BF’s Studio Design

Thank you to those of you who responded to my previous post. I think the B&Ws are going to turn out amazing in well designed soffits. We have been in the new house long enough to get all of the essentials done. While I still have the master bath to tile, we have decided that a project with a little more fun at the end of the tunnel is in line (well that and I’m sure the misses will appreciate the studio living in boxes in the loft being relocated). The studio will be consuming a good portion of the basement in a relatively new home (built 2002). The basement is constructed of concrete block, and has remained very dry with several good bouts of rain. None the less I will be installing a battery backup for the sump pump. The goal is to build a good sounding and comfortable space for sequencing and tracking solo work, while minimizing transmission of sound throughout the rest of the house. The majority of my instrumentation is sequenced outboard gear with a bit of DI bass guitar. While the levels of a performing band will not be an issue, respectable levels for monitoring will be desired. I have read Rod’s book a few times (top notch resource by the way), that combined with the reading I have found within and linked to in this forum I am feeling comfortable to start putting a design together. I have torn out the previous owners half attempt to finish the basement, and not pretty much have a clean slate to work with. The water line, sump, low hanging duct and a rough in for a future bathroom made finding the best placement for the room a little tricky, but I think I have found a good way to fit things in. I have decided on a single room build with a separate machine room to house my workstation, amp, power supply for the console, UPS and other equipment that creates noise while running. Lines will run from the machine room to the studio / control room to connect to the desk, interface and displays & keyboard. I am looking at a room within a room, double wall design with the exterior block wall being used as the second wall. The joists hang to 7’7” with the basement ceiling at 8’6”. I should be able to run ceiling joists for the room between the floor joists maintaining isolation from the structure everywhere save the concrete floor. This should allow a space based on Louden’s 1:1.40:1.90 of 7’6” x 10’6” x 14’ 3”. I know, a higher ceiling would allow for a greater space but this should allow ample square footage for my needs. A friend who rehabs homes and I intend to do most of the work ourselves. My little cousin is an electrician, so I have that base covered… and a friend who’s uncle works in sales at the Owens Corning plant (30 min away) so a potential discount there. I don’t have a set budget at the moment, but have been planning on and saving for this for awhile and have a lot of unused PTO to burn. An HV/AC duct runs between two joists above the intended space (this is an area where I am not as confident) so I am hoping tying this into the room will be an option. I am a little concerned about this piping sound to the living room above however. Building for isolation then piping sound right upstairs would be a waste of time and resources. I feel very green on sketchup, but I have tried to put together a representation of the basement and the intended placement of the studio and machine room. Tab one is an overhead of the basement with notes, tab two a 3d attempt showing HV/AC, water line, rough in and sump, and tab three is the intended placement of the studio and machine room. If anyone sees a better placement of the space please let me know. I am intending to work on a more complete sketch of the room design itself this weekend. I’m happy to finally be moving forward. Thanks for your time and comments. BF

Aloha and welcome to the forum, Congrats on your studio build! If I may ask: - Is the area marked "studio" to include a separate control room and live room or are you planning on a one-room control room/live room studio? - Would you prefer to face the machine room or away from it? Looking forward to your progress, Aloha 8)

Thank you kendale. I will be using a one-room control room/live room studio. My intent was to be facing the machine room to minimize the cable runs between the two rooms, with the desk font and center and the rest of the gear splayed in a U shape to either side. Soffits and and slot resonators in the corners adjacent to the machine room.

Aloha, Perhaps something like this? Aloha 8)

Thanks kendale. This is looking similar to the design I have been working up. Do you think reducing the width of the storage space and moving the room back in an attempt to put the pole inside the soffit enclosure would be advantageous or present problems?

Aloha,

Do you think reducing the width of the storage space and moving the room back in an attempt to put the pole inside the soffit enclosure would be advantageous or present problems?

I think that is a great idea, provided you can move the room far enough down so that the post would be located along the back edge of the the soffit, and not interfere with your mornitor. Is the arrow at the bottom left corner an entrance? If not, you could also move the room totally down to the wall and use the space up front for your storage/machine room. Aloha 8)

It was not intended to be, I didn't bother fretting about door placement until I knew where I would be placing the rooms. I had not placed the studio against that wall due to potential issues with where the watter line enters the structure. Building and sealing around it may be troublesome, and if it is included inside the studio putting trapping in that corner would eliminate access to it... or am I missing the obvious solution. Thanks again.

