over sized double garage - seeking advice

[thedukewestern]

I'm a network television music producer, and live performer Located in Upstate NY. Behind our house is a very large garage, that was previously a car detailing shop. The exact interior dimensions of the entire shop are 27' wide, 25 feet deep. The walls are 10 feet high, with an eve of 15 feet in the center. There is a structural support beam at 10 feet underneath the eve that goes along the center of the room. The floor is a concrete slab that is not connected to a house, however there is a warehouse to the rear of it where another business is (on the same concrete). The utility room in the diagram belongs to that business, although the pictures show that there is no wall yet. There is currently a loft ceiling only over that utility room, and over where the garage door recedes. There is no hvac in this garage. The garage has metal walls, with hard insulation, and an insulated roof with wallboard that is in need of repair as the photos show.

Like many users here, I have had many plans and ideas on how to breakup the space to create a more professional audio environment. After encountering this forum however, I'm stunned by the wealth of experience in its users, and by the results many have been able to achieve. As of this writing I am still in the planning stages, and reaching out for more experienced input.

My studio needs are:

a dual purpose control room, where I will do 90 percent of my composition,
A vocal booth,
a room for guitar amps, and drums.
The nearest neighbor is about 40 feet away.

I have considered using half of the garage for my studio, (as shown in one of the plans below) which means I would most likely have only a control room, and a small live room, as I also have a need to store performance gear, pa, and occasionally park a car full of gear late at night after performances.

Im obviously budget conscious but accept that it will be a costly venture.

Hopefully I've met all the criteria for starting a thread here, if not Im happy to re visit.

Im not as proficient in sketchup as I am with another program, so I provided the diagrams below using that. The photos are taken of me moving Counter Clockwise throughout the space.

In anticipation
David

[Soundman2020]

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

Hopefully I've met all the criteria for starting a thread here, if not Im happy to re visit.

You missed a couple... see above link...

The floor is a concrete slab that is not connected to a house, however there is a warehouse to the rear of it where another business is (on the same concrete).

That could be a problem: What does the "other business" do? Any heavy machinery? Things that cause impact noise or vibration on the floor?

I have considered using half of the garage for my studio, (as shown in one of the plans below) which means I would most likely have only a control room, and a small live room, as I also have a need to store performance gear, pa, and occasionally park a car full of gear late at night after performances.

That won't leave you with much space! You show only 12' x 20' (roughly) left over for the studio. That0s about the right size for a control room, but there's no way you will fit in a control room, a vocal booth and a drum booth. ITU specs (among others) call for 20m2 minimum floor area for a control room, which is 215 square feet. It is certainly possible to get a good control room in considerably less space (John has built a studio inside a shipping container!), but in order to fit in a drum booth and a vocal booth as well, the CR would just be too small to be workable, both from a practical as well as from an acoustic point of view. The smaller a room is, the more treatment it needs, and for a really small room, there is no amount of treatment that can make it sound good. A drum booth, also, needs to be reasonably large to sound good. Drums need space. Even a vocal booth needs some decent size to be usable, and not sound like a closet.

You might be able to get by with 180 ft2 for the control room, but that's about it. By the time you allow for isolation walls and door swings, the remaining space just isn't big enough to do anything with, and certainly not a drum booth.

I'd suggest that you should either figure out how to get a lot more space, or dump the idea of having so many rooms in there.

If all the space were available for the studio, then it would be doable, but your major restriction of wanting to use more than half of it for a garage, makes it pretty much impossible to do anything more than just a control room.


- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

Thank you so much for replying that gives me the ammo I need to make some better informed descicions.

The other business is a seasonal roofing storage warehouse, so there's people talking during lunch hour in the summer, an occasional poker game, and an occasional forklift moving shingles for 20 minutes.

Perhaps I can think of a way to use the divided space of 12 by 20 as a control room and vocal booth, with the intention of adding a live room after the fact?

Best

David

[thedukewestern]

Here is a floor plan I came up with today using the vocal booth idea featured above. I feel that if I could start with a concept like this I could utilize the rest of the space as my needs develop. Thank you guys for helping so much, many of us have nowhere to turn.

