Double Garage Studio - Interesting Questions??

Hi everyone. David here. I'm embarking on a major project (and lifelong dream) here. First a little background to help you see where I'm coming from. My degree is in music for Film and TV with a little studio design in there too. I've built a couple of studios over the last 20 years or so but this will be the biggest and best of course :) I tell you this so that you understand I'm not a total novice but I am a sponge for learning and I can't believe how much I've picked up already just reading the forum. Thanks guys, especially John of course. I'm funding the project below personally so budget is limited. The garage is already constructed. The door on the right of the picture is being kept, giving access to a storage area. The door on the left of the pic will be blocked off (blockwork). I have a double garage (single brick with A frame roof, slated) attached to neighbours garage but not the houses). I am converting it into a control room with space to record vocals, guitar and maybe drums too (I don't want to limit options). If space becomes a major issue, then I would happily leave the drum idea out. The reason this appears a little vague is that I've managed to secure a deal for my musical Kids TV series which I am writing the music for. Therefore I get to choose whether I use live drums of not. As I also have the option to record the dialogue as well (if I can gain further funding) then I need to have space for the cast to record. Most of this would be done 1 at a time, but there may be occasions where I get a few actors in to record together. Therefore I am considering a larger control room (multifunctional so I can have the space to choose) with a smaller vocal booth. See pics for general idea. Apologies for the sketch. I spent hours trying to get to grips with sketch up - Cubase is SO much more intuitive ;) My main monitors are likely to be either ADAM 77x or Mackie hr824 II. I don't monitor particularly loudly but would want to be toward 80-90dB. Yes, of course I'll crank it toward 100dB when its mastered and I want to enjoy the results. Hopefully you can see by the pics the following dimensions. Width 5900mm Length 5700mm Height 2425mm from floor to inside first existing joist. The floor is concrete. I will get into construction later but I wanted to kick this off with a question that I can not research a convincing answer for. As you can see from by (ROUGH) picture, if you look at the bottom there is a triangular shaped airgap between the brick wall (lower most line) and the internal studio wall. I have marked this "D". Has anyone has experience of "twisting" the whole room so that "D" is actually a long rectangle? ie, the two walls run parallel, therefore skewing the room? I have seen many designs like this, but I wondered what the effects of bass absorption was? My concern is that bass absoroption would be higher on one side than the other...? Therefore giving an unbalanced tone overall to the room. The inner walls would be inside out construction, 2 sheets of soundblock plasterboard. Bear in mind that the front wall would then also be skewed then against the outer wall on the right. The reason for suggesting the skewed approach is to maximise space. Any thoughts? With that same thought in mind, if you look at the speaker soffit above "D", it sits within a corner of the garage which would be chunk top and bottom with speaker soffit in the middle. The other speaker soffit would be the same of course, however, there is less absorption on this side (engineers right speaker) as this is where I was thinking of putting the WC / Kitchen (K) area. My overall question here I guess is am I trying to be TOO space efficient and compromising on tonal balance of the room? The entrance area would be acoustically dampened too. Hopefully I've given you all the points you need at this early stage but please do shout if I've missed anything? Cheers guys. David

Hi David, and welcome! :)

I'm funding the project below personally so budget is limited.

Do you have a figure in mind? That's important. Frequently people underestimate the cost of building a studio, so it's good to get that clarified up front. For example, many people don't even consider the HVAC system, which is a very necessary part of any studio. Others don't take into account the cost if acoustic rated windows and doors, or the real cost of the structure that is needed to get good isolation. So if you have an amount in mind, it would be good to mention that here.

I am converting it into a control room with space to record vocals, guitar and maybe drums too (I don't want to limit options).

If you want to track drums, then I'd really, really suggest thinking about creating a small booth for that. The problem I have with trying to track drums in the control room, is that I cannot hear what each mic sounds like on the control room monitors, because it is totally drowned out by the actual drum kit! So I never know if I have my mics in good positions on the kit, until I actually record something, then play it back. And of course, after having 115db of drums bashing my ears to smithereens (whatever they are!), my ears are in no condition to be able to judge if the recorded sound of each mic is good or not! So I end up with lousy drum tracks, unless I can put a really good bit of isolation between me and the drum kit. So I strongly suggest that you re-think your layout and turn part of the CR into a drum booth.

Most of this would be done 1 at a time, but there may be occasions where I get a few actors in to record together. Therefore I am considering a larger control room

On the other hand, if you had a drum booth you could send the talent in there to do your ADR! :)

I spent hours trying to get to grips with sketch up -

There are numerous very good tutorials on YouTube about getting started with SketchUp, and it is REALLY worthwhile doing so. Once you get the hang of it, you'll never look back. I've used quite a few 3D packages in my time (some of them costing more than my house, at the time!) but SketchUp is the one I use most today. Except for animation: it sucks at animating! But its pretty powerful for basic studio design.

