Creating/adapting my studio in a timber frame building

[wavefield]

Hello to all on this fantastic forum, this is my first post but I have dipped in and out over many years, who knows, I may even have understood and learned!

Hopefully this thread will follow the progress of my new studio build, but I wish to make this post a little intro to my situation as well as a sarting point for the questions I want to ask before I get started on planning this project. I am very much open to hiring a professional acoustician down the line once things look like they are ready to kick off, but I want to educate myself as much as possible first, so I can come to a designer with a half decent idea in mind, hopefully with the help of the experts here. I am really aiming to design my way into a relatively cost effective and ideal studio for my needs.

It is important for me to mention in this opening post that I am visually impaired, so providing photographs, graphics and using sketchup etc to better represent my thoughts will rarely be an option, unless I can corner a friend for enough time to help me put something together.

I have a feeling this is also something I will have to repete if this thread grows, so I apologise for any confusion in advance, and I do not expect everyone to find helping out easy or practical. In life generally I am not in the habbit of repeting the fact that I am blind over and over, but it may be necessary in these posts to remind people why I am not reading graphics, providing drawings etc.

Also, my spelling is suspect at best!

I will aim to make measurements and get busy with a meter shortly, so excuse the lack of exact numbers at times in this post.

My background:

I am a studio owner/producer/engineer/musician, I currently run my studio from the basement of a house I do not own and live in only when I'm working in the studio. In general this space has served me very well for about 4 years now, despite the fact that it is not structurally built for a pro studio. When I planned my current studio I did not know if I was cut out to be a fulltime engineer, I didn't have solid plans for life so I planned for it to be a learning ground, and did hope to move eventually all going well. The acoustics were designed and supplied by a well known UK company, who shal remain nameless, and despite the fact that I really love the result of the treatments they specified/supplied, I foun them to be very overpriced for the design consultation side of the equation, though at the time I knew very little/even less about acoustics so without them I would have not had known where to go to get such good acoustic treatment. I did no early on that acoustics were very important, and if I was going to learn anything, the acoustics would come first, the listening skills/experience second and the gear last. Luckily, I've earned enough and learned enough to pick up some fun gear in the meantime.

Since moving into this space I have grown considerably as an engineer and musician, have established a steady stream of clients and feel I am ready to move to grow my business, but also to make my quality of life better, as I am currently splitting my time between a number of locations. A huge point is that given the kinds of clients I work with, I would really grow my business in a place where I could become a residential studio.

The details of my current studio are not hugely important as I am moving, but a quick outline will b useful.

Current control room:

My control room is 12x17x8, which I would think just about surpasses the minimum recommended volume for a useable control room. Without going into too much detail, it is treated with absorbers and some membrane traps on the walls and ceiling, and though it has a few details that would not make it ideal, I find using my nearfield Adam a7 speakers, I have a fantastic workable and accurate listening environment. In general mixes translate for me very well from here, the imaging is fantastic etc, so when I move to my new studio, I see no reason to reinvent the wheel here unless there are some very simple and obvious improvements, which can be investigated at a later date in the design process.

I work on a medium format Allen and Heath GS-r 24m console, which is set on a custom built desk I had made by a friend, which is borderline rediculously sloped with a view to minimising reflections off the console and desk surface from my nearfields which are set behind the desk on stands.

I worked up to this setup from having no studio fernature and no console to the present set up, so I was happily able to subjectively assess by ear whether or not I was destroying my monitoring situation as I added bits.

The least ideal thing about the control room is that the monitors are more or less in the corners of the room and I face a window, but there is plenty treatment for the early reflections in this area and I did compare with having the monitors back the room a little and there was no practical difference to my ears. I'm sure some studious measurements would tell a bit of a different story here but I think there is a good balance between ergonomics and acoustics, I know I know, ergonomics and acoustics should probably be one and the same in a studio!

Some would scoff at only using nearfields considering I call myself a pro in a pro studio, but they are a good tool for me and are probably about right for this size of room, so I don't think I'll out grow this way of working in a new space. My mantra from day one was the speakers come last after the treatment microphones etc in terms of bucks invested as they are easily changed down the line. As it is, I do not feel the speakers or how I have arranged them are a hugely limiting factor in my quality of work.

Current live room:

My live room is aprox 14x16x8 feet, though due to the need to slightly splay one of these walls it is not completely uniform. Again, this has generous treatment, with 2 very substancial and excelently built diffusers that also function as bass traps. The live room is very pleasing to me in general, I have tracked 4 piece bands in here, and there is a good balance between controled frequency response and a little sense of ambience and space.

Current Lobby/airlock:

Between my control room and live room, there is what I call a lobby, which is difficult to describe, but it was created when I added the splayed wall in the live room mentioned above, so it is an airlock between my control room and live room, served by double doors on each side and a narrow window next to the double doors with laminated glass. I use this as a storage area for cables and mics and often crack the door to the live room and use it as a chamber or psudo isolation area for amps etc depending on the situation. It is untreated and at a guess I would say it is about 11x3.5x8 or some completely mad dimension, but I added it to the design early on in this studio as I felt I wanted better separation between the two rooms. It works fairly well in this regard but it has been a real joy for me for the other uses listed already.

Due to the structure the studio is in (essentially a conrete basement), there are numerous flanking paths that don't particularly ruin the experience of day to day tracking activities but are something I would aim to improve upon in the next place.

