Church conversion in North Lincolnshire UK

Hi everyone, for a long time I’ve been a sponge, soaking all of the superb information that gets shared on this forum. You guys are awesome, I feel I’ve learnt so much, so I firstly wanted to say thanks and hope some of you can share some input on my new project. I’ve Just bought an old Baptist church in North Lincolnshire UK that I’m going to convert into a studio with enough space to live in and have a few bunks for residential. It was built originally in 1790 then rebuilt in 1870, funnily enough it’s not a listed building but the locals want me to preserve the outside appearance. What I’m needing from the build is a medium sized control room big enough to house A 32/64 Amek Einstein Console, Sofit speaker mounts for Tannoy gold 15” or 12”, A large sofa, A double rack of preamps and compressors and enough space to work with a guitarist or 2. It would be cool to try isolate any fan equipment outside the control room in a small machine room or somewhere for my computers, Otari Radar, converters and PSU’s. I also need a live room with a high ceiling for drum tracking with an open natural reverb, preferably with enough space to have the rest of the band playing in that room with cans on. I’m thinking I’d like to have quite a small dead room with eyesight to the live room that I can isolate at least 3 guitar cabs in if guitarists are playing live. I need a small lounge, bathroom and kitchen, I was going to build a second floor over a 3rd of one of the halls to have myself a bed-sit style room (lounge, bed and en-suite toilet) for me to stay in and have a separate bunk room for when bands sometimes stay over. I know that is a lot to squeeze into about 18 square meters. I also have a pretty tight budget of around £20,000 UK pound. I have salvaged a whole lot of materials from my old studio which I built 4 years ago in rented space. This includes some timber, doors, windows, neoprene matting and even some plasterboard that was salvaged! I will be doing a lot of the work myself with family and friends and I have good contacts for other building supplies that I will need to buy. This is also the 3rd studio I’ve built so I’m hoping I can come in on target with a cool design. Hopefully I can open doors by August 2013 I usually record loud and heavy bands, sometimes Indie alternative bands that travel both nationally and internationally, usually contracted through some indie label etc. The building currently is made up of 2 church halls with an extension kitchen and 2 toilets on the back. It’s wooden floor but I’m thinking of having it concreted. It is on a corner of a residential street but most of the houses are far enough away to not course problems. The nearest is about 10 meters but the rest are across a busy A road. I’m guessing me blocking the traffic out will be just as important as me not disturbing neighbors. Inside there is a large supporting wall running down the center which would be difficult to knock out, but It has a large door and window that could be converted to a door easily. I’ve included a sketch up of the church as it is now if anyone’s got a few minutes and wants a tinker…I will put up another with the ideas I have been thinking about in the next few days.

Hope you guys like Jason Sanderson Producer Engineer UK

Wow, awesome! Can't help you on the details, but damn, thats one awesome project you got there! Btw, the sketchup you uploaded has some layers that aren't used. Maybe its on purpose, but just wanted to give you a heads up. Cheers and best of luck,

I'm useless with sketch up sorry, I will find how to delete layers and put a new one up

Hey dudes, It's great to see people have been checking the church out. I have been getting some ideas down in Sketch up, the file is messy, I've not got the software dialled yet. Here's a link, it says it's too big to attach so i just dropped it on my server for my website, hope that is ok http://www.jasonsanderson.co.uk/church%204.skp

I'm probably on the wrong forum to say this, but save yourself a lot of useless work and get rid of all those strange shaped rooms. It makes no sense and it even consumes space you could use to get better sounding rooms. If you want the suggestion of all these angles, create them with acoustical treatment like mineral wool filled pannels. :D

suggestions?

I thought having walls not parallel, running at 6 and 12 degree angles, made for better sounding rooms? Square rooms always sound weird don't they? I totally get the live room looks weird, my point is I'm struggling to get as much space as this laid out in other ways.

Suggestion is maybe not used properly, my english stinks. What I tried to say: if you want the room to look like it has these weird shapes..... :D Splaying walls removes flutter echo, but there are really easier ways to get rid of them. When you use absorption you don't have to worry about flutter.