My main monitors are likely to be either ADAM 77x or Mackie hr824 II.

Your soffits don't seem to be big enough for the A77x. Those are installed "lying down", which means that you need a very wide soffit to accommodate them. I'd suggest switching to the A7x, or even A8x if you need a bit more punch. Those can be soffit-mounted very successfully.

As you can see from by (ROUGH) picture, if you look at the bottom there is a triangular shaped airgap between the brick wall (lower most line) and the internal studio wall.

It seems that you are trying to do an RFZ design for your studio, but that isn't the way to do it. If you angle your entire wall then you lose a lot of useful space, so it is better to just angle the front section of the wall (up to the mix position) and leave the rear sections of the walls parallel. Gives you a lot more space, and better acoustics. Especially considering that in order to get a good RFZ, you usually need to angle the walls quite steeply... However, there's another issue with the way you are showing that part of your design: The speakers are hanging back into the MSM air gap! :shock: :!: That cannot happen. The speaker soffit is enclosed on all sides, and separate from the wall cavity.

Has anyone has experience of "twisting" the whole room so that "D" is actually a long rectangle? ie, the two walls run parallel, therefore skewing the room?

Yes, I have done that before. I designed a studio like that for a guy in Mexico a few years back. It can be done. But in your case, that would mean that the front wall of the CR would also be "twisted" at the same angle, so you would then lose space in that newly created triangle...

but I wondered what the effects of bass absorption was?

It does not affect bass absorption, since that area is outside the inner-leaf: it is in the MSM cavity, and therefore technically isn't really part of the room any more. It affects the room isolation, yes (since it re-tunes the MSM resonance point), but not the bass absorption inside the room.

My concern is that bass absoroption would be higher on one side than the other...? Therefore giving an unbalanced tone overall to the room.

With an RFZ design, if the inner-leaf walls are sufficiently massive then that won't be a problem. The entire philosophy of RFZ is that only direct sound from the speakers reaches your ears: all else follows after a delay of at least 20ms, and even then gets back to you at -20 dB (compared to the direct sound), and hopefully diffusely as well.

The inner walls would be inside out construction, 2 sheets of soundblock plasterboard.

You don't need to spend money on "special" proprietary materials: Plain old ordinary 16mm fire-rated plasterboard does an outstanding job of isolating, and somewhat cheaper than proprietary products (some of which seem to work by black magic, as their claims defy the laws of physics!). This is very simple: what stops sound is mass. Since sound waves cannot read price tags, they really don't care how much you paid for your mass. If your wall cost you $20 per kilogram or $200 per kilogram is entirely irrelevant to the sound waves. It is the "kilograms" that count, not how much you paid for them. For example, the equation for calculating the MSM resonance of your wall is: As you can see: no price tags involved! Just mass and distance, nothing else. So don't get caught up paying more for your building materials than you need to: You are on a tight budget anyway, so no need to throw away money!

With that same thought in mind, if you look at the speaker soffit above "D", it sits within a corner of the garage which would be chunk top and bottom with speaker soffit in the middle.

You don't have enough room height to do that: Your soffit needs to go up pretty much all the way to the ceiling, and at least down to below the top of the desk. John's soffit design is much better: hangers below.

The other speaker soffit would be the same of course, however, there is less absorption on this side (engineers right speaker) as this is where I was thinking of putting the WC / Kitchen (K) area.

Once again, you cannot do it that way: the speakers must be contained within the outer leaf, and also the inner leaf. The cavity between the outer and inner leaves must be sealed: you cannot have a kitchen in there! :shock:

but please do shout if I've missed anything?