[Soundman2020]

and an occasional forklift moving shingles

That would very likely be a problem. But you do say it's only occasionally, and only for 20 minutes at a time.... so assuming that you can schedule your sessions around that, you would probably be OK.

Perhaps I can think of a way to use the divided space of 12 by 20 as a control room and vocal booth, with the intention of adding a live room after the fact?

That makes sense, but you'd have to design the live room now as well, even if you don't build it yet. Studios are systems, not just a bunch of individual rooms, so you'd need to make sure that the future live room would work with the control room and booth, both acoustically and also practically.

Here is a floor plan I came up with today

That control narrows down towards the rear, and is not symmetrical. Two bad ideas. Control rooms should get wider towards the rear, or just stay the same width, but not narrow down. And they should be symmetrical.

Also, with that plan you'd have no place at all for the very necessary rear corner bass-trapping, and the rear wall would be mostly glass. Another two very important issues. You'd have major modal and SBIR problems, and serious lack of directionality, with major reflections coming off the rear wall...

Also, the airlock is wasted space. There's no need or reason for that.


- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

That all makes much more sense to me now. Thank you stuart.

As I move forward in developing my idea, and whittling away at what wont work, Im looking towards what known ratios that work would be. I keep thinking 6 to 5? Is there a resoure you might point me towards?

[Soundman2020]

whittling away at what wont work, Im looking towards what known ratios that work would be. I keep thinking 6 to 5? Is there a resoure you might point me towards?

Room ratios is whole major subject in studio design. Overblown, in my opinion, but important nevertheless. The problem is that some people tend to think that if only they can get their ratios and dimensions "perfect", the studio acoustics will also be perfect, and they'll have the best studio on the planet. That simply isn't true. Ratios are important, to a certain extent, but they are not the single most aspect of studio design that some people make them out to be. You can have a fantastic studio that is based on a not-so-good ratio, and conversely you can have a terrible studio that is based on Sepmeyer's first ratio (arguably the best there is).

Bluntly speaking, there is no such thing as a "perfect" ratio for a control room. There are merely good ones and bad ones, and that's it.

It works like this: The walls of your studio create natural resonances in the air space between them. We call those "standing waves" or "room modes". Those "modes" (resonances) occur at very specific frequencies that are directly related to the distances between the walls. They are called "standing waves" because the appear to be stationary inside the room: they are not REALLY stationary, since the energy is still moving through the room. But the pressure peaks and nulls always fall at the exact same points in the room each time the wave energy passes, so the "wave" seems to be fixed, static, and unmoving inside the room. If you play a pure tone that happens to be at the exact frequency of one of the "modes", then you can physically walk around inside the room and experience the "standing" nature of the wave: you will hear that tone grossly exaggerated at some points in the room, greatly amplified, while at other points it will sound normal, and at yet other points it will practically disappear: you won't be able to hear it at all, or you hear it but greatly attenuated, very soft.

The peaks and nulls fall at different places in the room for different frequencies. So the spot in the room where one mode was deafening might turn out to be the null for a different mode.

Conversely, if you have a mode (standing wave) that forms at a specific frequency, then changing to a slightly different frequency might show no mode at all: for example, if a tone of exactly 73 Hz creates a standing wave that is clearly identifiable as you walk around the room, with major nuls and peaks, then a tone of 76 Hz might show no modes at all: it sounds the same at all points in the room. Because there are no natural resonances, no "room modes" associated with that frequency.

That's the problem. A BIG problem.

Of course, you don't want that to happen in a control room, because it implies that you would hear different things at different places in the room, for any give song! At some places in the room, some bass notes would be overwhelming, while at other places the same notes would be lost. As you can imagine, if you happen to have your mix position (your ears) located at such a point in the room, you'd never be able to mix anything well, as you would not be hearing what the music REALLY sounds like: you would be hearing the way the room "colors" that sound instead. As you subconsciously compensate for the room modes while you are mixing, you could end up with a song that sounds great in that room at the mix position:the best ever! But it would sound terrible when you payed it at any other location, such as in your car, on your iPhone, in your house, on the radio, at a club, in a church, etc. Your mix would not "translate".

