John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Have you considered using a flat hanging cloud with a Louvered back? Each of the louvered cuts can be a different angle much as you will do with the larger individual panels. Such a design could concieveably save you a bit of headroom

Cool idea! A lot of calculations involved, but I think it would be pretty good.

Brian, is this what you had in mind?

Looks kind of like the CID concept?

- Stuart -

Yes pretty much.

Put in the context of a single cloud, the lower portion could be filled with absorption as need be, with a cloth covering. Suspended as a cloud the louvres would not even be seen.

I kind of like how they look.

Have you spent any time with ray tracing, as Mr. Walker and his staff did, in order to approximate what you can expect from this design as it is being superimposed over your build?

Seems to me there are a lot of things that can go wrong if the concept is not being fully adhered to. Like you may throw the reflections, from where every you are and from where ever these rays are coming from, back into your face and not around you as is the goal of this CID project.

I dunno, I would stick with tried and true, unless I had a real team with real ray tracing ability and a whole lot of time to ponder this concept.

Even the room dimensions would need to be approximated on your side, to simply "copy and paste" this concept, a ten foot tall ceiling,16 feet wide, etc., etc.

Just something I'm thinking about as you may have already.

Still, good luck with your work,

He Brien,

I came up with the angles for the ceiling by ray tracing and by including the ray and a 15 degree cone of error (even though these would be low frequency and have no effect on imaging or just go through the surface and be absorbed and extremely high frequency because of bumps in the drywall which we can't hear). It is pretty easy to do in sketchup.

Here is a simple example with color. You can see the lines coming straight out of the reflective surface, those are a reference angle to make sure the angle of incidence matches the angle of reflection.



All you do is take a line from the source (if you want to be very accurate, multiple lines because a speaker isn't a point source) to the base of the 90 degree reference line. Use the protractor tool to find the angle between the two, then match it on the way out. Go to the other end of the surface and do the same then you have the cone of reflection.

I dunno, I would stick with tried and true, unless I had a real team with real ray tracing ability and a whole lot of time to ponder this concept.

What would be the fun in that

The tried and true with all of the research is not done for someone with an 8' ceiling and and 1800 cu. ft. control room. We have to be creative in how to make it work.

The ceiling angles I came up with in this manner. The wall angles were stolen from the BBC Document. They have dimensions. I just created the ratios and applied them to my room so it matches exactly just on about a 10% smaller scale.

Eric

On the first plan you show on this thread, you have rather large sawtooth surfaces about 1/3 way back in the room, and I still don't see how they fit into a CID design. Are they just for the near-fields on the desk, or are they for the mains, way up front? I didn't ray-trace those, but just eye-balling it, the angles don't seem to add up... Or was that just an early concept, that has now been updated more precisely?

- Stuart -

Don't look at the control room on the first plan. I hadn't done the measurements yet, look at the control room plan later in the thread. The second one was done using ratios that I created from the BBC White paper.

This one.



Tracing the rays, there is a lot of room for error (ie 15%)

OK, that makes more sense! That first one was rather strange...

- Stuart -

"The tried and true with all of the research is not done for someone with an 8' ceiling and and 1800 cu. ft. control room. "

Yes sir it exists...you spend too much time thinking and not doing.


Exotic may be the quest, but it is not specifically the answer to you problem.

Here @ John Sayers...look at what he does...follow that...and make it easy on yourself....the path has been paved for you.

I actually don't see that what I am doing is that exotic. The goals of control room as I see it based upon reading from Everest, Newell, Sayers, the BBC and 10 years of discussing various studio design are:

1. Achieve room dimensions with an evenly spread modal distribution and an absolute minimum of 1500 cu. ft. with 2500 cu. ft. for even modal distribution (even though Newell believes this is unnecessary with proper trapping).

2. Create a room with lateral symmetry.

3. Create a mix position with free from early reflections.

4. Create a room with with a balanced rt60 between .3s-.4s.

What other goals are there in control room design?

There have been a variety of ways to achieve these goals. Why, because they have all worked at one time or another.
I am not interested in the status quo. I didn't achieve the top of my profession by accepting the status quo.

I have been told that you can't DIY accurate studio monitors, I have (I just hope the Big Dogs $$$ that I have designed will perform as well as the nearfield and midfield speakers that I have built).

Besides, if it doesn't work, I have a room with good dimensions that I can go back and just do standard acoustic treatment to

"What other goals are there in control room design?"


Make it easy on the help, easy on the designer and easy on the room.


We have a saying where I live...do not out think the room...

Reading other posts have me thinking.

I have a question about the wall between my two rooms. The framing in both rooms is solidly attached to the floor and ceiling (I am aware of the comprimise here, but it was necessary) all of the drywall is being hung on RC-1. I was planning a double wall between the two rooms but a couple of posts I have read recently have led me to believe that using RC was unnecessary, or that a double wall was unnecessary.

I think the RC is necessary because the framing is not de-coupled, but I also think the double wall is necessary to put the windows in. But then the windows are not de coupled from the framing. I can't remember who it was that said that sometimes this was just a necessary comprimise for structural integrity.