Building a new studio in Louisiana-want to do it right-Help

I am building a new house, recorded 2 cd's in my old house in my back kitchen (I also cook for lots of people at a time) and am going to build a studio attached to the house via a breezeway. Have lots of room on the lot, and have drawn up a layout, with square corners, etc. I know I need to get the walls out of parallel, but I would like some feedback on what else I could to to maximize this space.I am also flexible on ceiling heights, etc. I am having a contractor build the house, but the studio will be my own project. This is the third house I build, and I built the first one completely on my own, carpentry, electrical, etc. The only people I hired were the concrete finishers and the air conditioning guys, so I am pretty able in the carpentry area, just haven't got the knowledge in the studio design area.

I am definitely no expert in this field but I noticed a few things that had me thinking. 1. Where is the control room? It sure would be nice. 2. You have two isos a voc booth and a closet(which could act as a iso booth. I'd probably eliminate two of these. At the beginning of the forum there is a post regarding what you should read first before going any further with questions to the board. I think it would be a good idea to check it out. Congrats and good luck on your new studio! Damn, I wish I was there for the music and the cookin'! dougo

The reason I have a couple of iso's is the last CD we cut, I used the kitchen, control room, bathroom and garage to isolate different instruments and I am feeling like I'll use this place till I die, so I wanted to have it all prewired and handy. I am not dead set on any of this design, I just drew up the square footage I can afford to add for the studio. I want it to be roomy for comfort. I spent a lot of time in the old studio (kitchen) and plan to keep on doing so. I checked the posts at the beginning of the forum - was there something in particular I screwed up on for this post? My feelings cannot be hurt, so please just tell me if I am doing something against the practices of the forum. Thanks a lot, Lynn

Lynn, sorry but the "intro" post Dougo referred to is at the very top of the Construction forum - might not hurt to post it here as well - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 With that bathroom against the CR wall, I'd look into soft hangers for all plumbing, go one size UP on all supply piping to at least that bathroom, and whatever isolation techniques your floor plan will allow - Other than that, the link I posted should get you going... Steve

Here is what I came up with after checking reference section. It is a modified garage plan I saw. I would like to know what I should do about ceiling lines. The eaves height will be 10'.

Hey Knightfly - I've tried to find information on room dimensions and/or ratios, but all the ratios seem to be about rooms with parallel walls. I am trying to find out if I need to adjust the ceilings in these rooms to not be in parallel with the floor. I have poured the slab for the house and studio, and will shortly be starting to frame. You can check it out at http://www.lynnbreaux.com/HomeConstruction.htm

Lynn, one of the downsides to non-parallel surfaced rooms is trying to estimate what they will sound like BEFORE they're built; I'm not aware of any software solution to this, other than possibly CARA (which I own but have yet to find time to learn to any depth) - I know this program lets you do non-parallel walls, and it's deep enough to model almost anything if you have the time - it's deep enough that even on a fast P4 some simulations can take more than a day to complete. More here - http://www.cara.de/ENU/index.html Although there are a few quirks this is a LOT of value for the ridiculously low price of $70 Eur - again, if you don't have a LOT of time, don't bother... One way of "ballparking" non-parallel rooms is to AVERAGE all dimensions; this works pretty well, and in any case the final analysis must be done with tests using both hard/soft ware and EARS, and adjusted with the various acoustic treatments mentioned here and at other acoustic oriented sites. The vast majority of "golden" room ratios were arrived at long before it was so easy to run a set of numbers through a spreadsheet, point being that these should not be considered as LAW - they will, however, make it easier to get in the ballpark with a design. For example, you can look at the space you have available, compare the possible plan dimensions to some of the "golden" ratios, and pick the one that comes closest to your space; then, changing one dimension (or two) of the three can be decided on by what third dimension gives one of the preferred ratios - you can then use that dimension (width, for example) to set the AVERAGE width of your room, choosing angles for the walls that will minimise or eliminate early reflections at the mix location - Example - if your CR space can be a maximum of 16 feet wide, but you need a wall splay of 18 degrees each side to avoid reflections from either speaker off the side walls, you would move the points of the side walls IN by (say) 2 feet (this depends on length of the wall section obviously) - this would then make the AVERAGE width between walls 2 feet less (2 feet each side, half of that averages 1 foot, X 2 sides = 2 feet lost in total AVERAGE width) - so this new value would be the one used in modal calculations ) Keep in mind that this does NOT mean you will have exactly the same modal response in a splayed-wall, sloped ceiling room whose AVERAGE dimensions are the same as a fully rectangular room with 3 pairs of parallel surfaces; only that the GENERAL response of the rooms would be similar, but with GREAT differences depending on where in the room measurements were taken. Personally, I would not rush into a design without spending a LOT more time learning the ramifications of different choices; where you appear to be at this time is building something you HOPE will work, and possibly too far along to make changes that actually WILL work - I'm not judging here, so much as warning you about possible pitfalls; concrete tends to be relatively permanent, so it's usually good to know where/what/how you want it BEFORE you call the delivery truck - One thing that's prompting my concerns is your plan; I looked here and on your link, including the PDF - and found no mention of a roof line. This (unless I'm just not seeing it) tells me you haven't considered (not much available here or elsewhere on this :oops: ) that a really quiet studio requires planning far ahead for a complete "containment" shell before ever getting into room shapes, acoustics, flooring choices, etc - I'm just waking up after my last 12-hour graveyard shift and need to be somewhere else shortly, so I'll have to cut this short for now; meantime, check out this link http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.php?p=5570 and, for an excellent spreadsheet which does all three types of modes as well as Bonello distribution, etc - http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.php?t=497 This second link will probably require you to join the studiotips site and be logged in, but it's well worth it. If you can post an elevation or something showing your roof line/slopes, etc, it will help figure out what can be done with inner ceilings; overall, though, you also need to consider maintaining a mass-air-mass shell around the entire space for best isolation from things like airplanes, trucks, trains, or any other loud rumbly interference. Gotta run, hope this helps. I usually don't have time to check into the Design forum all that often, so if you want more input you can PM me as you did - not trying to ignore you, just 'way more things going on than there are hours in the day... Steve