OK, so now I have painted the scary-ugly "modes are terrible monsters that eat your mixes" picture. Now lets look at that a bit more in depth, to get the real picture.

So let's go back to thinking about those room modes (also called "eigenmodes" sometimes): remember I said that they occur are very specific frequencies, and they are very narrow? This implies that if you played an E on your bass guitar, it might trigger a massive modal resonance, but then you play either a D or an F and there is no mode, so they sound normal. Clearly, that's a bad situation. But what if there was a room mode at every single frequency? What if there was a mode for D, a different mode for E and yet another one for F? In that case, there would be no problem, since all notes would still sound the same! Each note would trigger its own mode, and things would be happy again. If there were modes for every single frequency on the spectrum, and they all sounded the same, then you could mix in there with no problems!

And that's exactly what happens at higher frequencies. Just not at low frequencies. Because of "wavelength"

It works like this: remember I said that modes are related to the distance between walls? It's a very simple relationship. Rember I said the waves are "standing" because the peaks and nulls occur at the same spot in the room? In simple terms, for every frequency where a wave fits in exactly between two walls, then there will be a standing wave. And also for exactly twice that frequency, since two wavelengths of that note will now fit. And the same for three times that frequency, since three full waves will now fit in between the same walls. Etc. All the way up the scale.

So if you have a room mode at 98 Hz in your room, then you will also have modes at 196 Hz (double), 294 (triple), 392 (x4), 490(x5), 588(x6), 686(x7) etc., all the way up. If the very next mode in your room happened to be at 131 Hz, then there would also be modes at 262 Hz(x2), 393(x3), 524(x4), 655(x5), etc.

That's terrible, right? There must be thousands of modes at higher frequencies!!! That must be awful!

Actually, no. That's a GOOD thing. You WANT lots of modes, for the reasons I gave above: If you have many modes for each note on the scale, then the room sounds the same for ALL notes, which is what you want. It's good, not bad.

But now let's use a bit of math and common sense here, to see what the real problem is.

If your room has a mode at 98Hz, and the next mode is at 131 Hz, that's a difference of 32%! 98 Hz is a "G2". So you have a mode for "G2". but your very next mode is a "C3" at 131Hz. That's five notes higher on the scale: your modes completely skip over G2#, A2, A2#, and B2. No modes for them! So those four notes in the middle sound perfectly normal in your room, but the G2 and C3 are loud and long.

However, move up a couple of octaves: ...

There's a harmonic of your 98Hz mode at 588 Hz, and there's a harmonic of your 131 Hz mode at 524 Hz. 524 Hz is C5 on the musical scale, and 588 Hz is a D5. They are only two notes apart!

Go up a bit more, and we have one mode at 655 and another at 686. 655 is an E5, and 686 is an F5. they are adjacent notes. Nothing in between! We have what we want: a mode for every note.

The further up you go, the closer the spacing is. In fact, as you move up the scale even higher, you find several modes for each note. Wonderful!

So at high frequencies, there is no problem: plenty of modes to go around and keep the music sounding good.

The problem is at low frequencies, where the modes are few and far between.

The reason there are few modes at low frequencies is very simple: wavelengths are very long compared to the size of the room. At 20 Hz (the lower limit of the audible spectrum, E0 on the organ keyboard), the wavelength is over 56 feet! So your room would have to be 56 feet long in order to have a mode for 20 Hz.

Actually, I've been simplifying a bit: it turns out that what matters is not the full wave, but the half wave: the full wave has to exactly fit into the "there and back" distance, so the distance between the walls needs to be half of that: the half-wavelength. So to get a mode for 20 Hz, your room needs to be 56 / 2 = 28 feet long. Obviously, most home studios do not have modes at 20 Hz, because there's no way you can fit a 30 foot control room into most houses!

