Melbourne Eastern Suburbs Studio Build (help needed please!)

Hi Everyone. Well, I have a studio build underway.. but I need to get some feedback and :idea: input from some more knowledgeable and experienced folk than myself on various aspects before moving on! In a way, the main piece of background info is that the new space being constructed is an addition to the existing house where my parents live, in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, in Ozland. I will have use of the space for at least a few years, though - and hopefully more like 15 or 20 years, up to who knows how long. The intention is to fit it out as best as I can for use as a studio with a control room and a largish live room, for playing and recording music up to average "rock" levels at times, but often quieter, and not late into the night, as I don't really expect we will be able to achieve this level of isolation required for full out all-night operation. I'll just turn down at night as required. The overall form & finish of the main shell components of the build is dictated largely by the requirements of how my parents wish to finish off their house, but some of the details of construction can be tweaked to suit a better build acoustically, such as thicker materials, and more layers, to improve isolation where affordable and practical. For example, there will be a lot of glass involved in the outer walls, but my dad is prepared to splurge on 10.5mm HUSH glass, which should have a better sound isolation character by a fair bit, compared with standard windows, if we install them correctly. (open to tips in that area) I am extremely lucky in that my parents are amazingly tolerant, and insist they don't mind all sorts of noise permeating into their house (as we subjected them to for years already, jamming downstairs), but I personally would love to minimise this to the best level I can figure out that we can achieve. I hate hearing other people's noise, personally, so I don't think it's fair to inflict mine on others, if possible! My background is playing a range of styles of music, collaborating with a few muso friends (ranging from pretty straight-up electric guitar rock kinda music, thru to experimental electronics and soundscapes, and all around and about), but I am also keen to get more into producing for others as well - certainly hope to get a great space together for tracking, and mixing too - if I can get good results from the control room. I won't be working with any really really loud muso's, but I'd like to be able to rehearse with a rock band at reasonable levels for an afternoon without bugging the (also quite tolerant) neighbours too much. I think the key to the project is probably going to be about lots of various panels on wheels, but I am up for looking into building some internal wall structures semi-permanently if my dad will allow it! I have a bunch of photos (and architectural drawings) to attach here in order to illustrate the space and where we're at with it, and perhaps it makes sense to post these before continuing with the rest of the specifics, and my burning questions! One for now, though: Q. Is the protocol to make a separate thread on this forum, in the CONSTRUCTION section, if I have pic's of the construction so far, such as the FLOOR SLAB and other details that we have already built? Or do these go here to inform the design process? Thanks in advance, guys. I've been hanging to get this info up for some further scrutiny. It's taken me a while to figure out as much as I felt I could myself, and then how to get it all down in writing. I also have been wrestling with the SKETCHUP program, so I'll be able to post a (slightly ad-hoc) 3D model file shortly, also. Greetings! Evan.

So, first up... This is the space that will be available for the two spaces: LIVE ROOM & CONTROL ROOM. The northern end space (opening onto a deck) is already allocated to a KITCHEN area: (the kitchen / chill area will only be used for servicing the studio area in the current arrangement) This shows the way I think the space would need to be divided up, including the layout & the measurements available to work with, in a nutshell, as dictated to some extent by the existing structure and my dad's preference for the two internal walls to sit behind two of those five columns that you see running along the bottom (east) wall.

Now, something important to mention immediately, is that the three new walls are to be glazed floor to ceiling, with over three metres of glass (!) I know this is certainly not ideal for acoustics in many ways, but I'm hoping I can find some effective ways to make the most of it! (10.5mm HUSH glass, as mentioned in my initial post) This image shows the East elevation (ie. front of the house). The new studio part is the lower half, under the existing level, with a balcony overhanging above. The house is built on a hill side. The LIVE ROOM section is indicated by the windows "W2" & "W3". The CONTROL ROOM is behind "W4", and the KITCHEN "W5".

