My control room in the attic, plz. comment. (Pix&plans)

Hello, may I introduce myself, I am Harald from Germany and I read and learn here for almost one year now. Please comment to the design ideas of my studio. The Goal: Build a Control Room for Mixing and Mastering only in my attic. Tracking will be done elsewhere. I need some extra space for my wife (arts & drawing), i can not built new walls to mount the speakers. (or maybe on one short side left and right of the window) The equipment will be: 1 or 2 pcs with Sonar, 2 or 3 TFT Monitors. Yamaha NS10 Nearfield with two Subwoofers, may another two NS10 will be used for Surround. E-Piano, Synth The Room: Its the attic in the house i bought and i'm currently renovating. It is built in 1956, all bricks, also concrete for the ceilings. As you can see we have to isolate the attic (for the Heating to avoid the loss of heat in winter). Isolation: Fiberglass 25mm gypsum board ceiling will be Knauf acoustic. Please see the plan: This is the rough room from both sides: These are three designs, the sofa can be split into two parts :-) Design 1: Design 2: Design 3: Please comment to the design, I tried to keep the symetric rule as best as possible. Acoustic Treating is only symbolic and will be done after proper listening and ETF Tests!!! Thank you for your help, Harald F. Metzner

harald - version 3 is the one that works for me but I'd add two extra walls like this cheers john

Hello John, thank you for your design, but i forgott to mention two things: There are wooden y support beams for the roof, one south in the middle, two north on one/third and two/third of length of wall. There is only one way to leave the stairs, and if i built walls they will go right through the existing windows. How about this: (trying to stay away from all wall as far as possible): Or, totally different: Can i soffit mount Yamaha NS10s into the wall? Thanks again, Harald

If you are going to try the second layout don't put a diffusor on the column - deaden it. Why can't you reverse my design like this? cheers john

Hello John, i tried to turn it around but all the walls will go through the windows in the angled wall. What angle should this walls be? I will measure all the dimensions and the proper place of the windows today. I erased the acoustic treatment from the plan because i will l come back with that after listening and ETF tests. The plan with windows: Harald

Ok, back to zero: I measured some of the beams and the wood/panels etc. today, and this is how the room looks like now with insulation and gypsum allmost finished. As you can see on the right the 3 windows go to the chimneys, and there is one y beam. On the left there are two windows and two y beams. The shortside-corners: (have extra beams) Right: Left: On now the whole short side, 2,4 m from wall to chimney: I was thinking about: but i don't know if soffit mounting the NS10 is a good idea. Also the whole space is only 2,4 meters, compared to this: so if i put the NS10 on stands in the middle of the room? The ceiling will be Knauf acoustic which lokes like this: and has this: John is it a bad idea to put everything in the middle of the room without the new walls? Would you prefer the "soffit mounted short side design" over this? The insulation is almost finished, maybe i should empty the room, put the desk in the middle, listen and measure, put the desk in the corner and build the walls for the soffit speakers (even if i tear them down later maybe) and listen and measure and come back than?

Harald - my main concern is you ending up with a huge room that needs treatment - My design is narrowing down your listening spot so you have a proper RFZ front end to your listening spot with those NS10s soffit mounted. (They soffit really well) I don't have the measurements for those Y Beams but I worked out from the picture that this is how they sit relative to the windows etc. and I'd recommend this kind of design. cheers john

Hello John, thank you for your help, i really apretiate this. Now it looks like i have to rethink the whole project, i have more rooms in the house i can use (maybe). The attic was not meant to be a studio/controll room in the first place, but the idea came up while isolating the roof. The windows are new (5 windows, 6000 Euro), so i don't want to sacrifice them and the light going through them because it makes the room really shining. I thought it a good idea to keep the room open (without aditional walls) to have a huge place with a lot of light, but it seems this is acoustically the worts idea) So i go and measure the other rooms, and take my time to rethink the whole, maybe i have a better idea for one of the other rooms (even so i like the attic best :-)). Maybe i find a way to build some walls without "destroing" the windows. Again, thank you for your help and your time, Harald

Harald - if you don't want to build I'd go with your very first version in this thread. cheers john