Isolation to and from the outside world is not a huge problem given a rural location, and the live room is mostly under ground/under the house. Transmission into the rest of the house is not good for numerous reason however, but it was never a huge deal with the other occupents.

I mayeventually invest in a good DB meter and get someone to take readings with me here, so I can know what exact numbers made me happyish with the performance of this space, and aim to improve on that with the next one. Realistically, taking good measurements and knowing what to do with them are probably high on the list of reasons I will eventually look to enlist the services of an experienced acoustician/studio designer.

So that is where I am, now for where I want to go.

Future studio:

I am moving my studio as I have found a place for myself and my partner to live, where I can provide accommodation for musicians in a very inspiring rural location, that is closer to bigger towns and the nearest big city than my current studio. So it is a quality of life and business move in equal measure.

Aside from the main house which is timber frame and timber clad, and a stone detached garage that we will convert into band accommodation, there is a detached building also of timber frame/timber clad construction, which was a professional photography studio. This was attractive to me as a possible studio space for a number of reasons, but a big reason was that it already has planning permition as a place of work and has space to be added on to. It is roughly 25x25 feet, I don't know the exact highest point but it is a vaulted ceiling, probably 12 feet if not more at the highest point. The inteerior is already fitted out and apparently has some very cool lighting from its days as a photography studio. It also has centrel heating, which unfortunately are radiators on the walls, so they might get in the way of adding mass to walls/building a room within a room.

What to do:

Which leads me to my initial rough plan, make this or part of this space a live room, and add/link a structure along side to house a control room roughly the size of the one I currently have.

I was excited initially by the idea of making this a live room because I like the idea of the extra floor space and volume when compared to my current live room but I remain open to suggestions/changes in thinking.

I have had very limited time in the space so far, and won't get to set foot in there to analyse it for a few weeks, but I want to start thinking of possibilities, and more importantly, I hope that by posting here I will know what to investigate, what questions to try to answer about the existing structure and what measurements to take

Internal acoustic treatment will be my final thought in the process, as the treatment in my current studio is all removable, so I willl aim to largely recreate the control room I currently have, and adapt the live room treatments I have to the live room I will eventually create. I can add more treatment if necessary either to a planned design with an acoustician or simply do it to taste, shock horror!

I know that any studio is a system and the internal acoustic treatment is not an entirely separate question to the structural stuff, but I think it is not a bad idea to work from the outside in so to speak.

I want to establish a rough idea of the kind of isolation the existing structure already provides. I would probably be hoping for about 60 DB attenuation for a finished studio, which should do considering the rural location, the infrequent traffic etc. Potential and infrequent noise from distant farm machinery and dogs barking are the main sounds to keep out. If convursations could be comfortably had standing outside while a rock band are blaring inside the studio, that would keep me happy. Largely the main isolation concern would be to have separation between this structure and anything I would add later.

My initial unscientific assessment:

Having been in there for just about 30 mins or so last week I did some listening based tests, and it seems obvious to me the windows and doors are weak points of isolation. I had a friend walk outside the double glazed door into the space and close it, and it was definitely nothing special even as domestic external doors with glass go, as it wasn't attenuating his whistling hugely. I would imagine the seals aren't great and it is a fairly average double glazed glass door otherwise. I have yet to get the exact spec of the door but I know it will either go or have to form part of a more complicated door/air lock system with better seals down the line however I decide to improve the isolation of the rest of the structure.

I also got him to start and drive his diesel car in the parking area just outside the door, as it was the best thing that came to mind to test mid and low frequency isolation. Unsurprisingly there was no great isolation here either but I didn't think it was anything much worse than the average domestic construction.

There are also 3 average sized double glazed windows elsewhere on the structure, I would invisage losing 1 if not two of these, and again, either replace the glass with high performing laminated glass or a secondary internal glaze of laminated glass depending on how I deal with the main structure and what kind of isolation I can achieve from it as is or withadded mass/decoupling.

What about the walls and roof:

The structure was built about 13 years ago by a timber frame company here in Ireland, it would be made from factory built closed panels, which for the time would have had cutting edge thermal insulation performance, and would be very respectable by todays standards even with all the changes in domestic insulation practices etc since then. They are genuinely industry leaders in this field in the UK and Ireland, so I do trust that it is well built, but of course, thermal insulation and acoustic isolation are not the same thing, although I am quietly, slightly optomistic that at least the air tightness and high tolerences of the build might be an ok starting point. Again the hope is that the windows and door are the real weakness. I'm awaiting a reply from the company on the exact system they used on this build, but the following link is indicative of the make up of the wall system this company seems to use, I don't know which exact one my structure is, but they seem to all be based on a similar concept, so if anyone here has a second I would love for you to take a look to help me ask the right questions.

http://cygnum.ie/systems/reflect-200/

I do know from talking to the previous owner of this property that the inside of this structure is thermocell (not sure of spelling), which is a kind of high density dry wal/plaster board, perhaps a better known product in Europe/the UK than the U.S. or elsewhere.

Oh and the structure is on a typical concrete foundation and the floor is a hard dust proof finish, not sure of the exact term but its the same used in shops and many commercial buildings. So I will now end this horribly long opening post with these horribly long questions so I can better form the next set of questions/lines of enquiry.

