Room Dimensions: Length=5 m, Width=4 m, Height=3 m
Room Ratio: 1 : 1.33 : 1.66
R. Walker BBC 1996:
- 1.1w / h < l / h < ((4.5w / h) - 4): Pass
- l < 3h & w < 3h: Pass
- no integer multiple within 5%: Pass
Nearest Known Ratio:
- "13) Rounded C. P. Boner ratio" 1 : 1.26 : 1.59
RT60 (IEC/AEC N 12-A standard): 242 ms
- ą50ms from 200Hz to 3.5kHz = 192 to 292ms
- ą100ms above 3.5kHz = 142 to 342ms
- <+300ms at 63hz = 542ms
- 300<RT60<600ms
RT60 (ITU/EBU Control Room Recommended): 210 ms
- ą50ms from 200Hz to 4kHz = 160 to 260ms
- <+300ms at 63hz = 510ms
- 200<RT60<400ms
Absorbtion to achieve ITU RT60: 492 sabins
Volume: 60 m^3
Room Dimensions: Length=5 m, Width=4 m, Height=3 m
Room Ratio: 1 : 1.33 : 1.66
R. Walker BBC 1996:
- 1.1w / h < l / h < ((4.5w / h) - 4): Pass
- l < 3h & w < 3h: Pass
- no integer multiple within 5%: Pass
Nearest Known Ratio:
- "13) Rounded C. P. Boner ratio" 1 : 1.26 : 1.59
RT60 (IEC/AEC N 12-A standard): 242 ms
- ą50ms from 200Hz to 3.5kHz = 192 to 292ms
- ą100ms above 3.5kHz = 142 to 342ms
- <+300ms at 63hz = 542ms
- 300<RT60<600ms
RT60 (ITU/EBU Control Room Recommended): 210 ms
- ą50ms from 200Hz to 4kHz = 160 to 260ms
- <+300ms at 63hz = 510ms
- 200<RT60<400ms
Absorbtion to achieve ITU RT60: 492 sabins
Volume: 60 m^3
Thank you Glenn!
When writing my previous post I hadn't realized that room height is obviously also relevant for the staircase design, so it's great to have this figure in mind already: I'll have to account for an additional two steps in the staircase in this case, but with the greater freedom of not having a pre-existing beam structure to consider, I don't think it will be much of an issue.
Cheers,
Mike
-------------------
"What does this button do?"
Here is the updated design: as mentioned earlier, I just reversed the design putting the staircase where it makes more sense to be, based on where the entrance currently is. This way I won't have to wall-up the current door and open a new one, plus if I should ever feel too claustrophobic I could always decide to splurge on a big window in the South wall overlooking the valley
Pic10.jpg
Taking into account Glenn's recommendation of going 3 m (little less than 10') ceiling height, I had to add two corner steps at the top of the staircase, otherwise it would be either too long or too steep, but that's not a big issue: my staircase at home has 3 corner steps and I climb it countless times a day, and turning the corner with large/long objects is not going to be any harder than it already was in the previous design. Any other staircase design that I could think of would take too much space out of the main room or be more dangerous.
While we're at it, just a little note on steps and heights that could be useful for someone else: the entrance door is currently at street level, which is obviously not good for when it rains/snows, so what I'm planning to do is to raise the entire entrance floor by about 20 cm (one step), while the rest of the ground floor will stay where it is now. This way I will protect the building from flooding (water never goes higher than an inch in this alley) and I can make the staircase one step shorter, which may not seem much but helps a lot space-wise. Getting from the entrance to the main room will of course require going one step down.
Cheers,
Mike
-------------------
"What does this button do?"
I have limited time to read the entirety of your thread right now, but, the ray tracing on the first page doesn't take into account all possible reflections. It depends on the dispersion pattern of your monitors, but if you're relying solely on geometry for controlling first reflections then I would change the angles of the side walls. In general I am not a big fan of controlling reflections with geometry in small rooms (100m2 or below) since it is almost impossible to deflect frequencies below 1khz due to the conical nature of sound waves. This is one reason (amongst others) why I prefer sufficient absorption for attenuating first order reflections.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing this build take shape, it's a beautiful building in its raw state with lots of potential!
Paulus87 wrote:I have limited time to read the entirety of your thread right now, but, the ray tracing on the first page doesn't take into account all possible reflections. It depends on the dispersion pattern of your monitors, but if you're relying solely on geometry for controlling first reflections then I would change the angles of the side walls. In general I am not a big fan of controlling reflections with geometry in small rooms (100m2 or below) since it is almost impossible to deflect frequencies below 1khz due to the conical nature of sound waves. This is one reason (amongst others) why I prefer sufficient absorption for attenuating first order reflections.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing this build take shape, it's a beautiful building in its raw state with lots of potential!
