Sketchup plan for a tiny room

[askomiko]

Hi!

First of all, thanks for this wonderful forum. 've spent weeks (nights really) reading thousands of pages, and I envy all the knowledgeable and skillful craftmen here!

I bought a house and claimed a tiny room as my kingdom. Usable space after the wardrobe is L308xW250cm. It's not the grand plan that might happen to upstairs if I win in a lottery, but for now, this'll have to do. It's a basic wooden house, gypsum board wall, wood panel ceiling and parquet floor. I'm not tearing the wall down and constructing them again from ground up, but instead just add some ready made products. (GIK) DIY would be cheaper, but I'm not a carpenter so I'd just spend just as much on tools and then make so ugly stuff it would burn my eyes for years to come. Still, DIY bass traps would be best because of the size problems I'm having here. I'll try to plan a bit so that I'd avoid major idiot moments. It's not a dedicated studio and I don't have any proper soundproofing, and that's OK. Use is for general usage music enjoyment and mixing my own stuff. Budget around 2500e.

It's a small room and the electrical outlets are in annoying spots: problem #1: near the front wall corner, blocking a free standing bass trap. I'm thinking about building some kind of a riser and getting a slightly shorter bass trap to fit the remaining space towards the ceiling. Also, the front wall with window is an outer wall, so I'll leave couple inches of empty space between the bass traps and wall to try and avoid any condensation issues.

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Tiny room trouble #2: fitting three regular size (60cm) panels on the left hand side wall, starting right from the bass trap, takes just a little bit too much space to fit (already existing) bookshelf. The door would hit the bookshelf. And also here, the strategically placed electrical outlet ruins a lot of useful space around it. I know the first answer is to ditch the bookshelf... I already ditched two parts out the door in the sketchup virtual reality! As said, this is not a dedicated studio, so maximum amount of bookshelves is required. Current plan would leave allllmost enough space for one tower of these shelves, but the damn electrical socket is there too.

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#3: The window is 35-41cm from the side wall. The square GIK bass trap is 41,3cm... This would be the main reason for DIY.

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I'd put 2x4"s to the side walls and install the panels to that, simple, sturdy and movable, plus the small air gap behind the panels is a plus.

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The current idea is bass traps on the front wall, six panels on the side walls (two of which would be the nice looking wood covered ones), two panels above the listening spot, and four triangular bass traps on the wall-ceiling corners. (Or maybe square, wall-ceiling -corners are not very useful space for anything else really.)

Questions:
1. By your quesstimation, would I overkill my highs with the current amount of absorbing panels? I'm guessing not yet.
2. Triangle vs. square bass traps on the corner and ceiling-wall corners: front wall corner would be a good place for double volume, but for space issues, is it much worse if I put triangles in the corner and squares in the ceiling, or vice versa?
3. I wish I could DIY but it always ends up horrible.
4. I can't do much of anything to back wall, free standing panels would be a distant possibility, but they would ruin the everyday life in such a small room.

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Here's a quick video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fGd6AV ... e=youtu.be


And here's the sketchup file if anyone wants to play with it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nait4z9av3pk ... 6.skp?dl=0

[Gregwor]

First of all, thanks for this wonderful forum. 've spent weeks (nights really) reading thousands of pages, and I envy all the knowledgeable and skillful craftmen here!

I'm glad to hear that you've read so much. There's plenty more to read. I'd suggest reading this book (just slowly plug away at it and you'll be thankful you did!)

http://www.roletech.net/books/HandbookAcoustics.pdf

I bought a house and claimed a tiny room as my kingdom. Usable space after the wardrobe is L308xW250cm. It's not the grand plan that might happen to upstairs if I win in a lottery, but for now, this'll have to do.

Congratulations on the house!!! It's awesome that you have a space and even if it's not your dream space, it can still be great for what you need.

DIY bass traps would be best because of the size problems I'm having here.

GIK products rule, but as you have pointed out, they aren't always right for your space. I highly suggest buying some tools. You can get cheap brand tools for a very small amount of money that will work just fine for your needs. You don't NEED a jointer to have perfectly straight wood for your panels. You can build panels just like these for super cheap using about $100US worth of tools. These are hard to screw up.