Questions:

1. Has anyone here experience designing a studio with this kind of construction method for the walls and roof?

2. How good or bad may it be as a start point? Obviusly I've yet to get specifics on the exact materials used etc in mine, but guesses/observations/questions based on the link I provided are very welcome.

3. What kind of questions should I put to the company about the structure, other than hoping they might have some lab data on acoustic performance etc?

4. An I correct or incorrect to think that this kind of wall would already constitute a mass air mass structure, so if I wanted increased isolation, adding a decoupled structure either inside or outside of this may not be the way to go as it would form a triple leaf structure? The building does have an outer wood cladding of cedar but as is standard in timber frame construction this is just a facing and there is ventilation at the top and bottom of this to allow the load baring structure behind it to breathe, so this wouldn't really constitute a leaf would it as its not air tight would it?

5. I know its very early stages to draw any conclusions but I would be leaning in the direction of thinking adding mass to the inside of this existing structure using more dry wall with damping from Green Glue, and tackling the doors and windows would get me close to my isolation targets in the least invasive way possible.

6. Leading on from the point above, aside from losing less volume from the room, I would think that adding layers of dry wall to the inteerior step by step could be less invasive than building a largely decoupled structure on studs inside the existing structure? Or would it be more labour intensive? I could invision having friends help with doing the extra dry wall etc with good results in exchange for studio time and thus cutting costs, where as the route of doing an internal decoupled structure on metal studs would require more expertees, more material costs, more of a need to basically gut the inteerior and start again.

7. Another crazy, and probably expensive idea I had would to be to build an outer shell around this structure, a room outside a room if you will. I could even leave a hallway running all around the perimeter? Maybe this would be cheaper and more effective than messing about with the internal structure long term and could provide storage areas/echo chamber. I raised the question of a triple leaf in point 4 above, but a sufficient air gap of 3 or 4 feet could make this less relevant? It could cut costs in the sense that I wouldn't have to alter existing light fixtures electrical outlets, radiators etc inside the existing structure, but adding such an external structure may be very costly in materials and labour in ways my uneducated construction brain can't even imagine and think this could be messier and more costly than other options.

8. For the control room I would aim to get planning for another structure/extention, which would require another foundation, which I could have more or less decoupled from the existing foundation which would get me on a good start to avoiding flanking transmission from the control room to live room. I could link the buildings in a way that they remain as isolated as possible, or even leave them as basically independent structures just a few feet apart?

9. I'm currently thinking I would have the control room structure built by the same company that built the existing structure, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would not likely aim to have the same level of isolation for the control room from outside noise as I would want for the live room, secondly aesthetically it would be nice to maintain continuity, thirdly I may want the same company to undertake alterations to the existing structure anyway, and finally it can be a quick and fairly painless method of construction.

10. Maybe I'm crazy, and I should just make a control room larger than I want/need in the existing structure or possibly add a bathroom/storage quicly and painlessly in there, and build a live room from scratch..after all that!

11. Budget is up for debate on all this, but I want to use what I already have as much as possibly, so I would hope for the construction of a new structure/extention to be a large portion of any eventual cost.

12. If its looking way to costly to do something useful, I could always look into dividing the existing structure into a two room setup, but I don't think I want this kind of compromise on the table just yet.

If you made it to the end with out skipping parts I think I am equal part sorry and thankful!

Hopefully my posts will only get shorter and more specific from here on in as I gather info and maybe get someone to help me with sketching ideas/taking photos/drawing diagrams for you guys!

Many thanks,

Brian.

[Soundman2020]

Hi there Brian, and welcome to the forum!

And ... WOW! What a great introductory post! I wish everyone would be as complete and detailed as that.

First, you mentioned that you are visually impaired, and I hope it's not impertinent to ask, but how bad is that? In other words, can you see at all? The reason I ask is because it's often easier for us to draw a diagram or post a photo to illustrate a point we are trying to make, but if you would not be able to see it at all, then there is no use doing that, and we'll just stick to words. Images are great for clarifying complex issues, but there is no point at all in doing that if you would not be able to see them to understand. Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with words! (As I'm sure you already know, if you have read any of the threads where I have been involved.... ) But I'd like to know in advance if it is worth posting an image for you, or if that is no use at all.

Speaking of photos: I know you said that it's not so easy for you to arrange that, but if you could get someone to take a few pictures inside your current studio and post them here, that would be excellent! It would help us understand where you are right now. And it would be especially important if you want to have your new control room similar to your existing one.

The details of my current studio are not hugely important as I am moving,

Actually, they are very important so that we can understand what is working for you, and also what isn't.

I find using my nearfield Adam a7 speakers, I have a fantastic workable and accurate listening environment.

That's a very good choice of speakers. I have a pair of those myself, and I find them to be very good.

In general mixes translate for me very well from here, the imaging is fantastic etc, so when I move to my new studio, I see no reason to reinvent the wheel here unless there are some very simple and obvious improvements,

There's pretty much always room for improvement! If you have speakers on stands right now, then a major improvement would be flush-mounting them (also known as "soffit mounting"). That eliminates many of the nasty artifacts that are always present when speakers are inside a room. Flush-mounting your speakers removes them from the room, acoustically, so they can no longer cause those artifacts. It also corrects the power imbalance issue, and greatly improves bass response. Its well worth thinking about, if you really wanted a top-notch place with impeccable acoustics.