Just to complete the picture.. Here are the north & south elevations, showing the profile of the house in each direction, including the addition of the new studio space below, indicated by the double doors and windows marked "W6" (on the north side) and "W1" (on the south side). The LIVE ROOM would normally be entered from the south, from off the driveway, where a ramp access will be installed, leading down off the drive to the double doors (for loading gear in & out, such as drums, piano etc). As you can see, there's a two car garage directly behind, or adjacent to, the studio space, and some other workshop and storage space. There's an existing (was external) brick wall on that side, and stud & plaster wall on the garage side of that. Directly above are living areas, and a bedroom, so treating the ceiling / floor above in the best way will be one of the upcoming challenges. I think this needs a couple more layers of plasterboard attached up onto the yellow-tongue flooring above, insulation batts, plus double layer plaster (+GreenGlue?) on acoustic isolating ceiling mounting system onto them beams for the ceiling of studio. ..anyway, that's more in the construction-specific side of things.. The floor of the studio area is a newly laid concrete slab which is set down from the level of the garage, against the footing of the existing house. I think it's about 800mm below the level of the garage slab, and the footing itself extends a little way into the studio space, so we'll box that in and use it as a space for cables to run as well. The plan is to grind and finish the slab for the finished floor surface, and use some floor coverings as part of the internal treatment.

My main QUESTION though, running through my mind daily, is which way to orientate the control room. I had initially planned to have the monitors set up in front of the control room window, facing south as it were, into the live room. But as I planned it this way, I realised there's no way to work around where the doorways are in the internal walls, in order to get a symmetrical control room layout. I would have to have it set up on the window side of the room with a monitoring width of about 2.7m before hitting the doorway. The control room dimensions are already a bit problematic at 4.5 x 4.5 (!) x 3.4 (high) so I just really got to wondering what going to be the best way to arrange this room.. If I did set it up along that side of the room, the monitoring space itself could be separated off a bit, but there's not much room left remaining for treating the diminishing space.. dimensions would be approx 2.7 x 4.5 x 3.4, within the larger space of the room. And I presume the larger size of the room would still be defining the overall characteristics of the room and monitoring position, anyway. So I got to thinking I should flip it around 90 degrees to face out the large windows. The plan was to having a landing & doorway access from this room into the main house, through an existing full length window opening, which could easily be turned into a doorway. But this may have to be removed from the plan altogether (meaning access to the toilet in the house could only be reached by going outside and around into the house) or the landing & stairs could go in the live room, where we have the same size window opening to contend with there anyway, and a bit more space to play with in general.. This way a symmetrical layout could be achieved in the CONTROL ROOM, albeit the control room window would be a 90 degree head's turn over to the right from the monitoring position - but I can live with that! This opens up the room to bass trapping and other acoustic treatments in the four corners, with the doors on the left and right, towards the back of the room. If I get rid of the stair & landing, I can position a couch back there towards that brick wall / footing. There are some pipes and conduits entering the house there, which the landing was conveniently designed to cover over, but I could build them into a soundproof box which could double as a couch-side coffee table arrangement. Attached are a couple of the early sketches I did showing the basic arrangement of these two layout options outlined, just in a bare bones way, with desk, monitors, chair, couch in position. For option B, below, I think the landing would need to go. The original plan: (OPTION "A") The more recent thinking: (OPTION "B") And another couple showing option B again, from a couple of different perspectives, with some indication of the room treatment in the corners etc.

Here are another couple of overhead illustrations of these two options, to make it clear the parameters of layout A vs B. Firstly, "A": (running along one side of the room) Is this one a lost cause, or worthy of consideration? It seems like the option "B" immediately resembles the control room layouts I see suggested on this site.. And option "B", in context of the adjoining LIVE ROOM: I'll try to get a 3D SKETCHUP model posted in the morning - it's 3am again - howzat happen!?

.. Been trying to get my out-of-control SKETCHUP file down from 13MB (!) to under 500kb's.. It's nearly there now, after finally finding the purge function and deleting all imported furniture objects etc. Here's a preview of the space, overlaid in front of (and above) the drafted plans: I think I have all the fundamental dimensions corrected and pretty close to spot on, to indicate position of all walls, but I'm sure there are some odd anomalies hidden here and there, and I haven't really correctly modeled the internal double stud or staggered stud walls, or indicated insulation etc. I will try to get the SketchUp files posted either tonight, or if not, then tomorrow.. should I try to add the size and spacing of the ceiling beams above?

