A barn conversion studio for a Brit living in Slovenia

[franny]

Dear All,

Firstly thank you for such a wonderful website and resource.
I am a British composer and engineer now living in Slovenia. My wife and I are turning our barn into a writing and recording space. I am a keyboard player and have many synths, my father is also a guitarist, and my wife is a vocalist.
For this reason we plan for the moment on having a big control room to house our keyboards, guitars, and mixing desk.
We can possibly work on a live room on the middle floor of the barn later. For now it's mostly midi, vocals, and guitar over dubs for what we work on.

The dimensions of the control room are 7.5m Long X 7.15m Wide X 2.6 m High.

From what I have read and understood on this website, I intend to put in a diamond shaped control room, and I plan to put this length ways (see diagrams).

The walls are of very thick concrete and rock (1 meter at least) and are very uneven. We intend to plasterboard and build out a room within a room with metal framing. For insulation we'll use knauf DP5 (the closest thing I can find to owens corning 703 in this part of the world). I have a 12mm laminate floor and I'll put foam underneath it.
There are windows on 1 long side of the building and these are recessed in a trapezoid like shape into the meter thick walls. I was planning on building movable gobos to try and sort those out, as when we're just playing and not mixing, some natural light would be nice.

At the back of this control room will be a series of divided vocal booths and maybe even an amp booth.
You can see from the photographs there will be a bedroom, a bathroom, and the large space will be the control room. There's an alcove in the bedroom where we could put the booths I was thinking.

Questions
- I am curious if the dimensions I have are good, or not acoustically? I think I should build the Width inwards to make the room more rectangular if it would improve the acoustics.

- I am concerned about the ceiling height. At present there are wooden beams with exposed planks (rough cut and not even). We will need to insulate these and my friend/builder suggested I put steel framing fixed to the beams and plasterboard over the roof. This would give an approximate ceiling height of 2.4m which I am worried would be too low. I'd have to put absorber panels on that ceiling - I don't think there's room enough for an angled ceiling.

Please let me know if you need any more specifics. I have been trying to get to grips with sketchup - I'm not particularly good at it, so I am sorry that it looks so rubbish...it seems really different than the old version I used years ago.

Thanks to you all in advance for your help.
Francis

[franny]

Hello everybody,

Did I post this in the wrong place. Does anybody have any ideas?
Many thanks,

francis

[Mojo Jr]

Hi Francis, and welcome to the forum.

First... let me say that it's pretty common that people take a while to answer here. Most of the people who frequent this forum are very busy, and they volunteer their time here whenever they have a free moment. Sometimes you can be waiting a while.

Please, while you're waiting, do yourself a HUGE favor and go to the following link. Read the very first post there. It's by a fellow named Stuart. It's his first post from many years ago. Now, he's got a killer studio built and he's a regular wiz here on the forum.

Compare his first post to yours, and based on the form of his post, think about every possible thing you can add to your information (there's some pretty huge things missing... like budget for example). But... before you edit your post and put in the budget... have a read through, not only Stuart's first post... but read that thread. Stuart asked every conceivable question about building a studio. Almost every possible question you will have regarding your build is addressed in that thread. You'll learn, for example, that there is SO MUCH more you can do with your space. You've not even scratched the surface of what you can do in terms of layout and construction methods.

I can say this with confidence, the people reading this forum will help you, but you have to show that you're doing everything you can to work it out on your own.

Think of the forum like a library. When you go to the library, you don't go to the librarian everytime you have a question about the subject you're studying... you look through the index, find the section where the books are most likely to be shelved, and you study... hour after hour... and ONLY when you're completely stumped, do you go up to the help desk and ask for a nudge in the right direction. Same thing here.

If you approach the forum that way... you'll have a LOT less frustration, and you'll end up asking questions that are laser-beam focused to specific tasks within your build schedule.

Again... just so you get excited about what lies ahead for you and your family... let me say, you have not even scratched the surface of what's possible with that space, even on a relatively tight budget.

Imagine you're going to see the most advanced studio designer in the entire world. She only has 20 minutes to speak with you. She will only speak with you once. She has asked that you type out one page of information to give her the most complete picture of your project. Remember... she's the most experienced designer in the world, and she's going to help you for free. You get one shot. She needs to know absolutely everything there is to know about your situation. She tells you she wants to look over your page the day before the meeting.

Now... what are you going to type on that page?