Allen and Heath GS-r 24m console, which is set on a custom built desk I had made by a friend, which is borderline rediculously sloped with a view to minimising reflections off the console and desk surface from my nearfields

Excellent! That's a very smart idea. I imagine that you'd like to keep that same desk for the new studio?

The least ideal thing about the control room is that the monitors are more or less in the corners of the room and I face a window,

Facing a window is not too much of an issue (many studios have windows form the CR into the LR), but having the speakers in the corner is not such a good thing. The room isn't big enough to get them far away from the walls, so they do have to go right up against the front wall to work well acoustically (otherwise you get phase cancellations, comb-filtering,m and other nasties). But they should still be spaced a decent distance from the side walls. I use a rule of thumb of starting with the speakers 28% of the room width from the side walls. That's not a "written in stone" number: just a good starting point.

I know I know, ergonomics and acoustics should probably be one and the same in a studio!

Yes! Absolutely!

Some would scoff at only using nearfields considering I call myself a pro in a pro studio,

I would not be one of those who scoff. Count me among the "non-scoffers" for sure! I have designed quite a few rooms that have successfully used "nearfields" as mains, without any problems. In fact, the term "nearfield" is itself one of my pet peeves: Acoustically, the term "near field" refers to the ROOM, not to the speakers, from my point of view. For any given room, here is a distance, called the "critical distance", where the reverberant field exactly balances out the direct sound from the speakers. If you are closer than that point to the speakers, then you are, by definition, in the "near field", regardless of what the speakers call themselves! And if you are further away than the critical distance, then you are, by definition, in the "far field", once again regardless of the speakers. It does not matter if the manufacturer printed the words "near field" or "far field" or even the rather curious "mid field" on the box: that makes no difference to where the "fields" are in the room. That depends only on the room size and the room treatment, and in most home studios, it's pretty hard to get far enough away from the speakers so as to be in the far field! They way I see it, for pretty much all small studios, the speakers are ALWAYS "nearfields", without any respect to what the manufacturer decided to call them. Which leads to my next pet-peeve: If you ask four different speaker manufacturers for their definition of what makes a monitor "nearfield" or not, you'll get five different answers! So if even the manufacturers of nearfields cannot agree on what they are making, then what hope is there for the rest of us to understand their terms and use their products in the correct "field"?

Sorry about the rant, but I call it like I see it. And your Adam A7 "nearfields" make excellent main monitors for home studios.

My mantra from day one was the speakers come last after the treatment microphones etc in terms of bucks invested as they are easily changed down the line

I'd probably agree with you in terms of investment dollars, but not in terms of studio design. When I design a room, my philosophy is to design it around the specific speakers that the owner will be using. There are big differences in how speakers work with rooms, so it is important to take that into account from the start. The room could end up being designed rather differently for speakers with a wide dispersion angle, as compared to speakers with a narrow dispersion angle, or for very large speakers vs. small "bookshelf" type speakers, or considering the frequency response of the speakers, or several other factors. In my design concept, speakers come first and the room fits around them.

That's not to say that speakers can't be changed down the line, and replaced with something different: they sure can. But that replacement will require changes to speaker placement, geometry, and treatment to get the optimum performance out of both the speakers and the room. In fact, I'm in the middle of doing exactly that right now with one of my customers who originally had Genelecs when I designed his room a few years ago. But one of those went flaky a while back, and he decided to upgrade to something bigger and better, so at present I'm working on a few changes in his room to make the best possible use of his new speakers. Yes, he could have just popped the old ones out and stuck then new ones in, but that would not have allowed the new ones to shine, and we spent so much time tuning his room to perfection the first time around, that he does not want to compromise on anything: When the new mounting is done, I'll ask him if he wants to share that on the forum, and maybe post some details of how it worked out...

But anyway, my point is that speakers are a very important, integral part of the studio, and should be taken into account in the design. Not all speakers are equal...

there is a detached building also of timber frame/timber clad construction, which was a professional photography studio

Photos would really help here! And drawings, too, if possible. Maybe get the plans scanned and post that? The construction you describe is unusual, so ti would be good to see the details, to help you decide how to proceed.

It also has centrel heating, which unfortunately are radiators on the walls, so they might get in the way

That might be an issue, but there are work-arounds. I wouldn't be too worried about that. Worst case, you just get them disconnected and so with a different system.

Which leads me to my initial rough plan, make this or part of this space a live room, and add/link a structure along side to house a control room roughly the size of the one I currently have.

That sounds like a good basic plan. You might want to consider making the CR a bit bigger, considering that you have the opportunity to do that.

I was excited initially by the idea of making this a live room because I like the idea of the extra floor space and volume when compared to my current live room but I remain open to suggestions/changes in thinking.

You are on the right track there for sure. If you have the budget to do a new CR adjacent to the existing room, to use as an LR, then that makes very good sense all around.

I hope that by posting here I will know what to investigate, what questions to try to answer about the existing structure and what measurements to take

When you have that opportunity, I would get someone to take accurate measurements of that building, including the length, width and height, obviously, but also the location of doors, windows, support columns, stairs, and anything similar. And take photos too! They really do help a lot in understanding what you are dealing with.

