Is this crazy? (not me, my design)

Hello, and thanks to all of you for such an amazing site. I've learned so much over the last few weeks from all of your experiences. Aren't forums great?!? I'm about to lease a 1650 sq ft space on the top (4th) floor of an old brick building for a project studio, and I was hoping to get some of your comments and critiques on my design. The space's interior has cool brick walls, new exterior windows with great views, and a ceiling that slopes from 13' (south wall) to 9' (north wall). It's a 28.5' x 58' rectangle. My hope is to turn this space into 5 isolated rooms - 1 large tracking area, 1 comfortable control room (A), one smaller overdub control room (B) that can double as a booth for large tracking sessions, and a small iso booth for each control room. That sounds like a lot as I'm typing... Here's the front runner in my designs, but I'm worried about control room A's shape. Will diffusers and a good bass trap in the corner cure the rear walls? Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance!!! Sorry about the bad CAD...

Welcome to the boards! Eeek! 90 degree corner behind the mix position! If those walls are reflective, you're going to be getting in trouble. Not un-fixable, tho- my first move would be to cut off that corner with a 45degree studwall, built wider than your speakers are (if your speakers are 6' apart, build the wall 8' long or so). If you build this wall with 24" clear between the studs, instead of 24" on center (or 16") then you can put a 2' wide piece of rigid fiberglass in each stud-space without cutting them, then just cover it with fabric. And if you're planning to do this, you can mount bass hangers in the space behind this wall. This idea will take up a bunch of floor space, but with that shape of room you've gotta put up a lot of absorption back there. My advice would be to do everything you can to absorb sound hitting that corner, because it'll come straight back at you if you don't. It's a big enough control room (guessing there, without dimensions) that having the mix position face the "short" wall instead of the "long" wall won't be too horrible. Of course, there are a million ideas for designs out there, and with as much space as you seem to have, fitting all this stuff in there shouldn't be too hard. Hope this helps!

In addition to what Kase suggested I'd add that you have to go through the studio to get to the control room which IMO is a no no. Try moving the control room to the entry door end and have the studio on the right. cheers john

Both Kase and John are right on in there advise. Although I see your difficulty in moving the control room for access from the entry door. You only have the one door for entry into your facility, and I personaly would rather have people moving there equipment in and out of the the tracking room rather than draging their stuff through my control room. Josh's suggestion is the only resonable solution to your corner orientation of the CR and is fairly inexpensive to do, I would do it. I would like to offer one further suggestion in regards to the wall facing your mix position, where your window is. IMO it is too wide and straight, and will produce some direct reflection from Josh's proposed 45 degee false wall, regardless of the treatment you use to make it dead. I would leave 4'-6' of straight wall centered on your glass, of course I'm assuming that you don't have a giant SSl desk or the like, then angle yor walls at 30 degrees as you show in your drawing, again you will lose some floor space, as you will have what would be essentialy chambers between your CR walls and your tracking room as a result. This additional airspace can be highly capitalized on. seal them up near your doors and make them basstraps, put a door on them make them storage or whatever. The change in the geometry of your CR will be noticablly beneficial acousticly, and if you layer the back side of both the CR and tracking rm walls with furred/channeled sheetrock your isolation would also improve. Just something to think about. I hope I haven't overstepped my boundries with you or the other contributors, but I took your drawing and made the basic proposed mods were talking about. please excuse the poor quality I only had a couple minutes. I've included a plan from SAE and added some of my own notes, the angles and such would be different for your situation but I'm hoping to better articulate what I'm describing. God Bless, David

Thanks guys! I had a feeling I was asking for trouble with that 90 in the control room. All of your ideas and solutions make perfect sense, and since nothing's been built yet, using your suggestions and illustrations, I came up with this new design that is hopefully a little less problematic from the start. I have to give up a couple of exterior windows, but it's worth it. Obviously this will be a near-field only room, but is it okay to have a wooden door on the 30 degree slant behind the monitors going to the airlock? Could it have a full window in it (French Door single-lite style)? I apologize that I can't figure out how to get the dimensions to appear clearly, but the new CR is roughly 21'(l)x16'(w)x12'(h) when measured in the center. Do those dimensions ring any favorable or unfavorable bells to you? Anything else look screwy to you guys? I was very unsure about the entrance in the tracking room, but as David mentioned, it seemed to make sense to make the most heavily-travelled area be the area with the most space and least amount of expensive gear. However, if there's a better reason to move it, I'm all ears. And that goes for any suggestions. Thank you so much for all of your input - by taking a few minutes to answer my post, you've probably saved me months of frustration! May God bless YOU!!! - Sean[/b]

