What's essential/priority in Control Room design?

I've been looking through the forum for several months and am reading Rod Gervais' book, but still have some big questions regarding control room design. I'm presently in a 25 x 36 ft. room that we will convert into a studio with one main control room, a secondary control room, a decent sized tracking room, and 2 isos. As I've looked through the forum I've seen control rooms of all sizes and dimensions with various angled walls and surfaces. So here's my questions: 1) What's the ideal dimensions and angles for a CR? Can you post a drawing of one? 2) How important is symmetry to the room design and what do you do to compensate for anomalies in the room shape or surfaces (i.e. window to the tracking room being on one side and not the other)? 3) Without specific space requirements (except space for a client or two), what would be the smallest CR you would construct? 4) Is any space treatable/workable? I will soon post some hand drawings of my ideas after I get some ideas here from you geniuses. I don't have any CAD software (no free Sketchup for Mac users yet :x ) so I'm afraid they will be fairly crude, but at least you can point me in the right direction. Thanks!

1) What's the ideal dimensions and angles for a CR? Can you post a drawing of one?

There is no ideal control room. Read the 5.1 doc and its references in the stickies for current recommendations.

2) How important is symmetry to the room design and what do you do to compensate for anomalies in the room shape or surfaces (i.e. window to the tracking room being on one side and not the other)?

Very important. You try to match acoustically anomalies like windows in real life. Or you can build romm within a room with symmetry... You seem to be asking ideal also, so ideal you avoid rooms with major asymmetry.

3) Without specific space requirements (except space for a client or two), what would be the smallest CR you would construct?

Very vague. How loud? How big a mixing surface? That's just the start of questions. See the 5.1 docs in the stickies above. The AES/EBU/CCITT/NARAS P&R Wing/Tonmeister SSR recommendation is 3500 ft^3 as base volume.

4) Is any space treatable/workable?

Yes. All it takes is money.

Thanks, Andre for the response. I'm not interested in 5.1, just stereo, so I hadn't looked there, but I'll check it out. The reason I'm asking for ideals is I have a large open space that can be filled a variety of ways, so I want to know what's optimal. No it's not unlimited space, nor do I have an unlimited budget, but our space seems decent enough to do what we want in terms of dimensions. I know it's better to have a larger CR at certain ratios to reduce modes, but that brings another question tto mind: How large is large enough? On the opposite end of the spectrum, the small control room will have a small DAW setup with an 8 fader control surface and will be used primarily for editing, MIDI/pre production, simple mixing, and basic O/Ds (iso attached). It's a work room, not a "finished master" kind of space, but I want to be as "usable" as possible. Just wondered if there was any minimum requirements for space and shape. Is it better to have a "long-throw" room or corner design, than "short-throw" even if it's symmetrical?

Okay. I read the 5.1 specs. It didn't say much in terms of room design. I was intrigued they said the ideal ceiling height for a CR is >11ft! That means your ideal dimensions (with 11 ft ceilings) would be 11 x 12.52 x 15.29 ft. or 11 x 15.4 x 20.9 ft. The problem is in the parts of the room I want my CR I only have 9ft ceilings, so I guess I have to rule out "ideal" :( :lol: Looks like the most ideal for my space would be 9 x 12.6 x 17.1ft for the larger CR and 8 x 9.12 x 11.12ft for the small CR. So what happens to the modal formula if you use non rectangular rooms?

Bump. Still had some questions here I hoped you guys could answer. Thanks. 1) Is there any minimum requirements for space and shape. 2) Is it necessary to have a "long-throw" room or will a "short-throw" room work if it's symmetrical? What are the disadvantages sonically? 3) Are there ideal dimensions for non-rectangular shaped rooms (like symmetrical trapezoidal shaped rooms.)

I suggest that a control room ideally should be at least 6m x 5m with a minimum ceiling height of 2.4m.

Above from John on: http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html AND the bigger the CR, the better. I'm sure others would have a different idea of how big CR should be or will even state there is no proven size of how big is big enough. In the end it's how much room you can afford. CR's of the size that most build at home, speakers and engineer face the long wall in room not the short wall. There is some point in size where facing the short wall is OK, but I don't know exactly how big the room should be for that. If you haven't already: The above link (also availble from top right link of this page "John Sayers Productions") will take you to the SAE site. There is a lot of info there worth studying, especially the Studio Plans. Also it's worth while to take an amount of time and look at all the designs John has posted here in the forum. For the most part things stay symetrical, but the rear of the room seems to be a place where a little liberty can be taken as long as some angle's of side walls are maintained. Above info should help lead you to figure out "ideal dimensions for non-rectangular shaped rooms (like symmetrical trapezoidal shaped rooms.)" Note, I'm not an expert, my comments are based on viewing countless posts and designs on this forum. Marc