So clearly, the longest available distance defines your lowest mode. If we take your own proposed dimensions as an example (since it is pretty typical of home studio sizes), your longest available dimension would be 13 feet, so the lowest mode you could possibly have in your room, would be at about 43 Hz. That's an "F1" on your bass guitar.

The next highest mode that your room could support is the one related to the next dimension of the room: In your case, that would be width, at 10 feet. That works out to 56.5 Hz. That's an "A1#" on your bass guitar. Five entire notes up the scale.

And your third major mode would be the one related to the height of the room, which will likely end up at about 8 feet, and that works out to 71 Hz, or C2# on the bass guitar. Another four entire notes up the scale.

There are NO other fundamental modes in that room. So as you play every note going up the scale on your bass guitar (or the keyboard), you get huge massive ringing at F, A# and C#, while all the other notes sound normal. tink.tink.tink.BOOOOM.tink.tink.tink.tink.BOOOOOM.tink.tink.tink.BOOOOOM.tink.tink....

Not a happy picture.

There are harmonic modes of all those notes higher up the scale, sure. But in the low end, your modes are very few, and very far between.

So, what some people say is "If modes are bad, then we have to get rid of them". Wrong! What you need is MORE modes, not less. Ideally, you need a couple of modes at every single possible note on the scale, such that all notes sound the same in your room. In other words, the reverberant field would be smooth and even. Modes would be very close together, and evenly spread.

So trying to "get rid of modes" is a bad idea. And even if it were a good idea, it would still be impossible! Because modes are related to walls, the only way to get rid of modes is with a bulldozer! Knock down the walls...

That's a drastic solution, but obviously the only way to get a control room that has no modes at all, is to have no walls! Go mix in the middle of a big empty field, sitting on top of a 56 foot ladder, and you'll have no modes to worry about....



Since that isn't feasible, we have to learn to live with modes.

Or rather, we have to learn to live with the LACK of modes in the low end. The problem is not that we have too many modes, but rather that we don't have enough of them in the low frequencies.

Obviously, for any give room there is a point on the spectrum where there are "enough" modes. Above that point, there are several modes per note, but below it there are not.

There's a mathematical method for determining where that point is: a scientist called Schroeder figured it out, years ago, so it is now known as the Schroeder frequency for the room. Above the Schroeder frequency for a room, modes are not a problem, because there are are lots of them spaced very close together. Below the Schroeder frequency, there's a problem: the modes are spaced far apart, and unevenly.

So what can we do about that?

All we can do is to choose a ratio that has the modes spaced sort of evenly, and NOT choose a ratio where the modes are bunched up together. For example, if your room is 10 feet long and 10 feet wide and 10 feet high, then all of the modes will occur at the exact same frequency: 56.5 Hz. So the resonance when you play an A1 on the bass, or cello, or hit an A1 on the keyboard, will by tripled! It will be three times louder. The nulls will be three times deeper. That's a bad situation, so don't ever choose room dimensions that are the same as each other.

You get the same problem for dimensions that are multiples of each other: a room 10 feet high by 20 feet wide by 30 feet long is also terrible. All of the second harmonics of 10 feet will line up with the 20 foot modes, and all of the third harmonics will line up with the 30 foot modes, so you get the same "multiplied" effect. Bad.

In other words, you want a room where the dimensions are mathematically different from each other, with no simple relationship to each other.

Back to your original question: What ratio is best?

Answer: there isn't one!

Over the years, many scientists have tested many ratios, both mathematically and also in the real world, and come up with some that are really good. The ratios they found are named after them: Sepmeyer, Louden, Boner, Volkmann, etc. Then along came a guy called Bolt, who drew a graph showing all possible ratios, and he highlighted the good ones found by all the other guys, and predicted by mathematical equations: If you plot your own room ratio on that graph, and it falls inside the "Bolt area", then likely it is a good one, and if it falls outside the "Bolt area", then likely it is a bad one. (Sort of, but not actually that simple.)

So, there are no perfect ratios, only good ratios and bad ratios.