Sean, as you can see i've been playing with your plans again. If the french door you are refering to is the door on the 30 deg wall, it not a good idea. What you want is uniform symetry to the room especially at the mix position. This symetry is not just obtained by wall angles, wall surface density/reflectivity etc... come into play. By putting a glass door at that location its reflection will distroy the balance you are tryin to achieve (see note on plan I numbered the other issues on the plan so you could refer to to area were talking about easily). 2. It seems to me that you have plenty of access to and from the control room. Again IMO I would lose the double sliders, and put in sealed double 1/4" glass windows of a size to your liking, not too big. I'm sure you know what I mean, studio windows each sheet angled. Theres all kinds of plans for these on this site, if I'm not clear. The thicker angled glass will be better for isolation and will produce fewer resonant aborations. 3. I can't remember if your post said you were going to seal off these windows, It's a good idea if you are. How much space do you plan on leaving between your new wall and the existing? space is good. 4. This needs to be fixed you still have that troublesome 90deg corner. I drew in a slot resonator like you have on the other side of the back wall at the same angle. 5.In the middle is just built up cloth covered rigid insultation made pretty, it doesn't nave to be angled like in the drawing just make it look cool and use whatever material you decide (703, roxul, etc..) to make that middle section acousticly dead as possible. Some space beween the actual wall and the layers of treatment 1" sounds good to me. The space will resulting in a reduction of energy as waves pass through each layer of treatment. Example a 500hz wave passes through layer 1 lossing substantial energy as it does (hopefully only a small portion this wave is reflected back into the room). The same wave now with less energy hits layer two with its 1" gap between. This wave also passes through with much less energy again, this wave also reflects off layer two, only two hit the backside of the first layer, this time the reflected energy attempting to reflect through the first layer is so greatly reduced that this reflections acoustic affect are negligible. I'm sorry If i went on too long but I get excited about this stuff, and this site is a blessing from heaven. Later, David

Thanks David. Everything you said makes perfect sense. I don't need to see into the airlock anyway... Are the French-style doors a bad idea overall, even if they're well-sealed with heavy glass? As far as the sliders in CR A, those are actually supposed to be windows, just like you said, but on that note, if the walls are angled as they are, do I still need to angle the windows? I do have sliders between CR B and booth B, but I was hoping some nice heavy velvet curtains could cure the reflections when line of sight isn't an issue. Would the french door idea be better for this situation to cut down on the glass? Speaking of glass, for the windows, is double 1/4" or even a 1/4" and 3/8" combo enough? 1/2" is sooo expensive, but I don't want the windows to be the weakness in my walls. And is laminated glass worht it, or will plate or tempered do the job just as well? As far as the rear wall of CR A, when the waves pass through the middle section, are they reflecting off of the actual rear wall or off of the ends of the slot resonators? - I'm not sure if the two slot resonators should connect or not.?.? Anyway, thanks again for your wisdom and your generosity with it. Have a great day! -Sean

1. the french door idea is a bad one if it is to be orientated on your 30deg wall to your air lock regardless of how you seal the door or the thickness of glass. The point is 30deg side L/R should have aprox the same density and reflectivity- you want both side to behave the same way. the glass is highly reflective and will distroy this symetry, even with heavy curtains covering it. 2. It's a good idea to angle the windows regardless of the angle of your wall wall, but not necessary. It looks cool, but more importantly the angled glass (tracking rm) will deflect the possibly high spl levels hitting it, reducing the vibration of the glass. the less the vibration of that glass, the less transfered to your CR room glass, the angle deflects from the outside and directs from the inside, directing most waves passing through at an angle other than parallel between the glass. The supplimental angle caused by you wall angles serves to further enhance this effect. I haven't modeled what I'm talking about but I think it's sound advice. The only reason this would be unadvisable is if your window angles are such that they create unwanted reflections in your room. 3. Curtains between the sliders is fine, looking at your room geometry, you might even get a real nice live sound leaving them opened or partially opened. 4. 1/4 and 3/8 is fine. i'm not an expert on glass I personally went thrift shopping and found a couple of glasstop dinning rm tables 1/2" and had the glass cut $45.00 for the tables $30.00 for the cutting- presto. 5. The rear wall, look at the SAE drawing earlier in the thread. The slot resonators shown in the corners can be fabric covered with out the wood if you have problems with that wall being too live. I don't think it would matter if your center treatment overlaps the slot resonators, make it look good and make it dead. I've got to go. I supposed to play at a event this evening honoring troops coming home from Iraq. I'm in Joshua Tree, Ca just a few miles from 29 Palms Marine Base. I've got to play a bunch of patriotic songs I don't know so I suppose I should learn them. God Bless, David

David- Great info again! And great idea about the table tops. Thanks so much. And to quote Spinal Tap, "David, have a good show..." -Sean

This is what I meant about access cheers john

Now I understand John. You're absolutely right - in the event that I have seperate projects working in each control room, the clients won't be bothering each other if access is through a "common" area as in your drawing. That's why you're the pro! Thanks for the info, and again for this website. Your kind efforts to help us all make better studios and thus better music, sounds, or whatever are the kind of example we all need to follow in this crazy world, and especially the music industry! Very gratefully-Sean

Another thing to think about... John's plans solve this problem, but the last one you posted doesn't, so I thought I'd mention it while you're still tinkering with the layout. Unless you just take John's plans and run, which is ok too... Most of the acoustic treatment for your control room will be on the back wall. Your last plan shows a door on the side wall, but pushed all the way up against the back wall. Leave yourself some room there to put up absorbers- even 6 or 8" will make a difference, but it wouldn't be out of line for you to have a foot or two of bass hangers behind a false wall back there. Plan your treatment right into the design, and it'll be a lot easier later on. See yaz!