I’m having a bit of confusion between a 60 ° vs. a 90 ° layout. I thought that I had seen it somewhere, but have been unable to dig the information up. How much distance do you want, or is required, on the soffit wall between the monitor edge and the edge of the 12 ° or 22.5 ° splay wall? I’m beginning to realize that although larger than my former bedroom studio, this is still a small space (10’6”x14’3”) and that fitting everything in with proper dimensions will take more than a bit of finesse. Also, the rear corner absorbers should be 22”x24” as shown here http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm or is this shown simply as a reference on proportions? I’m intending to put a door in the rear wall just past the corner trap to access the water line (should there be a need) then build a section of the rear wall absorber on top of this door allowing the door with this section of the trap to be opened. Finally, pushing the studio space back to totally remove the support beam from the interior leaves me with a space just over 2’ behind the rear wall. I’m hoping to be able to use this space to store flight cases and other items that would rarely need to be pulled out. Maybe I’m just a miser, but I dislike the idea of wasting this space. The thought of building a row of recessed shelves at eye level into this space in the back wall occurred. From an acoustic stand point would a single row of shelves running horizontally along the rear wall to hold LPs for example with a rear wall absorber running above and below be an issue? Thanks, BF

I'm not sure if I explained the first question very well. Maybe the pics will help clarify. On a 90 ° layout, a 22.5 ° splay wall of any significance only leaves about 7 1/2" of soffit wall between the edge of the monitor and the splay wall. Cutting the soffit wall 1' from the monitor edge on a 60 ° layout leave only about 2' 7" on the front wall to place trapping to handle reflections off of the rear of the desk and LCDs. If I bring the soffit walls any further forward I'm cutting the distance between the listening position and the B&Ws to less than 5 feet. Is 7 1/2" too little space, thus making a 90 ° layout not worth considering? Is a width of 2' 7" significant enough for trapping on the front wall to handle reflections off of the rear of a desk at least 4' wide? Am I over complicating this?

i think you want to go with the 60 degree but space them out a bit more. you want the focus point about 12-24" behind the mixers head to open up the sweet spot.

OK, thanks Glenn. Is there a minimum distance, or how much space do I want to keep between the monitor edge and the front corner of the side splay wall? Thanks again.

I think I have landed on the 60 ° with the focus point at 1’ 6” behind the listening position. Everything with the soffits and splayed walls seem to fit in well. I need to seek some outside council on running the air next, but I want to make sure I won’t be moving anything around before I move onto that step. I don’t have the HVAC in this current sketchup but it runs into the machine room (viewable on the older sketchup model). I may be naive, but patching into it doesn’t seem too far fetched. Please take a moment if you have one and view the new model. Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated. Please ask if anything seems confusing. I think I'm getting the hang of sketchup, but I may be drawing things in an unconventional way. I would still appreciate input on the thought of built in shelves on the rear wall of the studio. If it is pointed out as a bad idea I won’t have to worry about it any more, lol. Thanks again.

generally speaking, you want the speakers spread about 70% of the front wall width, and an equilateral triangle on 60 degrees between the speakers and listener - with the focus slightly behind the listener head. for example, if you have a 10' front wall, then you'd want the speakers to be about 7' apart and the focus point also about 7' so the listener is seated at about 5'6" or 6' - depending on console etc. then you want to consider that the speakers should not be perfectly centered on the soffit but also offset some value not evenly spaced to the room dimensions, and also to have the listener at about 38% of the length of the room... you want the listener and/or monitors at 43% of the room height or otherwise you may be in a strong room mode location... there's a lot of things to consider when placing the speakers...

Thanks Glenn. The width of the room is 10’ 6’. Currently the monitors are spaced 6’ 7” on center putting the focus 18” behind the listening position. I could achieve a 7’ (which is still 4+ inches short of 70%) spacing if I pushed the focus to 24” behind the listening position however this would place the outside edge of the woofer around 9” from the corner of the splay wall. I have been unable to re-find the information on what the minimum you would want to extend the baffle by using a soffit configuration, but 9” seemed like it was on the shy side. Perhaps you could correct me. Would pulling the monitors to the 70% mark outweigh reducing the extended baffle below 9” on the outside? Currently the monitors have 11 15/16” of soffit on the outside and 1’ 8 7/8” on the inside. Pushing the monitors to 7’ would have 8 15/16” on the outside and 1’ 11 7/8” on the inside. The room height is planned as 7’ 6” with ear level seated at 4’ 1”. I’m placing the monitors upside down with the tweeter at 4’ 1” to avoid having the woofer land around 3’ 8”. What do you suggest? Thanks again.

