Plan for a big recording and concert room

Hi, after building a mix-Room with vocal booth, our plan is to build a big recording and concert room for Jazz and classical music. As you can see, the room is very high, so mybe the best would be a hanging ceiling. We need to plate the walls anyway to prevent noise to the neighbours, so why dont we build it with an acoustical effekt inside. I thought about turnable Absorbers, so we can tune the room reverberation. For example concerts more dry, and mor reverb for little orchestras without audience. On the right side theres the control room on 2nd floor. The only things we cant change are the 3 doors and the windows, they will be double layered later. Maybe someone has a good idea for the walls to break the parallel waves? g-slam Please excuse my simple english. the sketchup plan is 8MB, too big to post it here...

maybe you can post the dimensions, construction of the existing space, proxity to neighbors, isolation requirements, etc... :-)

Yes, I will do it, need some time, I will do some pics tomorrow of the existing construction.

And here are some pictures of the existing place and the Wall construction. As you can see, there are 2 bars of steel on every wall side. They are perfekt to install absorbers or anything else. The walls are made from bricks, maybe 20cm thick. Neighborhood is quite near, maybe 30meters. So we should put in an insulation as rockwool and then 2-3 layers of drywall (gypsum). Windows will be replaced by double glass windows.

Aloha and welcome to the forum! :D Congrats on your studio build! Any chance you could please:

Edit your profile to include your location. This is very important, because this is a worldwide resource, and as such, material costs and availability vary widely. For example, masonry is cheaper than gypsum in some parts of the globe, whereas it's the exact opposite in other regions.

You'll probably get more of a response by doing so and this will really come in handy two or three posts down the road. It's also part of the forum guidelines. Thanks! :wink: For more info, check out both of these links - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7572 http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Looking forward to your build! Aloha 8)

Ups... thanks, just did it......

now one with an idea?

you can create a number of angled wall sections which incorporate bass trapping to mitigate the reflections and add the necessary bass trapping. on the ceiling you can add poly diffusers and perhaps some trapping which can be adjusted. on sections of walls without the angled traps, you can place some reversible absorber/reflectors to let you change the RT60 of the environment.

g-slam Please excuse my simple english. the sketchup plan is 8MB, too big to post it here...

no problem - g-slam open your skp file and goto window/model info/Statistics and purge all. The file size will come down so you can post it. everytime you drag a component into the file it stays in the file even if you decide not to use it, when you purge the file it clears all unused components, materials and layers. cheers john

good hint, thanks. Right now, I erased all the other rooms, to get it smaller.

Maye something like this. Right now I am working on turnable acoustic modules, so I can change RT60 for concerts with audience and recording sessions without (where longer reverb could be an advantage). Maybe someone has some mor ideas?

i like the smaller and more numerous side treatments. you could build inside-out and regular walls also as a means of preserving the space and adding the absorption and diffusion. here's what i was thinking about for the ceiling - adding 3 soffits overhead to house the AC and some bass trapping. in-between are rows of poly diffusers and lighting. the proscenium of the stage should allow for lighting, TV screens, and PA. over the staging you would have a solid ceiling to project acoustically and leave some audio on the stage for performers. alternately, you could have a moveable ceiling so you have overhead fly space and or some trapping. i'd leave some windows - with drapes - for natural daylight and avoid the large tomb effect... the rear wall would be about 30-40cm deep slats/absorbers to reduce reflection off the back without killing it... above the soffits and polys would be large hanging panels to provide absorption for bass and reduce the overhead reverberation to the desired level.

Wow, thats really awesome. what program do you use? What are the best angles for the ceiling and what kind of bass trap do you recommend? I will try to start an exact plan in sketchup. many thanks for the work!

the program is free - sketchup.google.com the bass trapping etc would need to be predecated on the room construction, volume etc... to see what would be the right balance. in this drawing i'm assuming some coupling into the space above the soffits and poly diffusers. and in that space would be trapping to balance the amount of bass reverberation you have. you might not need much. or you might need a bunch. the angles are arbitrary at this point and meant to implie some level of ceiling compression towards the rear of the theater to preserve sound intensity for the back audience, and allow expansion and direction in the front - attempting to equalize the delay of reflected sound across the audience is one goal. you would make your best calculations and then construct the isolation portions of the room, take measurements, add the broadband treatments such as the soffits and polys, take more measurements, and do your final tuning based on that. keeping in mind that an audience has absorption power which is not trivial...

Could you send me the skp file? Or maybe you post it here? many thanks for your work. Its unbelievable.

i'll try to post it tonight but i'm sure its much help as its really pretty much what you see in the jpegs... the real work - all the math and details is missing so it may be more hinderance than help...