John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

(see previous post for the design of the parts )

A now for the whole thing assembled:

Various views:
With clouds: I was thinking of building two big clouds in order to add some more absortion to the room, but to be honest this is the part where i am most clueless of the amount needed.

Again thank you for any advice you may give me. If this layout/composition is acceptable i will start thinking on designing the mixing desk, and doing the electrical blueprints for the room.

Best
Pedro

Just a quick update!
I have just decided on a date to start contructing all this.. 23/04/2016. I hope to have all trimmed out until then:)

For the air circulation i will mimic the designs i have seen here in the forum, so that should be easy.
I just need some confirmation about the design i made so that i can start creating some material budgets and start ordering stuff

Again thanks for all the help, and specially thank you Stuart for putting up with all my moronic questions ( ) and still have pacience to answer from time to time
Best to all
Pedro

Hi all, just one more update..
I'm gonna have to build a gypsum ceiling to lower the room height to 2.50mts (it is 2.84m right now) due to a column that exists in the ceiling.
It makes more sense, and makes my life easier in a sense that i will just have to build a smaller cloud in the front to channel the reflexions to the rear bass traps. Also by doing that i get a better room ratio (5mx3.7mx2.5m).

Anyone has any comment regarding all the sketchup pics i posted?

I was thinking of building two big clouds in order to add some more absortion to the room, but to be honest this is the part where i am most clueless of the amount needed.

Clouds can do several things at once. Then CAN add absorption, if you need it, but if you make them hard-backed then the also serve to redirect first reflections away from your head, AND they can help to break up vertical modes, to a certain extent.

The way to predict how much absorption you need is to calculate what the ideal decay time is for your room, then calculate how many sabins of absorption you need to get tha

t, then figure out if you have enough square feet of suitable absorption to accomplish it.

i will start thinking on designing the mixing desk,

The desk can be a big problem, since it is a large massive object with flat surfaces. It can cause several acoustic issues, most of which happen in the mid range. try to make it as small as possible, and as "open" as possible, and as low as possible. Try to angle the surfaces such that they minimize acoustic reflections. Make it very solid and heavy, so that it cannot resonate. etc.

For the air circulation i will mimic the designs i have seen here in the forum, so that should be easy.

Don't count on it! Sometimes it take me as long to design the HVAC system for a studio, as it does to design everything else!!! It's not as simple as it looks.

a better room ratio (5mx3.7mx2.5m).

That CANNOT be a good room ratio! 5m long by 2.5m high means it is exactly twice as long as it is high. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad... You can NEVER have two dimensions that are directly related to each other like that...


- Stuart -

Hi Stuart,

Was counting on you replying to the link i sent over the PM, since it was the new topic i created that had less clutter but i am happy anyways for an answer

Soundman2020 wrote:

I was thinking of building two big clouds in order to add some more absortion to the room, but to be honest this is the part where i am most clueless of the amount needed.

Clouds can do several things at once. Then CAN add absorption, if you need it, but if you make them hard-backed then the also serve to redirect first reflections away from your head, AND they can help to break up vertical modes, to a certain extent.

The way to predict how much absorption you need is to calculate what the ideal decay time is for your room, then calculate how many sabins of absorption you need to get tha

t, then figure out if you have enough square feet of suitable absorption to accomplish it.

I will first build the whole thing, measure it, and then try and understand if more aborstion is needed. If not i will just make it full reflective. Does that sound good?

Soundman2020 wrote:

i will start thinking on designing the mixing desk,

The desk can be a big problem, since it is a large massive object with flat surfaces. It can cause several acoustic issues, most of which happen in the mid range. try to make it as small as possible, and as "open" as possible, and as low as possible. Try to angle the surfaces such that they minimize acoustic reflections. Make it very solid and heavy, so that it cannot resonate. etc.

I was thinking on building something very similar to this (minus speaker stands)
https://www.argosyconsole.com/html_inte ... _halo.html
I will try and make the surface a bit angled to throw reflexions to the back (will ray trace that later before building) Thanks for the headsup!!

Soundman2020 wrote:

For the air circulation i will mimic the designs i have seen here in the forum, so that should be easy.

Don't count on it! Sometimes it take me as long to design the HVAC system for a studio, as it does to design everything else!!! It's not as simple as it looks.

a better room ratio (5mx3.7mx2.5m).

That CANNOT be a good room ratio! 5m long by 2.5m high means it is exactly twice as long as it is high. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad... You can NEVER have two dimensions that are directly related to each other like that...

- Stuart -

Regarding this last two topics.. well tough luck for me then.. wish you had answered sooner
I already built the ceiling and the ventilation boxes.. all is in place already.
However the actual room length (after correcting my measurements) is 4.9m and not 5. Also the actual ceiling heigh is 2.8m, i just put a thin layer of plaster board and filled part of the space with rockwhool.. So if my theory is correct the ceiling will be one big bass trap (which can possibly be a bad thing), but the modes on the bass frequency will obey the measurements of 4.9mx3.7mx2.8m (original room size,so no more 2.5x2 = 5). As for the rest of the frequencies, they will be reflected by the plaster ceiling, but they will also be reflected by the soffits, and absorbed by the backwall, so effectively the room size does not apply since for those frenquencies the room is not square anymore. The only parallel surfaces will be the side walls (3.7) and the ceiling and floor (2.5m).
So.. am i on to something in my theories, or just being too assumptuous?