Diego Panels.jpg

It's a small room and the electrical outlets are in annoying spots

Another reason to build DIY treatment. It's pretty darned easy to build your treatment in shapes to go around those things. If you're willing to actually mount things to your walls, you can easily mount wood to the walls that insulation sits in. Then you can cover that with fabric.

I know the first answer is to ditch the bookshelf... I already ditched two parts out the door in the sketchup virtual reality! As said, this is not a dedicated studio, so maximum amount of bookshelves is required.

Just do your best to make the first half of your room symmetrical. Be sure to make acoustic measurements at each step of the process so that you can see how the furniture is affecting things. If the book shelves negatively affect things, you can probably fix it quite easily.

1. By your quesstimation, would I overkill my highs with the current amount of absorbing panels? I'm guessing not yet.

On the verge I bet. So doing DIY, you can check how things are before you put fabric on. If you need high end, you can adjust the panels easily and at the end of the process put fabric on.

2. Triangle vs. square bass traps on the corner and ceiling-wall corners: front wall corner would be a good place for double volume, but for space issues, is it much worse if I put triangles in the corner and squares in the ceiling, or vice versa?

Triangle is fine, just make them as large (wide) as possible.

3. I wish I could DIY but it always ends up horrible.

You can do this.

4. I can't do much of anything to back wall, free standing panels would be a distant possibility, but they would ruin the everyday life in such a small room.

The back wall is SO important. Sleep on the idea of making it a designated acoustic treatment spot. If you want a remotely great listening room, you need this.

Greg

[askomiko]

I'm glad to hear that you've read so much. There's plenty more to read. I'd suggest reading this book (just slowly plug away at it and you'll be thankful you did!)

http://www.roletech.net/books/HandbookAcoustics.pdf

Yes, I've got that and the Rod Gervais book already read

GIK products rule, but as you have pointed out, they aren't always right for your space. I highly suggest buying some tools. You can get cheap brand tools for a very small amount of money that will work just fine for your needs. You don't NEED a jointer to have perfectly straight wood for your panels. You can build panels just like these for super cheap using about $100US worth of tools. These are hard to screw up.

Diego Panels.jpg

But I want a router and fingerjoint accessories... Yes, DIY is the way for the bass traps at least. If they don't completely suck, I'll do more. For DIY option they will be square for ease of manufacture. HOFA makes nice and affordable empty wooden frames for acoustic uses, that's another option too. I already researched what is the most suitable locally available (Paroc, Isover, Knauf) rockwool variant for this depth of bass traps, but that was before the move and I've forgotten it already. Note to self: do notes to self. Looking at hardware store pages again, I'd guess it was Isover KL-37. (Edit: No, 37 was the fluffiest one for mega deep traps. Does anyone remember this straight away? I'd guess kl-33.)

My plan with DIY bass corners would be to mount two or three 2x4"s throughout the whole length of side walls, and mount everything to them. I've gotta plan some more for this. The ceiling has heating elements too, so fixing the cloud panels needs to be something else than screws into ceiling. Perhaps I could install "roof 2x4s" to the same side wall 2x4s, spanning across the room. Sort of a lowered ceiling frame. Then it would be piece of cake to install two or four cloud panels on them.

43x36cm square corner traps would fit in nicely. Not huge, but i can fill the ceiling-wall corners to compensate.

[askomiko]

Phase one is done: i made bass traps for front corners, 43x36cm boxes from floor to ceiling. In this symmetrical listening spot that you see in the SketchUp pics, i now have a huuuge null in 75hz that sucks all the life out of music. It didn't happen in corner where I was previously. Oh damn. Next step: traps for wall-ceiling corners. DIY is a ton of work.

[DanDan]

Greg has you well covered so I will just add some 'Oblique Strategies' as Eno would say.
Your room has a lot of light boundaries, I would like to see an Acoustic Measurement of the current response in there.

DD

[askomiko]

You will not believe what I just did... I built a cloud.. too BIG! I didn't have the curtain pole installed when I measured the size for the cloud. How stupid can a man be? I'll make a new one. 123cm x 160cm would've been nice though. I'll hang this one to side wall so it's not completely wasted time and materials.