Help with Studio Layout & Acoustics

Hi! I am new to this forum and I want to start off by telling all the contributors, pro's and laymen alike, what a terrific resource it is for complete newbies such as myself. Thank you. I'd also like to apologize in advance if I get any technical terms wrong, I'm new to this particular science and English is not my first language, anyways, here we go: I have put together a small studio/rehearsal room in my basement (I live in an apartment building) and I have managed to do a decent enough job with the isolation to keep the neighbors off my back. Soundproofing is not an issue, acoustics however are, and I hope to be able to make the acoustics good enough for decent-to-good recording and mixing. The room is built inside a concrete space and the walls consist off several layers of plaster wall and glass wool. The floor is rock wool topped with particle board and various rugs. The pictures below shows the room with it's current layout. As you can tell the ceiling is very low and slopes down at different angles towards the edges of the room. The contraption housing a tube, between the wall and the ceiling, is supposed to represent the the ventilation silencer. The boxes in one of the corners represents the storage area which, while not possible to relocate at this very moment, is going to be removed in the future. From what I've gathered the wall behind the drums should be addressed first by putting up the kind of DIY acoustic panels (frame, glass wool, fabric) that you have schematics for on this forum. Whether diffusers on that wall would help, I haven't quite figured out. What I'd like you to help me with is: - Layout, especially where I should place the mixing area (the amps, piano and drums need to stay in the room, but I have no problem moving them around) - Identifying potential problem areas (corners, ceiling etc.) - Tips on solutions for problem areas I don't have a definite budget for the project and could probably come up with extra funds if needed, but I'd like to keep it DIY if possible and put any money saved towards gear. Just to give you a number I'll say ~$2000 I hope the long winded post hasn't scared you off and that I've followed the guidelines well enough. Thanks in advance! EDIT: The height of the middle part of the room is 205cm.

Mate did you see the thread layout advice. Just try to drop there maybe other can help you. [ SPAM signature removed by moderator ]

miajameslove wrote:

Mate did you see the thread layout advice. Just try to drop there maybe other can help you.

I might be blind but I'm afraid I can't find any thread with general tips on studio layouts, only specific cases. Would you mind linking to the thread you mentioned?

Hi Austerlitz, and Welcome! It looks like you might have run into one of our spammers that we try to keep at bay: They pop up from time to time with cryptic comments that are inappropriate for the thread they are "commenting" on, and hope the moderators won't notice their spam signatures. But we always do, eventually, and we always remove them, just like I just did with his. Anyway, please tell us a little more about your issues. What specific problems are you having in your room? What are your priorities? You say:

I hope to be able to make the acoustics good enough for decent-to-good recording and mixing.

... so I imagine that is your main goal: to have an area where you can record and mix successfully, with mixes that translate well. I don't really see a separate control room on your current diagram, and that's the number one issue: I imagine the corner desk in the top left is the current mix position? If so, you might want to consider relocating that, since corners are not good, acoustically. All room modes meet in the room corners, so any modes that happen to be triggered while mixing will grossly skew your perception of the mix. With the current layout you also have no symmetry, and the room is chaotic behind you, with parts of the ceiling dropping down differently on left and right, and widely differing path lengths for reflections coming from behind. It must be really hard to mix anything in there! :shock: I'd suggest relocating your mix position to the center of the wall segment marked "336cm", at the bottom of the second pic that you posted, then build a wall roughly where the piano is, going back at least half way across the room, so you can have good symmetry at the front. You don't have to use that entire 336xm segment if space is too tight: you could build that wall at, for example, 250 cm, but I wouldn't go smaller than that. The key point is symmetry: at the very minimum you need a flat wall in front of you, with perpendicular walls on each side and the mix position centered on the front walls. Speakers at 1.2m above the floor, on very massive (heavy) decoupled stands, positioned equidistant from the side walls and angled to face the mix position, so that the acoustic axes meet at an angle of 60° a few inches behind your head. Once you have that basic symmetry, then you can think of treatment, but first you need to get that part right, and that wall segment looks like the only place in the room where you can do that: It also has a low ceiling in front, rising back and up, which is good. Then you can re-arrange the other stuff in the rest of the room, with as little as possible behind you. For example, I'd maybe put the piano on the rear wall opposite the mix position, and the drums on the other side of the new wall, rough where the piano and "unmovable boxes" are right now, then distribute the amps and other things where the mix position is right now. Keep the mix area tidy and symmetrical. Did I mention that symmetry is important? :) If you want to get an even better mix, then I'd suggest you extend the above concept to create a full control room, by taking that wall I mentioned all the way across the room, and sealing of the control room all by itself. That's a much bigger job, of course, and way beyond the budget you mentioned. OK, so let us know if you are willing to do that, and we can start figuring out dimensions, positions, geometry and treatment for that setup. But one thing you said worries me:

The floor is rock wool topped with particle board and various rugs.