From above: You can see the services pipes just off-centre at the back of the control room. And also, a concept I was trying to combat the long parallel walls running the length of the LIVE ROOM: Constructed from an angled structure inside the wondows, tilted back at the top, with a translucent material for the top couple of meters (to let light through), and some kind of acoustic treatment in the bottom meter, where it might be a foot deep or more. Here's the view along the profile edge of this: (on the right hand side, in front of the windows) My original plan was just to make a lot of individual panels of different dimensions and material, to be maneuvered on wheels, but I suspect that this more large-scale addition, which could be sealed as more of a complete unit, would provide a more heavy duty treatment ..and go some way towards achieving a double glazing affect for stopping as much volume escaping in the direction of the neighbours.. I can also imagine on the other hand that separate modules, which could be constructed and angled much more dynamically / flexibly, may have their benefits, too. I imagine most likely I'd benefit from both together, really.

Purged the SketchUp file, so here it is! Let me know if it works for you. Please lend any thoughts on how you would arrange and treat these two rooms. I could spend two or three thousand dollars on treatment materials / products, and perhaps more if it seems worthwhile, but my preference would be to DIY as much as possible and do more treatment for less this way, if poss. Depends what will work effectively in the end. I'm open to any and all suggestions. Obviously the whole building project itself is costing a lot more all-in-all, but the treatment is something I'll have to save for and do over time, depending what I need to spend. My particular question first up is which way would work best to orientate the control room layout. The stairs and landing could be incorporated into either of the window openings in the existing (back) brick wall, or omitted if necessary. I also cleaned up and reorientated the images in this thread, so they all face the same way.

Hi Evan, and Welcome to the forum! :)

I'll try to get a 3D SKETCHUP model posted in the morning - it's 3am again - howzat happen!?

What? Only 3AM? That's way too early for a studio builder! You need to be up ALL night to do it properly! :) Anyway, some random comments on your post:

I don't really expect we will be able to achieve this level of isolation required for full out all-night operation. I'll just turn down at night as required.

That's good, but you should still check what the legal limits are in your area for noise. Call your local municipality and ask for a copy of the noise regulations. That's a good starting point for understanding how much isolation you will need.

but some of the details of construction can be tweaked to suit a better build acoustically, such as thicker materials, and more layers, to improve isolation where affordable and practical.

You might already know this, but isolation is a complete "surround" concept: you need to get the same level of isolation in all directions, not just in some places. For example, if you do your walls to 60 dB of isolation, your windows to 50, your ceiling to 40 and your doors to only 30, then what you get is 30. Period. Sound takes he easiest path out, and once it is out it expands from that point in all directions. Especially low frequencies.

For example, there will be a lot of glass involved in the outer walls, but my dad is prepared to splurge on 10.5mm HUSH glass, which should have a better sound isolation character by a fair bit, compared with standard windows, if we install them correctly. (open to tips in that area)

From what I found on-line, that seems to be laminate glass with a specially designed acoustic interlayer. That should be good, but you'll need two layers of that (one in each leaf) with an air gap between them, so this could get expensive!

I won't be working with any really really loud muso's, but I'd like to be able to rehearse with a rock band at reasonable levels for an afternoon without bugging the (also quite tolerant) neighbours too much

"Rock band" implies two problems: drums and bass. Those are the two loudest instruments, the ones that put out the most low frequency energy, and are therefore the ones that are the most difficult to isolate.

I think the key to the project is probably going to be about lots of various panels on wheels,

That will be fine inside the live room (tracking room) to help shape your acoustic environment in there, but movable panels are totally useless for isolation. The ONLY way to isolate loud sounds is by construction a complete air-tight "shell" around the sound source. It has to be air tight: If air can get through, then so can sound. And that shell has to be massive, as in "very, very, VERY heavy". The only ways that you can stop sound are with mass, rigidity, decoupling, and damping. That's it. There are no other methods nor magical materials that will stop sound. If you don't build a massive air-tight room, then you don't have isolation.

but I am up for looking into building some internal wall structures semi-permanently if my dad will allow it!

Let's hope that you can do better than that! Soundproofing a studio with drums and bass guitar inside it is an expensive proposition, so the walls that you build should probably be considered as "permanent", not temporary. It doesn't make sense to spend thousands of dollars on building an isolation wall if you think you might have to knock it down again in a few months.

