The Stickhouse design thread

Greetings. Ok, so, I'm getting close. I'm talking with some architects here in town to draw my plans based on this rough plan in order to get the needed permits and to help me through some of the construction details I don't have time to figure out myself. But before I get into it with them, I'd like to run my rough plan through the ringer here. My questions are mainly acoustic treatment issues at the moment, hence posting here in the design forum. When I get closer to the construction I'll head back over there. I tossed around soffit mounting the speakers, and went back a forth a few times, and have decided to go floor standing because I don't want to commit to my speakers I have now, I'm not terribly crunched for space, and I need to cut construction costs where I can. I figure I can always go back for them if I decided that my new monitors will work well that way. I'm not opposed to rearranging, but I like this orientation for the control room (the window looks out over the front yard and beyond into the trees). Oh, and the ugly wood box to the left of my chair is a MIDI keyboard... too lazy to draw it, and I couldn't find a pre-drawn component. Everything's moveable except the fireplace, including the bathroom, though it does have to go on the wall at the bottom of the drawing for plumbing purposes. To the drawing: 1. Speaker placement/listening position Am I going to have problems with reflections off the window on the left and the (maybe glass) door to the machine room on the right? The walls are angled, but I'm unclear as the whether that's enough to eliminate the right reflections. Also, what about the window to the front? What if I made that front window even bigger? I really want to be able to see outside while working... 2. Low end trapping Should I be planning some sort of treatment to the front? Bass traps in the corners behind the speakers? I don't have a good feel for how much trapping I'm going to need. I've drawn in a slot trap on the right, but is my room going to be too bright as it is? Should I just make it a straight bass trap with a soft front? I was assuming I wanted hi frequency reflection there symmetry with the other side of the room. Maybe it doesn't matter so much because it's past my listening position? On the bottom of the picture, those are floor to ceiling bass traps with a queen sized Murphy bed (you know, the beds that flip up into the wall) in between. I figured I could finish the underside of the bed with a cloth frame of some sort so that the matress would be additional absorption. How are those big traps constructed? Solid rigid fiberglass (or probably Roxul in my case), or just the part near the cloth with fiberglass, and air space behind it? 3. Ceiling Unfortunately, it's probably going to have to be parallel to the floor, probably around 8 feet. I was guessing a series of clouds would be the way to break it up. I'm guessing the clouds should be angled toward the back of the room, but should they be hard on the underside to reflect hi freqs, or would I be better served by more absorbtion to "raise the ceiling" acoustically? 4. Tracking room (mainly for vocals and guitars) Ok, I've got the non-parallel walls going, except for the ceiling, but again, probably an absorbtive cloud will do the trick for the flutters. What about low end in there? My guess is that I should put corner traps across some of the corners (or all of them?) The size of them is limited by the windows to a degree, but there's probably enough to make is sound ok... 5. Other details I haven't worked out how to deal with cable conduits. I'll be building on a cement slab, so underground isn't going to work. (Though, I will be up on a couple of layers of stuff under the floor... maybe an inch and a half or so... hmmm) And of course, punching holes in the sound walls isn't good for isolation... What other solutions have you guys come up with? The bulk of my gear will go in the machine room to the right, but obviously there are video monitor connections, MIDI, speakers, and other stuff, not to mention the mic and heaphone lines from the tracking room and back of the control room... perhaps I should be thinking about a small patchbay and rack for mic pres in the control room (or built into a custom desk in the future) for connections. I also haven't really thought about lighting in the room either. I like the look of halogen cable lighting, and am fine without dimmers as long as I've got a few options for zones... so maybe IKEA is the way to go there, with them strung in between my clouds on the ceiling, and up the walls in the back of the room or something. What am I forgetting? I know this is a ton of questions and a lot of issues. Feel free to pick one out to discuss, and hopefully others can chime in on what's left. Much appreciated, brian

Ok, let's break it down... (Take it to the BRIDGE!!!!) Talk to me about the glass on the left of the listening position (LP) and the door on the right of the LP. What about the window straight ahead? Is there enough angle in the walls to get the first reflections past my LP? The more I think about it, it seems like it wouldn't matter how angled the walls are, you're still going to get some reflection...

Stick wrote:

Ok, let's break it down... (Take it to the BRIDGE!!!!) Talk to me about the glass on the left of the listening position (LP) and the door on the right of the LP. What about the window straight ahead? Is there enough angle in the walls to get the first reflections past my LP? The more I think about it, it seems like it wouldn't matter how angled the walls are, you're still going to get some reflection...