Budget? Yep.
Equipment? Yes.
Noisy neighbors?
Picky neighbors who hate noise?
Nearby road... highway... airport?
Will you have free-standing monitors or will you soffit mount them?
The construction of the floor, the walls, and what the windows are made of, what the rooms are upstairs and what they will be used for.
How experienced are you at construction?
Will you need to hire other people (architect, carpenters, electricians)?
What style of music will be recorded there?
Will other bands and musicians come there?
What about your air conditioning needs? Remember, the control room is a sealed environment.
What's your timeline? Can you wait until you have all the info you need to build a killer place? Or... are you in a hurry? If so, what absolutely needs to be done right now?

See what I mean? You've got some of the world's best designers of studios and studio equipment on this forum, not to mention those of us who make our living in front of the mic and behind the board. When we read your introduction, and your plan, it's gotta be detailed. So we can look at it as if we're doing the project. Imagine posting something that, if you walked away... and just left us with your introductory information... we could build something VERY close to what you're after.

Anyway... hope this helps... I'm in the process of designing and building a studio myself, and I can't stress enough how important it is to be as detailed as possible for the forum participants.

You can read the page I mentioned by clicking on this text. It should answer many of your questions (for example... you asked about the room dimensions and whether they are adequate). Stuart mentions room dimensions at the very end of his post. Don't miss that. From there... figure out which of the two most popular ratios you want to apply to your build, and know why.

Then, read the forum rules posted at the top of the forum category page (you may actually want to read that before you read Stuart's thread).

Finally, come back and let us have every, little detail.

- VJ -

[RJHollins]

Great post VJ !

I'm preparing for my second build, and as always, following every new thread posted. So we'll be watching THIS thread too.

I'll join in and say how great this forum [and the people here] have been for me. My current Mastering Suite exceeded my high expectations ... and I'm now having to do it all again [that is the card that life draws].

Even with all the things I have learned here ... I will be posting with the specifics needed to give the Experts here the best view of my plan. They can only see what I show ... however, they HAVE been known to open MY eyes more than a few times!

Look forward to following this and all builds.

[franny]

Thank you for the advice – I see what you mean about Stuart’s post and it being miles away from what I wrote – thank you for taking the time to point me in the right direction.
Hopefully this will supply much needed further details. I will try and sketch up something like a floor plan and front elevation of the barn.

Budget: 6 – 8000 Euros

Equipment: Yamaha NS10’s, Adam P33’s, Allen and Heath 24 Channel GL 2400, PC, Cubase 5, RME Fireface, Alesis ADAT x3, Lexicon MX300, DBX 165, ART Compressor. Mostly working in the box with samples and digital recording of vocals and guitars.
10 hardware synths – mostly 80s like DX7, JX10 Juno 106, M1…, lots of 19” synths, korg, kurzweil. Guitars of all kinds (Gibson 335, les paul, strat, acoustics, nylon), an ajax vibraphone, a Rhodes 88 and a grand piano (Baldwin 5ft 2). I do have some percussion as well, and a tatty old drum kit…only ever used for sampling. You can glean what we do from my website www.franciskingsmith.co.uk
(not sure if I’m allowed to do that, it’s not to advertise – just to give an idea of our style).


Neighbours: The neighbors are small scale farmers - they do drive tractors – it can be a bit noisy when it’s cutting time, but usually only 20 – 30 minutes per day when moving hay into the cow shed. A delivery that happens at the same time every day. Otherwise it’s peace and quiet in the mountains aside from the odd deer barking late at night.
Neighbors do not mind noise at all, and there is virtually no traffic noise of any kind other than the tractors. I live in a hamlet of 3 other farmhouses. Their main working barns are not near the studio barn. I can live with the odd 2 stroke engine or tractor making some noise for 30 minutes a day – it will probably encourage me to take a break!

Monitoring: I think free standing monitors would do but soffit mounting could be an idea especially for the Adams, and it’s definitely possible. I don’t know enough to really have an informed opinion.
Where we’re up to so far: The windows and external doors are brand new and triple glazed, glass, PVC with a gas filling between glass. They were installed specifically for reducing noise in and outside and were recommended to me from the designer of a local concert hall (music college). I went and looked/ tested them – they seemed good. I know they have parallel lines in the glass and that this not the ideal but it is all I could get hold of here in Slovenia (there’s 2 window making guys in our local town). They do seem to keep the noise out very well thus far.

