Control Room Design and Orientation Help

[ybot77]

Hi All! Long time member, first time poster

After spending over one year building my last studio which I enjoyed over a 5 year period (thanks to the help of this forum and John Sayers recording manual), I decided to move house and do it all again!

I'm looking to build a control and live room in an existing shed in my new back yard. I have a good grasp on construction and isolation requirements thanks to my last build, however I'm having trouble deciding on the layout of the control room and would appreciate some help.

Firstly, a bit about my location and plans:
- My shed is 8m x 5.5m with colorbond outer walls with double skillion colourbond roof built on a concrete slab.
- My plan is to build two rooms within the shed.
- I live on a sloping block approx 1/4 of an acre and the closest neighbors house would be 15 meters away, my house being
approx 10 meters from the proposed studio.
- I plan to build the walls using Johns 'Inside Out' wall design using 90x45 timber at 600 centers with 2 layers of 16mm
fyrchek plasterboard, or possibly one layer of 16mm and one layer of 10mm. As distance from my neighbors is decent and
my site is 'cut out' into the land I feel this will be sufficient isolation. We can be loud when jamming, however this is
generally only once a week unless tracking an album.
- The walls will be installed directly on the slab. I have seen some people add neoprene to the bottom plate, is this
necessary? I will either lay floating floor boards on top of the slab but I'm also considering a polished concrete floor which
can look amazing too! Cost will be a factor here.
- Ceiling wise, not sure whether or not to do an inside out design or just normal. I have plenty of height room thanks to the
skillion roof design so...yep undecided!
- I would like to use Johns sliding door design between the live and control rooms. There is a post just off center of the shed
(long ways) which I plan to build around with a double inside out wall and would like glass sliding doors on each side of the
post separating the control and live rooms.
- The shed has two existing sliding door entrances, one which will be live room entry and the other control room entry. I
would like to keep these as from the outside the look great and being elevated on the sloping block, it offers fantastic views
of the area. I will add another sliding door internally to each existing door for isolation.

Please see attached a plan view of the shed with existing post/C channel positions. Obviously I'm going to build my studio walls inside the outer posts. What I'm stuck with is the the orientation of the control room. As I'm going to build the center post hidden inside a wall, I'm not sure whether to face the control room North or South.

Option 1. Facing control room North
If the desk was at the North end of the control room I would have the entrance sliding door directly behind me which I believe would cause reflection issues. I would sit a couch in in front of the sliding door (away from it far enough to allow access inside the studio). To the right of the desk I would angle the glass sliding door and build speaker soffits at the front and treat with resonators and bass traps around the room accordingly. If facing the control room this way, would hanging curtain in front of the sliding door act well enough to stop reflections when mixing?

Option 2. Facing control room South
The other consideration is having the desk in front of the sliding door - again obviously with enough room for access again. Again I would face the sliding door adjacent to the desk on the required angle. This however would mean I have no room for speaker soffits in the front. One solution would be locating the speaker soffits above the sliding door, which I've seen in one of Johns studio designs (Guerrilla Music in Beirut - Lebanon, see attached photo). The other advantage this offers is taking in the views from outside the door which especially at night is amazing. Facing this way would also allow the couch against the wall to the North of the control room.

Please excuse the attached extremely crude sketch of the above options. My sketch up skills are a couple of days old and I need some more practice...desperately!

NOTE: In both options the approx dimensions of the Control Room will be approx 5.3m long x 3.5m wide

Regardless of the layout, as mentioned above I'm not sure what to do with the ceiling in both the control and live rooms. My initial thought was to follow the angle of the skillion roof which I think would look great and reduce floor to ceiling reflections. I've seen 'angle to flat to angle' ceiling designs in other studios is this a better method?

I know there are more questions I wanted to ask but brain fatigue has set in.

Hopefully I've made some sense! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If you require any further information please don't hesitate to ask.

Sincerely
Toby Price.