1) It seems that you are missing the concept of how studio isolation works: You have an outer leaf, which surrounds all the rooms that need isolating (and often is the building shell itself, or part of the building shell), then each room is built as its own independent, separate inner-leaf which does not touch any other leaf at all. Each room stands on its own, and normally consists of a stud frame with drywall (plasterboard) on one side only. There might be several layers of plasterboard, but they all go on the same side of the studs. The inner leaf completely surrounds the room on all five sides (four walls plus ceiling), is very massive, and is sealed air-tight. All of the equipment, furniture, instruments, treatment, lights and everything else are inside that inner leaf. If your speakers are soffit-mounted, then you basically cut off the front corners of the room by adding thick, massive, rigid baffles diagonally, with your speakers poking through a hole that baffle. In effect, the baffle becomes the new inner-leaf boundary of the room, but the original inner-leaf boundary still remains behind it, where it was: You cannot have the rear end of the speaker hanging into the MSM cavity: it must be contained with the inner leaf, just like everything else in the room. 2) You show your speakers angled at 45° (axis intercept at 90°), and while it is possible to do that, it is not recommended unless you have no other choice. You do have other choices! You could easily do yours at the more conventional angle of 30 degrees (intercept at 60°), which gives you a more natural sound stage, and a broader sweet spot. 3) You show your desk stuck right up against the front wall, directly under the speakers, with the console on top: that would give you some pretty major artifacts reflecting straight into your ears: SBIR form the side walls, reflections from the console and desk surface, massive comb filtering, phase cancellation, and other not-so-fun things. You should move the desk back, well away from the front wall. 4) You show your mix position at what seems to be 25% of the room depth: that's the second worst place for it! (the worst is at 50%). At 25% and 50% of the room depth, all your modal peaks and nulls reach their maximum expression. That's not where you want your ears to be... Theoretically, the best spot is 38% of room depth. However, that's just a guideline, and you don't' need to nail it spot on. There's plenty of room to maneuver around that, if you need to... as long as you stay away from the dreaded 25% and 50% points. 5) That table in the middle of the room is going to cause you grief: it will mess up the sound at the sofa listening position, in much the same way that the desk would mess up the mix position. Move that out to a rest area, where it won't cause any harm to the room acoustics.

My overall question here I guess is am I trying to be TOO space efficient and compromising on tonal balance of the room?

Control rooms should be neutral. They should neither add anything to the direct sound of the speakers, not take anything away from the direct sound. They should not only provide flat frequency response (or rather, as flat as is physically possible), but even more important, they should provide even decay times across the spectrum, so that no tone decays significantly faster or slower than its neighbors. Unfortunately, I cant see that happening in your room the way you have it now. To summarize: the room is too long and narrow, the mix position is too far forward, the desk is under the speakers, the speakers are angled too much, the walls are not angled enough, and the isolation system is incomplete. Fortunately, none of that is hard to fix, and you have a decently large space to fit it all into. But I really would suggest that you spend a few hours going over the SketchUp tutorials, and do your design in SketchUp, instead of on paper. It is much, much easier, once you get started! - Stuart -

Wow. Thank you so much already Stuart. It looks like I need to dust my old college notes off again indeed ;) Apologies for the school-boy errors in my diagram. Clearly I have a lot of work to do here. I will go through your points line by line and revert once I am at the next stage. I do have a few answers for you through. You asked about the budget? Half of the work will be carried out by myself. The shell (brick walls, roof, garage doors) of the building is already in place. I have around £6k in mind for the plasterboard, studs and insulation plus HVAC, the doors and windows. I see you seem unsure about the dimensions of the room? I used the ratio of 1 - 1.6 - 2.33 to give me 2400 - 3840 - 5592. Are you saying this is an unacceptable ratio? I really like John's Double Garage Design (control room is trapezoidal in the corner) and perhaps if I AM to track drums this is a better option? I must admit, for speed, time and convenience I'm tempted to forgo the live drum option... something I may live to regret...? Will get the rest of the info back to you asap. Thanks again, most appreciated. Best regards, David

Quick Question!!! I'm in a similar situation, but in my case the room is 9x18 and the ceiling is 9'4". I am lost as to what to do about this room!!! :cen: Among some of the ideas I was throwing around were: partitioning, angled listening area, lowering ceiling, raising floor. But from what I've read, the optimal size control room should be at least 2500 cu ft. So anything I do to shrink that area reduces the size, but if I do nothing, the dimensions are horrible. If you have ANY advice, I would be most grateful. Thanks

To summarize: the room is too long and narrow, the mix position is too far forward, the desk is under the speakers, the speakers are angled too much, the walls are not angled enough, and the isolation system is incomplete. Fortunately, none of that is hard to fix, and you have a decently large space to fit it all into. But I really would suggest that you spend a few hours going over the SketchUp tutorials, and do your design in SketchUp, instead of on paper. It is much, much easier, once you get started! - Stuart -

Hi "StudioNoobie". It would be better to start your own thread about your build. Also, please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :)

I'm in a similar situation, but in my case the room is 9x18 and the ceiling is 9'4".

That's practically a cube, so it will need serious treatment to get the modes somewhat under control. It is also rather small for a control room, so clearly it won't be a world-class studio. However, people have done small studios like that successfully, albeit within the limitations imposed by the dimensions, so there is hope. And if that's the only space you have available, then it sure is better than "no place at all"! So go ahead and start your thread, following the forum rules, hopefully with photos and a SketchUp diagram of what you have, so we can try to help you figure out how to get the best possible results out of that space. - Stuart -