The best and easy formula for a beginner, but if it exist?

[strictlydubs]

Greetings to one and all,

First of all happy and productive new 2020 year to you!

And a second, I'm very new to this forum and very new to the acoustical and insulation treatment for studio rooms, but since long time looking into this topic. I'm based in the Baltic states, actually in Tallinn, Estonia and have been using/renting few different studios and rehearsals through some years. Since they are not all treated as well as you can hear more or less what you want and rehearsals are often sounds like a basic living rooms (nothing bad personally!!)... Finally, the idea came into my mind, that I need a better place for my self and my friends-musicians who are around our crew.

The first, let's call problem, that I don't have a place/ room to start building something now in - I'm searching for a nice place, as I don't have my own space for the studio works (that's why I can't write measures now). The gear and music instruments has been collected through the years and they should be doing musical work somewhere (that's why I'm here). The room which I'm looking for rent is more or less 50 m2 size. Looking for a place where loud-playing shouldn't be a problem. My main idea is to separate full size room to two different rooms; one for mixing/listening and another one for rehearsal/ practicing. As we have many talented vocalists here, the question is, could I fit the small vocal booth into the mixing room (I could be wrong by thinking to put the vocal booth into the mixing room, but correct me please, I'm just thinking on the size of the whole room..). The rehearsal room must fit with the simple drum-set with one kick drum, maybe two snares, two-three hats stands and max three toms, best if room could fit not only drum-set and drummer, but three more musicians with guitar/ wind instrument or vocalist (which is possible in 20 to 25 m2 room for example as I imagine, maybe tight, but affordable?). Mixing room consists of two monitors and one sub, medium mixing console (16 or 24 channel), if all rack-mount devices can't fit into the table rack slots, then one let's say eight unit on-floor rack will be in the room, a sofa to chill-out and a seat behind the table with monitors.

What exactly I'm looking for;

1) Practicing in rehearsal room without resonations of the place and strange noise

2) A nice listening area (at "mixing" room)

3) Possibillity to make better mixing

4) To make a good recording in vocal booth (mainly vocal or string/ wind instrument)

5) Better then just a "raw" recording of the drums

6) Recording rehearsal session (better then the demo-level, but not too professional)

Possibillities:

You can ask, why the place is not more then 50 m2?
- So, with the price of the rent I can keep up with this size.
More size/ space could be expensive for me, don't believe that I could run it.

Budget for the insulation and soundproofing together?
-1000 to 1200 euros

May I continue with the thoughts..

As I'm very new to the most of this stuff, and maybe some things I can't build by my self, may I fit into this budget and use some ready products from the online-stores like - thomann.de ??? As from the reads, I understand that insulation I can install by my self, but I don't belive that I have enough skills to build soundproofing panels and etc..

Why I named this topic as I did? Well, finally my question is, do we have a basic formula for this kind of small studio designs? Do I need to measure room with the REW software and get the mic for the "medium" sound at studio? As this is my first project, so maybe is better start easily and learn more skills during the process... Are there any basic specs from I could start, while checking other small studio plans that, I can use for a better sound in my future small studio; like cutting the corners from the insulation stage and using the most popular and easy type of constructions by following the different plans and trying to fit into my measures of the room?

I hope you'll give me a helping hand
Forgive me please if my questions are very common
Thank you in advance
Simon


Peace

[Gregwor]

Hi Simon,

Welcome to the forum! Can you please fully fill out your profile as per John's forum rules? Thank you!

That is a decent sized space and depending on the layout, you can probably easily fit a booth in there. Unfortunately with your budget, you won't be able to achieve the isolation you need. You can however achieve better acoustics. Your budget could probably allow you to build a partition wall and acoustic treatment.

Check out this website:

https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc

Try to build your partition wall such that both rooms fall into the "bolt area" on the website. This will give you the best modal distribution in your room at which point you can find tune it with acoustic treatment.

As I'm very new to the most of this stuff, and maybe some things I can't build by my self, may I fit into this budget and use some ready products from the online-stores like - thomann.de ??? As from the reads, I understand that insulation I can install by my self, but I don't belive that I have enough skills to build soundproofing panels and etc..

Sadly there are no off-the-shelf products that you can put on your walls that will provide isolation. There are products that can improve the acoustic response of the room though. Unfortunately store bought products cost a LOT of money and it's typically better to build your own.

do we have a basic formula for this kind of small studio designs?

There are a ton of formulas targeted at certain aspects of acoustics, but none that cover the needs of studios start to finish. Each room is unique. There are however basic concepts to follow. Here are a few:
- Don't have any doors in the corners of your room as that's where bass traps will live.
- Don't use rug on your floor. Have a hard surface for your flooring.
- Use insulation on your ceiling (you can fine tune this if your acoustic response is too dead. Often splitting up the ceiling between insulation and diffusion such as polys is a good start).
- Use as much bass trapping as possible. There are 12 corners to bass trap in a rectangular room.
- Your walls could have around 50% coverage of isolation.

