Questions about treatment for new studio.

Hello everyone, I've lurked some on this forum and gained some valuable ideas, but this is my first time posting. I've got a few questions about acoustic treatment. Myself and two other engineers are joining forces (splitting rent and sharing gear) to create a studio in Portland, Oregon. I have posted a sketchup file below which I have drawn up to give you all a clear idea of what our space is. What is not indicated in the sketchup file is the ceiling. It is joists running across the shorter dimension of the room. In between the joists is about 6 inches of insulation held up by fabric (cambric or dust cover). There is about 6" of joist exposed below the insulation. The floor is concrete. The walls are concrete block on two sides. The blue side is sheetrock. The front side is a garage door and glass entry door. The mix area that we are planning on is indicated by the table and monitor stands on either side. The live room area is everything between the mix area and the back concrete wall. The dimensions of the entire space are 41 feet by 23 feet by 15 feet high. I should say that we plan on starting with a one room Daniel Lanois-style working style and we have not yet moved any equipment in. Alright, I hope that's clear enough. Now on to the questions. We have some bad flutter echo. And we want to do some bass trapping. We do not necessarily want the room to be any more dead than it is now. (The insulation in the ceiling seems to do a lot to control things.) But it would be nice to have some flexible acoustic treatment that we could move around to change the response of the room (make it more or less live). My idea right now is to put some sort of polycylindrical absorbers together to hang at some distance 3 inches -- 8 inches? from the wall. These are represented by the vertical rectangular frames hanging on the walls in the sketchup model. We have not built them yet. Just planning right now. They would be reversible. We would be able to hang them with either side facing into the room depending on how we wanted the room to sound. One side would be a panel absorber. One side a polycylindrical diffusor. The panel absorber would be a wood frame approximately 8 feet tall by anywhere from 2 feet to 4 feet wide and 6 inches deep. Inside would be R19 insulation faced with fabric. On the other side would be a sheet of 1/8 inch masonite or lauan bent in an ellipsis with the extra space made by the bowing of the masonite as dead air. What do you guys think? Is this something that should work well or should I rethink this design idea. Are there any downsides that I'm not thinking of? Do you think its smart to hang the frames with the diffusers facing into the room out from the wall a few inches, would that increase the bass frequency damping? Thanks! -Josh http://www.studio211.us/studio_ideas_in_pdx.skp

what are your goals for this space? budget? you have a lot of hard surface and parallel walls to work with. the reversible absorber/reflectors sound like a good way to change the liveness of the space but you might only need something light to reflect without impacting its ability to absorb lower frequencies. you could also have the walls treated to absorb but build some gobos to manage absorption/reflection in places where you want it.

Thanks for the reply. Our goals for this space are a one room studio in which we could record all kinds of different music. We'll definitely be bringing in all kinds of different styles. We want to keep the live room as large as possible. We were only able to sign a six-month lease, so I'd like to keep things as modular as possible until we've had a little time to settle in and make sure that everything is going to work out well. Budget, is well, after all the cabling and patchbays that were just purchased, running out a little. I'd say we'd be ready for a first phase of $800 - $1000 right now. Maybe as much again in a second phase in a month or two if we need to. -Josh

I think in that case the polys can add some "diffusion" to the space plus some trapping. I'd recommend getting something into/across the corners of the room - both vertical corners and wall-ceiling corners. put some treatment on the ceiling over the mix console and whereever you designate the vocal spot. I'd mark out locations in the room where you find different instruments tend to work best (this will take some time) so when people come in you have the ability to rapidly place them in the spots that sound best. attached is a poly model. when building them, move the center supports around to keep them from having the same resonance. vary the use of 1/4" (6mm), 3/8" (10mm), or 15/32" (12mm) plywood for the same reason. cover with cloth if you need some damping. mount the polys on the wall. the rectangular absorbers can hang out about 3-4 inches or more if you have the space.