[Soundman2020]

Hi there Toby, and WELCOME! After all these years of being a member, we finally get to welcome you!

I decided to move house and do it all again!

Man, you sure are a sucker for punishment! Congrats on your starting your SECOND studio build.

- I plan to build the walls using Johns 'Inside Out' wall design using 90x45 timber at 600 centers with 2 layers of 16mm fyrchek plasterboard,

So far, so good. But before you decide on the details, you should first define how much isolation you need, in decibels, and the frequency range where you need it, to help determine your construction techniques and materials.

or possibly one layer of 16mm and one layer of 10mm.

So you don't need much isolation then? You are happy to go with less mass on your walls and ceilings?

As distance from my neighbors is decent and my site is 'cut out' into the land I feel this will be sufficient isolation.

What do you mean by "sufficient"? How many decibels is that?

We can be loud when jamming, however this is generally only once a week unless tracking an album.

How loud is "loud"? And what are the local noise regulations regarding your legal obligations on how loud you can be on your property?

- The walls will be installed directly on the slab. I have seen some people add neoprene to the bottom plate, is this necessary?

Not necessary, unless your slab is very uneven, or flaky, or cracked, or otherwise in poor condition such that you would not be able to get a good air-tight seal using the normal method. It might also be good if you can't get any straight lumber for your sole plates... but that shouldn't be a problem if you shop around, and especially if you have a planer ("thicknesser").

I will either lay floating floor boards on top of the slab but I'm also considering a polished concrete floor which can look amazing too! Cost will be a factor here.

You mean "floating" in the sense that some manufacturers of laminated flooring (a.k.a. "engineered flooring") refer to their products as "floating flooring", even though it does not "float" at all, in the acoustic sense? Or are you talking about a real attempt to float your floor?

- Ceiling wise, not sure whether or not to do an inside out design or just normal. I have plenty of height room thanks to the skillion roof design so...yep undecided!

Think of it this way: If you build inside-out, you already have space up there for a good amount of treatment, that can be hidden from sight if you wish. If you build conventionally, then you'll have to hang treatment below that, and it is ipossible to hide it (or really hard...). Also, how much height do you have?

- The shed has two existing sliding door entrances, one which will be live room entry and the other control room entry. I would like to keep these as from the outside the look great and being elevated on the sloping block, it offers fantastic views of the area. I will add another sliding door internally to each existing door for isolation.

How thick is the glass in those exiting doors? Is it laminated glass? If so, does it use a proper acoustic PVB, or just a normal PVB for the interlayer? Also, are those proper acoustic doors, with double full-perimeter seals? Or are they just ordinary "patio doors", of the type you can buy in ny hardware store?

What I'm stuck with is the the orientation of the control room. As I'm going to build the center post hidden inside a wall, I'm not sure whether to face the control room North or South.

You have glass doors. You want to see out of those glass doors. It's difficult to do that when you are facing the opposite way! In addition, the rear wall of any small room is the biggest problem, always. It always needs substantial treatment, very thick, across it's entire surface. It would be hard to see through 60cm of acoustic treatment....

In other words, set up the control room to face the glass. However, that is going to create a bit of a problem, since sliding glass doors do not open in the middle: they open to the left and right. So if your CR is centered on the exterior door, your entry path will be through one side of that, which will probably line up with your speaker soffits, not the room! It might be a good idea to make the room wider, so that one side of the sliders lines up with the middle of the front wall. Either that, or replace the sliding glass doors with a swinging glass door that is centered on the room.

One other thing: You will have no lobby/vestibule like this: Your door opens directly into the outside world, and there isn't even a canopy of any type to protect you and the studio entrance from the elements as you are opening and closing the doors, and/or trying to carry equipment, instruments, pizza, and beer in or out! Victoria isn't exactly known for year-round sunny skies with dry weather and no rain.... So this might be an issue. You don't want rain getting in to your room, nor being blown in by the wind. I'd suggest that you consider building some type of alcove out the front there, to protect the entrance from the element. At the very least, put up a canopy over the door way, to keep the direct rain out, and do not extend the laminate flooring all the way to the door: it doesn't hold up well to water and sunlight extremes. Maybe use ceramic tiling for that front part, where the door is, with an embedded "tray" for a thick welcome mat, to scrape the mud ant water off your shoes.

