New warehouse studio design

[liambrus]

Hey guys,

Long time reader, first time poster!

Just wanted to share my plans for a studio build here in sunny Australia!

Please find attached my rough 3D sketches.

The yellow coloured walls will be the ones that a built in the warehouse. It is 19m long by 10m wide, with about a 6m high roof.

The garage door poses a slight problem, but I thought I might just place a wall over it with a double door so there is still access. This also gets rid of 1 set of parallel walls.

Any suggestions and ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers guys!

Liam

[Soundman2020]

Hi Liam. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

The garage door poses a slight problem,

I don't see that marked on your diagrams: where is it?

but I thought I might just place a wall over it with a double door so there is still access.

It's very hard to get good isolation with double doors. It can be done, but is expensive and complex. Why do you need double doors? Do you have the budget to achieve that?

This also gets rid of 1 set of parallel walls.

Why do you want to get rid of parallel walls? It's a myth that you need to do that for a studio. Many, MANY world-class studios have parallel walls. Making them non-parallel does not eliminate modal problems or SBIR problems, which are by far the biggest issues in most rooms: all it does is to move those problems from one frequency to another frequency. Non-parallel walls can help with flutter echo, but flutter echo can be dealt with in far simpler ways, with just basic treatment.

Your diagram also shows that your control room is not symmetric. Symmetry is critical for a control room. If the room is not symmetrical, then there stereo image will be distorted, and the sound-stage will be staggered, so your mixes will not translate well.

I would suggest that you re-do the design to make the control room symmetrical (or at least make the front half symmetrical), and also show how you plan to achieve isolation, as well as your plans for basic treatment.


- Stuart -

[liambrus]

I am so sorry mate, let me try this again as per the rules.

I am currently finalising a lease on a 19m x 10m warehouse here in Australia, and wanted to get some opinions about my potential studio design.

The building and walls are brick, and I will be sharing one wall with the tenant next door. The other wall has nothing next door.

The current roof is about 6m high, but I think it will prove far to expensive to build walls and a ceiling that high, so I am going to settle on a 4m ceiling and wall height, and the floor is concrete, so looking at what people are saying around here, a floating floor might not actually be necessary to avoid sound transmission.

I have a budget of about $15,000 AUD, and would just like some opinions of layout, and any subsequent acoustic treatment that should follow.

Is there really any effective way of blocking out that garage door, while still retaining its purpose? In case I need to move a piano or something large through? Or is the best way to just block it off and use the front door?

Please find attached photos of the plan, with text to describe wall lengths.

Thank you guys!

[Soundman2020]

Is there really any effective way of blocking out that garage door, while still retaining its purpose?

To be honest: Not really. Isolation needs mass (lots of it) and garage doors don't have much of that. Isolation needs absolute air-tight seals, such that no air can get through at all, and garage doors don't have that either. Isolation also requires damping, which garage doors also lack. And finally, isolation requires decoupling, which (guess what?...) garage doors do not provide. So there really isn't anything you can do to the garage door to make it both usable and also "soundproof".

Most people deal with that just building a wall across the garage, a few inches behind the door, and making that their outer-leaf (even though technically it is the middle-leaf. But of course, that means that the door cannot be used.

Please find attached photos of the plan,

That's a much better layout!

- Stuart -