Is the protocol to make a separate thread on this forum, in the CONSTRUCTION section,

It is best to start in the design forum until you have your plans finalized, then one of the moderators can move your thread to the construction section, once you are ready to start building. It's better to keep everything together in one thread, since if you start several threads about different things you'll tend to lose track of where you asked what, and what the answers were.

if I have pic's of the construction so far, such as the FLOOR SLAB and other details that we have already built? Or do these go here to inform the design process?

Put everything here in this thread. Several months down the line when you need to come back and check on something you know you posted, you'll be very glad that you kept everything related to your build in just one thread! :)

This is the space that will be available for the two spaces: LIVE ROOM & CONTROL ROOM.

First problem! Your control room is square. That's bad, since all the natural room modes from the width will line up exactly with the natural room modes for the length: You'll have massive peaks and dips in your modal response for that room. The only shape worse than a square room, is a sube room, where all three dimensions are the same. So you might want to change that, and choose dimensions that give you a better ratio.

Now, something important to mention immediately, is that the three new walls are to be glazed floor to ceiling, with over three metres of glass (!)

:shock: :ahh: I hope your dad owns shares in the glass company! That is going to be expensive. Two layers of laminate glass, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, is going to cost a small fortune. Do you really need that in both leaves of your room? You could save a lot of money by only using glass in some places on the inner leaf, even if your dad wants to do the entire outer leaf in glass, for aesthetic reasons. Just a thought

I know this is certainly not ideal for acoustics in many ways, but I'm hoping I can find some effective ways to make the most of it! (10.5mm HUSH glass, as mentioned in my initial post)

The glass won't make much difference to the acoustics of the room: the acoustic reflectivity of glass isn't a lot different than that of drywall or plywood. But it will make a difference to the isolation. Glass is several times more dense than drywall, so you can use thinner glass to get good isolation, provided that you also support it rigidly and get at least some damping in the cavity. It sounds like that wont be easy to do, if you want wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling glass. The drawing shows both steel and timber framing, so that will have to be done carefully, to ensure sufficient rigidity. The damping is going to be a problem. Large panes of glass like that will most likely have some low frequency resonance that you'll need to deal with.

The LIVE ROOM would normally be entered from the south, from off the driveway, where a ramp access will be installed, leading down off the drive to the double doors (for loading gear in & out, such as drums, piano etc).

It is really hard to isolate double doors, since there is no central pillar that you can seal to, reliably. Air-tight seals are critical for good isolation: No seal = no isolation.

There's an existing (was external) brick wall on that side, and stud & plaster wall on the garage side of that.

So if I understand, then the studio area will be divided from the garage area with a stud-and-drywall partition? If so, that needs to be done right: you can put drywall on only ONE side of those studs, not both. Since you still need to build your inner-leaf wall in the studio, the drywall will probably go only on the garage side of the studs. It is very important to NOT put drywall on both sides of those studs: if you do, then you'll have a 3-leaf system system when you add your inner-leaf, which will reduce your low frequency isolation.

Directly above are living areas, and a bedroom, so treating the ceiling / floor above in the best way will be one of the upcoming challenges. I think this needs a couple more layers of plasterboard attached up onto the yellow-tongue flooring above, insulation batts, plus double layer plaster (+GreenGlue?) on acoustic isolating ceiling mounting system onto them beams for the ceiling of studio.

That's the basic idea for your two-leaf ceiling, yes, but that will only work if you do the inner-leaf walls correctly, and also tie in the ceiling to the walls. Doing just the ceiling by itself will not accomplish anything.

The plan is to grind and finish the slab for the finished floor surface, and use some floor coverings as part of the internal treatment.

When you say "floor covering", I assume you mean laminate flooring, or hardwood flooring, or ceramic floor tiles? If you don't want concrete (which is a good surface, acoustically), then those would be your best options. Carpet would be your worst. But plain concrete is also just fine, as long as it is in good condition. Since it is new, it should be just fine.

My main QUESTION though, running through my mind daily, is which way to orientate the control room.

In a square room like that, it doesn't matter: all orientations are equally bad! :) Seriously, you need to fix that square shape and get it closer to one of the many good ratios.

