Basement Control Room Design Questions

Hi Guys, I've spent a long time researching how to set-up my control room and I'd really appreciate some feedback and also the answers to a few questions. Here are the facts so far..... Basic room is 19' 10" x 14" 9" in the finished basement below the garage. Biggest issue is ceiling height at only 6' 10" and is painted cement. Room volume is 1999 cu feet and 292.54 sq feet. The walls are standard gypsum 2"x4" wood new home construction. Flooring is hardwood. There are 2 doors. One that leads to a storage room (on the right side) and the other (entry door) leads to an existing sound lock (approx. 8' x 9'). Sound proofing to the rest of the house is not an issue as even now I can crank-up the sound as loud as possible and still not hear it upstairs! Just lucky I guess :) I have included a jpeg of my proposed design. Basically, adding two walls from the doors at the back of the room to the front of the room at an approx. 6 degree angle. It is not on the enclosed plan but the width at the short end is 10' 5". I would place the desk and monitors 3' 4" from the front wall and 3' 3" out from the center line. There are electrical baseboard heaters and no HVAC issues or other external sound issues. I mainly do remix / production work 'in the box' and do not record many live instruments other than vocals at present. However, I do have other areas in the house that would be great spaces for tracking and so this is only intended as a control room. This is only a hobby/sideline at the moment for me at the moment but I intend to try and make a living from this in the near future and want to achieve the most professional result that I can. I do not have a specific budget in mind and would obviously like to keep the cost down but am willing to spend some money on this if necessary. Let's say under $5000 for starters. I am reasonably capable at doing most of the foreseeable work myself. (Walls, paint etc). My questions are... Do I really need to add the walls at all or can I get a close enough version with acoustic treatment? (Real Traps etc) While I want as professional end result as possible, I also appreciate that the low ceiling is far from ideal and so I do not want to put too much unnecessarily expensive lipstick on the pig, so to speak. If I stop the angled walls at the doors (approx. 70% of the length of the room) would that be ok? Would changing the angle from 6 degrees to 8 degrees make a big (and necessary) difference? Would this room be ok for 5.1 work? I do not do any of this at the moment but want to keep my options open for the future. On the front wall, I have seen some studios place a jagged rock finish. Would this work as well as acoustic panel treatments? How about if I added a large flat screen monitor or projector screen to the front wall? Any considerations there acoustically? Thanks for any help and advice, Colin

Can somebody please help with this? Am I missing something or not following one of the rules of the forum??

Hi Colin, and Welcome to the forum! :) Sorry about not getting back to you sooner, but it's been a madhouse lately....

Sound proofing to the rest of the house is not an issue as even now I can crank-up the sound as loud as possible and still not hear it upstairs! Just lucky I guess

Lucky you! Go buy a lottery ticket, quick! Before you r luck runs out! :) Seriously, you really are one of the lucky ones. That's great!

Biggest issue is ceiling height at only 6' 10"

Damn! Ok, not so lucky.... Bummer.

Room is 19' 10" x 14" 9" height ... 6' 10"

The room ratio isn't too bad, except for one issue: the length is almost exactly three times the height: So you will have modal issues associated with that relationship, unless you do something to change it.

Do I really need to add the walls at all or can I get a close enough version with acoustic treatment?

That depends on what basic design concept you want to use. For RFZ design, you would need to splay the side walls, or at least the front part of them. For other designs: not necessary. But RFZ is the best.... And if you do go with RFZ, then you'd need to splay them quite a bot more than 6°.

If I stop the angled walls at the doors (approx. 70% of the length of the room) would that be ok?

That's fine. And much further forward is also fine. You can probably stop them at about the same point as where your chair is. Behind that, the side walls can be parallel.

Would changing the angle from 6 degrees to 8 degrees make a big (and necessary) difference?

6° is for flutter echo, not for RFZ. RFZ needs much greater angles. And flutter can be dealt with in other ways.

Would this room be ok for 5.1 work? I do not do any of this at the moment but want to keep my options open for the future.

Possibly, but it's a long shot with that low ceiling. Also, if you do plan to do 5.1 down the line, then the entire room as to be designed for that right now. Changing it later will be expensive, and complicated, and will involve tearing down some stuff then putting up other stuff instead. Mixing 2.0 in a 5.1 room is easy, but not the other way around... So from that point of view, if 5.1 is in the cards, then design the room for that now, even if you don't by the speakers and other stuff yet. - Stuart -