If the desk was at the North end of the control room I would have the entrance sliding door directly behind me which I believe would cause reflection issues.

Yes. As well as filling up the place in the room that needs huge amounts of acoustic treatment.

If facing the control room this way, would hanging curtain in front of the sliding door act well enough to stop reflections when mixing?

If you can figure out how to make curtains from fiberglass insulation that is about 60 cm thick, then sure! No problem!

But even if it were acoustically possible to have curtains there, why would you do that? Why have large glass doors leading out to a beautiful view, if you then plan to cover it all up with curtains, so you can0t even see it or get light in there?

This however would mean I have no room for speaker soffits in the front.

Why not? See the solutions I mentioned above. There is room, if you set up the room correctly, and/or modify the existing door correctly. Also is you lose the unnecessary angled side walls, and just make them straight...

One solution would be locating the speaker soffits above the sliding door,

Not really a good idea at all. Psycho-acoustics is a fairly new branch of acoustics, and the understanding of how the human ears and brain perceive sound is much more clear and solid today, than it was 30 or 40 years ago. We now know why it isn't a good idea to place speakers up high and tilt them down steeply, even though that was done a lot in the past. Yes, you do still see that in some rooms, but usually those big monster speakers up high are meant mainly for the client couch at the back, to knock the socks off the producer and the musicians, as they sit back there, and impress the hell out of them... but the actual serious mixing work is done on a second set of speakers that is set up far more usefully for tracking and mixing, at ear height. Your room does not have room for both. So just soffit them mains as normal, at ear height.

NOTE: In both options the approx dimensions of the Control Room will be approx 5.3m long x 3.5m wide

Right, but you are also wasting space by angling the front walls! If you did not do that, and instead just used a normal rectangular shape, you would have plenty of room for the soffits.... plus more floor area, and greater air volume inside the room. It's a myth that you must angle your walls to get good acoustics. Not true.

I'm not sure what to do with the ceiling in both the control and live rooms. My initial thought was to follow the angle of the skillion roof which I think would look great and reduce floor to ceiling reflections.

For the live room, that would be fine, but the control room has to be perfectly symmetrical: the left half must be a mirror image of the right half, and that includes the ceiling. So it cannot be higher on one side than the other. It could slope the same on both sides, yes, as long a the left half is the same as the right half. Also, the control room ceiling can slope upwards towards the rear of the room, but not down. Or it can be flat. In other words, if it does slope, it must be lower over the speakers, and higher over the couch. It can also slope up a bit, and then be flat for the rear. But it can't slope down again. The basic rule is that the rear of the room can be wider/higher than the front, or it can be the same as the front... but never smaller. The room cannot narrow down at the rear.

I've seen 'angle to flat to angle' ceiling designs in other studios is this a better method?

The Tom Hidley compression ceiling was tried way back in the old days, then never used again. Tom himself only used it on a couple of rooms, then abandoned the concept.

One thing about room height and ceilings: I would flip your rooms around: Put the CR on the right side, where the outside wall is more of a brown color and the roof is lower and flatter, then put the live room on the left side, where the outer wall is more of a solver color, and the roof is higher and slopes more steeply. You generally want the LR ceiling to be as high as possible, and angles don't matter so much there, so put the LR on that side, where you get the most benefit.

Those would be my initial suggestions...


- Stuart -

[ybot77]

Hi Stuart! I've read so many of your posts...it's great to finally converse with you Soundman! And thank you for the warm welcome. I hope I got the 'quote' part right in my reply it looks messy from where I am, apologies if I stuffed it. I've highlighted my responses in RED

Hi there Toby, and WELCOME! After all these years of being a member, we finally get to welcome you!