It is impossible to have a "perfect" ratio, simply because that would require enough modes to have one for every note on the musical scale, but that's the entire problem with small rooms! There just are not enough modes in the low end. So you can choose a ratio that spreads them a bit more this way or a bit more that way, but all you are doing is re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, in pleasant-looking patterns. The problem is not the location of the deck chairs; the problem is that your boat is sunk!: Likewise for your studio: the problem is not the locations of the modes: the problem is that your room is sunk. No matter what you do with the dimensions, you cannot put a mode at every note, unless you make the room bigger by moving the walls. It is physically impossible.

But that does not mean that your room will be bad. That's the common perception, and it is dead wrong.

All of this leads to the question you didn't ask, but were probably heading for: What can I do about it?

Here's the thing: Modes are only a problem if they "ring". The wave is only a problem if the energy builds up and up, with each passing cycle, until it is screaming, and then the "built up" energy carries on singing away, even after the original note stops. That's the problem. If you stop playing the A1 on your guitar, and the room keeps on playing an A1 because it "stored" the resonant energy and is now releasing it, then that's a BIG problem! The room is playing tunes that never were in the original music!

If a mode doesn't ring like that, then it is no longer a major issue.

So how do you kill a mode? You can't. But you CAN prevent it from "ringing". You can "damp" the resonance sufficiently that the mode dies away fast, and does not ring. You remove the resonant energy and convert it into heat: no more problem!

You do that with "bass trapping". You use strategically placed acoustic treatment devices in the room to absorb the ringing of the mode, so that it cannot ring. There are several ways to do that, with different strategies, but the good news is that in most rooms it is possible to get significant damping on the modes, so that they don't ring badly, and don't cause problems.

And that is the secret to making a control room good in the low end! Damp the hell out of the low end, so modes cannot appear. It's that simple.

The smaller the room, the more treatment you need. And since those waves are huge (many feet long), you need huge bass trapping (many feet long/wide/high). It takes up lots of space, and the best place for it is in the corners of the room, because that's where all modes terminate. If you want to find a mode in your room, go look for it in the corner: it will be there. All modes have a velocity node in two or more corners, so by treating the corners, you are guaranteed of hitting all the modes.

OK, I said I was going to get back to your question, but I didn't:

What is the best ratio?

As I said, there is no single "best", but there are good ones. You can use a "Room Mode Calculator" to help you figure out which "good ones" are within reach of the possible area you have available, then choose the closest good one, and go with that. And stay away from the bad ones.

Arguably, Sepmeyer's first ratio is the "best", since it can have the smoothest distribution of modes... but only if the room is already within a certain size range. Other ratios might be more suitable if your room has a different set of possible dimensions. So there is no "best".

But that's not the entire story: So far, all the modes I have only mentioned are related to two walls across the room, opposite from each other. I mentioned modes that form along the length axis of the room (between the front and back wall), others that form along the width axis (between left and right walls), and others that form on the height axis (between floor and ceiling): Those are the easiest ones to understand, because they "make sense" in your head when you think about them. Those are called "axial modes", because they form along the major axes of the room: length axis, width axis, height axis.

However, there are also other modes that can form between four surfaces, instead of just two. For example, there are modes that can bounce around between all four walls, or between two walls plus the ceiling and floor: those are called "tangential modes". And there are other modes that can form between all six surfaces at once: they involve all four walls plus the ceiling and the floor. Those are called "oblique modes".

The complete set of modes in your room consists of the axial modes, plus the tangential modes, plus the oblique modes.

That's what a good room mode calculator (a.k.a. "room ratio calculator") will show you. There are bad calculators that only show you the axial modes, which is pretty pointless, and the good ones show you all three types.

Here's my two favorites:

http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm
http://amroc.andymel.eu/

In both cases, just plug in your room dimensions and let it do all the hard work for you. Both of them show a lot of additional information, which is very useful.

A the start, I did say that modes aren't that important, despite all the hype they get: I'm serious about that too. Modes are one aspect of room design, but there are many more. It's wise to choose a ratio that is close to one of the good ones, or inside the Bolt area, but you do NOT need to go nuts about it! There's no need to nudge things around by smalls fractions of an inch, hoping to get a "better" ratio. Just stay away from the bad ones, get close to a good one, and you are done. End of story.