The floor is newly concreted with a polystyrene humidity layer. The walls are 1 meter thick at least and are newly rendered and concreted encasing rocks/ stone – the barn is probably 150 years old, and was made with whatever stone the local farmers could get their hands on. It is built into the rock of the hillside, but thankfully it is dry and there is no humidity problem. We put the humidity control layers in that concrete to be sure, but so far so good! We’ll put a foam underlay, and then 12mm laminate on top of that.

At present a wooden beam and plank rustic ceiling divides the downstairs with the upstairs. Upstairs there is 1 big room which is at present used for wood storage, cutting machine storage, and maybe sawing the odd log up. Safe to say it’s the occasional workshop.

If we are ever successful in music I would LOVE to make this into a big live room. The kind you see for tracking strings, pianos, almost orchestral sized, as the room has such a big ceiling height. It would probably also make a brilliant drum tracking space, but for now, this is at the dreaming stage. It would cost a lot, and we’d have to do the roof before we do anything else which is probably 20 – 30k here.

Am I building it? I have a family friend who’s experienced in plastering, building, carpentry, electrics, and I’m not too shabby myself on construction. I’m helping him along the way, though he knows where to get local materials and local building practices. I don’t even think I could find an architect here. Everybody does it themselves, so I think I’m in that boat as well.

We have installed metal framing for the dry walls in the bedroom that divides the barn into 2 rooms and have mounted plasterboards with 10 cm of knauf DP5 insulation between the plasterboard and the meter thick walls. The steel girders are backed with a self adhesive cardboard acoustic proofing material (i.e. the metal doesn’t touch the concrete anywhere). They’ll be a bedroom (booths in the corner), bathroom, and control room.

We have done the electrical wiring and installed a new fuse box/ supply and sorted out the grounding. The bedroom/ bathroom is already close to being finished, but the control room still has much room for maneuver i.e. the wall positions, and framing hasn’t even been started apart from the divide between bedroom and control room.

In the control room I’m thinking of a diamond shape that is symmetrical so it will be a ‘room within a room’. We have already got tubing for a possible multicore to go upstairs one day in the wall.

What kind of music? We create Jazz, jazz fusion (Weather Report), classical piano, voice overs and film scores predominantly. I also make library music i.e. electronic/ acoustic guitars/ sometimes electric guitar over dubs. We’re into writing songs like Tears for Fears, Nik Kershaw, Steely Dan, Pat Metheny Group. We also love the ECM sound. We’re not making much in the way of rock or heavy metal, and we’re not doing anything loud really. We may at some point track a saxophone, or a double bass. Maybe a jazz trio.
The Studio for me will be a bit like a family music room if you like – we’ll put the vinyl, our books, and collection of scores in there as well.

Other bands recording there? Other bands probably won’t come here – it’s a writing and recording room for my dad (guitar), me (keyboards) and my wife (vocals) and our projects.
Climate Control Regarding climate control we have windows, cool mountain breezes and I’m not planning on A/C as the barn remains at a very constant temperature – probably due to being built into the rock/ hillside. In the winter we’ll heat it with a wood fired stove in the adjacent bedroom with radiators in the control room.

RE: Timescale we’re working on it now, and time is precious – I have nowhere to work right now so the sooner we finish the better. We’d like to get it done by September, but if there’s something really important better to wait and get it right. I am particularly concerned with the room ratio's and putting the walls in the best place I could. I really appreciate the knowledge here in the 'library'. Hours are going by and information is going in!

From what I can understand I think my closest standard would be the IEC 60268-13: Recommendation for listening room:1998" 1 : 1.963 : 2.593.
I don't want to sound stupid, but I've never ever had an explanation on acoustics. I know I'd love an even response in the room, and I know when I've got ringing notes in the room...I've built absorbers and so on, but lengths and mode calculation is just over my head right now. I'm sure I'll learn more through this process!

[Soundman2020]

Hi franny, and welcome to the forum!

The windows and external doors are brand new and triple glazed, glass, PVC with a gas filling between glass. They were installed specifically for reducing noise in and outside

Unfortunately, triple glazing isn't much good at isolating low frequencies, which are the hardest to deal with anyway. Triple-glazing is, as the name implies, a three-leaf system, which means that the low frequency isolation will be worse than it would have been with a two leaf system of the same mass and thickness.

and were recommended to me from the designer of a local concert hall (music college)

Let me guess: He's an architect, right? And the place looks really good, aesthetically, but is somewhat wanting on the acoustic side of things.... If he knew what he was doing acoustically, then he would not have recommended triple glazing: For this reason:

2-leaf-3-leaf-4-leaf-STC-diagram.gif

All of those have the exact same mass and total thickness. You can clearly see how the isolation drops drastically when going from two-leaf to 3-leaf, then drops drastically again when going from 3-leaf to 4-leaf.