Here we are with modifications according to your suggestions Glenn. The room width is 10’ 6”. The monitors are now centered at 7’ 4 ¼” (70% if I figured my fractions right) focusing 24” behind the listening position (room length 14’ 3”, listening position, 5’6 11/16”, 60 ° focus at 7’6 11/16”). This gives me about 9” of soffit wall on the outside of the monitors, and just over 2’ on the inside. The room height is 7’ 6”. The monitors are being placed upside down with the tweeter at 4’ 1” high (ear level) and the woofer centered at 4’7”. I know the monitors look set back into the soffit, it is the angle of the picture. The face of the monitors come about an inch forward of the soffit frame. The lower wall of the soffit will be faced with an absorbent trap and contain hangers within as in John’s sketch. The monitors are forward ported and passive, can I assume that the porting in the top and bottom of the speaker box as well as the vent in the top of the soffit wall are unnecessary in this case, or is the soffit dependant on this airflow in order to function as a bass trap more effectively? Do the faces of the side splay walls need to be solid to function properly, or can they be built as slot resonators? Thanks again, BF

hey guys, that last pic doesn't look like 60dec? or is it a bad angle? lil

It is the angle, here is a top view. Added a slot resonator as the side splay wall, but the pic is the same aside from that.

BF wrote:

Here we are with modifications according to your suggestions Glenn. The room width is 10’ 6”. The monitors are now centered at 7’ 4 ¼” (70% if I figured my fractions right) focusing 24” behind the listening position (room length 14’ 3”, listening position, 5’6 11/16”, 60 ° focus at 7’6 11/16”). This gives me about 9” of soffit wall on the outside of the monitors, and just over 2’ on the inside.

sorry for the delay... was busy having a new baby girl... 8) i think is in this case I'd ignore the (absolute) 70% rule because you also need to consider the effect of the soffit relative to the woofer size to avoid potentially weird cutoff frequencies in the (expected) bass boost... so i'd go with about 6' 9" wide on the monitors instead. for future calculations, Knightfly has posted a formula on the soffit space based on woofer size. again, not necessarily an absolute since you have tradeoffs, but good to ballpark things...

gullfo wrote:

sorry for the delay... was busy having a new baby girl... 8)

:) A lovely fun remark .... Congratulations ..... :mrgreen: Is it safe to assume your wife (girlfriend) was also involved? Congratulations to her too.

Aloha, Perhaps you might want to extend the side slat walls a little further to help direct reflections behind you? (In keeping with your original soffit framing, the slat wall angles turned out at around 6.7 degrees.) You could build your access to the panel box into the slat wall and hinge it. Aloha 8)

Awesome, congratulations Glenn! I won't hold it against you. :wink: I'll resize the width between the monitors to around 6'9", but can you explain what elements contributed to this figure as I would love to understand why I am doing things in certain dimensions? The B&W 602 uses a 7" woofer. It may be the nearly 7k posts, or my inability to find the correct way to weed down the search, but I have been unable to locate knightfly's formula. If someone knows where it is a link would be greatly appreciated. Thanks kendale, I have been working out in my head how exactly I was going to do this. 1. Either having part of the resonator covering the breaker mounted on hinges, so as to swing open to allow access. 2. Only having the resonator above and below the access (mirrored on the right side of the room as well) and building a sealed door in the wall to allow access to the breaker. I'm not exactly sure how to build this part without effectively killing the spring of the airspace between the walls. I could build around the breaker, in essence including it in the interior of the sealed control room, or trying to build to door to the breaker 'cabinet' to act as a seal. Building it onto the room would require sealing around all of the lines running in and out of the box (not sure if this is even a good idea), but building the door as a seal would depend on our ability to make the seal work. Thoughts? thanks again

Aloha,

Thanks kendale, I have been working out in my head how exactly I was going to do this. 1. Either having part of the resonator covering the breaker mounted on hinges, so as to swing open to allow access. 2. Only having the resonator above and below the access (mirrored on the right side of the room as well) and building a sealed door in the wall to allow access to the breaker. I'm not exactly sure how to build this part without effectively killing the spring of the airspace between the walls. I could build around the breaker, in essence including it in the interior of the sealed control room, or trying to build to door to the breaker 'cabinet' to act as a seal. Building it onto the room would require sealing around all of the lines running in and out of the box (not sure if this is even a good idea), but building the door as a seal would depend on our ability to make the seal work.

Blue Bear Sound did something similar http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainp ... uebear.htm (Click on update 6 tab - it's about halfway down the page) Hope this helps, Aloha 8)

Thanks, sent Bruce a PM. See if he bites.

Great info from Bruce, think I have a handle on that now. Would still appreciate knightfly's formula if anyone can provide a link. Also had a thought. The walls will not be load bearing (the inner walls will be supporting the ceiling and cloud, but that is pretty basic) so would setting the studs at around a 25 1/2" center rather than 16" so the bats of 703 don't need to be cut down be a problem? Will be reworking the design with the new monitor spacing to post when I have a bit of spare time.

Aloha,

Great info from Bruce, think I have a handle on that now.

That's great!

Also had a thought. The walls will not be load bearing (the inner walls will be supporting the ceiling and cloud, but that is pretty basic) so would setting the studs at around a 25 1/2" center rather than 16" so the bats of 703 don't need to be cut down be a problem?

That may depend partly on what your building codes are in your area. Best to check and see before the building inspector nixes your build. Aloha 8)