I decided to move house and do it all again!

Man, you sure are a sucker for punishment! Congrats on your starting your SECOND studio build.

YES...I'M SOME SORT OF STUPID! But seriously, as challenging as the last one was - what a feeling of accomplishment when it's done.

- I plan to build the walls using Johns 'Inside Out' wall design using 90x45 timber at 600 centers with 2 layers of 16mm fyrchek plasterboard,

So far, so good. But before you decide on the details, you should first define how much isolation you need, in decibels, and the frequency range where you need it, to help determine your construction techniques and materials.

or possibly one layer of 16mm and one layer of 10mm.

So you don't need much isolation then? You are happy to go with less mass on your walls and ceilings?

Hmmm maybe not...was thinking about cost more so but 2 layers of 16mm is the better option.

As distance from my neighbors is decent and my site is 'cut out' into the land I feel this will be sufficient isolation.

What do you mean by "sufficient"? How many decibels is that?

Yep I have no idea...I admit there is no science to this decision, however years of experience as a muso growing up in the suburbs I'm quite sure this will work! I grew up with my Dad jamming in the backyard bungalo with my Uncle smashing the drums. The iso they used was old phone books in the walls, cladded with timber slats on the inside. The outer wall was cement sheeting (pretty sure asbestos!) - Lots and lots of airgaps, no treatment on the cement (asbetos) roof sheeting. Sound proof? NO! I know this build will be MUCH better than that and having built the last studio inside our house I'm confident this will do the job. My last studio build I used one wall with 3 layers of 16mm, ISO was excellent. Neighbors house then was 2 meters from me and they never batted an eyelid. Don't get me wrong, what you're suggesting is the smart option but funds are also determining who far I can go with isolation. I could not afford to do a double inside out wall and I'm not keen to take up more real estate either. Could maybe consider going the 3 layers...again the cost it all adds up. One thing I have learnt from you guys, your isolation is only as good as your weakest point. If I build as per my current plan this will be the sliding doors....correct?

We can be loud when jamming, however this is generally only once a week unless tracking an album.

How loud is "loud"? And what are the local noise regulations regarding your legal obligations on how loud you can be on your property?

Good question...by the sound of the parties my neighbors throw every now and then and the length of time they go for I think I'll be right! Funnily enough someone else in the street has a studio/jam room in the same street as me. This room is not properly treated but no one seems to mind...like me they're not jamming every night and the closest neighbor to me (who is closer to the other musician in the street) has already told me he has no issue with the noise or me building a studio next to him. I certainly can't here them unless I'm in the front yard. All blocks of land in the area are 1/4 acre so there is lots of space between us. Hence why I'm happy with the one wall with 2 layers. I should have also mentioned I'm using high density batts to line the colorbond walls (they have a perforated lining/backing to allow air flow to stop condensation) and the inside out walls with have thick, dense batts also. I will allow for an airgap between the outer and inner walls as well.

- The walls will be installed directly on the slab. I have seen some people add neoprene to the bottom plate, is this necessary?

Not necessary, unless your slab is very uneven, or flaky, or cracked, or otherwise in poor condition such that you would not be able to get a good air-tight seal using the normal method. It might also be good if you can't get any straight lumber for your sole plates... but that shouldn't be a problem if you shop around, and especially if you have a planer ("thicknesser").

Great, the slab is in very good condition (no cracks or anything) and I do have a planer just in case I have level issues. FIRE SOUND was my friend on the last build...or was it enemy? I kept running out and buying more and more...that stuff sucks to get off your hands!

I will either lay floating floor boards on top of the slab but I'm also considering a polished concrete floor which can look amazing too! Cost will be a factor here.

You mean "floating" in the sense that some manufacturers of laminated flooring (a.k.a. "engineered flooring") refer to their products as "floating flooring", even though it does not "float" at all, in the acoustic sense? Or are you talking about a real attempt to float your floor?