Well, Stick, since many of John's designs, along with some of the SAE basic plans call for sliding glass doors on either side of the control room, I would have to guess that you can probalby make that work. Now, I'm not sure how much the soffit mounted speakers alieviate the need for 1st reflection absorbtion on the walls, or if it's just the angled walls that take care of the issue. Hopefully someone can chime in on whether your walls are in fact angled enough to not cause too many issues. [it's all good... I know you guys are busy... I'll take the lack of critique as encouragement that my plan is pretty good. :lol: ]

Stick - you plan looks pretty cool - I'd place bass traps (like your rear ones) in the front corners also. can you post the .skp file? cheers john

Hi John! Sure, I've actually updated the plan to account for a different floor set up, so I'll post the new one. I just updated the jpg above. I had to zip the SketchUp file, it was over 1 meg after I worked on it tonight. Lemme know if it doesn't work for you.

John Sayers wrote:

I'd place bass traps (like your rear ones) in the front corners also.

After I read that again, and looked at my plan, I'm wondering if those front traps will need to be bigger... with more surface area. I could chop off more of the corners and do some sort of beveled cutout for the window... I went for the bigger window because that view out the front of the room is pretty nice...

I've increased the angle of the front splay to the full 12 degrees both sides. check it out :) cheers john

DOH! Can you save it back a version? I'm still SketchUp 4.0-ish. Thanks, b

Stick, .RAR is a compressed archive, similar to .ZIP. Here's a RAR extractor for Mac.

No, I can uncompress fine (StuffIt does it)... it's that my version of SketchUp won't open John's newer version.

Ok, I got the current SketchUp viewer so I could look at it. John, can you explain what I gain by going to 12° on the walls? Is it that the reflections in the listening position will be better? And with more "square" walls toward the back of the room, will that be detrimental? Thanks for your help!

Sorry about the version 5 :( Yes - the increased angle gives you a wider reflection aspect up to level with the listening position - after that it's not so important and you rear traps should help. cheers john

John Sayers wrote:

Sorry about the version 5 :(

Not a prob... I'm the one behind!

Yes - the increased angle gives you a wider reflection aspect up to level with the listening position - after that it's not so important and you rear traps should help. cheers john

Is this a signifcant improvement? I'm assuming mostly in stereo imaging? Why 12°? Is there a point of diminishing returns? Thanks for the help! I'll post a redrawn version with the 12° walls later on... got some "real" work to get through. Thanks, b

How about this? I'd put the .skp file, but even compressed it's 800K or so.

More of a top view:

Yeah - that's better. BTW - to make the file the smallest possible try purging your model. Window/Model info/statistics/purge unused. cheers john

Ah, cool... thanks for the tip. So, what do you think about the tracking room... how would you treat it? The floor will be wood or something hard, and I thought one or more of the walls could be "inside-out", but the ceiling will have to be hard, so I'll probably need an absorbtive cloud in there. And low end will be the issue... put a corner trap on a couple corners? Though, I'll probably only be cutting vocals and guitars in there... not room for a drum kit. Thanks for the help! b

I'd suggest an inside out booth, ceiling as well - with various slots over 50% of the area. cheers john

Is there an example of this in your designs site somewhere? To clarify, you'd build the whole thing inside-out, then cover half the wall area with slats... So for a 3" slat, there will be 3" of absorbtion? And those should be spaced evenly around the room? Do they need to be different widths, or if I did the same width all around the room would that work? How much should they vary? Between say, 3" and 8"? I can't really afford the ceiling height to go inside out up there... I think I'm working with about 9' before I start leveling the garage floor, adding the extra layers of drywall under the attic, then building the ceiling on top of the inner walls. It's going to be pretty tight as it is. What about something like putting 2" deep, varying width strips of 703 on the ceiling leaving half the hard surface exposed. Would that be enough to kill the flutter? What about bass... do I need bigger traps in the corners, or will the inside-out walls be enough to keep it controlled? Thanks! b

Something like this?

More like this cheers john

John: I guess I don't understand how this works. Why do the slats need to be spaced varying distances? Are they supposed to be in front of an enclosed sealed box like a resonator trap? Sorry for not catching on quick... I definately like the look of yours better...

These are slats put on an inside/out wall. The cavity is the stud space behind the slots. The spacing between the slats is the variable. cheers john

Ok. cool. As far as where they are vertically on the wall... I'd guess you want them to go up at least as high as a standing person head, for high reflections when cutting vocals. So, like up to about 6' 6"? Thanks for the help!