I know they have parallel lines in the glass and that this not the ideal

Parallel or not parallel doesn't really make much difference. What is most important is to have only two leaves, each of them with as much mass as possible, and separated by an air gap that is as large as possible.

The walls are 1 meter thick at least and are newly rendered and concreted encasing rocks/ stone

That's excellent! So the walls will be getting you very, very good isolation, and it is the windows that will be the weak point.

We’ll put a foam underlay, and then 12mm laminate on top of that.

Also excellent! That will give you a very nice floor, both visually and also acoustically.

At present a wooden beam and plank rustic ceiling divides the downstairs with the upstairs. Upstairs there is 1 big room which is at present used for wood storage, cutting machine storage, and maybe sawing the odd log up. Safe to say it’s the occasional workshop.

Will that remain as a workshop while you are recording downstairs?

The steel girders are backed with a self adhesive cardboard acoustic proofing material (i.e. the metal doesn’t touch the concrete anywhere).

I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that the metal studs are directly attached to the stone walls, with some type of cardboard layer in between? If so, that would be a big mistake...

but the control room still has much room for maneuver i.e. the wall positions, and framing hasn’t even been started apart from the divide between bedroom and control room.

OK, and how has that "divide" been built so far? Have you put up both leaves of the dividing wall, or only the leaf on the bedroom side? It would help if you post some photos of that.

In the control room I’m thinking of a diamond shape that is symmetrical so it will be a ‘room within a room’.

I would strongly suggest that you fully complete the design for the control room and post it here, so we can take a look at it before you build anything. Dimensions, layout, geometry, construction materials, construction techniques, etc. are all critical.

The Studio for me will be a bit like a family music room if you like – we’ll put the vinyl, our books, and collection of scores in there as well.

... but NOT on the control room, I hope!

Climate Control Regarding climate control we have windows, cool mountain breezes and I’m not planning on A/C as the barn remains at a very constant temperature – probably due to being built into the rock/ hillside. In the winter we’ll heat it with a wood fired stove in the adjacent bedroom with radiators in the control room.

You really, really, REALLY should re-think that! HVAC is a critical part of studio building, and is often the part that is completely overlooked by first-time studio builders... but NEVER overlooked by second-time studio builders, because they learn the lesson well after building the first one, and understanding all of the big problems that lack of a proper HVAC system will create....

RE: Timescale we’re working on it now, and time is precious – I have nowhere to work right now so the sooner we finish the better. We’d like to get it done by September, but if there’s something really important better to wait and get it right.

I think you are being extremely ambitious! Realistically, it takes a month or two for an experienced studio designer to work through all the issues and come up with a good, detailed design that can be built and will work. For someone with no experience, they will first need to learn the basics of acoustics, then the basics of studio design, and only THEN start the actual design phase. After the design is complete, it will then take probably 2 to 4 months to actually build the place completely, treat it correctly, install the gear, then tune the room. The very, very best I have ever managed is to complete a full studio in a residential garage, in three months. And that was me designing in parallel while the builders were working... It was a very tight schedule, and we only managed that cause it wasn't the first design I ever did, and the construction team also had plenty of experience...

So I would strongly recommend that you re-think your schedule...

I don't want to sound stupid, but I've never ever had an explanation on acoustics.

I'd suggest two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest, and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. You REALLY need to read through both of those completely, and understand them, before you start designing anything. There's a huge amount that you need to learn: having a good ratio is just one very, very small part of it. You'll only really understand how much you need to learn, when you start learning it.

Let me put this in musical terms: you are sort of like a guy who has just picked up a guitar for the very first time, and is saying "I'll learn to play it by next week, then three weeks after that, I'll do my first solo classical guitar concert in the symphony hall, for 500 people". That really is how ambitious you are being right now, but without realizing it. Hoping to fully design, build, equip, and tune a studio in a couple of months, with no prior knowledge of acoustics, is very much like hoping to pull off a world-class classical guitar performance in two months without ever having played any musical instrument before. Your chances of success is about the same in both cases.

