Lonar Studios.

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Building a new studio .

Location : Rooftop of a three floored Brick and Mortar building . Fairly new . New Delhi.

Dimensions (mm): LxBxH : 4875x3765x2743 . Which lands it roughly into the golden ratio .

the studio can be loud , i don't mind , there are no neighbours as this roof is pretty isolated . But , i do practice mixing and producing on fairly low volumes .



Attaching plans that show the dimensions of the front windows and the column that is at centre in the front wall .

Raising the column is critical in laying the roof, weight management on the column that extends to the building skeleton .

The floor is already tiled , i might wanna get a wooden laminate on it later depending upon how i feel about it . ( or if it sounds better )

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So, here are the queries :

1 ) Do i need to curve my walls so that there are no real corners ?

2 ) Im concerned about my front wall . there is no real option of not having windows . How bad is it really ?



Thank you for looking and your time .

Adi.

[Soundman2020]

Hi Adi, and Welcome!

Location : Rooftop of a three floored Brick and Mortar building

What is under you? It's pretty hard to isolate a studio on an upper floor (which is why most studios are built on the ground), so I hope there's nobody down there that might get upset at the noise.

the studio can be loud , i don't mind

It doesn't rain in New Delhi? No thunder, wind, hail, aircraft flying over, traffic outside, or anything else that could interrupt your sessions?

Dimensions (mm): LxBxH : 4875x3765x2743 . Which lands it roughly into the golden ratio .

Which "golden ratio" are you referring to? There is no such thing as one single perfect ratio. Your ratio is 1 : 1.37 : 1.77, which is reasonably close to the fifth best ratio on a commonly used list of good ones. That's Louden's first ration, at 1 : 1.4 : 1.9.

However, you are talking about the existing walls, which would be your outer-leaf walls if you do need isolation. The ratio that actually matters is the final boundary surfaces of the inner-leaf.

1 ) Do i need to curve my walls so that there are no real corners ?

No, definitely not. Curves focus sound waves, which you do not want to happen. Even if you did curve them, there are still corners, from the point of view of low frequency sound waves. You can't get curves with a radius much bigger than maybe 30 cm in that room, but low frequency sound wouldn't even "see" such a tiny curve. Waves at 20 Hz are 17 meters long: more than fifty times bigger than such a curve.

Curves would make no difference at all, except to greatly complicate construction, and likely focus mid and high frequency sound into places where you do not want it.

2 ) Im concerned about my front wall . there is no real option of not having windows . How bad is it really ?

Many studios have windows at the front( usually for looking in to the live room or a vocal booth), so there's no problem at all with that. You just need to get the geometry correct, and then install the right type of treatment in the right places.

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Hello Soundman.

Thank you for your quick replies and insight . I will answer your questions now.

>> ''what is under you?''

This studio is being built on the roof of my apartment . So if I'm in here , there won't be anyone downstairs .


>> ''It doesn't rain in New Delhi? No thunder, wind, hail, aircraft flying over, traffic outside, or anything else that could interrupt your sessions?''

The studio's primary are of fucntion will be for electronic music production and mixing . Maybe recording a feW vocals here and there ,if any .
So the Weather noises are not really an issue . Traffic is not an issue as this is in a residential area, and air traffic stops at night .


>> "" However, you are talking about the existing walls, which would be your outer-leaf walls if you do need isolation. ""

Not planning on doing isolation or a room in a room design . The dimensions are of the final room , and yeah almost the golden ratio !


>> ""Curves would make no difference at all, except to greatly complicate construction, ""

Okay , i was told that front walls can be made at an angle so as to minimise the use of diffusers on the front wall .

>> "" Many studios have windows at the front( usually for looking in to the live room or a vocal booth), so there's no problem at all with that.""

But if you look at my drawings , there is a glass window on each side of the front wall column , placing it behind the speakers . IF that is good to go then that is the best news of the day !

[Soundman2020]

So if I'm in here , there won't be anyone downstairs .

Makes sense! So no problem there, hopefully.

The studio's primary are of fucntion will be for electronic music production and mixing . Maybe recording a feW vocals here and there ,if any .

Right, but you seem to be missing the point: I'm not talking about recording, but mixing. When mixing, you are often listening to individual quiet tracks, as well as partial and full mixes, and flipping back and forth all the time. Personally, I find it very annoying when I have to stop, go back and listen again and again and again to the same part because what I was trying to hear was drowned out by external noise.

The recommendation for control rooms is NC-20 or lower. A typical residential house is more like NC-40 or NC-45: That's a pretty big difference. Most engineers find it hard to mix in such an environment. Which is why one of the reasons studios are isolated in the first place! It's not just to keep loud sounds from annoying the neighbors, or to keep unwanted external noise out of the mics. It is also to give the engineer a quiet environment where he can concentrate comfortably on mixing, without interruptions. Some people think that you can deal with that by just increasing the volume on the monitors, but that doesn't work: it ends up being too loud for the full mix or even partial mixes, and leads to hearing damage, tinnitus, and other unpleasant issues.

and yeah almost the golden ratio !

Like I said above: there is no such thing. It's a myth. There is no "golden ratio". There are good ratios and bad ratios, but no single ratio is "best". Some are better than others for different purposes. Over the years, many scientists and acousticians have done work on identifying the good ones, and the preferred ratios are named after them: Sepmeyer, Louden, Bolt, Volkman, Boner and others. Your ratio is close to one of Louden's good ratios, which might or might not be suitable, but it isn't a great ratio. If you look at the Bonello diagram for your room, there's a dip at the start of the second octave, which is not a good thing. That means there are fewer possible modes in that octave band than on the one below it, which should be avoided where possible.

You might want to take a closer look at the subject of room rations and modal response, to understand the possible consequences of this.

i was told that front walls can be made at an angle

Well that's true, but you didn't ask about angles! You asked about curves! Angle walls are not curved walls. Very different things, acoustically.

i was told that front walls can be made at an angle so as to minimise the use of diffusers on the front wall .

You were told wrong! Yes, angles can be used, but their purpose is not to minimize diffusion on the front wall. Your room is too small to be able to use most types of diffusion, and diffusion is seldom used on the front walls in modern studio designs anyway. Diffusion can be used on the rear wall, if the room is large enough, and perhaps even on the ceiling and side walls behind the mix position, in a large enough room, but not on the front wall. Some experimental designs have tried that, but the results have not been good. The best plan is to keep the front of the studio "clean" in that sense, either reflective or absorptive, but with no devices that change the frequency response selectively, like diffusers do. That's why RFZ, CID, NER and similar concepts are the preferred design criteria these days.

there is a glass window on each side of the front wall column , placing it behind the speakers .

I would definitely not set up your room facing that way! The artifacts from those cavities on each side of the column would be fatal to getting clean, usable sound out of your speakers. Rather, set it up the other way, facing the other end of the room, where it will be possible to have decent control of the front-end acoustics.

The main goal with studio design is to ensure that the direct sound from the speakers gets to the engineer's ears perfectly cleanly, without being changed in any way: no coloration, no artifacts, no phase issues, no comb filtering, no diffraction, no SBIR or anything else. That won't be possible with those cavities and that massive central column. There's no reasonable way you can treat that to make it usable, and especially not if you want to keep the windows. Having the speakers at that end of the room would be about the worst possible way to set up your room.

So I would turn your room around to face the other way.

- Stuart -