NO NO NO...apologies I should have stated laminate flooring - I'm NOT floating the floor.

- Ceiling wise, not sure whether or not to do an inside out design or just normal. I have plenty of height room thanks to the skillion roof design so...yep undecided!

Think of it this way: If you build inside-out, you already have space up there for a good amount of treatment, that can be hidden from sight if you wish. If you build conventionally, then you'll have to hang treatment below that, and it is ipossible to hide it (or really hard...). Also, how much height do you have?

Height in the control room is approx 2700mm on the low side and 3500mm on the high side. Live room 2600mm low side and 2900 high side.

- The shed has two existing sliding door entrances, one which will be live room entry and the other control room entry. I would like to keep these as from the outside the look great and being elevated on the sloping block, it offers fantastic views of the area. I will add another sliding door internally to each existing door for isolation.

How thick is the glass in those exiting doors? Is it laminated glass? If so, does it use a proper acoustic PVB, or just a normal PVB for the interlayer? Also, are those proper acoustic doors, with double full-perimeter seals? Or are they just ordinary "patio doors", of the type you can buy in ny hardware store?

The existing sliding doors are not standard hardware store doors, although they do have standard 4mm glass and seals. I have spoken with the manufacturer who is local and they are going to upgrade them and install laminated glass and better seals for me on site when they deliver my other sliding doors (which will be made with the seals and laminated glass).

What I'm stuck with is the the orientation of the control room. As I'm going to build the center post hidden inside a wall, I'm not sure whether to face the control room North or South.

You have glass doors. You want to see out of those glass doors. It's difficult to do that when you are facing the opposite way! In addition, the rear wall of any small room is the biggest problem, always. It always needs substantial treatment, very thick, across it's entire surface. It would be hard to see through 60cm of acoustic treatment....

In other words, set up the control room to face the glass. However, that is going to create a bit of a problem, since sliding glass doors do not open in the middle: they open to the left and right. So if your CR is centered on the exterior door, your entry path will be through one side of that, which will probably line up with your speaker soffits, not the room! It might be a good idea to make the room wider, so that one side of the sliders lines up with the middle of the front wall. Either that, or replace the sliding glass doors with a swinging glass door that is centered on the room.

Crystal clear...I will set it up facing the glass door.

One other thing: You will have no lobby/vestibule like this: Your door opens directly into the outside world, and there isn't even a canopy of any type to protect you and the studio entrance from the elements as you are opening and closing the doors, and/or trying to carry equipment, instruments, pizza, and beer in or out! Victoria isn't exactly known for year-round sunny skies with dry weather and no rain.... So this might be an issue. You don't want rain getting in to your room, nor being blown in by the wind. I'd suggest that you consider building some type of alcove out the front there, to protect the entrance from the element. At the very least, put up a canopy over the door way, to keep the direct rain out, and do not extend the laminate flooring all the way to the door: it doesn't hold up well to water and sunlight extremes. Maybe use ceramic tiling for that front part, where the door is, with an embedded "tray" for a thick welcome mat, to scrape the mud ant water off your shoes.

Great question (as are all the others) and well spotted! Yep, I plan on building a deck/walkway with awning outside the entrances.

If the desk was at the North end of the control room I would have the entrance sliding door directly behind me which I believe would cause reflection issues.

Yes. As well as filling up the place in the room that needs huge amounts of acoustic treatment.

If facing the control room this way, would hanging curtain in front of the sliding door act well enough to stop reflections when mixing?

If you can figure out how to make curtains from fiberglass insulation that is about 60 cm thick, then sure! No problem!

You've set me a challenge here...i do not accept

But even if it were acoustically possible to have curtains there, why would you do that? Why have large glass doors leading out to a beautiful view, if you then plan to cover it all up with curtains, so you can0t even see it or get light in there?

Yep...curtains?