You mean you laid several inches of mineral wool on the existing concrete floor, all over the entire room, then put a layer of MDF or something similar directly on top of that mineral wool, with no framing or support at all, and that's your floor? If so, WHY? :shock: :?: What is the purpose of that? Why destroy a perfectly good acoustic floor and waste so many precious inches of room height, for no reason at all? I'd serious consider taking that out again! It isn't helping you at all, and is most likely harming your acoustics. In any event, you cannot build the new wall on top of that. Maybe you could post some pics of the room, and also post your SKP file, if possible. - Stuart -

Hi Soundman2020, and thank you for your reply.

Anyway, please tell us a little more about your issues. What specific problems are you having in your room? What are your priorities?

I'm not sure I can articulate my issues well enough, but I'll give it a shot. The acoustics in the room are not very pleasant, there is alot of bass build up and the treble is harsh. Overall the room just sounds "wrong", unfortunately I lack the expertise to provide a better description than that.

... so I imagine that is your main goal: to have an area where you can record and mix successfully, with mixes that translate well.

Correct. I have no illusions of transforming the room to Abbey Road, I just want to do the best I can to improve on bad circumstances.

I don't really see a separate control room on your current diagram, and that's the number one issue: I imagine the corner desk in the top left is the current mix position? If so, you might want to consider relocating that, since corners are not good, acoustically.

Yes, the corner desk is the current mix position, though I haven't really started to use the room for mixing because of the terrible acoustics.

I'd suggest relocating your mix position to the center of the wall segment marked "336cm", at the bottom of the second pic that you posted, then build a wall roughly where the piano is, going back at least half way across the room, so you can have good symmetry at the front.

Then you can re-arrange the other stuff in the rest of the room, with as little as possible behind you. For example, I'd maybe put the piano on the rear wall opposite the mix position, and the drums on the other side of the new wall, rough where the piano and "unmovable boxes" are right now, then distribute the amps and other things where the mix position is right now.

I appreciate the suggestion and I can see why this would be the ideal solution. However, being 6'4 and having a shot back at 27 leaves me feeling less than enthusiastic at the prospect of squeezing in to a 140 cm high space to reach the drums. With that said, I'll keep the idea in mind. If there is any other way to do the layout that would improve on the current one, even if it's less optimal than the one you suggested, I would be interested in hearing it.

If you want to get an even better mix, then I'd suggest you extend the above concept to create a full control room, by taking that wall I mentioned all the way across the room, and sealing of the control room all by itself. That's a much bigger job, of course, and way beyond the budget you mentioned.

I realize that this would be the optimal scenario but, like you said, the budget would be beyond what I am currently willing to spend. It would also leave the would-be "Live Room" awfully cramped. It is definitely something that I will consider doing in the future though.

You mean you laid several inches of mineral wool on the existing concrete floor, all over the entire room, then put a layer of MDF or something similar directly on top of that mineral wool, with no framing or support at all, and that's your floor? If so, WHY? What is the purpose of that? Why destroy a perfectly good acoustic floor and waste so many precious inches of room height, for no reason at all? I'd serious consider taking that out again! It isn't helping you at all, and is most likely harming your acoustics. In any event, you cannot build the new wall on top of that.

This makes me worried as well. It might be a case of me giving an inadequate description of the construction, or I might have fucked up. Anyways, I added a poor attempt of a cross-section of the wall at the bottom of this post which I'm hoping paints a clearer picture of it all. I also added the skp-file and you might notice that some of the measurements on the previous pictures aren't identical to the ones in the skp, this is due to the fact that I havent used Sketchup before and I couldn't figure out how to change the measurements without fucking up the room. Last but not least I want to thank you again for your feedback. I hope you don't find my responses to certain issues too negative. I realize that this is a case of polishing a turd, but I intend to polish this turd until I can use it as a mirror. SKP: http://cl.ly/3D0Q1U2Q1w0X2o1M0g0w

leaves me feeling less than enthusiastic at the prospect of squeezing in to a 140 cm high space to reach the drums.

