John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Thank you both for your feedback. I really suck at the designing part and have gone back and forth 100 times (no exaggeration) on various different configurations. I think I'm almost back to where I was at the beginning taking into account Johnnie's suggestion to rotate the CR 90 degrees and also having looked very closely at, and incorporating room ratios. I tried to use Louden and Sepmeyer but given my available ceiling height it didn't really yield anything. I then read through this article from Salford University and by creating a quick spreadsheet that calculates room dimensions based on the ratios and ceiling height was able to find one from their 50 cubic metre selections, namely 1:1.58:1.89

So here is the latest floor plan (still not much more than a sketch) I am considering. As you can see I have gone back to the idea of rectangular rooms and would add treatment wherever necessary. I just can't seem to find a working design otherwise - but that's likely just my poor design skills. Still, this does at least seem to work functionally so perhaps it will work acoustically also?

So my main questions at this point are as follows:

1) Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all.

2) In the small drum room / booth I would really like to do sliding glass doors or some kind of glass wall to make this room feel like an extension of the main room. I'm not so worried about isolation here - although I do of course want to keep as much drums out of the main room vocal mics as possible, but rather my question and concern is on the acoustic properties inside this room for recording drums. If one wall is mainly glass, and especially if the other wall will be containing a window - is there not a pretty high probability that the drums will not record well in this room?

Why so much glass you may be wondering. Well a large part of what I do these days is live video performances. I have PTZ camera's located in each room and stream bands playing live (check out www.youtube.com/recordingstudiolive for an idea on what I was doing at the old space). Hence I'd really like to keep these two rooms as connected as possible.

3) Is my Control Room going to be too small to sound decent? I have read that they should ideally be 1500 cubic feet minimum and that there's even an ideal 11ft ceiling height. I'm quite a bit off on both - approx. 1150sq ft and 88 - 92" or so by the time I've framed the new ceiling (after demo I'm measuring 92" from slab to joist).

I think that's about it for the questions. I'm pleased to say that unlike the last house I've only uncovered one nasty surprise behind the walls here so far - a giant wasps nest that appears to be dormant. Fingers crossed I don't uncover anything else this time!

Reference my question 1:

Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all.

I'm guessing I need to angle the two walls at the front left and right of the control room. 6 degrees each side right?

Still no idea on the other two questions though and welcoming everyone's thoughts.

Wishing everyone a super weekend.

Andy.

was able to find one from their 50 cubic metre selections, namely 1:1.58:1.89

OK, but what are the actual dimensions? That matters too!

I just can't seem to find a working design otherwise - but that's likely just my poor design skills. Still, this does at least seem to work functionally so perhaps it will work acoustically also?

IT is inside the Bolt Area, so it should work. And plain rectangular rooms can certainly make good studios! Personally, I'm really partial to RFZ design, so most of the ones I do are based on that, but there's nothing wrong with plain old rectangular, if you treat it appropriately.

1) Is having a window on the left wall of my CR a no-no? I had the same window in my last studio but my walls were splayed there. Here I'm worried about first reflections. The window is angled down towards the floor if that helps at all.

If the glass is at your first reflection point, then yes, it is a problem. And angling it down might help a bit, but not as much as you imagine: reflections will just come from a different point on the glass. sound expands outwards in a 3D field, not just in 2D, so instead of thinking about the sound that came out exactly horizontal from your speaker and hit the glass at yoru ear height, change your point of view to 3D and think about the sound that came out from the speaker going in the same direction but heading slightly upwards: that will now strike the glass a bit higher than your head, and be reflected right back at your ears...

That's why splaying your walls is a good way of creating an RFZ. Or if you want a rectangular room, then you must treat the first reflection points with thick absorption. That's a problem if your window is where the treatment has to go...

2) In the small drum room / booth I would really like to do sliding glass doors or some kind of glass wall to make this room feel like an extension of the main room. I'm not so worried about isolation here - although I do of course want to keep as much drums out of the main room vocal mics as possible, but rather my question and concern is on the acoustic properties inside this room for recording drums. If one wall is mainly glass, and especially if the other wall will be containing a window - is there not a pretty high probability that the drums will not record well in this room?

There should be no problem with that. Most drum kits sound good when recorded in a slightly bright room, so as long as you have a reasonable amount of absorption on the ceiling and other walls, and maybe some diffusion too, you should be OK.

3) Is my Control Room going to be too small to sound decent? I have read that they should ideally be 1500 cubic feet minimum and that there's even an ideal 11ft ceiling height. I'm quite a bit off on both - approx. 1150sq ft and 88 - 92" or so by the time I've framed the new ceiling (after demo I'm measuring 92" from slab to joist).