Thanks Paul for taking the time to check and give me your feedback, much appreciated!!
So how would you design the room differently to use absorption rather than geometry? Would you just make it rectangular and place absorption panels in the first reflection areas? Or would you add absorption to the current design to join forces between the two methods?
The side walls in the current design are around 12.7° from the room symmetry axis: how would you suggest to change this angle to improve the geometry effect?
And yes, it's going to be a veeery long journey, but can't wait to make progress and share the updates!
Many thanks again!
Cheers,
Mike
-------------------
"What does this button do?"
Paulus87 wrote:I have limited time to read the entirety of your thread right now, but, the ray tracing on the first page doesn't take into account all possible reflections. It depends on the dispersion pattern of your monitors, but if you're relying solely on geometry for controlling first reflections then I would change the angles of the side walls. In general I am not a big fan of controlling reflections with geometry in small rooms (100m2 or below) since it is almost impossible to deflect frequencies below 1khz due to the conical nature of sound waves. This is one reason (amongst others) why I prefer sufficient absorption for attenuating first order reflections.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing this build take shape, it's a beautiful building in its raw state with lots of potential!
Thanks Paul for taking the time to check and give me your feedback, much appreciated!!
So how would you design the room differently to use absorption rather than geometry? Would you just make it rectangular and place absorption panels in the first reflection areas? Or would you add absorption to the current design to join forces between the two methods?
The side walls in the current design are around 12.7° from the room symmetry axis: how would you suggest to change this angle to improve the geometry effect?
And yes, it's going to be a veeery long journey, but can't wait to make progress and share the updates!
Many thanks again!
Actually 12.7 in your design is okay if you're just wanting a RFZ around the listening position, it would give you a pretty clean area almost the entire width of the console, which would definitely suffice. But if you want to maximise it further, then you could increase the angle and/or add some absorption on those walls. Or you could keep the room a rectangular cuboid and use lots of angled Wideband panel absorbers. This would be more of a non environment approach. Angled panels with absorption is the best IMO as it guarantees the maximum reduction of reflections.
Paulus87 wrote:
Actually 12.7 in your design is okay if you're just wanting a RFZ around the listening position, it would give you a pretty clean area almost the entire width of the console, which would definitely suffice. But if you want to maximise it further, then you could increase the angle and/or add some absorption on those walls. Or you could keep the room a rectangular cuboid and use lots of angled Wideband panel absorbers. This would be more of a non environment approach. Angled panels with absorption is the best IMO as it guarantees the maximum reduction of reflections.
But, all in all, if you decide to keep the design as it is then I would definitely add more rear wall absorption and deep ceiling absorption.
Great to know the basic design is ok for the listening position, this is what I was trying to achieve indeed and I'm not going to need a bigger RFZ. But definitely adding absorption is an option I am considering: I suppose once I have the room built I will perform plenty of tests and look for improvement areas to be addressed with proper acoustic treatment, but having confirmation that the overall design is ok is a great starting point.
I will definitely look into the proposed design in your other post as well: makes a lot of sense and might even allow for a more efficient usage of the little space I have, I'll play with that a while and revert on this thread.
Thanks again, appreciate you taking the time to explain and draw and give recommendations!
Cheers,
Mike
-------------------
"What does this button do?"
Paulus87 wrote:Here's what I mean, play around with something like this if you want to extend the RFZ a bit more. Numbers are the angle.
If you did end up doing something like this then I would also move the front closet door so that it mirrors the main entrance door on the other side.
Do a google image search of Wes Lachot's control rooms for inspiration - very similar to what I think you're trying to achieve here.
Here's the updated design based on your suggestion: the door walls are now at 30° and the remaining side walls little less than 4°:
Pic11.jpg
With this, the new RFZ looks significantly larger:
Pic12.jpg
Also, moving the closet door and making the room door slightly smaller, I have now a perfectly symmetrical design which is something I couldn't achieve with the previous approach: great!
The only small downsides are that the closet door opens almost in front of the back wall, but I'm slim enough to be able to live with that , and the new door position eats about 1 meter of contiguous wall space on the south wall where I was planning to place a low storage and rack cabinet, but considering I won't be using the corner closet often I can always put a wheeled cabinet in front of the closet door and move it out of the way when needed.
So overall I think this looks like a great improvement to the original design, many thanks Paul!
Cheers,
Mike
-------------------
"What does this button do?"
Paulus87 wrote:Here's what I mean, play around with something like this if you want to extend the RFZ a bit more. Numbers are the angle.
If you did end up doing something like this then I would also move the front closet door so that it mirrors the main entrance door on the other side.
Do a google image search of Wes Lachot's control rooms for inspiration - very similar to what I think you're trying to achieve here.