I hope that helps!

- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

WOW~~ Thank you so much for that - I was working again on my design concepts as you posted this. Thank you so much for your insights stuart. I wanted to share this with you and see what you thought. In this concept I am using the back half of the room to contain 2 booths for vocal and guitar amp purposes, etc. mirrored to bring their longer sides to the center of the room to add shape to the rear wall. As I mentioned before I have been plugging away with a rough 6 to 5 ratio. The window to the right of the mix position was intended to give visual access to a larger live room in the future. What do you think of this basic idea of mine?

I can't thank you enough for your amazing response. Im happy to donate to the site etc.

David

[Soundman2020]

As I mentioned before I have been plugging away with a rough 6 to 5 ratio.

I'm not sure what you mean by that: in acoustics, ratios are three-dimensional, not two dimensional. They are normally expressed as something like " 1 : 1.14 : 1.39 ". The first number is height, the second is width, the third is length. There's no ratios I'm aware of that are expressed as just " 6 : 5 ". Assuming that you meant 1 : 5 : 6, that would be a very strange room! Very long and wide,with a low ceiling. In your case, of the length is 13' 3", the ceiling would be just 2' 4" high...

So I'm wondering where you got that ratio from, as it doesn't make much sense. Rooms are 3D, not 2D.

But anyway, regarding your updated design: it makes a lot more sense than that other one! There's space for bass trapping at the back now, and you have your two small booths... but they are very small! They will have to be heavily treated, to make them totally dead inside, acoustically.

Also, you have created 3-leaf wall systems for those booths. You should fix that, or you'll have lousy isolation in the low end. And it wastes space too, unnecessarily.

Have you considered doing an RFZ design? I highly recommend it...


- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

I was driving away and thought exactly that - about the 3 leaf system, and thinking how I could have avoided that. Yes I am familiar with that pitfall after reading through many of the builds here.

Im not certain what an rfz design is stuart? I would totally consider it however

[Soundman2020]

Im not certain what an rfz design is stuart?

Reflection free zone. The concept is simply that by suitably angling some surfaces at the front of the room, and flush-mounting your speakers, you force all of the early reflections to go past your head, leaving a zone around you that is totally free from reflections. Thus, all that you hear is the pure, clean, unspoiled sound of the sound coming directly from the speakers themselves. You also treat the surface towards the rear of the room such that the later reflections that do eventually get back to your ears are very much lower in intensity, diffuse, and delayed long enough that your brain has time to determine that they really are "copies" of the same direct sound that came by initially, rather than being a smeared, blurry, unclear mangled part of the original sound.

It turns out that our ears and brains cannot fully figure out that a reflection of a sound is actually that (a reflection) unless it gets to our ears about 20ms after the original, and quieter. If your ears hear a sound and its reflected copy within less than 20ms, your brain thinks that it wasn't a copy at all: it thinks that it was part of the original sound but that it came from a different direction and has a different frequency envelope, so you have the impression that the "sound+reflection" was actually a broader, wider, less defined sound, coming from an indeterminate range of possible sources: In other words, you cannot identify the exact direction that it came from: So your sensation of "stereo image" is degraded, and your ability to pinpoint something accurately on the "sound stage" between the speakers is lost. In addition, your brain also thinks that the total sound has a different frequency response, because of the interaction of the reflection with the original: you can't accurately determine the real tones of the sound.

But if the reflection comes more than 20ms after the original, and it is a lot quieter (about 20 dB lower in intensity) then your brain can figure out that it's just a reflection, so your ability to resolve the direction of the original sound is not degraded: you can identify it with pinpoint accuracy, and you can also identify the frequencies accurately.

That's why most of the rooms I design these days are RFZ-style: it makes for a much cleaner, more accurate, more precise listening experience, and allows you to hear the music with pristine clarity: you can pick up details in it that you never realized were there, when you listened to it in a less accurate room.

Designing and building an RFZ-style room is a bit more complicated than for a simple rectangular room, but the results are very much worthwhile.

