A control room design dilemma!

Hey folks, So I'm looking for some design advice, and my studio's already half built :roll: . For some background on my project, check out this thread to see my design, and this thread for construction info (and build pictures!) My original floor plan was like so: Right now, this is what is built: The interior is just bare framing - no doors, drywall or even insulation yet. The idea was that I'd finish out the bathroom, waiting room and piano room first so that those spaces would be usable, then build the "inner" framing for the remaining space (marked "future control room/booth") and finish it up later. Here's the thing, though - the "future control room/booth" space, as it is now (i.e. not split in two like the first floor plan above), is very cool - the ceiling is much higher there than in the piano room. We're thinking that the piano will sound better on that side because of the higher ceiling, and it would just be a more pleasant space to have as the "main" room/teaching studio. So if we follow that line of thinking, the room that's already framed up (marked "piano room" above) would be "my" room, i.e. the control room (we will have to sacrifice the booth, which I think I can live with). For good stereo imagery I understand the control room should be symmetrical, so I'm wondering if framing can be added to accomplish this, like so: Which would give me a symmetrical room, albeit very wide and not very deep. Would this be a workable shape for a control room, assuming a reasonable amount of acoustic treatment? What do you guys think? Part of me feels pretty ridiculous changing plans mid-project like this, but at the same time I'm so thrilled with the building so far that somehow I'm not beating myself up over it--I just think it would be a shame to split up the space on the right. Sure, I should have designed it that way to begin with, but there's nothing I can do about it now, and as Rod says, "You gots to deal with what you gots to deal with". Looking forward to hearing what folks have to say. ---Devin

I think your original plan was a good one. when you do the construction you should also consider putting the door to the bath on the side facing the waiting room. this way you could add an air lock in the resulting space or expand the control room (or shift it down to expand the drum booth). note: the top of the live room wall is a treatment wall not a third leaf.

gullfo wrote:

I think your original plan was a good one. when you do the construction you should also consider putting the door to the bath on the side facing the waiting room. this way you could add an air lock in the resulting space or expand the control room (or shift it down to expand the drum booth). note: the top of the live room wall is a treatment wall not a third leaf.

As far as the bathroom door is concerned, that's a done deal. The rough plumbing (i.e. sink position) is in, and the door is framed. We did consider placing the door like you show it, but in the end decided to put it in the "hallway" for privacy purposes. The waiting room is small enough that we didn't want that tiny bathroom opening directly into it. I'm attaching a couple mockups of the two rooms so you guys can see the difference in ceiling height and the shape of the rooms. Trust me, standing in the "taller" room and thinking about splitting it in half is difficult. I'm really leaning toward not splitting it up - I'm trying to determine whether the "shorter" room could be a suitable control room. I do appreciate your input, gullfo, and it's true, the first design looked pretty good on paper as a floor plan (which is why I originally went with it) but unfortunately I didn't fully take into account the overall 3-D shapes of the rooms.

ah... now i see... I'd definitely go with putting the CR and booth(s) into the lower side and make the entire tall side the live room. properly treated that tall side will sound quite nice with a grand piano. do you have the 3d sketchup that you can upload? just need the basic shell without additional components if that makes it small enough.

I'm attaching the sketchUp file for the shells. There are a couple things that are important to keep in mind: --the overall shape of both rooms can't change because the "lower" room sits on its own isolated slab - the only option as to changing room shape is adding framing on the inside --I think I can live without having a booth - the space will be multi-use (the live room will double as a piano teaching studio) so I'm actually liking the idea of more space in the control room. It's where I'll be spending a lot of my time out there - I'm a keyboard player with a small collection of vintage instruments so it would actually be nice to be able to keep them in "my" room. So assuming I forget about a booth, is there any acoustical reason that such a wide control room woudn't work? I can understand that the depth, being only 10 ft or so, isn't optimal, but I've seen lots of small control rooms here that are about that distance from the window to the back. The sketchup file has a tab which shows my initial solution to making the room symmetrical - any ideas in addition to that?

one thought is to create some soffits and rear wall absorption to keep the symmetry of the space but still leave it open. take advantage of the overhead space to add some hangers and a cloud.