Internal acoustic treatment will be my final thought in the process,

Mmmmmm!!!!! Not a good idea to see it that way! Treatment, isolation, layout, geometry, doors, windows, access paths, HVAC, and many other things should all be considered together when designing a studio, because they all affect each other mutually, in one way or another. For example, it might be necessary to move a door to a different location so that you can get the right treatment in the right place... There is no point in treating a sound problem at the point in the room where it is NOT happening...

as the treatment in my current studio is all removable, so I willl aim to largely recreate the control room I currently have,

That would only work if you built an identical room, with no changes at all. Room acoustics is not scalable. So for example, if you have a hypothetical control room that measures 15' by 11' by 9', and it has fantastic acoustics, so you decide to build another one that is 25% bigger: scaling it up by 25% to make it 18'9" by 13'9" by 11'3" would produce a room that sounds terrible! Even if you used the exact same treatment but added 25% more of it, the room would STILL sound terrible.

The treatment you have now was designed specifically for the room you have. It is tuned to that room. All rooms are different, and need different tuning. You will very likely be able to re-use some or even most of your current treatment, but the new room will also need additional treatment, or you might need to modify some of your treatment.

For example, you mentioned that you have some membrane traps in your current room: those are undoubtedly tuned to specific issues in the room, but your new room will not have those exact issues: it will have other issues. If you use the same membrane trap, then you will be treating "issues" that aren't there and don't need it, while wasting the space needed for other treatment that does hit the specific issues of your room. Ditto for diffusers: they are also tuned, and may or may not be tuned to the correct range for the new room.

and adapt the live room treatments I have to the live room I will eventually create.

For the live room: no problem. But not for the control room.

I can add more treatment if necessary either to a planned design with an acoustician or simply do it to taste, shock horror!

Ditto. For the live room: tune it and treat it any way you want, so that it sounds good to you. Live rooms are supposed to have their own "character" and "vibe" and "sound". That's why musicians will come badck to your place: because the like the way they sound in your live room. But not, no, never, no way, forget it, bad idea, nasty, wrong in the case of the control room! The entire point of a control room is that it tells the truth: it must be neutral. It must not add anything to what comes out of the speakers, and it must not take anything away. It must not "color" the sound in any manner at all. It must be transparent. It must not have any sound of it's own. If it does, then it fails! The mix engineer must be able to take a seat and listen with full confidence, know that what he is hearing is exactly what is in the mix, nothing more, nothing less. And the only way to give him that guarantee, is to make the room acoustics neutral. Some people assume that "neutral" is the same as "dead", but that is totally wrong. Neutral does NOT sound dead: it sounds like no room at all. It sounds like the room is just not there. OK, that's the ideal, and it's not so easy to achieve (especially in small rooms), but the goals should be to get as close as possible to that ideal, by designing the room to be as neutral as it can, given the size of the room, ad the budget.

I would probably be hoping for about 60 DB attenuation for a finished studio,

That is indeed a good, reasonable, and achievable goal. That makes sense.

If convursations could be comfortably had standing outside while a rock band are blaring inside the studio, that would keep me happy.

With a properly designed and well built room, you'll be exactly that happy! 60 dB of isolation will get you there.

it seems obvious to me the windows and doors are weak points of isolation.

Very probable, and very much expected. Those are probably just typical domestic units, bought at the cheapest price, in the closest store, and not at all meant for studios. Fine for ordinary houses or offices, but not what you need for a studio. They will need to be replaced with something more suitable, but that will be determined by the design.

There are also 3 average sized double glazed windows elsewhere on the structure, I would invisage losing 1 if not two of these,

Makes sense.

of course, thermal insulation and acoustic isolation are not the same thing,

Yup! Very true! But if you can get the specs on the type of insulation the used, then we can figure out just how useful it is (or isn't...).

the following link is indicative of the make up of the wall system this company seems to use

The don't give a lot of details there, other than to say that the insulation is "factory fitted rigid insulation". That could mean many things. If it is "rigid" in the sense of polystyrene or another closed-cell foam, then there's not much acoustic benefit at all. If it is "rigid" as in mineral wool or fiberglass pus a binder, then that's a lot more interesting!

1. Has anyone here experience designing a studio with this kind of construction method for the walls and roof?

From the diagrams and info on that web site you linked to, it doesn't seem to be anything unusual. It has what they call a a "service cavity" added on the inside with battens, and separated from the main cavity by an air barrier, but that's nothing complicated or out of the ordinary.

2. How good or bad may it be as a start point?

depends mostly on the insulation and the details of the other materials, in terms of density and thickness, but overall I'd guess it should be similar to a typical house wall for isolation: maybe 30-something dB.

3. What kind of questions should I put to the company about the structure, other than hoping they might have some lab data on acoustic performance etc?

Mostly get details of the materials they used: type, density and thickness.

4. An I correct or incorrect to think that this kind of wall would already constitute a mass air mass structure,

Yes. But it is a coupled structure, so it acts something like a two-leaf and something like a single-leaf.

adding a decoupled structure either inside or outside of this may not be the way to go as it would form a triple leaf structure?

In theory, yes, that would make for a 3-leaf system, but I wouldn't be too worried about that: there are ways of compensating, and there are ways that the existing wall could be modified. You do have options.

just a facing and there is ventilation at the top and bottom of this to allow the load baring structure behind it to breathe, so this wouldn't really constitute a leaf would it as its not air tight would it?

