Your help would be appreciated - controlroom design

ˆHello all, My name is David. I've been studying the wealth of information on this site for quite some time. This is my first post. Thank all of you who frequent this forum and dedicatedly share there skill and experience freely with us who wish to learn. For the past 15 years or so I have been obsessed with audio recording. In the last few years I have had a lot of customer interest in video, so now I can add that to my list of obsessions. Over the past 15 years I have built 3 studios, (I wish I could have had access to this sort of info then). What I know about studio design has been achieved by the endless mistakes I've made in the past. The A/V production I do now is primarily a Christian ministry. I offer my services to many Bible teaching churches, I record artists and bands, which are endorsed by the Pastorate of that church, on an ability to pay basis, the same is true for video production, which I mainly edit church recorded video and prepare it for local cable television broadcast. I also do quite a few dvd projects. I will take on a commericial job occasionally to keep the studio moving forward. WOW thats alot to read. My hope is to give you adequate background info on myself and skill level and goals. I am currently preparing to remodel my control room. I have included drawings of the proposed floor plan and ceiling plan, please feel free to pick them apart; your criticism is appreciated. I'm a poor guy (9 kids) and want to do this right the first time. All construction will be done by myself and 2 friends that are framing contractors. It's nice to have friends. I've got lot's of questions but i'll limit them to a few for now. You guys already do so much for so many. I don't want to attempt to monopolize your time. 1. I have orientated the room so the mix position is directed in the length of the room, because my RPG room optimizer program say's so. But my ceiling slopes from aprox 18' high on the left side of the mix position to 8' on the right side of the mix position (see floor plan if I'm not clear). In most studio's I've seen the mix position faces the low side of the ceiling sloping upward toword the back of the room. Do I have a problem with my symetric's with this orientation? Should I turn the plan around so the mix position is facing the lowest part of the ceiling? 2. the antique woodburning stove I would like to keep. It's very cool-decorative red brick half circle platform-red brick up the two walls plumb with the edge of the platform, the brick goes 6' up both walls with pine T&G finish to the existing ceiling height. The stove is cast iron and is centered to the corner of the room. It seems to me that reflections off the brick would be diffused in a multiple unpredictable directions off the stove, maybe a good thing maybe not. considering the slot resonators on both sides of this feature and the wall resonator across the room. Do you guy feel this would significantly affect my overall room acoustics? If so what options do I have to minimize the affect? 3. Could someone evalute my ceiling plan? The Bass trap sofit feature will continue aound 3 walls - no sofit on low side of ceiling-wall resonator side. this bass trap will be sealed but will be framed in such a way that I can seal individual legnths of the trap in order to tune it to different frequency's ------------------------------------------------------------------------

David, welcome to the board - just a couple of things; first, your pix didn't make it - if you have them on your hard drive and they're smaller than 150k, first check to see that they are ALSO smaller in size than 800 pixels wide (in Windows Paint, you can click Image/Attributes to check file size and pixel size) If necessary, resize them down by choosing the same percentage in both axis so they are under 800 wide - this keeps us from having to scroll sideways to read your messages, and all messages in that page :cry: Once a correct size file is on your drive, just click the Browse button below the text entry box, navigate to your pic, double-click it; the path will show up in the Browse window. If there's only one pic, you're done - just click Submit; if you want to add more, click the Add Attachment button after all the above - this clears the Browse window and lets you Browse for the next pic; after each Browse, you then click the Add Attachment button. You can post 3 pix in each post doing this; they will appear in your post in the OPPOSITE order you chose them :roll: One other thing - it would help if you could edit your profile info to include a city, or at least a state - we have members worldwide, and as such we deal in every currency there is as well as disparate economies, and it's not possible to recommend things to members without having a general knowledge of all the economic factors including budget. (There's no point in recommending you use a certain material if it's 25 TIMES as expensive as another that will do the job that's available in YOUR area) So, please try your file uploads again, add your location to your profile, and once again WELCOME... Steve

Steve, The largest of the 2 images is 550pix wide and the largest file is 149kb. I am on a Mac but I don't see how that would make any difference. any suggestions. I updated my profile. Thanks for the help

Gee, TIF is one of the supported files and you're under 150k - did you follow the method I described? Wierd... Steve

followed proceedure discribed exactly. My e-mail is [removed]. contact me I couldn't find your e-mail in your profile. I'll send you the images via e-mail maybe you can locate the problem. Thanks again David

Well, pix or not, your question about control room orientation... Sloping 18' to 8'? Yikes. That's a tough one. And if your room is 18' wide, it sloped 10' down over that 18'. That's about 22deg slope. If you want to keep that kind of slope to the ceiling, then yes, I'd recommend turning the room so that mix position faces the low end of the room. With an 18' (or so) deep room, you've got enough depth that early reflections off the back wall won't be so bad, even if left untreated. And with a 24' or so wide room, you sure won't have to worry about the side-walls much. I've seen lots of control rooms where the speakers fire down the smaller axis of the room, and they're not 18' deep. On the other hand, if you don't mind building the ceiling down from that, you could keep the speakers firing the long way. My recommendation there would be to make a "trayed" ceiling, where it's 8' at the sides, and slopes up to 10' (or whatever) in the middle. If you didn't want a flat spot in the middle, you could just mirror the slope on the other side and let it meet in the middle (at 14' or wherever), but that "cathedral" ceiling will focus reflections back down to the floor. If you built it that way, and put good diffusion or absorption up there, you'd have an awesome sounding room- in fact, it'd be a shame to just use it for control and not for tracking, IMHO. =) Speaking of which, is this going to be an all-in-one room, or do you have a separate tracking room? Keeping the stove shouldn't be a big deal, unless it's vents or ducts ruin your sound isolation, and that can be dealt with, too. I'd keep it- like you said, it adds an old-skool flavor to your room. As far as the bass traps go, I can't see 'em clear enough to judge them, and others here will do a better job of it anyway. If they're symmetrical about the mix position, you should be ok. Hope this helps!