This however would mean I have no room for speaker soffits in the front.

Why not? See the solutions I mentioned above. There is room, if you set up the room correctly, and/or modify the existing door correctly. Also is you lose the unnecessary angled side walls, and just make them straight...

Great! I thought they did have to be angled and have seen it so often in designs. I will make them straight! I'm struggling to picture the studio as a rectangle...I assume this is without acoustic treatment added? Any chance you could flick me a rough plan view of what this may look like?

One solution would be locating the speaker soffits above the sliding door,

Not really a good idea at all. Psycho-acoustics is a fairly new branch of acoustics, and the understanding of how the human ears and brain perceive sound is much more clear and solid today, than it was 30 or 40 years ago. We now know why it isn't a good idea to place speakers up high and tilt them down steeply, even though that was done a lot in the past. Yes, you do still see that in some rooms, but usually those big monster speakers up high are meant mainly for the client couch at the back, to knock the socks off the producer and the musicians, as they sit back there, and impress the hell out of them... but the actual serious mixing work is done on a second set of speakers that is set up far more usefully for tracking and mixing, at ear height. Your room does not have room for both. So just soffit them mains as normal, at ear height.

Question...you do think it's worth building the speaker soffits and not just using near fields on the desk or stands?

NOTE: In both options the approx dimensions of the Control Room will be approx 5.3m long x 3.5m wide

Right, but you are also wasting space by angling the front walls! If you did not do that, and instead just used a normal rectangular shape, you would have plenty of room for the soffits.... plus more floor area, and greater air volume inside the room. It's a myth that you must angle your walls to get good acoustics. Not true.

Awesome! Yep I'll make it rectangular.

I'm not sure what to do with the ceiling in both the control and live rooms. My initial thought was to follow the angle of the skillion roof which I think would look great and reduce floor to ceiling reflections.

For the live room, that would be fine, but the control room has to be perfectly symmetrical: the left half must be a mirror image of the right half, and that includes the ceiling. So it cannot be higher on one side than the other. It could slope the same on both sides, yes, as long a the left half is the same as the right half. Also, the control room ceiling can slope upwards towards the rear of the room, but not down. Or it can be flat. In other words, if it does slope, it must be lower over the speakers, and higher over the couch. It can also slope up a bit, and then be flat for the rear. But it can't slope down again. The basic rule is that the rear of the room can be wider/higher than the front, or it can be the same as the front... but never smaller. The room cannot narrow down at the rear.

Great, thanks for clearing that up...will do

I've seen 'angle to flat to angle' ceiling designs in other studios is this a better method?

The Tom Hidley compression ceiling was tried way back in the old days, then never used again. Tom himself only used it on a couple of rooms, then abandoned the concept.

One thing about room height and ceilings: I would flip your rooms around: Put the CR on the right side, where the outside wall is more of a brown color and the roof is lower and flatter, then put the live room on the left side, where the outer wall is more of a solver color, and the roof is higher and slopes more steeply. You generally want the LR ceiling to be as high as possible, and angles don't matter so much there, so put the LR on that side, where you get the most benefit.

Bugger...had a feeling you'd say that! The reason for the positioning was so the live room could be big enough to jam in - and the views are better from the left side! The post in the middle of the room is a pain. I'm guessing you may think it's better to have a bigger control room anyway? I will definitely consider this.

Do you have a rough layout in mind? If possible a rough sketch so I can picture it would be great? (just a plan view layout only not a 3D sketch up model!)

I've attached some photos of my last studio that I found on my phone. It was very hard to say goodbye! The design was given to me by the late LP Swist who actually past away just at the end of my build. This was one of his last designs. I built the whole studio from top to bottom using Johns manual and this forum. Why I never posted my journey I don't know!? I'll make sure this one is up for everyone to see.

Thanks again Stuart, look forward to catching up soon.

Toby

[ybot77]

HI all, I've been working on my sketch up skills the past week and have come a long way since my rubbish effort posted in my first post!