A leaf is still a leaf, regardless of whether or not it is airtight. Think about a kick drum: the front head (not the beater head) resonates big time, because it is a membrane on a frame and has an air gap between it and the beater head. But if you cut a huge hole in that head so you can get your drum mic inside, does the head stop resonating? Nope! It resonates less, for sure, but it still resonates. It is still a membrane on a frame with an air gap next to it... In other words, a leaf does not have to be sealed in order to be part of a resonant system. It just has to be a large chunk of mass with an air gap next to it. When it is sealed, it is more efficient, but even unsealed, it still works.

5. I know its very early stages to draw any conclusions but I would be leaning in the direction of thinking adding mass to the inside of this existing structure using more dry wall with damping from Green Glue,

That would work to a certain extent, but it won't get you t 60 dB of isolation. You might be able to add 10 dB or so to whatever you have right now, but not more than that. Assuming you have 30-something at present, you'd end yo with 40-something: a far cry from the 60-somthing you need. Don't forget that the decibel scale is logarithmic, so adding one decibel to a a wall that already has 40 is tent times harder than adding one decibel to a wall that has 30.... The higher you go, the harder it gets. All decibels are not equal....

I would think that adding layers of dry wall to the inteerior step by step could be less invasive than building a largely decoupled structure on studs inside the existing structure?

Less invasive, for sure, but also far less effective. That wall is fully coupled right now, so it acts more like single-leaf than two-leaf in that aspect. Doubling the mass of the wall will get you an increase of 6 dB, more or less. Doubling it again gets you another 6 dB: You need to double the mass quite a few times to get from 30-x to 60-x!!!! Mass law is not your friend.

I could invision having friends help with doing the extra dry wall etc with good results in exchange for studio time and thus cutting costs, where as the route of doing an internal decoupled structure on metal studs would require more expertees, more material costs,

It's not that much more complicated, really! And it does not have to be metal studs: wood is easier to work with for most people: Your buddies plus a contractor to supervise could make short work of getting an inner-leaf together.

7. Another crazy, and probably expensive idea I had would to be to build an outer shell around this structure, a room outside a room if you will.

That would work too, but we are talking much bigger numbers now, in cost, time, materials... and it's not something your buddies could do: pouring foundations and raising roofs is a job for professionals with experience.

another foundation, which I could have more or less decoupled from the existing foundation which would get me on a good start to avoiding flanking transmission from the control room to live room.

You could go that route, yes, but you don't need to decouple everything! You could extend the current foundation walls to enclose your CR and you'd raise the outer-leaf walls on that, totally connected to the existing structure, then poor an isolated monolithic slab within that boundary to be the floor and support the inner-leaf walls of your studio. That would be the smart way to do it.

or even leave them as basically independent structures just a few feet apart?

I wouldn't do that, no. You need to run cables and things between the rooms, and you need easy access paths between them for you and for the musicians. Ideally, there should be doors that lead directly from CR to LR, with no passages, halls or other rooms in between.

10. Maybe I'm crazy, and I should just make a control room larger than I want/need in the existing structure or possibly add a bathroom/storage quicly and painlessly in there, and build a live room from scratch..after all that!

Like I said; you do have plenty of options right now! Part of the job of the studio designer is to help you through making those decisions. That's actually how I spend a lot of time when I'm starting out with a new studio design project: discuss all the options with the owner, draw up some initial sketches to show the pros and cons of each, then decide which path makes the most sense for his situation and his budget: And only then start worrying about foundations, walls, leaves, doors, windows, etc.

11. Budget is up for debate on all this, but I want to use what I already have as much as possibly,

That makes perfect sense, and is very smart. However, as I pointed out above, I wouldn't count on re-using your existing CR treatment in exactly the same way in the new CR: it very likely won't be what is needed. You can re-use it for sure, but you might end up using it in LR, or for an entirely different purpose than what it is doing now.

12. If its looking way to costly to do something useful, I could always look into dividing the existing structure into a two room setup, but I don't think I want this kind of compromise on the table just yet.

If you have the space and the budget, then I would definitely not do that. a 25x25 room is great for a live room, but if you try to also shoehorn in a control room, a bathroom, an iso-booth, a storage room, and a lobby, then everything gets tight and cramped. There's a general rule of thumb that you might be interested in keeping in mind: The cubic volume of the live room should be about five times (or more) the volume of the control room, if you want a world-class studio. The reason is simple: if there relationship is much smaller than that, the you will not be able to hear the "reverb tails" from the live room, when you listen in the control room, because reverb tails of the control room itself will mask them. The control room needs short, tight reverb control, so that you can hear the natural decay of the what is happening in the live room. So the live room needs to be much bigger in volume to do that.

If you made it to the end with out skipping parts I think I am equal part sorry and thankful!

Loved it! As I said at the start, I only wish more people would put as much thought and detail into their initial posts as you did here.

I am very much open to hiring a professional acoustician down the line once things look like they are ready to kick off, but I want to educate myself as much as possible first, so I can come to a designer with a half decent idea in mind, hopefully with the help of the experts here.

You are going about this the right way, for sure. And there are a few designers right here on the forum who would be happy to talk to you when the time comes. Starting with John himself, of course! After all, this is his forum! Drop him a line at some point, and see if he is interested in taking on your project. It sure sounds like an interesting and fund project to me!

(BY the way, since you accidentally posted the same message three times, I have deleted the other two, to avoid confusion)


- Stuart -

[wavefield]

Hi Stuart, many thanks for your response, and apologies for the 3 posts, I'm taking a little time to figure the forums editor with my screen reading software.

