Odd shaped control room

At the university where I teach I have inherited an old video studio that we converted to a recording studio. Does anyone have suggestions on how to improve our control room? It is 20' by 8' and 14' high! The walls are pegboard with (I think) rock wool underneath. There is a door in one of the 8' walls and a long window 6'x2' centered on the right wall as you enter the control room. At one point there was a suspended ceiling and the t-grid for that is still hanging about 7' above the floor, which is tile. Currently I have the monitors set to fire the length of the studio and have them placed 1/3 of the length away from the front wall. We built an 8'x6' 6" compressed fiberglass cloud above the console with hanging 2'x'4' by 4" traps on either side. I put a 4x8 poly on the front wall with cheap and dirty bass traps (stacked rolls of fiberglass insulation) in all four corners and 4'x2'x 12" bass traps of loose fiberglass in muslin hanging from the ceiling in each corner. I also built 2 16"x7' QRD diffusors that I have placed in line with the projection from the monitors. Finally, I built decouplers out of 1x3 pine spaced in a QRD pattern hanging from the T-grid (7' above the ground) for a large portion of the ceiling that is not taken up by the cloud. (I have no idea if this actually works, but it looks cool :yahoo: ) Thanks! Scott Michal

Hi Scott. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :) That said, what seems to be wrong with the room? What do you hear, and what needs fixing? For example, is it too "boomy" too "tinny", too "honky", too dead, too live? etc. The ratio is not fantastic, but also not terrible, the volume is fine, the footprint is a bit low, but you have a high ceiling so that's acceptable. The floor is hard (tile), so it should not be too hard to make that room sound decent. As soon as we can figure out what is wrong with it! :)

I also built 2 16"x7' QRD diffusors that I have placed in line with the projection from the monitors.

Lose them. They are not doing you any good, and are probably doing some harm. The room is too small to benefit from most types of diffusers, especially QRD based ones. The issue with diffusers is lobing: you need anywhere from 3 to 7 full wavelengths (depending on which expert you listen to) of the lowest frequency that the device is tuned to, between the device and your head, in order for the lobing to smooth out. The room simply is not big enough to be able to get that kind of distance for a QRD that is tuned low enough to be of use for the room, and one that is tuned high enough to be able to get those distances is pointless anyway.

Finally, I built decouplers out of 1x3 pine spaced in a QRD pattern hanging from the T-grid (7' above the ground) for a large portion of the ceiling that is not taken up by the cloud.

Not sure what you mean by "decouplers". What exactly do they decouple from what? There isn't really anything inside a studio that needs decoupling: decoupling is part of the isolation system, not part of the treatment. About the only thing that needs decoupling is the speakers: they should be decoupled from the stands, but it doesn't sound like that's what you are talking about. So firstly, please provide a diagram of your room, done in SketchUp, with accurate dimensions, showing the locations of the walls, floor, ceiling, doors, window, console, speakers, listening position, and treatment. Also post some photos of the room. It's hard to get a good idea of what you have there just from a text description. I'd be particularly interested in seeing some photos of those "pegboard walls with rock wool underneath": they are probably doing strange things to the room acoustics, which might be good, or it might not. Also, download REW and run an analysis on your room, then post the result here: that will tell us how your room is behaving, acoustically, will highlight any obvious problems, help to track down the not-so-obvious, and help to suggest things that can be done to fix it. - Stuart -

Sketchup and I are not getting along. I feel like an idiot, but I just don't understand how it works. I did find another program and will have a floor plan and actual pictures of the studio tomorrow along with some Room EQ wizard plots. The sound of the studio has dramatically improved with the addition of the clouds and bass traps! I think it sounds pretty good, but I really don't have anything to compare it to. My mixes are improving, and I want them to keep improving. I have a pair of Alesis M1 Passive Monitors and am thinking I would like to upgrade to either Mackie, Tannoy or (If I can scrounge together enough money) Adam monitors. I don't want to spend money on that if the room is still causing problems though. I don't know what to do with the ceiling, and; It seems like there is a lot of wasted space. I wonder if there might be a better way to lay things out. Thanks! I look forward to hearing your comments after I get stuff posted tomorrow.

I figured out sketch up, sort of. Here is a model of the whole space we have for the studio. This is a model of the empty space so you can look at it without my ideas imposed. I will work on adding in the studio elements we have and try another post later. We had a major storm come through last night and the studio will be sans electric for a few days! but I will get pics posted ASAP. The building is concrete block from the early 80's. The rooms are very well soundproofed already. The floors are vinyl tile on concrete slab. (we built a wooden platform that we use as a "stage" both for recording and coffee house fund raisers.) The 8x20 room as a ceiling tile grid 8' above the floor, but there are no tiles. (the small foyer area does have ceiling tiles) Above this are many pipes and other stuff for ventilation and utilities. The large room has a grid of pipes hanging from the ceiling right below the roof trusses to hang theater lighting, scenery etc. from. The ceilings above the trusses are perforated metal panels typical for general sound control in the model, I represented the peg board with metal and little stars since I couldn't find the right texture. Thanks, Scott

I tried to open your model, but SketchUp says that it is not a SketchUp file. It should have an ".skp" extension, not ".kmz". - Stuart -

Sorry, the file size is too large to upload, Here is a link to the file on Google 3D warehouse http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=3fddee55d4740250226bd2fb58a3a56d

Some pictures of the studio

I don't know what to do with the space above the clouds. It goes up to 14 feet, but their is a ceiling tile grid at 8'. The room is so small I didn't want to close it off. I built these diffusors that are spaced on a QR formula. I have no idea if they actually help, but the ceiling was really ugly and these help cover it up!

some more diffusors and part of the cloud above the mix desk

The tracking room

There is an angled wall on one end of the tracking room

The ventilation system is not very quiet, but we use carotid mics facing the other way, and are getting fairly quiet recordings.

a shot of the ceiling in the tracking room. Plenty of things to hang stuff from!

The entrance from the Fine Arts hallway

The outside of the recording studio. It is very quiet inside, no road noise, and even if a rock band is practicing down the hall, we can't hear it. The only time outside noise is a problem is during severe thunderstorms, I can hear the rain hitting the roof!

Our biggest concern is about how to utilize the space. The existing control room is only 92 inches wide, 263 inches long, but 174 inches tall. The tracking room is about 22'x 28' and the little foyer is about 5x7. Also- we have some JBL 4311b speakers. Is it going to even be possible to soffit mount those in the control room, or are they going to be too big? I also have a pair of Alesis M1 passive near fields. I am getting better at sketch up! Here is a link to a new model of the studio http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=774386576323dd1aa2956231ce04a6e1&prevstart=0 Thanks Scott

Any Suggestions?

Well, now that I have gotten more familiar with the forum, I consolidated this thread into a more focused form- http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17692 Thanks everyone for a great forum!