I just wrote a reply to another post, asking more or less the same thing, so I', just copying and pasting that here:

"That depends on what you want to do, and far how you want to go! For example, for optimum critical listening room, the specs from EBU, call for a floor area of not less than 40m2 for a reference room, and 30m2 for a high quality control room. That's about 430 square feet and 320 square feet, respectively. On the other hand ITU specs call for "20 - 60 m2" for a stereo room, and "30 - 70 m2" for a multi-channel room (5.1, 7.1, etc.). 20m2 is about 215 square feet.

On the other-other hand, John has built highly successful studios inside a shipping container, and many people here on the forum have built great studios in small spaces.

So, if you are aiming for a world-class studio that meets international specs, then you need a floor area of about 250 square feet or more for your control room, and about 5 times that for your live room, for a total of about 1500 ft2 or so. Or if you don't need to go to that level, then you can do a great studio in less than that."

The specs don't actually mention height, and yes about 1400 cubic feet is a good total volume, so you can work it back from there: if you have "standard" 8 foot ceilings then, then about 175 square feet of floor space would give you that, so a room roughly 17' x 10' would be good. But as I said above, John and others have done fantastic things in much smaller spaces. I mentioned on another thread that I did a design for a guy in Canada last year on about 400 square feet of space, and we managed to fit in FOUR rooms: CR, LR, vocal booth, live room. So you can get good studios in small spaces.

I'm guessing I need to angle the two walls at the front left and right of the control room. 6 degrees each side right?

6° will get rid of flutter echo, but isn't enough to deal with first reflections. There's no minimum angle or "one size fits all" here: you have to ray trace, either in SketchUp or on paper, with ruler and protractor, to make sure that your reflections are missing your head by a wide margin.

- Stuart -

Hi Stuart,

Thanks so much for answering my questions. I'm very relieved to hear about the drum room sound and CR size. You'll be pleased (or perhaps concerned) to hear that I have a copy of MHOA on the way, although it will have to take a back seat to Sketchup8 for Dummies which I am currently loving - wish I'd picked that up a month ago! I'm not sure if MHOA will be too much for me but we'll see.

So I've been spending the last week or so doing more research, reading through as many build threads as I can, and playing with the room ratios some more. To answer your question about the actual dimensions of the CR - with the orientation as shown in the jpg above I'm hoping I can get a ceiling height of 92" (current slab to joist height is 95" and I plan to frame my ceiling on top of the newly framed walls). At 92" I think I could even do Louden's first ratio of 1:1.4:1.9 which for my CR would be 7'8h x 10'8w 14'7l. edit: actually this won't work, and neither will 1:1.58:1.89 - I only have an available room length of 14'10; and that's before framing the new inside walls! Back to the drawing board again for me


Having said all that, given everything I've been reading and considering your comments I can't help but think I need consider the following priorities:

• Orient the CR so that I can put the window in the front wall between the speakers (so that I don't end up with glass in my first reflection zone).
• RFZ - to increase the acoustic potential of the room
• Increase the CR size if possible also to increase the acoustic potential of the room

I also need to look more closely at the thought of soffit mounting my HR824's - something I hadn't really given much thought to previously - but your arguments for doing so in other threads is quite compelling.

In the future I hope to add a walk-out / load-in door in the area currently marked as the lounge (can't afford to do it now as it would eat up most of my budget for the studio) and if ever this became a commercial operation I would need to make that the wheel chair access from outside - so I'm keeping this in consideration for my plans too.

So what do you think? Would you go with something like I pictured above but perhaps add some splay? Or does your experienced eye see an improved configuration that my untrained eye just can't see? I feel like I have a lot of space to play with all told - I'm just struggling to find the right location and orientation for each room.

I finally got around to calculating my spend from my last "rotten basement" build and will be posting the breakdown in my old build thread for others to use. It came to a little over $30k given some of the unexpected issues I encountered. The interesting thing I noticed though was that the most affordable part of the project was the drywall install as my best friend's Dad's company did it for me and they were only charging $20ph plus materials at cost. Given that they could have done the framing for me too if I had gone with steel framing - I am now seriously considering doing steel framing for this build and having them do it. By comparison the guys that I had come in to do the wood framing were charging $49ph. From what I've read the only thing I'd have to frame with wood would be around the window right?

Next on my list of topics to research will be Ray-Tracing, but for tonight I'm going to get back to Sketchup for Dummies. In other exciting news I have a structural engineer coming over tomorrow to look at my ceiling joist load calculations, and to confirm if I can take out the perimeter framing. I'm hoping I've done enough work for him that his fee won't eat up a tenth of my budget! Fingers crossed!

