first post, new studio, thanks guys

This is my first post so I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Mike, I'm 24 and I do tech for my real job. My friend and I are taking our first crack at building a professional facility. I just discovered this forum a few days ago (thanks to Tony Belmont) and I must say this place is awesome. I'd like to say thanks in advance to anyone that offers their assistance. So here's what we're trying to do. The place we've found isn't perfect but I think its very usable. Overall goals. 1. Treat the live room to have a live but controlled sound. 2. Isolate control room from outside sound. Need good enough isolation from the live room to be able to overcome live drums reasonably. 3. Soffit mount monitors and treat control room and treat room so mix area is accurate. Live room = 27'w x 16'd x 9'h Control room = 17'w x 11'd x 9'h The buildings outside walls are concrete so the building itself has decent isolation from the outside. There are some sky lights in the live room ceiling that I will be sealing off to minimize leakage there. The live room is a good size and I want to leave it as one big room. I'll be putting together some gobos and such for isolating individual elements if needed. The floors in both rooms are wood. Obviously if I end up floating the floor to the control room I'll end up pulling that up. Hopefully I can reuse some of it. Goals 2 and 3 are my most important and also the hardest for me to achieve on my own. The images and sketchup file below are of these two rooms how they exist now. The walls between the live room and control room are seemingly standard double leaf with one layer of drywall each. I had planned on tearing out the layer of drywall in the control room in order to create a gapped double leaf. The outside walls which are the thick walls are concrete and appear to be single leaf with the drywall against the concrete. At least that's what I hope. Either way I really don't want to pull down the drywall of of these walls. So I had planned on creating air gapped double leaf walls and ceiling and asking advise on whether I should float the floor. Let me add that the dimensions in my sketchup are accurate as far as room size and ceiling height but wall thicknesses are not. Some other things to think about. I'm thinking the door between the live room and control room should definitely be closed off and install a new door from the kitchen to the control room. With that I had planned on getting rid of the closet and starting the wall where it begins in the kitchen. This will add another 2' of width to the room. I'm going to have someone with more experience take a look at that wall to see if there are any repercussions regarding load with that move. I want to install a window from the control to live room and soffit mount the monitors. I am planning on going with genelec 1032a's. Also we'll be using a toft atb32 console that will have a custom desk with patchbays and whatnot so that's what will be sitting up front. I've been reading as much as possible and I understand the concept of the soffit mounting and somewhat of how to implement it. I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around resonators and proper placement. I would assume we would want to splay the side walls but I don't know if with the current height restriction if an angled ceiling would work. An accurate monitoring environment and decent isolation from the live room are so important to me. Keep in mind if the drums are very faint from the live room that is perfectly acceptable. I'm doing this while I'm working so if I forgot anything important don't hesitate to let me know. Sorry if my sketchup skills aren't up to par, just started using it a few hours ago.

OH MY GOD!! I'm so bad at using sketchup it's awful. Ok so the deal is your not aloud to make fun of me unless you also post some usefule info. So this is my attempt at sort of what I had in mind. The monitors are floating in mid air since because of the room shape I cant figure out how I can soffit mount them properly. The monitors a to scale and the mixing desk is a good guess as it hasn't been built yet. Hopefully you guys can understand what I'm getting at and look past my very poor model. There should be a window from the console room to live room but I wasn't able to figure out how to do that on the software yet.

Aloha and welcome to the forum,

I'm so bad at using sketchup it's awful. Ok so the deal is your not aloud to make fun of me unless you also post some useful info.

Actually, you're not doing badly at all. :wink: You may want to reorient your layout so that the monitors fire down the length of the room:

because you don't want rear reflections to interfere it is better to start with a longer front to back dimension than the side to side dimension. John Sayers http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

I'll try to put up a couple of ideas in bit. In the meantime, check out the link above, and as many of the "Stickies" as you can, as they have a lot of good info. Aloha 8)

Ahh man you know you set off a light bulb in my head. I have been reading the site a bunch and it is soaking in slowly. I did realize that it would be better to do the room the other way as you have proposed, but I wasn't seeing it in my head. Anyway, now I think I should leave the door to the tracking room, close off the door to the outside, make that end the front of my mix position and can the idea of the doorway into the kitchen. Do you think having the window on the right side will cause any reflection issues? I guess I could make something to cover it during mixing, like a resonator that could slide out of the way. Oh I'm excited now. I planned on leaving the finished side of tracking room as my first wall and tearing out the drywall on the console room side so I can build my second wall. I was going to go with 2 layers. Probably 1/2" and 5/8." Maybe adding a layer of particle board or if I could find something particular for sound isolation that wasn't outragous in price for a third layer. With that in mind do you think floating the floor would be necessary for the isolation I want or if I'm careful and make sure everything is sealed good will walls and ceiling be enough? I'll be looking forward to your ideas. Thanks so much.

Oh btw, I will be using resilient channels as well on the new interior walls.