Steve: Excellent post! Andre

I've got the thing blacked in and the floor plan looks like this. I have 10' ceilings, the live room dimensions are 10'X16'X23.3'. I don't care about isolation from neighbors - we're all on 5 acre lots and the nearest house is 500' away. It's a quiet neighborhood. I've done 6" walls around the studio part of the building and am going to insulate the walls with 6" batt and the ceilings with 6" batt and blown fiberglass. You can check out the construction progress at www.lynnbreaux.com

From: knightfly To: breauxlg Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 10:04 am Subject: Re: Am I asking the wrong questions? Or just being a pest? Hey - I'm in the country too (9-1/2 acres) and I STILL want a "bomb shelter", which I WILL have - our property is long and narrow (only about 200 feet wide at the upper end where the house/barn are located) and neighbors on one side are basic trailer trash, no thoughts for anyone but themselves - youngest boy (about 28, still lives at home, spends a fair amount of time in jail for drunk/disorderly, driving without licence, etc) decides he's gonna work on his car at 2 am, sets up a boombox for "background noise", cranks it up and proceeds to give his car an "italian tune-up" - neighbor on the other side is really nice but runs a custom hot rod shop (seems to specialize in older MoPar big blocks with blowers) in his 40 x 60 shop, at least he shuts his operations down by 6-7 pm, but that eliminates any acoustic recordings during the day (other "neighbor" screws up doing it at night, thank God for earplugs or we couldn't sleep) - Then there's the farm gear during hay season, garbage trucks for a couple hours once a week, two Sherrif's deputies just around the corner with a need to play with automatic weapons, National guard choppers and tanker planes flying over (apparently this is under their normal flight path), and you see why I'm concerned with isolation... In your case, making sure your ENTIRE outer shell is heavy and sealed should be your immediate priority - inside that, you'll need a second mass separated from the first by insulated air space - this also brings up the subject of moisture/vapor/air barriers, where they go, if they're necessary or a detriment, what's required by your local code, etc - for a TON more on that, check out some of the Building Sciences links in the REFERENCE section of the Construction forum - once at the Building Sciences site, check out all their "white papers", and spend at least an hour looking over all their info. Joe Lstiburek is one of the few Engineers who can talk "human" talk and still knows his stuff. Sloped ceilings; absolutely. you will want a MINIMUM of 6 degrees, more if possible. In a CR, if you have the headroom you want a LOT more slope so you can eliminate early reflections at the mix position. People who don't have a few extra feet of headroom are forced to put 2-4" of rockwool or equivalent spaced 2-4" away from the ceiling, at least in a 4x6 foot "cloud" centered over the mix position, in order to control flutter and early reflections. In a tracking room it's even MORE necessary NOT to have parallel surfaces, especially if you want a more LIVE environment. Any surfaces that are parallel will mean more area where absorption is necessary, which will leave no choice but have a more DEAD room. Lack of choices SUCKS for a studio - ideally, you should be able to place portable treatments to get the degree of liveness/reverb you want for the particular situation, but if it MUST be dead in order not to be "boingy", then you're STUCK. You didn't mention which books you bought; one excellent (but not cheap) one is Phillip Newell's Recording Studio Design. It's about $70 at Amazon, and there are some things you'd never need, but it's a course in acoustics (and a whole lot more) all by itself. Looking back over this reminds me why I try NOT to have PM's get this involved; stuff here that should be public, and not enough time to re-type for everyone - If you like, you can quote all this in your thread @ the Design forum (please quote IN CONTEXT), I'll try to cruise by there more often - that way others can choose whether to read or not, but at least it'll be available to them... Steve

Got your PM, looked at the pix on your site, etc - so you're using single frame walls everywhere, and parallel ceilings? Any plans for resilient mounting on one side of walls, or don't you care about room-to-room isolation? To control flutter between ceiling and floor (live room) you might consider some type of diffusion instead of absorptive clouds; it would keep things brighter in there, and the 10 foot ceiling should let diffusion work if you don't use deep wells. Have you decided on glass for the windows yet? Steve