As per Stuarts reply I've straightened the live and control walls/glass sliding doors to allow for more room...is this what you were talking about Stuart? It feels weird having built the last studio with lots of angles...but I'm assuming angles will still need to be introduced using resonators and bass traps as by using the inside/out wall design the room is already treated.

Deep Cloud Studio 2 plan view.pdf

Deep cloud iso view.pdf

I'm making two models, one with the control room as originally planned and shown in the attached sketch up file and the other with the control and live rooms flipped, as per Stuarts advice t allow for more height in the control room (the left side of my skillion shed has more height)

For now I'd thought I'd post my current progress and see if there's any feedback before I keep going?? I've only illustrated the isolated walls in this model and not the outside colorbond shed, although you can see the slab and existing beams of the shed.

As previously mentioned the plan is to do Johns inside/out walls using two layers of 16mm fyrchek and polyester batts from a company called polyester solutions (these guys are awesome, they helped me out on my last build if anyone is interested...believe they recently did upgrades at Abbey Rd studios in Melbourne using their product which I highly recommend...it's not glass wool so much easier to handle, although it is more expensive than glass wool batts)

Next step in sketch up is to work out speaker soffit positions and mixing desk/seating location in the room...I've had enough screen time tonight I'm signing off!

Look forward to any feedback from the greats...

[ybot77]

Hello everyone and happy Monday (in Melbourne Australia anyway...thankfully it's nearly over!).
I've got some sketch up updates of the control room design, a couple of things to mention:

1. I have increased the original control width to center the entry door and which allow for better soffit room as per Soundmans
suggestion - feels bigger and better and haven't lost any live room sq/meterage as I will still have 100mm gao between the
walls if I keep them in the same position.

2. I have persisted with the control on the left at this stage as if I move it to the right side the room size will be identical a
anyway so I'll just mirror the design.

3. Soffits have been placed at 35 deg each. As per advice on this forum I've made sure the intersect point is behind the
ears/head position.

4. Current mixing location is approx 38% of the room (although I know this is not the be all and end all) and if I adjust the
position slightly, say move it back a bit I'm within all recommended parameters...unless I've missed something?

5. Back corners I've added two bass traps with a low-mid panel absorber in the center of the back wall.

6. I plan on adding slat walls in places on my s=inside/out walls but as yet not sure where to place them, does anyone have
any suggestions?

Hoping I'm on the right track? Next I'll be drawing up the ceiling! Would appreciate any feedback on the current layout.

Cheers
Toby

UPDATE: I'm starting to have some concerns with the rectangular shaped room...I'm struggling to find any studio that doesn't have angled walls. Won't standing waves be a major concern? Stuart can you confirm this is what you're suggesting?

UPDATE # 2! : The internet is awash with opinions regarding the angled V rectangular set up - I guess what I find curious is pretty much all the designs I come across on this forum (including Johns own personal design projects), whether done by the experts or the beginners, all seem to have angled wall designs, even in the smaller rooms. Having said that, I found similar recommendations to another recent poster as well as a discussion regarding a church/studio remodel back in 2012 that even Stuart mentions the same topic (although Stuart you also state if going for an RFZ type room then it makes sense to have splayed walls...plus it looks good..BUT yes, it does take up more room.). I guess I'm wondering is if the space and 'air volume' mentioned critically important and will it make a substantial difference to making the room sound better?

I've entered my current room dimensions into a https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm room mode calculator I found on the forum...I've got no idea what I'm looking at really, but I did read yellow, pink and red colours are the dangerous ones and my calcs seems to be pretty good. Finding it hard to copy/link the results so if anyone could punch in my room dimensions and help interpret I would be extremely grateful.
Length 5.216
Width 3.604
Height 2.7

AND...what does it tell me regarding treatment of the room if I do go rectangle?? HELP! haha

Look forward to some feedback, cheers
Toby