. I will get measuring mic next week so i can start the project. How does these ideas sound? Cheers
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for the first reflections - if you're not angling the side treatments, then the porous absorber will be better. if you are angling it (say 6° or more) then i'd go with the slats.