For mixing rooms, it's a similar concept except:
- The ceiling above your mix position needs to be 100% insulation.
- Your rear wall needs to be at least 6" thick of insulation. Preferably 24" thick.
- You need absorption panels at your first reflection points on your walls (4-6" thick).
- If you're not soffit mounting your speakers, put large panels of 4" thick insulation on the walls behind your speakers and then push your speakers right up against these panels.
- Your head should be at a location ~38% the length of your room.
- Your speaker should be shooting down the long length of your room.

I'm probably missing others but those are the basics to start with. I highly recommend downloading SketchUp Make from here (it's 100% free):
https://help.sketchup.com/en/downloading-older-versions
Don't waste your time using the only browser based version called SketchUp Free. Watch some basic tutorial videos on using it. Hint: Check out "inferencing", "components", and "layers". After that, you'll be sketching like a pro! Draw up your room and post pictures of your plan here for us to check out. Please keep any questions you have on this thread so that the forum doesn't get too cluttered and so that people like myself can easily follow your build and be able to help you more efficiently!

Greg

[strictlydubs]

Hi Simon,

Welcome to the forum! Can you please fully fill out your profile as per John's forum rules? Thank you!

That is a decent sized space and depending on the layout, you can probably easily fit a booth in there. Unfortunately with your budget, you won't be able to achieve the isolation you need. You can however achieve better acoustics. Your budget could probably allow you to build a partition wall and acoustic treatment.

Check out this website:

https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc

Try to build your partition wall such that both rooms fall into the "bolt area" on the website. This will give you the best modal distribution in your room at which point you can find tune it with acoustic treatment.

As I'm very new to the most of this stuff, and maybe some things I can't build by my self, may I fit into this budget and use some ready products from the online-stores like - thomann.de ??? As from the reads, I understand that insulation I can install by my self, but I don't belive that I have enough skills to build soundproofing panels and etc..

Sadly there are no off-the-shelf products that you can put on your walls that will provide isolation. There are products that can improve the acoustic response of the room though. Unfortunately store bought products cost a LOT of money and it's typically better to build your own.

do we have a basic formula for this kind of small studio designs?

There are a ton of formulas targeted at certain aspects of acoustics, but none that cover the needs of studios start to finish. Each room is unique. There are however basic concepts to follow. Here are a few:
- Don't have any doors in the corners of your room as that's where bass traps will live.
- Don't use rug on your floor. Have a hard surface for your flooring.
- Use insulation on your ceiling (you can fine tune this if your acoustic response is too dead. Often splitting up the ceiling between insulation and diffusion such as polys is a good start).
- Use as much bass trapping as possible. There are 12 corners to bass trap in a rectangular room.
- Your walls could have around 50% coverage of isolation.

For mixing rooms, it's a similar concept except:
- The ceiling above your mix position needs to be 100% insulation.
- Your rear wall needs to be at least 6" thick of insulation. Preferably 24" thick.
- You need absorption panels at your first reflection points on your walls (4-6" thick).
- If you're not soffit mounting your speakers, put large panels of 4" thick insulation on the walls behind your speakers and then push your speakers right up against these panels.
- Your head should be at a location ~38% the length of your room.
- Your speaker should be shooting down the long length of your room.

I'm probably missing others but those are the basics to start with. I highly recommend downloading SketchUp Make from here (it's 100% free):
https://help.sketchup.com/en/downloading-older-versions
Don't waste your time using the only browser based version called SketchUp Free. Watch some basic tutorial videos on using it. Hint: Check out "inferencing", "components", and "layers". After that, you'll be sketching like a pro! Draw up your room and post pictures of your plan here for us to check out. Please keep any questions you have on this thread so that the forum doesn't get too cluttered and so that people like myself can easily follow your build and be able to help you more efficiently!

Greg

Greg! Thank you for your knowledge sharing and very quick response on my message. I will start to checking out and choosing the place for rent already now. Will check the tutorials and will try to use the SketchUp tool. Well, as I mention in the first message, the budget at moment is limited, but I’ll try to increase it as much as possible (if possible). I will keep up posting further information, hopefully will come back with the measures.

User page is updated!

Once again, thank you!
This is really from where I can start on.

[DanDan]

The Master Handbook of Acoustics by Alton Everest.

[Gregwor]

The book DanDan is referring to can be found here for free:

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

It is a very interesting read with only a few "boring" sections!

Greg

[strictlydubs]

The book DanDan is referring to can be found here for free:

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

It is a very interesting read with only a few "boring" sections!

Greg

Thank you for the link!