Dymaxian, Knightfly is trying to help figure out whats up with my images, hopefully they'll be posted soon; bless you knightfly. In my ceiling plan the slpoe of the ceiling is altered to 10 degrees with very large basstap-sofits on 3 sides of the room. Anyway the pix will certainly aid us having a lively conversation about this. If I can help in anyway with wiring/cabling issues I would love to help. I can't articulate how greatful I am that this site exists and for the people who populate it. Thanks again all.

I've been able to see 2 gray images since the first day I read this post. 1 top down and 1 side view. Are these not the images you're talking about??? I'll save them and repost em if they are. -josh

Josh, it sound like my images. I darkened them and adjusted the contrast due to the size constrants, they seemed clearer that way when zoomed in. Please post them. thanks David

Sorry to take so long, been at work all night. When I saved the files they were missing extensions although i can see the full filename when i look at the images properties in the post. I guess my PC recognized they were .tiff, but others' didn't im reposting as gifs. If the front of your control room is next to the bedroom then you're angled resonator wall is backwards. It should go narrow at the front to wide at the back. -josh

and your absolutely right I drew in the resonator wall backwards thanks for pointing it out. If your having problems reading the text on the plans let me know. Or just save them to your desktop and open them with the application of your choice and click zoom. [/b]

David, I agree with Kase on orientation - if this is going to be a 1-room studio + vocal booth, you will need to consider variable acoustics; mixing needs a fairly dry environment, while tracking works better with a more live room. That sloped ceiling, if not symmetrical left-to-right, will mess up your mix balance so I'd put the desk looking out the windows. Having the room wider than deep isn't a bad thing with that big a room; as Kase mentioned, you've got enough size not to worry about rear reflections until they become un-wanted echoes (instead of shorter-than-20 millisecond phase problems) It sounds like you're not at a loss for DIY expertise (or in your case, DIWF) (Do It With Friends :wink: ) - So building some variable acoustic treatments shouldn't be too daunting, and the only additional cost over regular fixed treatments might be a few hinges and hardware - To keep your window view, you may need to change the existing windows - if they now open, you would need to change that for better isolation if that's a concern. If they are already double-pane, you would get better isolation replacing them with heavy single pane windows. This is because your inner wall should have a second, thick but different thickness glass that's at least a foot from the existing glass - the wall itself should only have paneling on one side of each frame, and your outer sheathing may need to be beefed up to get enough mass for good iso. Here's a basic idea of what you can do for your window - Also, check out variable acoustics ideas at the two links in my post on Oct 8, here http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1462 You will need to build a couple of 3-4" thick absorber "gobo's" to place between your windows and the speakers while mixing, in order to kill the bounce off the glass before it causes cancellations from early reflections - these can be either on casters (easier for one person to move) or stands, and need to be in the range of 3-4 feet by 4-6 feet wide, centered on your speakers height-wise. The high side of the ceiling, as I believe Kase pointed out, could be partially used as a large broadband trap by building a false ceiling frame and filling between joists with either rigid fiberglass or rockwool, covering with cloth, and stuffing more plain spun glass un-faced insulation behind - you may want to see how the room sounds without that first. Hope this helps... Steve

David, considering your area of expertise I'm hoping you intend to wire your place with Cat6e ? More reason than just networking, if you're curious I'll explain... Steve

There are several great reasons to run category 6 enhanced in todays studios. Probably the best right now is the predomince of devices such as the Avion an-16, or the Digigram Ethersound. I certainly see a trend established for moving lots of channels audio and video and data at Hi/res through standard Cat 5 cabling. With Cat 6e's enhanced PSACR and 1000base-t cababilities I think it won't be long before manufacturers/developers fully exploit this potential. I'm surprised that were not seeing more development of ieee 1394b products for the same reason, but that's a different subject altogether. A/V hardware and software companies have there own agenda. But CAT 6e has so many possible application's other than A/V it's going to be developed by someone, so the A/V company's are quick trying to get there first. My wifes giving me that look so we'll talk later. I would love to here your thoughts on the subject.

That was one of the two areas I had in mind - the other is being able to completely control a DAW-based studio from anywhere you have a lan connection, thru boxes like Belkin and others that extend KVM thru a single cat 5 or better connection - my new place will be wired for both these, with a spare or two, to every room I might ever use for anything. That way, if you're working alone and need to lay down a vocal track, you can go to the booth, plug in your portable control center (LCD, keyboard, mouse or trackball) and run the entire studio while you lay down as many takes as it takes to get the track right - with complete control over play, record, erase, punch in, anything your software can do can be done at the other end of several hundred feet of cable - and as cheap as Lan cable is, the only extra cost would be a small LCD and keyboard and the two extender boxes - hard to beat that in my book... Steve

Ok, now that we can get a clear look at the layout... If you've got the ceiling how you want it, cool, but like you said in the first post, put the mix position on the low-end wall. The setup of the absorbers looks a little strange- with a room that wide, I don't know that having the side-walls asymmetrical will really hurt you that much. What I do know is that whichever wall is behind you should have as much absorption on it as possible. Build it so that sound goes past you and just gets swallowed up by that wall. I can give you some ideas on this, but they're all over the board, and it looks like you've been doing your homework. =) Building variable absorbers for that back wall won't be hard- I've spend the weekend building a set of them single-handedly, so I'll post pics of them soon. Just need to go pick up some more rigid insulation soon. See yaz!