small attic studio

[Carbonchio]

Hello everybody, first time poster here!
i am moving to a new house (i am located in ITALY) and for the first time in my life i will have a room dedicated to music listening and producion. The room is very small (397x352 cm), but my demands are also small.
I am setting up a home studio for producing music with mostly virtual instruments (orchestral samples played via a midi keyboard, above all, and maybe some DI guitar). I will play and playback at average listening volumes, i am not going to play acoustic drums or trumpet, moreover it is a quiet neighbourhood and i will not disturbed by outside noises as well therefore acoustic insulation is not an issue here.
my inquiry is about gear placement and acoustic treatment of the room: althought it is a rectangular room, its particularity is the sloping ceiling (the room is under the roof, in the attic): that might be a good thing since floor and ceiling are not parallel, still i am not sure if i can apply the usual setup for basstraps etc, because all models take for granted a flat ceiling. moreover, the ceiling is lower than normal (233 cm at the highest side, 106 cm at the lowest), which shrinks the total cubage of the room making it somewhat small. To be honest i am not even completely sure whether i should place the desk facing the tall side of the room, or the other way around.
one other issue is the fact that a corner is taken by the room entrance, which prevents me to put a proper corner bass trap there.
I am working on a somewhat large table (170x90cm) and i am used to dual monitor setup: the 2x27" display monitors sum up to about 125 cm width, which forces me to place the audio monitors maybe a little wider apart than the canonic 60°, maybe nearer to 90°, would that be an issue? my monitors are JBL LSR 305 by the way.
My budget for acoustic treatment is near to zero, but i have some DIY capabilities and i will be able to make some wooden frames for rockwool the cheap way.
I am also attaching a sketchup project (available HERE), in case anyone is using it and willing to help me (mind the windows: one in the ceiling, another in the left wall)

[BackEastDon]

Hello everybody, first time poster here!
i am moving to a new house (i am located in ITALY) and for the first time in my life i will have a room dedicated to music listening and producion. The room is very small (397x352 cm), but my demands are also small.
I am setting up a home studio for producing music with mostly virtual instruments (orchestral samples played via a midi keyboard, above all, and maybe some DI guitar). I will play and playback at average listening volumes, i am not going to play acoustic drums or trumpet, moreover it is a quiet neighbourhood and i will not disturbed by outside noises as well therefore acoustic insulation is not an issue here.
my inquiry is about gear placement and acoustic treatment of the room: althought it is a rectangular room, its particularity is the sloping ceiling (the room is under the roof, in the attic): that might be a good thing since floor and ceiling are not parallel, still i am not sure if i can apply the usual setup for basstraps etc, because all models take for granted a flat ceiling. moreover, the ceiling is lower than normal (233 cm at the highest side, 106 cm at the lowest), which shrinks the total cubage of the room making it somewhat small. To be honest i am not even completely sure whether i should place the desk facing the tall side of the room, or the other way around.
one other issue is the fact that a corner is taken by the room entrance, which prevents me to put a proper corner bass trap there.
I am working on a somewhat large table (170x90cm) and i am used to dual monitor setup: the 2x27" display monitors sum up to about 125 cm width, which forces me to place the audio monitors maybe a little wider apart than the canonic 60°, maybe nearer to 90°, would that be an issue? my monitors are JBL LSR 305 by the way.
My budget for acoustic treatment is near to zero, but i have some DIY capabilities and i will be able to make some wooden frames for rockwool the cheap way.
I am also attaching a sketchup project (available HERE), in case anyone is using it and willing to help me (mind the windows: one in the ceiling, another in the left wall)

Welcome to the attic studio club. I think the good news for you is that you don't have angled ceiling at both ends. Mines about 550cm long with 125 cm knee walls at each end. My room follows the model mostly. Measuring room modes takes a bit of creativity but I'd start there. What I did was flip the measurement points, effectively virtually flipping the room upside down. Search online for how to measure room modes and get a measurement mic and get familiar with REW software.