Thanks as always for your generosity of time, insight and support, it's very much appreciated!

Andy

So I've been hard at work learning Sketchup and boy what a difference a little reading makes - I feel so much more comfortable with it now - thank you Sketchup for Dummies. Now I need to read "Designing for Dummies"!

I'm attaching my first decent attempt at a Sketchup. This is how my basement is currently configured - what I'm calling my baseline floorplan. I purged the file but it was still too large to upload here so you can download it from here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/998 ... urged2.skp

So what do you think? Would you go with something like I pictured above but perhaps add some splay? Or does your experienced eye see an improved configuration that my untrained eye just can't see? I feel like I have a lot of space to play with all told - I'm just struggling to find the right location and orientation for each room.

Anyone have any thoughts on the above? Now that I've sharpened my Sketchup skills my next one will be the new floorplan.

Many thanks and hope everyone is enjoying the weekend!

Andy

I tried to open your SketchUp file, but it says it was created with a different version! I don't want to upgrade just yet, as I'm in the middle of a big project, and last time I upgraded I ran into unexpected issues... I should be done in about a week or so, so I'll upgrade then, and give it another shot. Sorry!


- Stuart -

No worries Stuart - I totally understand. I've been there with studio software so many times!

I've actually been working an numerous different configurations in Sketchup using the baseline file and inserting various different control rooms based on ratios that work with my ceiling height, seeing if I can make it work given ductwork location Etc. and then examining the room predictions to see how it might sound. Let me post some of that and see what you think Stuart - and of course anyone else who might like to share some feedback.

Btw, structural engineer came out last week. I gave him everything he needed to get the calculations for adding dead load to the floor above and after a few days we met up for coffee and he handed over his calculations. He had already confirmed on the phone earlier that even three layers could be beefed up (I was enquiring about 2). After coffee I took a close look at his numbers and to my amazement he had calculated it all with joists based on 12" centers where I had expressly mentioned to him on-site that my major concern was under the kitchen where the spacing changes to 19.2" centers and there's 8000lbs of granite countertops, kitchen cabinets, a fridge etc. Etc. His response "oh you wanted me to do that too?"

andy,

congrats on the baby (again!). i'll be watching this thread closely, I'm trying to come up with some ideas for a new studio as well, also round #2 for me... It was nice to hear that the exact sqft of floor space is somewhat flexible.

good luck with sketchup... i know everyone here uses it, and I used it for my first studio build, but I bought ($100), Home Designer a couple years ago to play with some floor plan ideas, but I might just upgrade to the Pro version next week... it's a lot faster and easier to use than sketchup (believe it or not)... since it can draw in the walls, framing, etc for you... If I have time next week, I'll try and draw up your plan and see what happens...

kevin

Hey Kevin! It's great to see a familiar face around here. I was wondering what had happened to many of the friends made during the last build.

I'm excited to learn more about your next build. Did you move? Are you still in Morgantown? Our new place is quite a bit closer to WV - perhaps an hour or less from the border now.

I'm intrigued to learn more about Home Designer and would love to see what you can do. Can you import files to get a head start. Do let me know if you need me to send an export in a particular format. I for one really struggled at first with Sketchup - it's such a paradigm shift from any software I've used before, not to mention working in 3d. But I've dedicated the past few weeks to learning it and have found Sketchup for Dummies to be a superb way to learn. I actually feel pretty confident with it now and am hoping that my designing skills can catch up to a similar level. I've been trying out various different configurations but have yet to find something I really like. I'll post something later to show my best plan yet to give you an idea. There is a Ruby plugin for sketchup that automates building framing detail for walls, ceilings and floors, but I've only just started playing with that. For now I'm still at the stage where I'm testing room shapes and sizes in my available space based on known room ratios. I'd been making great progress until this big snow storm this week. Did you guys get hit hard too?

All the best and great to see you back again - so happy to be sharing the journey with a familiar friend.

Andy.

"ruby console to automate..." you mean programming! argh! i'm fairly technical, but still can't handle programming tasks...

so to give you a sample of what I was doing with home designer... I attached a pdf of a studio plan i'ev been toying with. now, there's good and bad to this program... first, it costs money... second, it's not very compatible with many other applications... so i'll have to check on the import/export functions... that being said, i currently have the cheapest version, and i have exported the file out to cad files. another issue is that i can't currently control the actual wall layers, i have to use what they give me... but thats only restricted to this version... hence me looking at the Pro version, where you can control that... one major positive is that it can give you a fairly accurate materials list! and it does everything in both 2D and 3D, but it's really easy to place things in either way...

yes, still in morgantown. I'm looking at building a new house (and studio) from scratch this year. I am still in the planning stage and trying to choose a plan that will suite my needs and that I can afford.