Ok so maybe it won't be as easy as I thought. I don't think the desk will fit properly if I face the room the other direction. I suppose I can have the pacthbay set up in a regular rack instead of integrating it with the desk. Looking forward to your reply.

you should probably look around for info on the floating floor... done correctly it can help in certain cases, in others, its more problematic... you could try this type of layout and later on add booths if needed...

Yea, I like that but flipped 180. The only thing is I don't know if the desk will fit once the new walls are up.

the desk pictured here is 79" wide and 39" deep.

Man thanks guys!! Gullfo, what did you use to put that together? I'd like to be able to look at it more in depth as far as dimensions. What is the angle on those side walls. I know I've seen what the optimal angles are for the side walls but of course now when I'm searching for them I can't find them. Also, what do you think about reflection issues with having a window to the right of the mix position? Thanks again.

its done in sketchup.

Thanks so much. This really helps allot. I'm probably gonna do a floated floor as that seems to be the only way to get the isolation I want. I'm guessing since the current ceiling is 9ft that should put me at 8ft with the new floor and ceiling in place. Do you think I should install a false angled ceiling above the mix position using 703 or do you think maybe a cloud would be adequate. Also I'd like to make the window larger than the plans posted, do you think this would cause major reflection issues or would the angle of the wall take care of that.

what is it you need to isolate? maybe having isolation booths for amps or drum kit are the answer... a true floating floor is expensive and a less than true floating floor could very well under perform...

Well, I do want isolation from drums and guitar but I realy wanted to keep the live room one large room, at least to start. Also the air handler right next to where the control room is located so i think the best thing to do is concentrate on the isolation of the control room. I do want to make sure it is done properly. We've budgeted about 10,000 for building modification, which other than adding a door to the live room and Some treatment for the live room that can all be used for building a proper control room. We plan on doiing ourselves so there won't be any labor cost. I'm hoping that the existing wood floor that is in place where the control room will reside can be reused once we pull it up so that should save us a little.

what is the existing floor construction under the wood? maybe do some tests to determine how much flanking your getting from the live room before tearing it up? if its minimal maybe you don't need to do anything with it... or if you have concrete under everthing, maybe strip it wall down to concrete and stain and polish it? as far as budget, does the $10K apply to just the floor or the entire CR construction? i think to build a proper floating floor its got to be several of thousands in engineering, rebar work, suspension units, concrete pour and spreading, settling, etc...

It's 10k for the control room. I was planning on a wood floor with neoprene pads though. I think a floating concrete setup would be beyond the scope of what we are doing. I had planned on removing the existing floor down to the slab and starting from there. Again, I really appreciate all your help.

what kind of testing can I do before hand?

using a rubber and metal hammer, you can tap around to find out if you have any serious flanking issues from the slab or exterior walls. also, some loud bass intensive music (live or recorded) played in the space will give you an idea about how much leakage you have - measure inside and outside, upstairs, etc. to map out the levels and paths.

Ok so I think you are right about not needing to float the floor. Awesome saves me $$. So do you think it would be a good idea to decouple my wall frame from the floor? ANother big question. I like the idea of using a sliding glass door but I'm concerned about losing my isolation because of this. Does anyone know any tried and true doors that have a good seal. I found one at lowes that seems to have a great seal and uses 5/8" glass said to withstand 130mph winds. I think that as long as it seals properly 2 of these will probably be adequate.

yes, decouple the wall framing. if you don't have Rod's book on studio construction - big help on isolation and techniques for building. a pair of well sealed exterior grade sliding doors should give you decent isolation.

Sounds good. I have ordered Rod's book. Hopefully it won't take to long to get here. I wish i could have found it someplace locally. Oh well. So now I'm wondering how I can keep people from tripping over the track for the doors as they will be raised somewhat do to decoupling them from the floor. Any ideas to make this less of an issue. The door that I'm thinking of using is 5/8" insulated glass. Should I be worried about the fact that it's insulated glass. I'm thinking thats what most doors will use.

to set the doors level with the floor you'd need to build it up (not necessarily floating but layers to raise it. otherwise most folks can learn to adjust to the doors being above the floor. another consideration though is if this is a commercial facility, then ADA compliance would be critical and a normal residential door would not likely cut it because of the gaps in the floor frame. the insulation should be ok.

So do you think I should install any treatment on the side wall to the right of the mix position? I was thinking maybe I should add a curtain over the galss areas that i could pull across while mixing or should I just install absorbers on the back wall to take care of reflections?

you should install absorbers wherever you have a reflection point on the side walls, ceiling, and backwall. if the glass door on the side is too lively, putting a heavy drape over it while mixing can help but try to keep it balanced with the treatment on the opposite wall.

Here's a pic of how we decided to combine the door and the window into one. So I've got a another concern. We have started talking about floating the floor again not beause of flanking issues but because of the fact that the owners of the building aren't to excited about us pulling up some of the orignal wood floors to build the new walls. So we thought about floating the new floor on top of the exisisting wood. After reading rod's book and alot of information here on wood deck floors I'm concerned about resonance issues. You had mentioned building up the floor as opposed to floating it. Perhapps that is something we could do. Any suggestions would be helpful. I think I will post something over in the construction forum as well. Pehaps Rod will have some input.