Help on Acoustic Panels placement.

Hey Guys and Gals! My brain is fried.Trying to work a full time job and get the studio built is cooking my noodle. I am at the point of wiring. I am trying to figure out my outlet placement and overhead lighting, I realize I want to make them fit between my acoustic treatments. At present the floors are cement and the walls and ceilings are to be double 5/8ths drywall. All ceilings are 9 foot tall. Attached (hopefully) is a rough drawn plan of the 3 rooms I need to treat acoustically. My original thoughts were to treat the ceilig and most wallswith 2" compressed fiberglas or the like and build some bass absorbers to fill either the ceiling to wall corner or 2 of the wall to wall corners. I think only 2 of the wall to wall corners are candidates because of doors near the other corners. I am willing to put as much material as I need. I just dont want to put too much and make it too dead. Plus I need some space for mounting audio panels and the like on the walls. I had thought about building 6 foot high hanging panels on the long wall and running corner absorbers mainly across the ceiling to wall joint. But I also have a drum booth and a vocal booth to treat and wire. Please... all input is appreciated. I need to have a basic game plan before starting to wire on Thursday. part of my trouble is, I dont know how close to the floor to start my panels. I guess I could start the panels about 16 inches off the floor and put my outlets below that. I also need to know spacing between the panels to know whether I should plan on mounting audio connection between the panels, or below them. Thanks for your help. Tom oh.. if the picture is too hard to see I will shrink it down.

If you can redraw your plans with this free program it'd help everyone here a lot: http://www.sketchup.com/?sid=368 Here are a couple design links to start with: http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm and http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4206 cheers, chris

I appreciate the links, but I don't need ideas on how to design the rooms, the drawing here is the actual rooms. Perhaps I rambled on too much and my questions are unclear. I have studied extensively the different types of acoustic treatments, and have settled on the basic 2" to 4" thick broadband absorbers for the flat walls and ceilings. I also had planned on some Bass corner traps, but now realize most of my wall to wall corners have doors precariously near. I want the large room to be a little on the "live side" where as the drum booth and vocal booth more dead. What I do need to know , I have not been able to glean from reading a ton of posts. My basic questions are: 1) how high from the floor is a reasonable height to start the broadband absorbers. 2) If trapping the 2 available corner is not sufficient or practical, can I substitute trapping the long 30 foot wall section where it meets the ceiling, or is there something inherently different in vertical vs horizontal trap placement.? Thanks Tom

The first issue you are going to have to deal with is that your control room is not symmetrical - It looks like the left side of the large mix area room is 11'8" and the right side is 7'11" . If you can send us a better drawing that shows the layout of your speaker placement it would help with the absorber placement. As far as "flat bass traps" check the link I sent before in the "rear wall absorber" section: http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm cheers, chris

Again, Although I appreciate the effort, it does not answer my questions. I know "how" to build the traps, but none of those examples tell how high from the floor I can get away with. Although the main room is not perfectly symmetrical, the mix position is. It is a perfectly symetrical 7 foot deep nook with side walls that are symmetrically splayed at 22.5 degree angles. my speakers will be positioned about 4 feet apart along the 6 foot wall at the back of the nook area, pointed towards the live room. The 7 ft side walls is more than enough to get the sound past any mix position. I have planned to put enough absorbers on the long wall of the live room to minmize reflections back to the mix position. It puts the rear wall a minmum of 18 feet behind me, which should be sufficient. I think part of what I am trying to ask has to be based on some experiance on what is non-textbook. Help! Tom

Something to think about is that the floor is a "corner of a room" and corners are where bass build up occurrs - so moving bass traps off the floor isn't necessarily the best idea... Check out Ethan Winer's video to get some ideas about layout for panel traps: http://www.realtraps.com/videos.htm also these may help: http://www.realtraps.com/placing_mt.htm http://www.realtraps.com/install_mt.htm And unless you make the large room very dead, with absorption on all surfaces, you are going to have serious reverberation issues at your mix position. cheers, chris

My basic questions are: 1) how high from the floor is a reasonable height to start the broadband absorbers. 2) If trapping the 2 available corner is not sufficient or practical, can I substitute trapping the long 30 foot wall section where it meets the ceiling, or is there something inherently different in vertical vs horizontal trap placement.?