To answer 1 important question, I have zero vision so it will be a thousand words rather than pictures I'm afraid! Occasionally I may have time with someone to talk me through a visual or two.

It will be some time before I get into my new space to measure photograph etc, but I just remembered my website (badly in need of updating) has a slide show of some photos of my current rooms prior to.my purchase of a console...these may be useful for anyone reading/kind enough to help. The site is:

http://www.wavefieldrecordings.com

The site in general needs rewording etc so do ignore all but the photos!
To touch on some of your points/observations/wisdom Stuart:

I really do hope to recreate my current control room as presicely as possible, because it is working fantastically for me at present. The reason I have my speakers on stands right in the corners is that the room is quite narrow with the absorbtion on the side walls, I have an equilateral triangle of 6 ft sides going with the speakers and my head right now and the image is great and when I sum to mono the centre definition is amazing. Perhaps the treatment in my corners is doing a great job with my speakers or maybe I'm learning to mix around some low mid/lf issue that should probably arise, but my mixes have translated exactly as expectedd to top mastering rooms I've visited, so I'll be slow to reinvent the wheel here. I've spent some time reading everything I can find on flush mounting and given what I've just stated I'm not convinced its the best route for me in a new room, although I understand the concept and don't dismiss the idea totally! As I want to keep construction costs in check where possible and because I like what I already have I think I'd put flush mounting in the 'may be fun to investigate in future' box. When I say acoustics are my final consideration I simply mean I'll start by figuring what kind of structural work/layout/isolation I can afford, and I once a rough design is established I can start tweaking the design with internal acoustic treatment in mind.

I'm hoping my existing structure is at least in or around the 35 db tl mark, but I kind of fear it lacks serious mass and may not perform well for lf isolation.

A decoupled inner room bar the floor is the obvious route, but aesthetically the existing vaulted ceiling is supported by very attractive exposed wooden beems which would be a shame to cover, but as I type I'm sitting in a bedroom with the Irish rain loudly falling on the roof, so logic takes over and tells me I won't explore options to leave the pritty wooden beems in sight for long.

I will hear from the company that built the structure of the proposed new LR in the next day or two, so I'm hoping for new info and hope they may be interested in working closely with me to adapt their construction methods to meet the tl needs of a studio...I'm hopeful it may be an interesting show case for them given a common prejudice held against timber frame building here in Ireland is that it is infeerior to concrete homes for sound isolation, whether right or wrong! My logic tells me there are trade offs, for example these kind of timber wall systems may not be quite as efficient a flanking path as a concrete wall.

Anyway I'm off to find a good DB meter and dream of more possibilities while I await my chance to measure the real world vitals of the studio I have and the studio I want...oh and I've a bunch of projects to mix track and produce, just in case I was about forget that audio engineering by and large does not get done on the internet!!!

[Soundman2020]

No problem about the triple post, Brian. It's fixed now, and it's understandable that you are having trouble posting. Not a problem.

I really do hope to recreate my current control room as presicely as possible, because it is working fantastically for me at present.

OK, that's fine, but then you do have to duplicate it exactly. The new one must be identical.

I mentioned that control rooms cannot be scaled, but I didn't mention why: the problem is very simple. Your room was carefully tuned by the company that built it, and the treatment (evident in the photos) is tuned to the specific acoustic issues that your room has. If you scale up your room, or change the dimensions by more than a tiny fraction, then that treatment will no longer be correct, and will end up treating "problems" that are not there in the new room, plus it will not be treating the ones that really are there.

Let me give you an example: Let's say that there is treatment in your room designed to deal with a problem at 70.6 Hz, which is the first vertical mode in your room (the first standing wave between the ceiling and the floor) for a room that is 8 feet high. But say that you decide to make your new room 9 feet high, instead of 8 feet. Well, now there is no longer a problem at 70.6 Hz! The first vertical mode for a room 9 feet high is at 62.8 Hz instead. But none of your treatment is tuned to 62.8 Hz, so that problem will not get treated, and instead the treatment you have will continue attenuating 70.6, but there are no problems any more at 70.6! So you will be attenuating frequencies that do NOT need it, while also not attenuating the frequencies that DO need it.

That's the issue. Unless you build your new room identically in all aspects to your old room, then your existing treatment, layout, and geometry will be useless. That's the problem. Rooms cannot be scaled. Every size and shape of room is different, and needs it's own set of treatment, specifically designed for that room.

In other words, if you change any of the dimensions for your new room, then none of what you have will be any use.

So you have a very hard choice to make here: Either you duplicate your room exactly, in which case there doesn't seem to be much point to building a new one, or you build a different room, which will need different treatment and will sound different too. I can very much understand that being visually impaired makes it highly preferable to have an identical room, since you already know exactly where everything is by touch, and also since you rely much more on hearing than sighted people, having a different sound to your room might also not be desirable, so it might just be better to copy the existing room identically.

I'm hoping my existing structure is at least in or around the 35 db tl mark, but I kind of fear it lacks serious mass and may not perform well for lf isolation.

What I'm about to say here about that is probably also not what you wanted to hear, but it has to be said: the isolation for your new control room must be exactly the same as the isolation for your existing control room. You cannot change that, as it would change the way the room sounds.

