Studio design from scratch in the yard.

Hi guys, I wanted to share my plans to have more opinions on it. Overview: I'm building a studio in my back yard and i'm already in the process of building. The foundation and the outer walls are almost finished. There are preparations (pipes) thru the foundation for placing and the kitchen. So those are fixed places. The rest is under review because I wasn't sure anymore the rooms will work. I placed it on a belgian homerecording forum and guys over there said the room isn't going to work. I'm also still puzzling with the ventilation. So I'm here to hear your idea's and opinions to insure to get this done right. How loud am I I'm lucky to have no neighbors at least in my backyard. The building is located 40m behind my house. The inner bricks are topargex acoustic blocks full concrete blocks of 14cm tick, The outer brick are red hollow claybrick of 9cm tick. The ceiling is concrete and the height is about 2,82m For isolation of the building i'm using exotherm panels of 8cm. The inner walls of the rooms are also topargex blocks but 9cm tick. The space between the rooms are 4cm tick and are filled with rockwool glass fibers. Budget is 30.000 EUR I hope you guys have enough information of this project. Herewith the design I have made and the photo's of the current building status. Thanks in advance.

I don't recall ever seeing a pentagonal control room before! :shock: Not really sure how modal behavior would work out, but I suspect it would be ... errr ... "interesting"! Having all the walls the same length might also not be a good idea, but the only real way to predict the behavior of such a room would be with finite element modeling / analysis. Also, it would be easier to get an idea of what you have in mind if you could show the position of the desk, speakers, soffits, racks, sofa and other equipment and furniture in the CR, as well as your planned acoustic treatment, plus the doors and windows. I can't even imagine how you would arrange things in such a room. Is the "front" of the room going to be one of the walls, or one of the corner? Either way, why? One thing I can say: if you do build a room that shape, you are pretty much on your own, becoming your own acoustic test laboratory. It might work, but then again it might not. Are you willing to bet Eur 30,000 on that? :) To be honest, it might just be better to go with a more conventional design. Fortunately you are still early enough in the process that you can change anything. A comment on your planed construction technique. You say you have no concerns about annoying neighbors, that your own house is 40 m away, yet you are building this to very high isolation level: why? Is there something very noisy close by that you have to block out? Or is there another reason for the heavy isolation? - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

I don't recall ever seeing a pentagonal control room before! :shock: Not really sure how modal behavior would work out, but I suspect it would be ... errr ... "interesting"! Having all the walls the same length might also not be a good idea, but the only real way to predict the behavior of such a room would be with finite element modeling / analysis. Also, it would be easier to get an idea of what you have in mind if you could show the position of the desk, speakers, soffits, racks, sofa and other equipment and furniture in the CR, as well as your planned acoustic treatment, plus the doors and windows. I can't even imagine how you would arrange things in such a room. Is the "front" of the room going to be one of the walls, or one of the corner? Either way, why? One thing I can say: if you do build a room that shape, you are pretty much on your own, becoming your own acoustic test laboratory. It might work, but then again it might not. Are you willing to bet Eur 30,000 on that? :) To be honest, it might just be better to go with a more conventional design. Fortunately you are still early enough in the process that you can change anything. A comment on your planed construction technique. You say you have no concerns about annoying neighbors, that your own house is 40 m away, yet you are building this to very high isolation level: why? Is there something very noisy close by that you have to block out? Or is there another reason for the heavy isolation? - Stuart -

Well I don't have any neighbors but at the back of the studiobuilding there is a meadow, so when the farmer arrivers to plow his loan. Well you can see the picture. Would I bet 30k offcourse not :S . I was searching to have the control room as flat as possible. Anyway now I'm not sure anymore it will work. A company did the calculations and worked it out with acoustic panels. What about the corner control room ?

What about the corner control room ?

Corner is fine,... but it isn't a pentagon: angles and sides are different, and much of the treatment is already incorporated into that design: there was no visible treatment in the design you posted. If you could show those details, it would be easier to try to judge if it would work or not. But in general, non-rectangular rooms just make it harder to figure everything out. You say that a company designed yours: Tell them you want to go to another pentagonal room that they did, and see how it turned out, as well as several others of different design. In all cases, talk to the owners/engineers on your own, in private, when the design company is not around to influence things. If the designer can't (or wont) do that, then I'd be seeing red flags waving merrily... even worse would be if yours is their first attempt at that shape!

A company did the calculations and worked it out with acoustic panels.

Only acoustic panels??? What about bass trapping!? A room that small is always going to need lots of bass trapping, regardless of what shape it is!

I was searching to have the control room as flat as possible.

What do you mean by "flat"? Not the shape, obviously! :) Flat frequency response? Not going to happen without bass trapping! Flat waterfall plot? Not going to happen without careful measurement / treatment after the shell and initial treatment are done. And truly flat frequency response and RT60 is not desirably anyway. Neutral, yes. Flat: not so much. Maybe John, Glenn, Rod or Andre (or Eric!) could comment on that design, but to me it doesn't look like a great idea... - Stuart -

Do you know the angles from the corner control room ? Maybe I can retro fit this design in my building. Because the kitchen space seems to be in the right place tough I have to vertical flip it. Thanks in advance, To put a big basstrap in the 90 degree corner seems to me like a good idea. Thanks in advance