Hey, Now if I'm understanding your questions & if I understand everything I've read then: The bigger the absorber the better (depending on desired result) As far as your electrical installation goes consider mounting the boxes on the frame of the absorbers. You'll have to use conduit (with in the absorber) and make sure you run it all safe, secure and tight. You'll be able to bring the absorber all the way to the floor this way. Same goes for audio panels. I'm planning on mounting electric boxes into the bottom slats of my side wall slot aborbers and in rear absorbers. Same goes for over head lighting. You can even build a cloud like Kendale has done (I plan to do too :D ) and mount lighting in the frame work of absorber. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4091 Any corner in the room is a good place for bass trapping.... wall to wall, ceiling to wall and floor to wall. Even better is the corner where all 3 walls meet. There are pics in posted recently on a thread here some where... where someone is builing a frame for a rear wall to ceiling bass trap (I though it was Len Morgan, but does not appear to be... it's someone with a similiar color wall though :? ) OH and just posted above... Ethans site is great. Marc

Thanks for the input. I had not thought of mounting the boxes in the panel absorbers...... hmmmm. that might be cool. I had been hesitant to put a lot of boxes in the wall because I did not want to penetrate the sheetrock any more than I absolutely had too. Putting them in the absorbers would allow me to simply pull the wires out the wall and caulk them tight. I tried to look at the videos on Nathans site but my streaming is so slow it was going to take 45 minutes to download... and I am at work : ) I did look at the articals on placement, and they pretty much answered my concerns. Thanks again for all you guys effort. Hopefully I have done enough planning in the original design to eliminate a lot of the issues. I have been on this site for over 3 years reading and designing, now that I am building, it seems to point out little "job specific" issues that don't seem to have many links as far as my searches have turned up. Thanks again Tom

You might also use "racetrack" for your wiring needs depending on your area building code- this is an external channel and box system that the electrical cables run through, so wall penetration will be limited. something like this: http://cableorganizer.com/hellermann-ty ... aceway.htm cheers, chris

simply pull the wires out the wall and caulk them tight.

Not that simple, I don’t think that will meet code. From the wall to the box the wire should be in conduit pipe or "racetrack" or other covering. I’ve got no specific electric code advice to quote, but when I suggested running wire in conduit like this with a local inspector, this is where he said a big yes. Even though the wire is behind something… that “something” is not a real wall. Also caulking between conduit pipe and drywall will make me feel much safer then caulking standard household wire. Bottom line household electric wire 12 gauge or 14 gauge or other should never be exposed and that is code. AND note attaching boxes to frame work of absorber is not my idea, like many other things I can't remember where on this web site I read that, but it's here somewhere. 8) Also another page from Ethan, http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html#bass%20traps AND note on this page, better pic of Ethan’s room. All though the rear is not as wide as tmix's room, it’s still an “L” shaped room. http://www.ethanwiner.com/music.html Symmetry and RFZ at listening position in CR is required; the rear of the room can bend Symmetry a bit, though not recommended because of loss of symmetry in the rear of room (couch where client sits) IMO. Marc :twisted:

Actually, I did run this past the building inspector, he said as long as I was terminating the wire to a box attached to the dry wall (where there was no suspended wire portion) such as a surface mount box, this was fine. I imagine if I was bridging from the wall to the absorber I would have to run conduit though unless the panel was framed and mounted directly to the wall with no space. It would be no different if I were wiring a light like a flourecent lighton the ceiling. tom

OK, Wow your quick on talking to inspectors office. :shock: I thought the front of your absorbers might be further off the wall, since were talking about bass trapping. Still an option if you decide to go thicker with some absorber and then use conduit. So you'll end up with "indents" for AC and audio outlets in the absorbers? Just curious now... are you placing the DIY absorbers 2" off the wall? or varying? or how far? Marc

Marc, As for the inspector... I had allready run ideas past him when I started framing because of all the double wall stuff he was curious and very interested in what I was doing. I was planning (for the most part) to build the panels in 1 x 4 frames and space them an inch or 2 off the wall. That would put the panel back (if I use 2" thk) about 2 to 3 inches off the wall. I may just start all the panels about 16 inches off the floor (where all my electrical is under them) and go all the way to about 18 inches from the ceiling, then put in a straddled version across the wall to ceiling joint, all the way down the 30 foot wall. I may be over obsessing... I don't know. We will see (I guess) Tom

Sounds good to me, Tom; hate to waste ALL the corners in a room when there's so much "smoothing" to be done... Steve