Here's the updated design based on your suggestion: the door walls are now at 30° and the remaining side walls little less than 4°:
Pic11.jpg
With this, the new RFZ looks significantly larger:
Pic12.jpg
Also, moving the closet door and making the room door slightly smaller, I have now a perfectly symmetrical design which is something I couldn't achieve with the previous approach: great!
The only small downsides are that the closet door opens almost in front of the back wall, but I'm slim enough to be able to live with that , and the new door position eats about 1 meter of contiguous wall space on the south wall where I was planning to place a low storage and rack cabinet, but considering I won't be using the corner closet often I can always put a wheeled cabinet in front of the closet door and move it out of the way when needed.
So overall I think this looks like a great improvement to the original design, many thanks Paul!
Looking much better.
You could shift both doors up slightly more towards the speakers, and have the hinges on the opposite side to where they are now, which, even though won't make the opening physically any bigger, somehow seems to give the illusion of being bigger opening that way.
The next thing you might consider is using at least 2' (~600mm) or more of the space in front of the rear wall for some serious treatment. Small corner traps and relatively thin broadband panels will struggle to do much good here, you need deep treatment, or thinner calculated membranes with broadband treatment in front of them. To make things simple, I would just line the entire wall with 50-100mm insulation, then put about 16-20 Wideband angled absorbers in front of that.
You could shift both doors up slightly more towards the speakers, and have the hinges on the opposite side to where they are now, which, even though won't make the opening physically any bigger, somehow seems to give the illusion of being bigger opening that way.
The next thing you might consider is using at least 2' (~600mm) or more of the space in front of the rear wall for some serious treatment. Small corner traps and relatively thin broadband panels will struggle to do much good here, you need deep treatment, or thinner calculated membranes with broadband treatment in front of them. To make things simple, I would just line the entire wall with 50-100mm insulation, then put about 16-20 Wideband angled absorbers in front of that.
Moving the doors towards the speakers would make them hit the desk when opening, but I could cut the rear desk corners, which looks like a feasible solution as I probably won't use that desk area anyway, and it would provide a longer uninterrupted wall space on both sides of the room. I guess when the plan is laid out in the real building I will make some simulation with different desk shapes and door positions and choose the optimum one.
But I'd still keep the hinges to that side because otherwise I'd have to shut the door behind me to be able to enter the room, and I know I would hate this, especially when needing to go upstairs and downstairs often.
On the topic of the back wall, the back wall itself (as all the other room walls) would be of the staggered stud type and filled with about 100 mm insulation: would this be enough or are you suggesting an additional 100 mm on top of those?
When you talk about wideband angled absorbers are you referring to something like this?
You could shift both doors up slightly more towards the speakers, and have the hinges on the opposite side to where they are now, which, even though won't make the opening physically any bigger, somehow seems to give the illusion of being bigger opening that way.
The next thing you might consider is using at least 2' (~600mm) or more of the space in front of the rear wall for some serious treatment. Small corner traps and relatively thin broadband panels will struggle to do much good here, you need deep treatment, or thinner calculated membranes with broadband treatment in front of them. To make things simple, I would just line the entire wall with 50-100mm insulation, then put about 16-20 Wideband angled absorbers in front of that.
Moving the doors towards the speakers would make them hit the desk when opening, but I could cut the rear desk corners, which looks like a feasible solution as I probably won't use that desk area anyway, and it would provide a longer uninterrupted wall space on both sides of the room. I guess when the plan is laid out in the real building I will make some simulation with different desk shapes and door positions and choose the optimum one.
But I'd still keep the hinges to that side because otherwise I'd have to shut the door behind me to be able to enter the room, and I know I would hate this, especially when needing to go upstairs and downstairs often.
On the topic of the back wall, the back wall itself (as all the other room walls) would be of the staggered stud type and filled with about 100 mm insulation: would this be enough or are you suggesting an additional 100 mm on top of those?
When you talk about wideband angled absorbers are you referring to something like this?
No that's a diffuser and not what I mean by the Wideband absorbers. I was referring to the hanging panels which I mentioned in my previous reply to you with the link to the paper on them. You would have insulation inside the staggered stud wall, yes, but you need some treatment without drywall in front. 600mm would be my min recommendation, but instead of a solid chunk of insulation I would use the hanging panels I mentioned.
I understand the ergonomics of opening the doors the other way may be a pain for you, but, If you opened up the doors out the other way then they would actually miss the desk quite easily, I have drawn out what I meant for you but am having trouble uploading files on this site today for some reason...anyone else having that issue?
Anyway, send me a message on here and I'll e-mail it over to you.
, and the new door position eats about 1 meter of contiguous wall space on the south wall where I was planning to place a low storage and rack cabinet, but considering I won't be using the corner closet often I can always put a wheeled cabinet in front of the closet door and move it out of the way when needed.