Myself and two friends are moving into a new studio space this week, I've been a (thankfully) working engineer/producer for the past few years and I've decided to take the plunge and set up my own room for songwriting, preproduction, overdubbing (mainly guitars, bass, synths, vocals, perc, occasional individual strings/brass) and possibly some mix work as well. Most of my drum tracking will be probably be done elsewhere, although no doubt I'll end up tracking drums here at some point.
I work on a lot of different styles of music from acoustic through to rock and electronica/techno stuff Not too worried about isolating the room, just treating it so it's sounds good and it's an enjoyable space to work in. I've gotten very used to the accuracy of working in good commercial studios and I'd really love to be able to rely on what I'm hearing.
I've been doing my research over the past couple of weeks and I've come up with the plan outlined below. Big thanks to everyone who posts on these forums. The design ideas and general information, not to mention the willingness to share, has been absolutely invaluable to me while I've been working on this.
I have a few specific questions that I'll outline at the end of the post and if anyone spots anything they see as problem or think could be better done a different way please throw in your two cents, I'm far from an expert and any help would be hugely appreciated. I'll attach some 2D renders from sketchup of the plan as well.
So......
Room Dimensions are L=7.96m W=4.46m H=2.75m
The room is located at the end of the building so assuming your facing the speakers the only adjoining room is to the left. It's currently occupied by an electronica group that I've done a lot of work with. They use it for writing/rehearsing and they're good friends so we can work out any times we might need peace and quiet from each other. Above me is used as storage for a PA company.
I'm in Dublin, Ireland so I'll be using Rockwool RS60(60kg/m3) or RS100(100kg/m3) as appropriate instead of fibreglass panels.
The corners are going to be 848mm faced superchunks
The side walls will have 5 broadband panel absorbers each and the back wall will have 3. The panels are 1800mm x 900mm inside the frame and are going to be 100mm deep with a 100mm gap from the wall provided by the 100mm x 100mm spacers attached to the back.
There are 16 Ceiling clouds sized 1200mm x 600mm based on this design but with the same 100mm thickness and 100mm gap as the wall panels. I've grouped eight of them over the listening postion with back four angled slightly downwards at the back. There's another group of 4 near the back of the room where I envision most of the tracking will happen and the remaining 4 will be evenly spaced across the rest of the ceiling.
There's also two "clouds" straddling the floor-wall join at the front of the room.
....and now the questions....
Regarding the superchunks I'm unsure what the best material is to use for these. From what I've read I'm as well using lower density insulation for this depth but how low should I go? Also if I'm making them out of 'fluffy' insulation rather than rigid rockwool is there any advantage/disadvantage in cutting the insulation into triangles or would I be as well just building a frame and stuffing it with the insulation?
Also not sure what to do with the irregular back left corner or if I'd get away without treating it at all...
Initially I was going to use 100kg/m3 Rockwool for all the panels/clouds but I'm worried that I'll end up killing the room completely if I do. So now I'm swinging more towards the 60kg/m3 instead. Or possibly a mix of the two... 100kg/m3 at the first reflection points and on the back wall and 60kg/m3 for the side walls and remaining clouds?
Another consideration was frk faced panels.. I was thinking they'd be good for the back wall panels and possibly the back few side wall panels as well to lower their useful low frequency absorption point and keep some of the life in the room?
One more question regarding fabric... I seem to be pretty limited for choice here in Ireland. I'd love to be able to get deep blue and deep red coloured fabrics for the panels and clouds so I'm probably going to have to order them online. My knowledge of fabrics is even lighter than my knowledge of acoustics (no pun intended) so any guidelines on what I should be asking for would really help. Is felt a viable option? If anyone can point me towards a specific supplier in Ireland or the UK that'd be amazing.
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If you made it this far sorry for the long
post and again any advice, thoughts, opinions greatly appreciated.Cheers
C