Sorry i was meaning do have any suggestions on how it could be laid out better? I'm struggling to come up with better ways where the space is optimised. Cool about flutter but what about real low standing waves. I tend to record really loud abrasive bands where the bass content is stupidly excessive

I really appreciate the input by the way, thanks

but what about real low standing waves. I tend to record really loud abrasive bands where the bass content is stupidly excessive

Standing waves, also called room modes, are a fact of life: There is nothing you can do to get rid of them. They are directly related to the dimensions of the room, so changing the angles of the walls does not eliminate the modes: it just moves them to a different frequency, and makes it much harder to predict the modal behavior of the room. If the room is rectangular, then it is easy to predict the frequency of each mode. As soon as you change the angles of the walls, making the room non-rectangular, it becomes very complicated to predict the modes.

Square rooms always sound weird don't they?

Not if you choose a good "room ratio" and treat the room correctly. All rooms need treatment anyway, so it simply boils down to choosing a good set of dimensions for your room.

I thought having walls not parallel, running at 6 and 12 degree angles, made for better sounding rooms?

Well, yes and no. As Bert mentioned, non-parallel walls do help deal with flutter, but flutter can be dealt with using simple absorption too. The only time that angled walls are really necessary is if you are aiming for an RFZ design, or something along those lines. The shape of your control room is more suited to a 5.1 setup, but you only show 2.0. If you are planning to go 5.1 at some point in the near future then that shape could be one possibility, although treatment would work well too. But if you never plan to have 5.1, then that shape doesn't make a lot of sense. And like Bert also said: the shapes of your live room and dead room are a bit over the top! Plus, you seem to be wasting a lot of space with that layout. OK, sure, you have a lot of space in there, but it could be put to better use. - Stuart -

I was going for the rfz type of control room yes, I am only wanting stereo not 5.1, I guess i am going over the top with the live and dead room. Going to do some more reading, alot more thinking and reflecting on what you have said and draw up some new ideas. Thanks :D

You have, if I'm right, this lovely and true saying: keep it simple, stupid. :D :D

I'm thinking that i might split the second hall near in half and have a control room plus live room taking up that complete space. Then have a dead room to the left as I walk in hall 1's main entrance, still have a lounge in the same place but a bit bigger. Then have just the 1 bunk room to the right of the main entrance but bigger, then down the centre have a loby with stair case up to the second floor. Does all this sound more simple. I started taking all the pews and the stage out and taking the sloping floor up this week, I will put some picture of the internal up too. Also I'm putting all the pews on Ebay if anyone might be interested? As far as designing a new live and control room, Is it suggested that i have more square/straight normal walls and then worry about RFZ with Acoustic paneling etc? I still want to achieve a control room like the one here right?http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/Titles/Plans.htm

A drawing would help visualize your intentions, but it seems right to me. I just wouldn't make a control room that way. But some folks drive BMW and others Mercedes, isn't it? :D

Just did this quick one so you get the idea Points worth mentioning... Where the door goes from live room to dead room (where the corridor used to be) currently is a large window so i'm trying to utilize that opening for a door. Further down where the new corridor goes into the control room there is currently a large opening 276cm by 326 big, so i wanted to put a door there and block the rest up. I'm kinda scared of putting anymore holes in that wall. At that end is still where i plan to have that second floor so i need that lounge and maybe where the dead room ends to be a supporting wall. I'm also worried about the live room and dead room being that shape, should i not angle the walls a little bit?

I never realised that there was so much divide out there between having the shell walls splayed into a trapezoid type shape and having right angle shells and making the inner shape up with acoustic trapping and diffusers etc. I read one thing and think oh i should do it straight right angles then see a sketch up that John as made for someone where the walls are splayed and read some where it's better... honestly it's blowing my mind! would love to hear what more of you think on this subject? I think one thing i have pretty much decided on is having the live room walls splayed, I don't want too much absorption in there, I want it really over the top lively (Steve Albini esc). I'm thinking about having the walls brick and leaving them exposed. what you think?