If I did set it up along that side of the room, the monitoring space itself could be separated off a bit, but there's not much room left remaining for treating the diminishing space.. dimensions would be approx 2.7 x 4.5 x 3.4, within the larger space of the room.

I don't understand what you mean by "monitoring space" and "diminishing space". The entire room is the control room, and the monitors are inside it. There is no way to separate the space into to acoustic areas unless you build more walls in there, but it is already a small room and you don't have space for that. Maybe you could explain what you mean by these terms?

Attached are a couple of the early sketches I did showing the basic arrangement

Option "B" is definitely the best: there is no symmetry in "A", so that is no use. However, your sketches are showing only the treatment, not the isolation. You can't really plan the layout and treatment until you have designed your isolation. So I would suggest that you first concentrate on your isolation plans, then once that is worked out you can think about your layout and treatment options. - Stuart -

G'day Evan, firstly, nice job on putting forth your issues :thu: Thought i'd chime in in support of your plight. One thing that comes with this construction is having to make seemingly endless "decisions" :roll: Esp. decisions considering planing restrictions, monetary restrictions & neighborly restrictions :!: Anyway I am also in the Melb's East. and building and have some rather similar issues to contend with but I am fairly well into the build. If you'd like and your close you can check it out and pick what there is left of my brain... I can tell you easily now that the (Viridian) hush Lam also comes in a 12.5mm and mine cost $161.26 ex gst/m2 direct form them and the 10.5 is $128.33+. Considering all Stu's advice below, one point you will really want to go with is the 2 leaf configuration on the windows, which is blow out consideration number one if not number 10 :? . Also as mentioned the isolation of said windows. Having been in construction 30 yrs I can tell you, you'll want to allow avg of 15% on top of your budget for 'blow outs / variations' :cen: As I have priced most materials already locally & procrastinated long & hard over the a fore mentioned decisions feel free to touch base Cheers Anthony

Thanks so much, Stuart and Anthony! ( ~ and hi everyone else! ~ ) Anthony, I'm definitely keen to meet up and check out your space - absolutely! I'm still processing the detailed input from Stuart, and I've been working on a potential improvement to the internal wall layout to get away from the problematic 4.5 x 4.5 wall lengths in the control room.. Here's a quick pic of where I've got to with it, so far.. As you can see, I've added a little booth there as well, as a way to make a double door isolation chamber that can also be used for an isolation booth. I'll post a further pic below.. The problem with the internal wall positioning, is that my dad wants the walls to sit directly in line behind the steel columns out front of the large windows, so that they connect in with the window framing. To be honest, we weren't really looking at doing a full wall-within-a-wall design, as it goes too far outside of what my dad wants to see in the end result for this part of the house. We did talk about the possibility, but I think it's just beyond the scope of this build as far as budget & scope. The scenario is more that I have the space available to me, to make the most of as I can, but my budget for all the internal fitout - which would have to include the entire internal shell additionally, in this case - is more like $5,000, not $20,000, let alone $50,000, which is getting more into the ballpark of building an internal semi-glazed wall within the external glazed walls. There is room in the main structure budget to accommodate additional ceiling insulation, layering of plasterboard, and isolation mounting, which I can pay off over time, but I can't really ask my dad to put up more money (that I will owe him in the long run) to build additional walls that he doesn't want to see in there. Maybe it's a possibility down the track. What I'm looking at is trying to get a balanced and nice sounding control room, trying to stop noise transferring directly upstairs through the floor into the home areas above and - as best as I can within my relatively meager budget - trying to find ways to improve the isolation of sound escaping from out of the whole space in all other directions as best as I can. The 10.5mm laminated "Hush" glass will obviously be considerably better than using regular glass, but I know this will be the other main problem area, of which I'm not too sure how I'm gonna tackle it. We've rehearsed downstairs in the house for many years in the past, and the noise levels getting to the neighbours was not really a big problem, but admittedly - for the most part, the room we have always jammed in was behind the brick & stud wall, from the neighbours' perspective.. Basically, the full length ("Viridian HUSH") glass windows are locked in to the design (the frames are being made up now), and I can't see us affording, in addition, to add another complete sealed layer within this, the whole way around (of pretty much any construction, let alone half glass again). As has been noted, it's very expensive as it is, and unfortunately I don't have the additional funds to contribute more to it at this point. It could be something to look at some years down the track, but for now, I just need to figure out how to lay down the best basis as possible with the internal walls and layout, so I can get two good sounding rooms, and at least achieve the best isolation I can from the compromises in materials outlined above. Just to clarify, re. the garage wall.. The garage is a stud and plasterboard wall (internally), with a brick wall making up the second leaf (externally). So the brick wall will now become the inside wall of my studio space, and skirts one entire length of the space. Tomorrow I'll post some pic's of the actual space as it is now, to give a better idea of all this. Sound getting into the garage is not such a big deal compared with sound traveling directly upstairs through the studio ceiling. I realise that ideally each of the studio rooms would be isolated in its own air tight sealed space (and equally isolated on all sides) but seeing as I'm not looking at being able to achieve this equally, is it still worth going the extra mile on the ceiling isolation (such as using isolation mounting clips for the ceiling plaster, etc)? I had imagined this kind of localised specific treatment would still help to minimise sound transfer in a particular direction. (ie. from one floor to another in the vertical direction)