With light construction, a lot of the lower bass will pass through. That was the good news for me. Still was pretty some bass frequencies are hyped due to the 125cm knee wall corresponding with listening height. I ended up filling the entire rear wall with 61cm deep of light density fiberglass for bass traps in addition to the front corners. You have the door to contend with so front traps will present some challenges.

I did mine 25 years ago and am redoing it again with more than just a bunch of 703 rigid fiberglass covered in fabric. It isn't going to be perfect so measure, basstrap, measure, treat and temper your expectations based on the reality of what the measurement tells you.

I'm building all my own treatment. Materials are pretty cheap.

[gullfo]

i'd face the lower part and pack that out 1m of insulation and a light frame for cloth. then 150mm x 600mm x 1200mm absorbers on the tall wall and sides. start there. then spend some time adjusting monitoring positions until it's about as good as it will get, then tweak amount of absorption to finish time and frequency response.

[BackEastDon]

i'd face the lower part and pack that out 1m of insulation and a light frame for cloth. then 150mm x 600mm x 1200mm absorbers on the tall wall and sides. start there. then spend some time adjusting monitoring positions until it's about as good as it will get, then tweak amount of absorption to finish time and frequency response.

Interesting. I always viewed the interaction as a bit of a horn so I had the same idea except having the speakers facing into the absorption. As often is the case, acoustics is counter intuitive. My problem is at both ends unfortunately but am interested.

Can you expound upon this a bit?

[gullfo]

there is no question a room like this will need a lot of absorption on the "back" wall - in fact the top peak is ideal for a large soffit for LF absorption. however, doing it the other wall forms a compression ceiling which is less good than an expansion. not to mention practical headroom. if we put 1m of absorption on the larger wall, well banging heads on the sloped ceiling every time you get up will lose its novelty pretty quickly so the 1m high space in the lower section just begs for deep insulation since it's virtually unusable and having the headroom above and behind will provide more options for tuning. just plain old absorbers (POA) might not be enough. membrane/resonant/etc traps may be needed.

[Carbonchio]

here is a rendering of the 2 options of desk placement:
option facing the tallest wall is my preferred solution from an ergonomic / furniture wise point of view; facing the short wall would probably lead to anxiety, and i would not make the most of the little room space available. furthermore, the listeners position would be about in the center of the room, while facing the tall wall i would fall at the golden 38% lenght. i think i will face the tall wall, unless acoustics would be so awful to force me doing the other way around.
there will be furniture at the short wall (probably metal lockers / shelves with books and gear), so there is no way i can stuff it with 1 m (one meter deep rockwool or did i get wrong???) insulation.

[DanDan]

Very often speakers perform best almost touching the Front Wall. The listening position will follow. The 38%..... heresy.... witchcraft

[Carbonchio]

Very often speakers perform best almost touching the Front Wall. The listening position will follow. The 38%..... heresy.... witchcraft

that's one more reason to face the tall wall!

[gullfo]

nothing says truth like empirical testing the low section with the deep insulation was recommended because i didn't know it was already filled with other stuff - usually a good idea to include details like that but since you have the room and the equipment, set it up and test it. see which way sounds better and then tweak it a bit until its about as good as it will get before you start building all the treatments.

[DanDan]

Test Trumps Theory

[Carbonchio]

Test Trumps Theory

that needs a link, i'm new to this stuff please... google is not my friend when anything "trump" is in the search

[DanDan]

Trump is a term used in games of cards. It means wins over, or beats. So Acoustic Testing is always more certain than predicting, calculating, guessing, based on Theory.

[Carbonchio]

got it, that sounds silly i'm sorry english is not my first language

[DanDan]

Il test batte la teoria?

I'm learning Spanish, so I use deepl.com a lot.

[Carbonchio]

Il test batte la teoria?

we say "vale più la pratica della grammatica"