That's why I'd recommend that you consider it: it's about the best possible design concept out there.

Most of John's rooms are also RFZ-style these days too, as you can see from his website.

- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

Thanks stuart - yes I have seen that pretty much everywhere I look at this forum. Its a very attractive design. Perhaps you could help me design it.. I do not know if there is a fee? Regardless - here is a revision of my begininning floor plan. I felt like I would rather have 1 room that sounded more open than 2 deadened small booths. I also felt I should ask, should I consider having just a straight wall in the rear of the control room adjacent to the booth and treating it - so as to deal with speaker reflections? A straight wall would allow for more room in the booth? The angled at the center idea came from using 2 of Johns vocal booth concepts mirrored to create the angle.

once again I am interested in an rfz design like the one you mentioned, however am not sure how to guide myself through incororating one.

This has been a very educational process for me I thank you stuart for your replies!
David

[Soundman2020]

Perhaps you could help me design it.. I do not know if there is a fee?

Send John himself a PM, and see if he would be able to help you. As far as I know he just finished a big project, so he might be available. If not, then contact me by PM. I would be able to help, but not until late September, as I'm tied up with other studio projects at present. In both cases there would be a fee for dedicated private design services. We give help for free on the forum, as much as we can, but sometimes it can be slow, and frustrating for the wait. Right now, I have 17 threads lined up that I need to respond to. I'm answering yours first because it's fairly fast and not too complex, as you are in the early stages, but some of the others take a lot longer to answer... Some people need fast answers, and would prefer to pay for that, instead of waiting. Others don't have the inclination or interest or time to learn how to do it all themselves, and prefer to pay. But some don't mind the wait, and prefer to save money by learning as much as they can themselves, then asking on the forum, and waiting.... So it comes down to whatever fits your needs and your budget!

I felt like I would rather have 1 room that sounded more open than 2 deadened small booths.

That makes a lot of sense, actually! Smart move.

should I consider having just a straight wall in the rear of the control room adjacent to the booth and treating it - so as to deal with speaker reflections?

You could do that, yes, but I like your current design too. The rear wall will need treatment anyway, since it is usually the biggest source of problems in most small rooms, so angling it or not angling it won't make a huge difference. But it might make a difference to the interior acoustics of the booth, so taking both into account, it could be worthwhile to keep the angle. Try to calculate that angle to give you the best acoustics, by ensuring that reflections take the longest possible path to get back to your ears, and preferably go to the same ear as the original sound hit: reflections on the left side of the room should go to your left ear, and vice versa.

Also, I noticed that you fixed your three-leaf problem around the booth, but you also eliminated the second leaf around the front and left of the control room! You should put those back again...

I thank you stuart for your replies!

Glad to help!


- Stuart -

[thedukewestern]

Hey Stuart - I noticed that the small studio sketchup fits my available dimensions pretty closely. I have a few feet more space, but not much more...

If I were to go ahead with that... how would I modify the design? For example.. If I have 2 or 3 more available feet and I add them equally to either room how would that affect my design, (not financially - acoustically) theres an 11.385 foot overall width, and a 19.357 length. I have more length available, (around 22 feet total - however the 11.385 dimension is about what I am dealing with. Also - the design calls for a maximum height of 8.3 inches on the exterior, where I have 10 feet available for maximum height.

So - if I can add 3.5 feet to the length of the design, (or say 1.5 more feet to each room, and another foot of height, in your opinion what is the best way to make the best use of my available space? I read in another post of yours that the angles of the interior are really what makes the most of the designs, and I have a hunch youll mention something like that...=-)

As far as the 2 leaf wall system... since this would be a free standing structure inside of a free standing garage (not attached to house) - should I consider the exterior of the garage which has outward facing insulated metal walls the 2nd leaf

[thedukewestern]

I did a quick search on here and found some useful posts - however - I figured Id come right out and inquire..

theres a fella around here thats unloading some owens corning 703 panels he made at a pretty low price. So - im wondering if I should jump on it? I originally intended to use rockwool, however....