Here's another angle of the newer control room layout: {trying to get away from the 4.5 x 4.5 dimensions of the earlier layouts} It's basically a variation on the original "Option A" layout, but with the doorway to the live room moved across to the window side of the room. Thus the monitoring area is now centred in the space, allowing for a symmetrical layout, and extended into the space of the live room to give the control room the extra length required, away from the fixed 4.5m running across the other way. In this case, where the control room window is now, the length of the room in the centre would now be about 5.5m (from the control window to the back wall of the room, where the couch is). It's an improvement of ~1m in this direction, but not across the whole width of the room, as you can see. I've put the stairway + landing leading into the main house back into the control room for this layout, though it could maybe also alternatively go back to being in the live room if for some reason it doesn't work for it to be in the control room. Just felt like a good trade-off after giving up that extra space in the live room for the extension of the control space. Question: Do you guys see this control room layout as being a satisfactory improvement on the earlier versions? How could this be further improved? I'm trying to keep this wall's edges terminating at that window frame (on the left) - which sits behind one of the main structural steel columns just outside that glazed wall - and the existing brick nib wall extending out on the right.

Just to give some context to the project, I'll post some images of where we're up to now, starting from the beginning.. Here's the house, viewed from the front driveway down at the bottom of the valley:The space you can see underneath the veranda, along the whole front length, is where all the action's taking place.. (Left to Right will be: live room, control room, kitchenette, & outside deck). Here's a pic from the top of the driveway, at the garage entry level, showing the studio space to be, as it's been for the past 10 years or so... (it's where we pretty much just used to store stuff like old bikes and junk). This wall will be essentially fully glazed, :oops: with double door entry directly into the live room: :shot: (from a ramp leading off of the driveway) These new rooms will basically sit correspondingly under the three front rooms of the existing house above; Master bedroom, Lounge room, and Living / TV / Dining room at the far end. Other rooms directly adjacent (downstairs) are just the garage, a hallway, and another tinker/hobby room, and also a workshop tool space. There's also a toilet, which I'd like to be accessible from the studio spaces, hence the stair + landing indicated in my layouts. The pic below is what the space looked like (from the other end of the house) once we had done a whole bunch of digging work, built up the front block retaining wall two blocks higher, and put in nine concrete piers behind it, to support the new slab: The piers go right down to the rocky natural ground below, and consist of a rectangular "pad" of concrete at the bottom, with the "Formatube" columns extending up to the new slab level, making pouring the remainder of these piers much easier. Here you can see the tops of the Formtubes before we finished leveling out the earth..

And here we are now, since the slab was poured in June: (viewed from the kitchenette, looking back through the control room area towards the live room at the other end) This one shows the block retaining wall (and the deck outside of the kitchen in the foreground).. Here's the control room (foreground) + live room (background) floor spaces, specifically:Note the little pink pipes sticking up in the middle of the slab in the first & last of these three images - They indicate where the wall will be between the control room and kitchen. (Pipes are for a hydronic heating panel on each side of that wall). Also the larger cluster of miscellaneous services pipes towards the brick wall, which I need to work into either a box, or into the stair / landing arrangement for access to the main house.