The fact that you don't see the importance of an HVAC system, is sort of like the hypothetical musician saying "Well, I really don't think I need to learn how to read music in order to do my guitar performance! All I have to do is sort of twiddle my fingers here and there...". And the fact that you didn't notice the issue with the triple-glazed windows is sort of like saying "Well, I really don't think I need all six strings on my guitar! I'm sure I can play just as well as John Williams or David Russell ever did, with just my three old nylon strings...".

OK, so I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think you get the picture!

- Stuart -

[franny]

Thanks all for the advice.
OK - so I got hold of the books, and have been reading, learning, and have got maths coming out of my ears etc. (never was a strong point for me).
But anyway; learned a lot. I see many flaws in the original idea/ posts. So thanks for saving me those headaches. Hopefully I'll try and do this thing right once.

So on my journey I arrived at bobgolds mode calculator, via trevor cox and his list of ratio for 100m3 rooms from Salford University UK.
I think I'm about to settle on a 1: 2.19 : 2.94 ratio trevor suggests.

Any known problems with this one?

I think this gives best possible bang for back with regards to getting the most out of the existing shell which is 2.78m x 7m x 7.5m so I can have enough space for my gear.
I'd lower the ceiling by 20 cm and fill between those beams with absorption and extra mass to create a 2 leaf on the current planks forming the floor upstairs, but still plenty of sponge room for bat and rockwool type insulation and cover those with felt.

The shrunk down width of 1.5m would give some space for a booth and a machine room. Also good area for ducts for the HVAC and heat exchange plan I've got.

[franny]

So I checked the Trevor Cox ratio again on Bob's Mode calc:


I did plugin the suggested nearest ratio 1 : 1.963 : 2.593 on Bob Gold's Mode calc. but actually found that it gave a nasty downward spike at the higher end of the curve that was worse than Trevor Cox's.

So having played about a bit with ceiling height, I bought the room height down a little to 2.58 (realistic when I fill in the beams with rockwool).

I seem to have found 1 : 2.11 : 2.79 that looks like a smooth curve.

This would be giving me dimensions of:

Room Height:
2.58m

Room Width:
5.46m

Room Length:
7.2m

which is very workable for the space, and leaves a better amount of space for, ducting, booths down the side and a machine room.

[bert Stoltenborg]

If you have a room 7 meters wide I would really consider you mad if you made it smaller because of these room ratio's.
Your dimensions are, except for the ceiling, in a range where modes are under the lowest frequencies of a bass guitar.
And side wall reflections are far away, thus decreased in level and less harmfull.
Scott Foster would say: We need a bigger room referring to Jaws: we need a bigger boat.
Never make a room smaller because of ratio's, it's so stupid in my opinion. You really better use the space for adding absorption.

[franny]

Here's the current plan.

[franny]

Hi Bert,

Thankyou for your post, you make a logical argument, but aren't my dimensions a bit too close to a square? I agree it makes sense that the waveforms have space to develop down to a low frequency (not the ceiling), but I understood that square or close to square is really not good acoustically. I could line the walls with absorption and resonators and probably get a bigger control room for it keeping the 7 m width. The ceiling will have a 2 leaf construction with airgap then insulation angled in a slope with tip at mix position.

But Stuart has really prompted me to consider the future and my needs may change I.e. booths with line of sight would add versatility, as would a machine room.
The booth's will also give much needed isolation from the main space. I will be recording vocals, and guitar amps regularly. And 5.4 meters wide is still quite generous, isn't it? Maybe not...

[bert Stoltenborg]

I don't want to be a smartass and Stuart is totally capable of giving solid advice, but when a room is big enough you have a transition from small room acoustics to large room acoustics where the rule book changes and standing waves and room ratio's (which I consider overrated anyway) are not your biggest concern.

What do you mean with angled absorption?

[franny]

I was thinking of something like this Bert for angled absorption on the ceiling.
Just so it's clear (my sketchup is not that good, I'm sorry) I would sit facing the front of the room (speakers soffit mounted).
I certainly value your opinion and it has got me thinking...or rethinking.

[franny]

Or this design with an air gap between the plasterboard and the planks may be better still.
Excuse the stick figure...

[bert Stoltenborg]

The second figure is as good as the first and cheaper as you use less wool.
You can place a certain thickness of absorbing material on a gap tree times the size of the material without compromizing the acoustical performance.