Then put them in the corner where the mix position is now! Where you put the drums or other instruments is not the issue: Your priority is to get a good control room, and you did say you were prepared to move things around to attain your goal. So take out the the things that are interfering with the only feasible spot for your control room, and pt them wherever else you can figure out to fit them. The way I would do it: Here's the SketchUp: http://digistar.cl/Lokal/lokal_sketchup_s02.skp The geometry is set up correctly for the mix position. I would also put the speakers in soffits, for maximum optimization, but you don't have the budget for that. Pity: you'll be missing out on some major gains by not having them in soffits. Also, I would NOT put them on brackets attached to the wall! :shock: Rather, put them on massive (hollow, sand-filled) stands, in the positions indicated, at the angles indicated.

If there is any other way to do the layout that would improve on the current one, even if it's less optimal than the one you suggested, I would be interested in hearing it.

For a usable control room, symmetry is key: Everything forward of your ears must be laid out symmetrically, if you hope to have clear, accurate sound stage and good stereo imaging. That symmetry includes the ceiling: you can't have the ceiling at one height sloping one way over the left speaker, and at another height and/or sloping a different way over the right speaker. It has to start at the same height over each, and slope in the same way, symmetrically about the central axis of the room. It also cannot slope DOWN from the speaker position going backwards: it must slope up, or remain horizontal, but never down. The only place where all of that can be accomplished, is the location I pointed out. Unless you can modify the ceiling, there are no other possibilities.

This makes me worried as well. It might be a case of me giving an inadequate description of the construction, ... Anyways, I added a poor attempt of a cross-section of the wall at the bottom of this post which I'm hoping paints a clearer picture of it all.

Yes it does clarify, and yes you did mess up. It is as I expected: You put down a floor that doesn't need to be there, and you wasted probably around 8 to 10 cm of precious room height. But even worse, you created a three-leaf wall! :shock: You already had an outer-leaf (the concrete shell of the room), then you added two leaves in front of that, one on what looks like some type of thin furring, and the other on a separate set of studs. So you have reduced the isolation in the low end of the spectrum. Your room now isolates worse than it would have for drums, bass and the lower couple of octaves on the piano and keyboards, compared to what it would have been if you would have put all of that drywall on a single leaf on the separate studs, instead of spreading it across two leaves with two air gaps. (I could go into the detailed acoustical explanation of why that is, but I'm short on time right now, and you can find it in numerous other places on this forum. If you search for "three-leaf" and "MSM", you'll soon find explanations as to why this is.) That wall might also explain some of the issues with the room just "not sounding right", since it might be acting as a panel trap (membrane trap) or other form of resonant device, depending on various factors that are a bit complex to go into right now. Since it is a partly coupled 3-leaf system, with two air cavities of different depths and different masses on each leaf, you probably actually have multiple issues going on there, that are really hard to calculate. Figuring out two fundamental resonant frequencies for a 3-leaf system where both gaps are the same size and all three leaves have the same mass is not so hard, but once you start having multiple variables it gets hard to predict. So I really can't even guess at what that wall might be doing to the acoustics inside the room. What you should have done, is to just build a single stud frame a few inches away from the original concrete wall, right on the concrete floor, and put all of your drywall on only ONE side of that, creating a proper 2-leaf system. That would have maximized your isolation and minimized your other issues. Your floor you could have left as plain concrete, maybe staining it creatively for aesthetics, or putting down some laminate flooring if you don't like the idea of bare concrete. Either way you would have had a great acoustic floor, and maximum room height. Now you have some type of damped resonant floor that you don't need. What you did is fine for a drum riser (sort of), but you didn't need it for the entire room, as it isn't helping your isolation any, and is eating up maybe a worthwhile percentage of your room height and room volume. I also would NEVER build walls on top of a piece of mineral wool, like you did! :shock: There is nothing solid supporting that wall! I have no idea how you managed to get that past the building inspector, and get your final inspection passed! I can't see that meeting code. You can float a floor or a drum riser like that, but not with a wall on top! I certainly hope the inner-leaf ceiling is not resting on those inner-leaf walls... ? :?: :!: I don't know how much you are prepared to do to fix the room, but it seems there is an awful lot you have to un-do first, to get back to a point from which you can actually progress, safely and acoustically correctly. - Stuart -