OK, I've gone back to my books, and back and forth across all the orientations I can think of for the control room, and I think this is probably the best solution: Is this close enough? From the beginning of this project I've tried to aim for the second of Sepmeyer's indicated favoured ratios, which in this case is 1 : 1.28 : 1.54 The exact measurements (with my ceiling height of 3.35m) should correspondingly be about 4.3m wide, and 5.2m length. It may be that I can get a bit closer to this, but perhaps approx 4.5m and 5.3 is about as close I can get, with what is already existing. I'd love to get feedback on this. Also, there's a brick support section coming out from the wall there, towards the front of the control room, which you can see in the images from my previous post. For this wall arrangement to work, I'd have to use this space as a corner bass trap, I suspect, and build a corresponding structure on the other side of the room to make it symmetrical. Is there any issue with doing this?

This shows roughly what I mean for treatment in the front corners of the room: In behind there could potentially be totally dedicated to deep bass traps or some kind of wide band treatment on each side.

Here are a couple more wide-angle images of what I mean, showing each corner section sort of "double trapped", to try to deal with the brick nib wall extending into the room in that front right corner..

That control room is looking better, to my eyes! But I am not coming with any technical knowledge at all! I'm keen to hear what the experienced technical people think of that approach. :) MUZBOZ :shot:

Is there any reason why you can't just build two conventional speaker soffits, designed to fit around those pillars? I've never seen a control room where the speakers are mounted in close proximity to four giant poly-cylindrical devices: I have no idea what that would do to the acoustics. I suspect that specular reflections would be a big problem. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Is there any reason why you can't just build two conventional speaker soffits, designed to fit around those pillars? I've never seen a control room where the speakers are mounted in close proximity to four giant poly-cylindrical devices: I have no idea what that would do to the acoustics. I suspect that specular reflections would be a big problem. - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart! I did wonder about building a soffit mount arrangement into this room - partly just as a way of dealing with the pillar in that right corner, and also partly because it seems like you can get great results, and possibly the most economical use of the space available (without the need to have speakers on stands a metre or more away from the back wall, etc). But it also seems like quite a daunting task, to get it right, and not to mention the additional expense of getting the rather expensive dedicated monitors. It's not something I've looked into in such great depth as I have only ever had freestanding monitor speakers designed to be used on stands. I admit I'd be quite daunted by the prospect of choosing the right monitors to suit the job, and building the wall and mounting arrangement just right to do it all justice. Could you perhaps suggest a ''tried and true'' pair of monitors commonly used for soffit mounting, in a room of about this size, which I could look into for further research in my case? The volume of my room will be about 75m3 / 2500 cubic feet. I'm prepared to look into it - especially if it solves the problem of that horrid brick pillar there on the right side, and if it makes much better use of the space available - but, in either case, I would like to construct the corner areas so that I have the option to use free-standing speakers with great results as well.. I suspect, in the long run, it will be more viable for me to use regular triangular type corner treatment (if there is an eloquent solution that would work around the brick pillar) and then I could use my current monitors, or other relatively affordable freestanding monitors, as I am able to upgrade. I'm sorry for the confusion on my most recent uploaded images. I actually thought those corner modules that I imported into the model were regular flat-faced corner treatment bass traps, with poly-cylindrical top and base plates only. Here's an image with just straight lines indicated across those corners, to show what I had in mind, in case this concept makes more sense?

not to mention the additional expense of getting the rather expensive dedicated monitors.

I'm not sure what you mean by "dedicated monitors". You can soffit mount pretty much any monitor, as long as it is not rear-ported/side ported, and as long as you have some method of rolling off 6 dB of bass. The vast majority of studio monitors fit both of those requirements, since they are either front ported or un-ported, and practically all monitors worth considering for a studio have room correction controls on them. There are a few that cannot be soffit-mounted easily, sure, but most can. What monitors do you have? (brand and model).

But it also seems like quite a daunting task, to get it right,

Not really. At its simplest, a soffit is just a large sheet of very thick wood, with a hole cut in the middle for the speaker to poke through, and some supporting framework behind it. It can be made a lot more complex, sure, and John often combines his soffits with bass traps below, which is a great idea, but it can also be kept very simple.

I admit I'd be quite daunted by the prospect of choosing the right monitors to suit the job, and building the wall and mounting arrangement just right to do it all justice.