I guess the answer to the question "To splay, or not to splay?" is that either will work, if done and treated correctly. There are good arguments on both sides. On the one hand, a purely rectangular room with parallel surface makes it easy to predict the modal behavior, and therefore easy to choose a good ratio. On the other hand, splayed walls make it much easier to create an RFZ design, as well as eliminating flutter echo, etc. So it's sort of a toss-up. If you want a true RFZ design with soffited speakers, then splaying at least the front section of the side walls (or the side sections of the front wall, if you prefer that perspective) makes that a hell of a lot easier. There's lots of opinions, both ways. Personally, I think splaying looks good, from the purely esthetic point of view, as well as having the above acoustic benefits, so I'd go with it. But it does make the design process more complex, and does tend to waste space in the angles that you lose. So there's my "non-answer" for the day! :) - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart that's great thanks

I'm really not trying to be sarcastic and I haven't really followed this forum for the last years so maybe I missed something, but can anybody tell me the benefits of a reflection free zone control room and theory measurements why this would make any sense at all?

I didn't' take it as you being sarcastic Bert. My last live room in the old studio had no absorption at all, it accidentally was a rfz by default (weird shaped walls like that first design). The drums sounded massive to say it was only about 4x5m. I loved how lively it was but without bad flutter. My control and booth was also rfz and I loved how direct everything sounded. As for the control room and booth this time it doesn't bother me if its not rfz in it's shell I can always make acoustic absorption to fit in that shape with helm holt traps etc, Thing is I really want my live room to echo like thunder and don't want much absorption in there at all. I never liked the sound of live rooms that don't make you shit yourself when you hit a DW snare.

My last live room in the old studio ... accidentally was a rfz

I'm not sure how a live room can be RFZ! By definition, RFZ implies a fixed sound source and a fixed listening position. How can you accomplish that in a live room? You would have to always place every instrument in the "correct" location for the sound source, and always place the mic in the "correct" RFZ location. Sounds like a very strange way of recording. It also seems totally irrelevant for a vocal booth. Do you have photos of these rooms that you mention? It would be interesting to see how they were set up.

... but can anybody tell me the benefits of a reflection free zone control room

Bert, if I'm not wrong, it was RPG that coined the term and did the original design, as an adaptation of LEDE. They published a paper on it, way back in 1984, it seems, and interestingly Peter D'Antonio's name is no that: https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conve ... elib=11598 Apparently, according to a Google search, they also tried to trademark the term "RFZ", but it appears that they might not have succeeded: http://trademarks.justia.com/736/87/rfz-73687109.html http://trade.mar.cx/US73687109 If I recall correctly, the basic idea is to arrange the front surfaces of the room so that no reflections can reach the ears of the engineer until at least 20ms after the direct sound, and even then 20 dB below the direct sound. The alleged benefit is that the engineer hears only direct sound from the speakers, with little to no Haas effect from reflections. And since the speakers would almost certainly have to be soffit mounted to create a true RFZ, you also get the benefit of no SBIR regarding the front walls, bass response extension, etc. There's probably more in the paper, but I don't have a copy. - Stuart -

Sorry, I'm getting my terminology wrong i was meaning non parallel There's some pictures of my old place on here if anyone is interested

I hope people are not face planting ever time I write something sorry, I am just a recording engineer wanting a new studio and trying my best to get my head around as much of this as possible. I just bought Bobby Owsinski's studio building handbook and Philip Newell's recording studio design books. From what i gather ones pretty easy going and one pretty deep. Obviously needing to turn it round quick so trying to cram as much into my head as possible (ouch), yet again I appreciate you guys input.

I hope people are not face planting ever time I write something sorry,

Naaah, not at all! I hope I didn't come across that way. I think most of us here have suffered through that phase: the learning curve for this whole acoustic thing is pretty steep at first, and it takes a while to get used to the jargon. But that's what this forum is all about! Folks helping out other folks, pointing them in the right direction, giving advice, etc. To your list of books I would add two more: 1) "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), 2) "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. And John Sayers work @ http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/index.htm is also pretty darn good. #1 there (affectionately known as "MHoA" around here) takes you from zero to advanced but without going too heavily into the math. #2 (a.k.a. "Rod's Book") is a great primer on the actual building techniques and methods. MHoA is heavy on theory and how it all works, while Rod's Book is less theory and much more practical: 2x4s and drywall, hammer and caulking gun. Both of those are very much recommended. Perhaps even more than the two you already have. But please don't be afraid to ask all the questions you want! Like the saying goes: "The only dumb question is the one you didn't ask"! :) I'm not saying that we can answer all your questions, but I'm pretty sure that we can answer most of them, and point you in the right direction to find the answers to the others. - Stuart -