From an auditoruim to a studio...

Hello everybody! It's been long since I've been here. I completed my small studio and have been working there for the last 4 years. You can go check it out here:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Studio-ManCave/198486353524452 A couple of days ago a friend who also has a recording studio near mine told me about a place that could possibly be turned into a big studio. We decided to do it together because we are both professionals, friends and always looking for a bigger place... Here's the deal: There is a 95-seat auditorium about 30km from Helsinki that could probably be converted into a studio. I'm going to go see the place tomorrow and find out more about it. So far we're thinking maybe 3 iso-booths, control room, a small lounge/kitchen, storage room, and one big studio room. We really like the fact that the walls are already angled and if possible, we would like to keep the big room pretty much as it currently is. Just the sloped floor needs to be leveled. And there's a long narrow room behind the last seat row that we are thinking about making into a vocal booth and and amp room. I don't have a layout or any measurements of the space just yet but here are a couple of pictures of it. Tomorrow i'll provide some more detail and any layout suggestions are welcome... :wink: Thanks, Tomi

So I went to see the place today. Here's a rough sketch with measurements of the floor. The total floor area seems to be around 126m2 I think we're going to go with a control room, one vocal booth, one amp room/storage and one big room. The doors outside are on the back wall. If you have any ideas for a layout I'd be very grateful... I'll be thinking about it today and will post my thoughts later.

Here is the first layout I drew. It has a control room, an amp room, a vocal booth, and a big live room. I think we still need the storage/shop but what do you guys think about this so far? As you can see this picture just represents the approximate place of the walls, no acoustic treatment or anything. Just a layout...

Looks like you have a decent amount of space and should be able to build a nice control room and ISO rooms in addition to a nice sized live room. Here are some questions and issues that I think you will run into: Most theatres (and I work in a theatre full time) are not built to isolate for recording purposes very well (and I do live recording in my spaces and they down right suck). What kind of access do you have to the exterior walls in terms of being able to reinforce the mass on the outer leaf. You said that this theatre was located with other studio spaces? I assume what? dance studios, rehearsal rooms, art studios maybe? What kind of sound levels are you going to have to compete with? The raked floor (where the seating is now) could be problematic, depending on how it is built. If it's a raked concrete floor, concrete is good, as long as you are fine with it being on a slope. If you want to level the floor out, it will probably require a lot of work and expense to do that. To build a good recording studio (and with that amount of space, why would you go through the trouble and NOT make it the best you can) you are going to have to rip out all of the current acoustic treatment. Treatment for live performance space isn't real useful for recording studios. Build a two-leaf room within a room set up. I think your control room is too wide. Make it more narrow. Then move it to the center of the space, put the ISO booths on one side and build a drum room on the other. Should have enough space left for some nice storage also. You can use the current "control booth" for your machine room and storage IT, etc... Also, I think you should definitely find a way to use the old tires in your studio. Maybe some kind of bass trap?

JCBigler wrote:

Looks like you have a decent amount of space and should be able to build a nice control room and ISO rooms in addition to a nice sized live room.

Yes, there is enough space for those.

JCBigler wrote:

Here are some questions and issues that I think you will run into: Most theatres (and I work in a theatre full time) are not built to isolate for recording purposes very well (and I do live recording in my spaces and they down right suck). What kind of access do you have to the exterior walls in terms of being able to reinforce the mass on the outer leaf. You said that this theatre was located with other studio spaces? I assume what? dance studios, rehearsal rooms, art studios maybe? What kind of sound levels are you going to have to compete with?

I never said anything about any other "studio spaces". No dance studios, no rehearsal rooms and not even art studios... There really is nothing in the building that we need to "compete" with. Outside these walls there is a parking lot on the other side and the building entrance hall on the other side. There is nothing on top of or below this space The outer leaf is made of solid brick with no neighbours behind them, and there's some sort of inner leaf as well. I will find out the wall construction once we get the space.

JCBigler wrote:

The raked floor (where the seating is now) could be problematic, depending on how it is built. If it's a raked concrete floor, concrete is good, as long as you are fine with it being on a slope. If you want to level the floor out, it will probably require a lot of work and expense to do that.

The floor is solid concrete and we will level it out.

JCBigler wrote:

To build a good recording studio (and with that amount of space, why would you go through the trouble and NOT make it the best you can) you are going to have to rip out all of the current acoustic treatment. Treatment for live performance space isn't real useful for recording studios. Build a two-leaf room within a room set up.

Thanks, that is the plan.

JCBigler wrote:

I think your control room is too wide. Make it more narrow. Then move it to the center of the space, put the ISO booths on one side and build a drum room on the other. Should have enough space left for some nice storage also. You can use the current "control booth" for your machine room and storage IT, etc... Also, I think you should definitely find a way to use the old tires in your studio. Maybe some kind of bass trap?

What "old tires" are you talking about? The bass traps will be incorporated into the room themselves, so you will eventually see them in the drawings. Here's the current situation: We're negotiating with the owner and I'm still drawing, calculating and planing... We decided that we need another smaller control room/edit as well with a small booth next to it. So the plan now would be: a big CR, a small CR/edit, a small vocal booth, a bigger iso booth, live room. Using the room mode calculator, it seems(to me at least) that the best ratio for the CR would be 1:1,26:1,59. This ratio seems to give the most even spread of modes down low under 100Hz and the upper bass region seems pretty manageable as well. Playing around with the ratios, it would seem that the next best ratios would be 1:1,28:1,54 and 1:1,50:2,50 Both control rooms will share the same ratios so that the sound would be as close to each other as possible. Any thoughts so far? T

It looks like you have a really nice space there, Tomi. Excellent possibilities. Just a couple of comments:

The floor is solid concrete and we will level it out.