It's not as complex as it seems at first glance: You still set up your speakers in the normal way, according to ITU and EBU recommendations, then you get your piece of wood, cut a hole in it in the appropriate place, build the 2x4 framing to support it, and poke the speaker through the hole. That's about all there is to it, in theory.

I would like to construct the corner areas so that I have the option to use free-standing speakers with great results as well..

Free-standing speakers can never sound as good as the same speakers correctly soffit mounted, for one simple reason: SBIR. That stands for "Speaker-Boundary Interference Response". It refers to the way the speaker interacts with the nearby walls, floor and ceiling, but mostly the front wall of the room. It's a confusing term, and some acousticians include many artifacts under that name while others only include a few, but ALL of them still happen: reflections, comb filtering, phase cancellation, baffle step response, power imbalance, room loading, reflections, diffraction, diffusion, etc... All of those ugly artifacts associated with the front wall will always be there with a free-standing speaker, regardless of what speaker you use, where you place it, or how you treat the room: But if you soffit mount the exact same speaker in the correct location, then all of those are gone. Eliminated. Don't exist. Buh-Bye. Not there. Or at the very least, they are greatly reduced. Of course, you CAN still use free-standing speakers if you want, as long as you carefully locate them to minimize the artifacts, and many people do that. But it could always be better if you soffit mount them. If you want incredibly tight bass response, a crystal clear sound stage, accurate stereo imaging, plus pure, clean direct sound, and you DON'T want SBIR, phasing, comb filtering, phase cancellation, power imbalance, et. al., then soffit mounting is the way to go.

more viable for me to use regular triangular type corner treatment (if there is an eloquent solution that would work around the brick pillar)

The easiest would be to just stuff those "gaps" full of mineral wool, floor to ceiling, then build superchunks in front of them, and more superchunks in the angles nest to the side wall. But that sounds like it would be rather expensive. That's a LOT of insulation! And to answer the question in your drawing above: Yes, you probably would need to replicate that pillar on the other side, to get acoustical symmetry. Even with the deep insulation around it, that single pillar will still have some effect on low frequencies, so the other side of the room should be done the same. Of course, if you do soffit mounting, then you do NOT need to duplicate the pillar, since technically the pillar would no longer be in the room: it would be inside the soffit, which is not really part of the acoustical space of the room. - Stuart -

OK - This is all very interesting.. Thanks again for the further information, Stuart. You make it sound, at least potentially, a lot simpler than what my research seemed to suggest about the soffit construction.. My monitors are Alesis Monitor 1's (the original mid 1990's version). I also have a decent quality sub woofer I can use in conjunction. But they're rear ported. So I'd have to get something else, I guess - maybe some old JBL's, or some B&W monitors.. I'm not sure which would be the best way to go. I also have some nice old "Interdyn" hi-fi speakers which may mount well in a soffit system, too. They're three way speakers, with two 10" drivers per box, an upper mid range driver + tweeter. I think all drivers are from SEAS, of Denmark. A friend suggested Focal Twin6's as a future upgrade, which I could potentially mount on stands, and have the option to switch between the two pairs?

INTERDYN MODEL 60 (original brochure info) A 3-way system using four drive units, the Interdyn Model 60 employs two 25 cm bass units, an oval mid-range speaker, and a 3.75cm dome tweeter. Response is 25-20,000 Hz, and size is 67.5 x 46 x 29 cm. Crossover frequencies are 600 Hz. and 3000 Hz. Power handling capacity is 70 watts RMS.

"INTERDYN MODEL 60". I can't fine any more info on those, and I think this is a first: Google comes up with precisely ONE hit when searching for that phrase, and that single hit is your post, above!!! But from the photo, it looks like those are front ported, so you should be able to soffit mount them just fine. And since they have nice rectangular cabinets, it should be easy to soffit mount them.

Alesis Monitor 1

Those seem to be rear ported, so probably not soffit mountable. Pity.

So I'd have to get something else, I guess - maybe some old JBL's, or some B&W monitors.. I'm not sure which would be the best way to go.

Everyone has their favorite speaker, but personally I think it's hard to beat a pair of Adam A7X's, or even A5X if you are on a tight budget. - Stuart -