I haven't been up to Wisp yet this year, but i'm hoping to get up to do some skiing... I also have good friends in cumberland, md, so maybe we could get together over a beer some time? i should have time later this weekend to draw up your plans to see what you think...

i'll have to dig through some pictures to post on my old construction posts...
cheers!
kevin

Hey Kevin - actually the Ruby Housebuilder plugin does it all for you - you just tell it whether you want 16oc or 24"oc, the plate height, header height, lumber size, and how many top / bottom plates and it builds it all for you.

Your plans look really good - are these some you've been working on for the new house?

Do let me know anytime you're heading out this way - would be great to meet up for a beer and a chat.

All the best,

Andy

Well I finally have a plan to show you all and would really welcome your constructive criticism. I've tried all manner of orientations and approaches - splayed walls, non-splayed, Louden, Sepmeyer, CR at the North, CR at the south etc etc. But so far this seems to be the one that achieves the following:

• Maximum Use of Space
• Ability to add future walk out to north wall
• Access to Fireplace Ashbox on south wall
• Largest possible Control Room (>1500 cubic feet)
• Acceptable Room Ratio's as a starting point
• Line of sight and good visibility for video feed

The Control Room Ratio is Sepmeyer 3 - 1:1.6:2.33 which for my space equates to 7'6:12'0:17'5.7

I have yet to add any treatment, or framing in the plan - this is really just to get an idea on flow and whether the configuration would work. A couple of know issues I should point out - firstly the Control Room window location. I need to do some reading up on Ray Tracing so that I can see where my first reflections will be so that I can figure out placement of this window. I had considered rotating the desk 90 degress (i.e. facing the CR window) which would make sense from a line of sight point of view and would help with the first reflections, but from what I've read one should usually set up using the longest dimension of the room to give distance for the bass frequencies.

The other second known issue is one that I enter into consciously - the patio door between the two live rooms. I don't expect this to give huge isolation - just enough to be able to have a live drummer in one room and a vocalist in the other without a tremendous amount of bleed - something that was a real issue in my last one-room studio.

So I think that's about all for now - I am posting some JPEG's for Stuart since he doesn't have the latest Sketchup currently, and there's also a link to the skp file for anyone that wants to poke around in more detail or have a play around.

Here's the .skp file - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/998 ... Soffit.skp JPEG's are below.

Let me be quite clear here - I am no designer, and I like to think I have very little ego so please don't worry that your feedback will offend. I am posting this in the hopes that some of you will have some constructive feedback or suggestions for improvement - I know from doing this once before that I can't do this alone. Even if you're not an "expert" please feel free to jump in with anything you notice. After all - we are all learning together and as with my previous build thread I hope that this next build thread will help others out in future builds.

Many thanks - and hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful weekend.

Andy

Andy,

I think I understand your layout, why you have chosen the specific order for the rooms. I'll take a closer look, but one comment off the top of my head... If you are not highly concerned about absolute isolation between rooms, then I'd be tempted to move your control room door forward about 3ft. I would get rid of the airlock and use it for a closet storage, or just add it to the live room... my reasoning would be, by putting a door in the corner, you remove the ability to put in a super chunk low end absorber, or at least on both sides of the cr... and the whole symmetry might mean you cant do the other corner either... however, since the teh room is so long in general, if you were concerned about isolation of the CR and live room, it isn't that much room to build a true double wall, and then use a solid double door. I was very pleased with teh double wall assembly i did in my past studio, and even used some standard lowes full light exterior doors (a pair), and the isolation was good enough for my purposes. since the door is behind the mix position, you could prob get away with just a solid core steel exterior door (well two)...

I haven't quite gotten around to doing your layout... i've been selfishly working on a new design for my house... I started from scracth basically... but I should be able to get something soon, and not sure if it would be much different than what you have already done...

kevin

Yep that's a really good point you raise about bass trapping both corners. The reason I had the sound lock was to enclose the structural support that you can see there behind the second door. I forgot to list that in my list of design considerations but it was definitely a key contingency. It looks like I could move the door and still enclose the pillar though - the only drawback would be that the door would swing into the drum room and take up some space. I will give it some more thought. Thanks so much for thinking of that - it's exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for!

Talk with you soon,

Andy

A couple of curve balls for ya:

1) Have you considered putting the control room in the middle, with the drum booth on one side, and the guitar booth on the other?

2) Have you considered a "corner control room" layout?



- Stuart -