Acoustic advices requested

[stevegalante]

Hello, this is my room.

Main features:

- tracking and mixing room (no iso booth);
- as you can see dimensions are in centimeters;
- height is 220 cm. ;
- the 'console' is a ArgosyConsole Series 90 with 16 faders ProControl;
- there's an external (not shown) machine room with computers and interfaces;
- the 'storage' is mainly used for guitars;
- the disposition of the various elements can be modified;
- the room is in a basement, and there's a little window on the console side;
- the 'rack' is a 2 bays x 14 units that will be used for outboard gear, its height is about 90 centimeters; for various reasons it's unpractical to put the keyboard on top of it;
- the 'keyboard' is a 88 keys master keyboard and it will have a computer keyboard and an LCD monitor on it, and maybe a couple of expanders in a small rack;
- the 'piano' is a 180 cm 1/2 coda;
- the floor is in laminate;
- there's a small insulation treatment that I found already set in this room and that at the moment it is not possible to change. From what I can see, on the walls, from inside to outside, we have plaster (1 cm thick), then rockwool panels (4 cm thick more or less) then the original wall, while on the ceiling we have those beautiful (!!!) office white plaster (I think) panels, then 10 cm. of air, then 2 layers of some dark green material 2 cm thick each and then the original ceiling. There's no underlying floor under the laminate but there will be a light rug in the center of the room;
- the 'entrance door' is two wood doors 5 cm. thick each with a 6 cm iar in between;
- luckily there's no need of further insulation (soundproofing);
- monitoring is via a pair of KRK E7;
- the file attached is a jpg conversion of a sketchup file, just in case someone needs the 'original';

Questions:

- would anybody suggest a better disposition of the studio elements (for example, the rack in front of the console, even if it would eat a lot of living space...) ?
- what kind of basic acoustic treatment will this room need ? I think I'll need some basstraps, but if some of you could suggest some other presumably useful acoustic corrective elements (and their positioning) that would be great...

[Ethan Winer]

Steve,

> would anybody suggest a better disposition of the studio elements <

Actually, that looks pretty good as it is. Usually the rack would be closer to you for convenience, but it's better where it is than in one of the front corners because those corners are where bass traps need to go.

> what kind of basic acoustic treatment will this room need? <

A complete answer requires far more than will fit into a single reply here. The short version is:

* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps in as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.

* Some additional amount of mid/high absorption on any large areas of bare parallel surfaces, such as opposing walls or the ceiling if the floor is reflective.

--Ethan

[knightfly]

Steve, your pic was 'way too wide - I hope you can read the top post again for anything else you may have missed; all I needed to do to get yours down to requested size was eliminate all the blank space on the right.

Welcome to the board... STeve