Can anyone tweak this layout for me?

hey guys, wondering if anyone could tweak this design for me.Building a house and want to get the layout of the studio right the first time. Measurements at the moment are (these are going to change slightly once final plans come through).... CR L 16.4' W 13.1' ISO L 8.2' W 7.8' ceiling height will be 8' to ISO and 9' to CR. Guess Im after a good use of available space without feeling claustrophobic. Anyway, heres a pic and thanks.

The angled walls at mix position need to extend just beyond the mix position (your seated position) Bryan Giles

Actually, Bryan, although extending the splayed walls that far gives a "deeper" RFZ, the mix position itself should be fine as it is. For a worst case scenario, draw a ray from the right nearfield to the rearmost part of the existing splay wall, and match that angle reflecting off the splay - it puts the reflection about 3 feet or more behind the mix position. Same with left nearfield to right splayed wall section. Checking from soffited speakers the same way gives even more of an angle, since the soffited speakers are further forward the reflection will hit further "aft". I agree that if possible the splayed sections should extend further back, but this will work OK at the mix position... Steve

So Steve let me understand this, the parallel walls that will be at his ears will be ok? even if they JUST have absorption. I have to disagree with you buddy. I have been in those rooms and the Midrange suffers. And not sure if this guy just wants an OK design but one that will yield excellent results for a minimal amount of cash outlay. I also should add, cunstruction costs are so subjective. I was able to build my entire studio (with my OWN labor) for about $2500.00 for everything. For me that seems miniscule..... Bryan Giles

Bryan, I agree it's not ideal but I forgot to mention the item on the right side (left of the mix position) that looks like heavy absorption - if that's NOT what that is, then there's more "tweaking" needed. If it IS absorption, it would help any flutter, likely to the point of being workable. I was partially just trying to keep Qiktune from more work. Qictune, If it were me, I'd make a couple of changes for sure - I would bring the splayed walls back as Bryan suggested, so that they extend past a point that's even with the mix chair - Then, I would either build the booth door into that slanted wall, or move it into the study and just have a window into the booth from the Control room. Noting that your booth wall/door appear to already be built, the very LEAST I'd do is put at least 3" cloth-covered rigid fiberglas (703 or Knauf) on your booth door(Control room side) , confirm that the thick unidentified thing on the opposite wall is indeed an absorber, and build a slat absorber in the booth, on the wall between booth and study, to eliminate that parallel wall - the deeper side of the absorber would go to the left of the drawing. Then there would be no parallel walls in the booth either. 8-10" of splay on the booth wall would do it. Qik, you got a first name? I'm kind of an English freak, and I hate typing anything with a "Q" in it that doesn't have a "U" immediately after... Steve

cool, just making sure we were reading from the same play book. LOL Bryan Giles

Id eliminate the door to the booth by using the office as a sound lock - I'd also angle the wall between the office and booth as it hasn't been built yet. cheers john

Bryan/Steve: Don't the 4 angles at the front of the control room need to be 30 degrees (each one), resulting in a 60 degree angle coming to the mix position? Just want to get this right since I'm messing around with splayed walls at the front of my control room as well, and didn't know if these angles need to be exact or not.... Thanks in advance. jeff

Jeff, there are "technically" 2 sets of angles you are dealing with in the above diagram The side wall resonators which should conform to the rule of a 12 degree splay minimum (6 degrees /wall/10 feet- Steve did I quite that correctly) And the soffits. The soffit angle is for speaker positioning. Depending upon the angle you want for your speaker mount. 60 degrees is the normal listening angle. however as you will see when searching other threads here, people play with a 90 Degree listening angle and even shallower degrees (i.e. 50 degrees). John has a nice diagram showing various speaker angles. Do a search and you should be able to find the thread Hope that helps. Bryan Giles

Yeah, Bryan, pretty close - the way it works out is that if you offset one end of a 10 foot long wall by one foot, the resulting angle is slightly under 6 degrees. Using those values just makes it easier to lay out. Others have claimed that they successfully kill flutter with as little as 3 degrees, John has told me that 5 seems to be minimum from his experience so he recommends 6 degrees. If we're talking about walls, yes it's 6 degrees PER WALL - for ceilings, I would do at least 10 degrees, (since it's not convenient to also slant the FLOOR :? ), 12 would be better. For the common problem of low ceilings, about the best that can be done is a fiberglas "cloud" - if there's room, the thicker the better - no hard backing and spacing the cloud away from the ceiling also helps even out absorption. As to soffits, seems like I read one of Barefoot's posts where he recommended several woofer diameters of flat surface in all directions from the speaker (like 4 or 5 diameters) in order to avoid either losing the soffit advantages or creating a "horn effect" which would narrow the sweet spot. Don't take my word on that part, it's one of a long list of "clarifications" I still need to get done... Steve

Thanks for the replies and insights guys.I'm just about to shoot off again so hopefully I can go into a bit more depth later this evening. Firstly, that thing against the wall in the CR is nothing (my 8yr old daughter was trying to be helpful and I forgot to remove it from the pic when I saved it). Thanks for the drawing John...as far as the "sound lock" goes I really would like to keep that open if I can as its a feature of the entrance (one of the things my wife fell in love with when we first viewed this house) and since she never asks for ANYTHING yet indulges my EVERY musical whim....I'd like to at least give her that. Re: the splayed wall debate. Another possible option I guess would be to put sliding doors to the ISO/CR walls which negate the need for a window but also allow for the angle of the walls to extend further toward the back. ...I really gotta go.Will add more later Thanks guys Brett

