First Studio design, 12x14 room - advice please

Hello everyone, I've been lurking for about 6 months here trying to read and reread as much as I can. I've finally come up with my first draft so here's my first post, finally! Some background, I'm building a one-room studio used mainly for mixing/mastering, writing and vocal tracking. No drum tracking, live room, or vocal booth. So the main goals are to acoustically balance the room with enough soundproofing to handle high monitoring volumes only. The interior dimensions of the room will be 12x14 and the unfinished ceiling height is currently about 8 ft to the joists. The room is in the basement. Looking at the attached design, the grey walls are existing exterior walls. They are underground brick foundation, with existing framing, with yellow insulation, probably R-11. The drawing shows their interior position/measurement. So I don't have to worry about soundproofing on those walls. To the left is the laundry/furnace room and I plan on building the STC68 double-wall design there as represented by the green lines. I've measured a max 65db spl from the applicances in there. I have 2 problems there, one is the door its a major weak link. Don't know if I should try to build a major laegue door with stuff from zeroint'l, or do the double door (tiny) soundlock. The second issue is that I'm going to keep my computers in the laundry room and will need to run cables between the rooms. One is a 25-pin serial cable for my soundcard, so that right there will require a 3" hole in order to fit through, ugh! My main concern is the ceiling. The family room is directly above my studio and is the most used room in the house. From what I can see I've got a 1/2" subfloor and then tile floor right on top of that. Right now I can hear normal speaking from my studio area when in the family room. This is really bad. I attribute my of it to the 2 furnace vents in the ceiling that feed the family room. One is at the front(top) of my studio, and the other in the rear. I'll start a separate construction thread, but just for reference, to tackle the ceiling I plan on adding 5/8" sheetrock between the joists against the subfloor, then R-19 batts, then RC with 2 layers of 5/8" sheetrock. You'll notice I decided to soffit my monitors(orange lines), which will be the new Event ASP8 actives. The walls are splayed at 60 degrees. The height of my computer monitor will require me to raise the nearfields and angle forward. I plan on using teh bottom of each soffit wall as a bass trap, leaving the port open at the bottom. I have a small 4ft span between the 2 soffits, shoudl this be absorbtive, like or maybe a hemholtz resonator? For the side walls I was planning on just haning some 703 panels, mounted 2 " off the wall. One wil prbably have to hang on the door because its right across from my mix position. If this is a good way to go, should I stagger the panels between the 2 walls, or should they be spaced the same so they are identical and facing each other on both walls? I'm not sure what to do about the backwall. I wanted to do corner traps and just some 703 along the back, but teh closet messes that up. So I'm thinking that I'd do deep panel traps along the back. Overall I think I need alot of broadband absorbtion throughout teh room because of its size. Also planning on hanging a 4x8 could over the mix position. Lastly HVAC. There is already a vent running along the length of my front wall. I could easily tap into that, except now I'm creating almost direct path to the vents in the room above. So I'll probably want to create separate vent and returns for the room. Well I guess that's enough for my initial post. I mainly want to see if anyone sees any huge gaps/concerns in the design, make sure I'm on teh right track, and just generally start the discussion. I look forward to comments and also jioning in on your threads. Hello and thanks! HB

John, I know that typically you'd want to splay the side walls in this design. 2 reasons I didn't: 1 - With the door on the side I didn't think I could splay down far enough to get past the mix position. 2 - Don't want to lose the floor space, I get slightly clausterphobic as it is.

Why not angle just one wall like this Cheers john

Ok John, you've had me thinking pretty hard for awhile now. I'm working on another version of the design using your suggestion. Not sure if that's teh route I'll go yet, but I certainly want to put it through its paces. Geometry was my worst math class for sure. I've been having a hard time figuring out all the angles, but I think I've got it. If the left wall is splayed 12 degrees, and previously I had the soffits at 30 degrees, then they now have to each move 6 degrees correct? I need to act as if I'm actually splaying each wall 6 degrees. So that would make the angle of my left soffit 36 degrees(whats the abbreviation for degrees?), and my right soffit which was 120 degrees (from 0 vertical) now becomes 126 degrees? And what was horizontal fromt wall now is angled 6 degrees as well? Please let me know if I've got this right. I'll post an updated design soon. So I'm a little worried that if I'm having this much trouble on paper, imagine when I actually have to construct it (I'm even worse at construction than geometry!). So let me ask, what advantages am I gaining from splaying the walls? Is it to save me from having to put absorbtive treatment on the side walls? Anything else? I know that is part of creating the RFZ by deflecting early relections behind you. Just trying to determine the advantages/disadvantages of either design. Thanks for your help! Can anyone else chime in? I know I had quite a few questions in that first post. Maybe too long to read through? Thanks everyone

Yup - you've got it. Left wall at 12 degrees - everything else at 6 degrees. here's the smartdraw version. cheers john

Thanks much John!

ok, I've created an updated draft based on John's recommendations. A few questions.... What should I do about those back corners? I've got that closet sticking out a bit and that might have some weird impact. I'm thing I should build a corner trap in the bottom right corner and then angle the closet front to be the same as the corner trap. The closet should act as a bass trap right? If this is a good idea, then what is the angle of those traps, 45 degrees? Should I factor in the splayed wall when determining the angle of those traps? Also, what is the best way to construct the closet? Thanks folks!

I'd turn the cupboard into a bass hanger trap like this. cheers john

Actually its a closet, not a cupboard, so I need to have floor to ceiling access and won't be able to do hanger traps as you've suggested. It's not yet built, but I need to build some storage space into this design. So I heard that closets can act as bass traps, and if true, was wondering what's the best way to construct them to deliberately make use of that? I also could possibly make both corners into closet/bass traps in order to get more storage. Thanks -HB