Think of it this way: if you have only 35 dB of isolation, then it means that a lot of sound is getting out. Each frequency is "getting out" at a different level: some are getting out louder than others. Now, logically. if some frequencies are getting out, but then you change the isolation of the room to a higher level, then those frequencies are no longer getting out. And if they are not getting out, then they are staying in. And if they are staying in, then you will hear them! So isolating your room better will also change the way it sounds, since the sound that is leaving right now wont be leaving any more: it will stick around, inside.

This effect will be more noticeable in the low frequencies, and inaudible at high frequencies.

An example: let's say that right now your wall has a natural ability to let through tones at 80 Hz, which is roughly the fundamental frequency of a kick drum, but does not let through notes at 220 Hz, which is roughly the fundamental for a snare. So right now, kick drum thumps sound quieter in your room than they should, because some of the energy at that frequency is escaping, leaving into the great Irish outdoors, and never coming back. If you improve the isolation of your room, then that energy won't be able to leave any more, so kick drums will sound LOUDER than they do now. And since the snare level won't change, you will automatically tend to turn down the kick in the better isolated room, so it once again fits in with the snare, even though it does not need to be turned down!

In other words, your mixes won't translate any more, because you'll be compensating for the louder sound of some tones, with respect to other tones, but the only reason they sound louder is because you have better isolation. So you'll be making "corrections" that are not needed.

That's also what I meant when I said that your new control room must be identical to the old one: it must be built the same way, have the same isolation, the same ventilation, the same dimensions, the same everything. Nothing at all can be changed, because anything that does change can potentially have an impact on the frequency response and decay times of individual frequencies.

I'm sure this is not what you wanted to hear, but it is how acoustics works.

I can't tell you if the differences will be major or minor, because there are just too many variables, but potentially there will be audible differences, unless you build the new one exactly the same as the old one.

Not trying to scare you! Just pointing out realities.

- Stuart -

[wavefield]

Nothing scarey there at all, I completely understand the concepts involved, and so it is the plan to start with the exact same control room layout and the same structural walls, same doors and furnature where possible. Of course there will be some tweaking to do some way or another but I'm just saying the room I have works very well and won't be too difficult to match closely. If the measurements along the way point things in another direction then no problem. As far as I can tell most if not all of my panels in my CR are broadband by design, and there was no room analysis done on site to determine exact frequencies to design specific traps for.

So that is my reasoning, its simply practical less costly and if a measurable problem arises fron some slight difference in the make up/isolation of the walls in the new CR then that can be treated accordingly.

Which returns me to my point that I really don't believe the wheel needs reinventing here.

My familiarity with the lay out of the room isn't important, I could move into any CR tomorrow and start working once familiar with the gear/acoustics, I'm only basing my plan on what has worked for my clients and has supported the steadily improving quality of my work these past years. Its as sensible a starting point as any to me even after years of reading forums books etc.

[wavefield]

So I'm back with a little plan I had a friend draw up based on where I want to start from. Apologies in advance, I'll have to leave a drop box link for now as my phone can't seem to access the attachment. Opinions thoughts etc are appreciated!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/89fbddzbjvs6d ... t.pdf?dl=0

Hopefully the existing and proposed new extension is clear. Some points:

• I will build decoupled internal walls for both live and control room (possibly using metal studs on 600 mm centres, double layer of dry wall or possibly some mdf or similar).
• will source good acoustic doors with a portion of laminated glass for viewing between rooms.
• With this extension I can recreate the exact dimensions of my current control room and it should please the planning authorities and be relatively uncomplicated to build, so no totally crazy costs.

For various reasons I have not had a chance to set foot in the space not least because of.a booked out studio, so I have been restricted to reading loads with the following thoughts.

• I think I may hire someone to do some analysis of my current space for me and maybe do a little consulting on my plands, but to keep costs down and more importantly for fun/education/sense of achievement I think I'll mostly go it alone for the design, with advice from helpful individuals. I will have an architect involved for the structural stuff/planning permition.
• I am toying with the idea of setting up the new live room with the 2 diffusers and 10+ absorbers I already have, leaving them movable rather than fixed to the walls as they are now so I can play God with the sound of my live room and get even more creative/adaptive in tracking sessions. I would invision hanging my cloud panels below the apex of the roof to get a good constant start on bass trapping - I would assume this meeting point of boundaries would be an important place to trap.
• I would like to add some more diffusion on the live room roof also, I like the idea of the rpg sky line for this but it gets expensive quickly. I would probably add this down the line if I felt the need still.
• I would also like to introduce some diffusion in the back of the control room to give more life and sense of space forr clients, I would end up tracking more bits and pieces in the CR too if there was some more life in in the mids/highs than there is now.
• after Stuart raised the point I have read up on flush mounting quite a bit and it is not really frightening at all as concepts go! I'm not sure if its worth the cost/effort though. Right now I'm sure I have problems I've learned to live with due to the placement of my speakers right at the boundary, but wiol flush mounting not just swap a 200 hz or so anomaly I probably have now for a bump in the low end that I'll have to calculate and compensate for with eq. It always looks cool but I'm wondering if its worth getting into designing/paying for something that is essentially the devil I don't know.


Thanks and hope someone may chime, particularly with thoughts on diffusion, having variable live room treatment and flush mounting vs speakers right in the corners with plenty absorption.

And thanks again to Stuart for his contributions already, having ideas bounce back has already been a major help!

Brian