It seems that you have basically two options there: 1) Chop out the raised rear section to bring it back down to the same level as the front. 2) Build up the front section by pouring more concrete there, to bring it to the same level as the back. Either way, that's a lot of volume. Have you calculated how much volume that actually is? Are you sure it is worth the effort? It might not look like much of a slope, but even small slopes over long distances add up to a lot of volume. Been there, done that! :) I guess you are aware of this and are working through all of the calculations, but I wanted to point that out, just in case... Another option might be to "terrace" the floor: Cut out one section while building up another section, so that the control rooms sit higher than the live rooms and look down on it: That might save a bit on work and materials.

Using the room mode calculator, it seems(to me at least) that the best ratio for the CR would be 1:1,26:1,59.

The overall best ratio according to ranking is Sepmeyer's first ratio of 1:1.14:1.39. The one you mention is C.P. Boner's best ration, which is number 12 on the list. Not bad at all, but not the best. Sepmeyer's second ratio (1:1.28:1.54) is very close to yours, and a bit better in second place on the list. That said, there's no need to go crazy about hitting one of those ratios perfectly: There's no such thing as a "perfect" ratio, and even if there were, it still would not be necessary to hit it exactly. As long as you are far away from the bad ratios, and reasonably within the Bolt area, then you will be fine. I'm with JC on the orientation of the CR, though. Generally it is much better to have the speakers firing down the longest axis of the room, and not as you have them, firing on the short axis. There are several reasons, but the most import one relate to the bass trapping, Haas time, and to using numeric sequence diffusers on the rear wall. All of those become problematic if the room is "short and fat", but much tamer if the room is "long and thin". That's not to say that it is impossible to have a good room set up "sideways": it can be done, as evidenced by many professional studios. But if you look at the ones that are st up like that, they are BIG, and they have a lot of treatment to compensate for the orientation.

Both control rooms will share the same ratios so that the sound would be as close to each other as possible.

Not necessarily true. Ratios are not scalable, musically. Even though two rooms that have the same ratios but are different sizes, will show the same proportional distribution of modes, those modes will fall at different notes on the musical scale. So while the smaller room might have had the fundamental mode exactly on D#, a bigger version of the room with the same ratio might have the fundamental mode falling on B. The rest of the modes would then be on proportionally lower notes, all the way of the scale. So the two rooms would sound quite different, even if they are the same ratio. The other issue here is that the modes might be triggered differently in a different size room. Even though the same set of modes is present theoretically, it might turn out that a different subset gets triggered in each of the rooms. For example, it could turn out that the 1,0,2 tangential mode just never happens to get triggered in the smaller room, but is triggered easily in the larger room, due to some quirk of speaker location, furniture, treatment, or whatever. So once again the rooms would sound different, modaly, even though the ratio among the modes is the same. Even identical sized rooms can behave differently if different speakers are set up in different locations and the rooms are furnished and treated differently. It could be an entirely different set of modes that gets triggered. Once again, the difference won't be huge, and with good treatment both rooms can be brought reasonably close to neutral, so there's no need to go crazy over that aspect. Just make each of the control rooms as big as it can be (more volume is practically always better), and keep the ratios in the "good" area of the Bolt diagram. The objective of control room design is to get the room sounding as neutral as possible, conforming to the AES, ITU, EBU, etc. specs as closely as possible. That can be done in a variety of shapes and sizes. Two somewhat different rooms (in terms of sizes and ratios) can be made to sound very similar with good design and good treatment. - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart! We won't be pouring or drilling concrete, that's unfortunately not an option. Instead, we'll be looking at building your usual floating floor but we probably will add some mass(sand) inside the floor. Here's the latest layout, which I like the best... It has everything needed and the live room actually is really big(around 70m2).

Instead, we'll be looking at building your usual floating floor but we probably will add some mass(sand) inside the floor.

:shock: Floating floors? That's not going to be cheap either, for floors that big, and with such large differences in height from one side to the other. I'm not sure if you have seen this thread (link below): it explains many of the details about how to float a floor correctly (and also how to do it incorrectly! :) ) : http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173 - Stuart -

Thanks, Yeah, I've read that thread. Like Rod Gervais wrote:"It's the airborne sound that transmits through the deck - deck assembly, windows, doors, ducts, pipes, holes, etc., etc., etc. that cause 99% of your problems. " Given that we have a solid concrete floor, I would think the floor is not going to be a problem. We just need to find a reasonable way to isolate the rooms without the costs getting stellar... We are going to level the floor and build our rooms on that. I was thinking that we would float the walls separately from the floors, I know that's one way to do it...

I was thinking that we would float the walls separately from the floors, I know that's one way to do it...

True, but floating walls is pretty much as complex as floating floors... :) Not quite as complex, since floors are really planar loads while walls are linear loads, but it's still not so easy to do the math and get it right. What type of resilient base where you thinking of using for that? - Stuart -