Steve: With reference to your mention of how to treat low cielings with "clouds" at 10-12 degrees: If one is using cloth covered 703 for this purpose (4" thick??) are they horizontally "stepped up" higher than one another, or do you fasten them together making one large piece of 703 that slopes up? What angle do the clouds themselves need to be at versus the overall slope if you know what I'm saying? Thks, jeff

Jeff, "how to treat low cielings with "clouds" at 10-12 degrees:" - That was an EITHER/OR, not both - 10-12 degrees would be for the ceiling itself, if there's adequate headroom to do it. If not, then spacing absorbent "clouds" a few inches off the ceiling will help kill some of the parallel surface problems with absorption. I've seen clouds done all at the same level, and I've seen stepped versions - if you mount a cloud forward enough so that it's up against the front wall, you should gain some bass trapping by mounting the 703 low in front, high in rear (toward the rear of the room) so you have more depth between the wall and the absorbent. There doesn't seem to be much advantage to angling 703 to control reflections, except possibly at really shallow angles of incidence where it's absorption isn't as good as quoted. If what you were asking is about mounting clouds beneath a SLOPED ceiling (assuming there's enough headroom) you would probably see some slight smoothing of absorption response by mounting the clouds stood off the ceiling and level with the floor, but stepped so that each cloud's front edge was the same distance from the ceiling, with each cloud's REAR edge further from the ceiling. Aw, crap, can't even talk right tonite - here's a rudimentary drawing of this last scenario - Hope that helped... Steve

don't forget guys that you can have a plywood backing on a cloud and still have 703 on the bottom surface. You can angle them to break up a parallel ceiling. cheers john

Thanks John & Steve (drawing was very helpful). One other question...if I'm planning on track lighting on the ceiling of the control room, is one or two feet sufficient space between the 703 clouds (in between the lengths) sufficient so as not to a) cause a fire and b) reduce effectiveness of overall cieling treatment? Just trying to get my ducks in a row. Qiktune, didn't mean to cause your thread to digress..... Thanks, Jeff

John - "don't forget guys that you can have a plywood backing on a cloud and still have 703 on the bottom surface. You can angle them to break up a parallel ceiling" - I thought Jeff was asking about clouds for an ALREADY sloped ceiling - othewise I'd have mentioned that approach, as it's a really good way to break up a full 8 foot ceiling. In fact, that's what I'm looking at doing in the bedroom that's going to rescue my sanity til I get to the REAL "toybox"... Jeff, first off you should ALWAYS either use fire rated cloth over your absorbers or buy spray treatment to make it fire retardent. Second, a foot of air between light and absorber is enough, unless you're using focussed infrared bulbs :roll: Third, if you've ever played pool (billiards, sort of) you can sit at the mix position and look up - ANYWHERE on the ceiling that you could hit with a billiard shot and the next bounce would hit a speaker (including as much "english" as you could possibly put on the ball) that place should be absorbed. Same is true for the 2 foot area AROUND that imaginary impact point. Other than that, if the sound misses the absorber on the way up, it will probably pass thru it on the way back. Use some basic geometry here, draw it out if necessary - One scenario that works is a cloud, about 4 feet x 8 feet, centered halfway between mix position and speakers, the 8 foot dimension running side to side - this could be surrounded by track lights (air gap of course) if you need that much light. As John pointed out, I forgot to mention that a LEVEL ceiling can be improved by using plywood backed 703, purposely tilted so that it reflects sounds to the rear of the room - if you do that, in order to NOT have parallel surfaces anywhere in the sweet spot I would overlap these panels down the center of the room, with ZERO places where floor and ceiling are parallel - you can put track lighting along the SIDES , aimed to cover the areas under these tilted clouds. In order for this to be completely effective, the plywood backed clouds should be 1 foot closer to the ceiling at the rear edge than at the front edge. This gives just over 12 degrees of splay... Steve

Steve, apoligize for the crude drawing....but do you mean something like this on the clouds? I like your suggestion of track lighting on the outside edges, pointing in. Also, I am confused on how to splay the walls on the front of the CR. Thks, jeff

Or are the clouds more like this??? Still don't know about splaying front end too...

Jeff, there are as many ways to do these things as there are people doing them - I'm not sure where you are in construction, so it's hard to offer suggestions. Do you already have any walls or ceilings up, or still in the planning stages? Do you intend to have your REAL ceiling(s) sloped or level? And, I thought you already had a floor plan that showed splayed walls for the control room? Sorry, but I need an update of status quo so I know what to recommend... Steve

How about a corner control room? Are my designs/layouts ok or am I way off track? Thanks Brett

Brett - stop fucking around :lol: :lol: you're design is fine - BUILD IT!! :):) cheers JOhn

LMFAO...thanks John Just making sure I get this thing right the first time...also trying to make the most of the space,hell if I can get two different tracking environments in there then why not. Something thats intrigued me since I started lurking here and at the homerecording forum is the comment made over and over again, and that is to shoot your monitors down the length of your CR. Other pro studios I've recorded in which include JMF Studio (Bankstown), A# Studio (Riverwood) and my time spent at both SAE (the original studio in Elizabeth St, Sydney) and Studio 301 (the new one) I've noticed just the opposite. They all have their monitors across the widest wall (all of these CR's are much wider than they are deep)....could you explain this for me please? Thanks again Brett

the idea is to send the signal past you and absorb it on your back wall. The longer the distance the better so that any reflections that come back aren't within the 18 - 20 msec range. I only know the 301 room and it's pretty big if I remember correctly - mind you it doesn't have a good reputation as being a great room. The new SAE room in Byron is similar and it's just a big square box lined to the hilt with 4" sonex foam. You mightn't have noticed that the rear wall is actually deeper than you see because of the rear bass trapping. cheers John