John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Also just wanted to express my admiration - amazing room, would love to hear it!

Massive congratulations to you both (albeit very belated )

This is inspiring...

This is impressive!

Congrats!

gabrielaudio wrote:This is impressive!

Congrats!

Thanks, Gabriel, and welcome to the forum!

I do plan to update this thread with the final graphs, which are even better, as soon as I have some time. I'm hoping Rod will also update with some new photos!

If you are ever in that part of the world, be sure to give Rod a call, and ask if you can drop in. I'm sure he'd love to give you a tour!


- Stuart -

Looks amazing!

Any chance you guys would be willing to share the MDAT? I'm curious to dive into it a bit, specifically I'd love to see/play with sliced ETCs or the spectrogram for what the first ~20ms looks like through the mids and highs. I'm always interested in what people are able to achieve there in a 'practical' scenario with a desk etc.

Also I was kicking around on the website (not too many studios there in Lone Jack), out of curiousity were some of the rooms pre-existing? The demensions on the website seem like unusual dimensions (16x17x8, 12x14x12, etc) for a purpose built studio. Not trying to be critical at all, just curious about the philosophy and the project overall.

Also I was kicking around on the website (not too many studios there in Lone Jack), out of curiousity were some of the rooms pre-existing? The demensions on the website seem like unusual dimensions (16x17x8, 12x14x12, etc) for a purpose built studio. Not trying to be critical at all, just curious about the philosophy and the project overall.

I'm not sure how the rooms ended up at those dimensions. When I came on board the project, all of the rooms were already fully built, with the walls all in place and not able to be moved. I did the best I could with what I was given. I probably would have arranged the rooms differently, with different dimensions, if I would have been called in from the absolute beginning, but the final outcome is certainly pretty darn good, I think, regardless of the room dimensions! I honestly don't think that it could have been substantially better with different dimensions. The treatment deals with that rather well, I reckon.

I'm a bit hesitant to publish the actual raw MDAT files, firstly because they are not mine: they really belong to the studio owner, who has not authorized me to do that (although he doesn't mind at all showing off the graphs of what he achieved in his room!), and secondly because of the numerous incorrect ways of setting the parameters for creating graphs and viewing the data in REW. I'm not questioning that you know how to set them correctly, Ryan, but most people don't!

However, I have been meaning to update this thread with the final data for a while now, and I've never been able to get around to it. But now you have prompted me to go through the data files and do a final set of graphs, showing how things ended up after we completely finished tweaking everything as far as it would go.

So here's how the room acoustics actually ended up: the way it is today. The main difference you'll see in the graphs is that, instead of being ruler flat, we "tilted" the response a bit. We wanted to "tilt" things a little like that, slightly enhancing the bass, to match the tried-and-trusted B&K curve, from many years back. The B&K curve favors the low end with a slight rise, and gently rolls off the high end, which most engineers find to be the best environment for mixing accurately. So we did that, and we also tweaked a few other things, as you can see in these final graphs.

First, the final frequency response graph:
I'm putting that one first, since most people erroneously think that it's the most important indicator of the "quality" of a room (it isn't). The graph above is smoothed using a "psycho acoustic" filter, to closely emulate how a normal person actually perceives the sound.

For people who don't agree that psych-acoustic smoothing is the most accurate way of representing frequency response data, and prefer the older "standard" of one-third octave smoothing, here's how the same data looks with 1/3 octave smoothing:
And for purist that think one third octave smoothing goes too far and can hide details, here's the same data with 50% less smoothing: 1/6 octave.
And for those freaky perfectionists who are really, really, beyond all hope, there's even a graph of the frequency response smoothed even less, to another 50% lower than above, at 1/12 octave:
Still pretty darn impressive, even at this high resolution.

Note that all of the above graphs show the entire audible spectrum and beyond: form 18Hz to 22 kHz. The normal hearing range for most humans (young ones, with undamaged hearing) is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. I ran all the tests from 10% lower than the lowest limit, to 10% higher than the highest limit, to ensure that we got more than the complete picture. And even at those extremes (which actually reach the limits of the test gear we were using), things are clean and sharp.

For those who are questioning the slight "roughness" in the mid range of many of these graphs, at around 500 Hz, that's due to the presence of the console and desk, and there's not much that can be done about that. (We did a couple of tests with the mic forward of the console, and that roughness disappears). But it's rather low level, and not audible anyway, so it's not really relevant.




OK, so the above is frequency domain data. Now for the time-domain stuff, which is actually more important than the pure frequency response.

Waterfall for the low end of the spectrum, from 18 Hz to 500 Hz, completely raw data (smoothed at the absolute minimum level of 1/48 octave, which is basicallyu no smoothing at all!):
Most experts recommend only looking at the data up to 200 Hz, since that really defines the overall room sound, and above that it tends to get rougher anyway, but I'm showing all the way up to 500 Hz (more than an octave higher) to show just how smooth we managed to get the entire low end, even at this very high resolution, without smoothing! Not many rooms can boast that type of precision.


Here's the same data as above, smoothed to a more realistic 1/6 octave (much more like human hearing really perceives it):


Plus also smoothed to the "standard" level of 1/3 octave:


And in case you think there might be something hidden in the rest of the spectrum (above 500 Hz), here's the waterfall for the entire audible spectrum, 18 Hz to 22 kHz, smoothed to 1/6 octave (realistic perception) and also 1/3 octave ("standard").

Ahh, what the hell... just in case there's someone who actually thinks that even 1/6 is still too much smoothing, here's the entire waterfall, full spectrum (and more), 18 Hz to 22 kHz, unsmoothed (1/48 octave):

Enough of waterfalls already!

Of course, everyone wants to see the ubiquitous RT-60 graph, showing the actual decay decay times for each 1/3 octave band across the entire spectrum: Perhaps not a hugely useful graph, but many people expect to see that, to base their opinion on the smoothness of the decay times in adjacent frequency bands.


Next up, the spectrograms, completely unsmoothed. First just for the low end of the spectrum (always the most important, by far):
Then for the entire spectrum, also completely unsmoothed: Once again, those are for 18 Hz to 22 kHz. Beyond the audible spectrum at both ends. Hiding nothing, even at the extremes.


For more sophisticated folks who want the actual impulse response, here it is in the form of an ETC graph (Energy Time Curve), very lightly smoothed by just 0.1ms, to make it more readable: That's probably one of the most useful graphs, actually!

You can clearly see how there are no reflections at all above -25 dB, ever. (There's a true reflection free zone around the mix position, without any doubt! Mission accomplished.). You can also see that the level drops very fast to around -35 dB, where it stays constant for about 50 ms to provide some nice ambiance (reduces fatigue, makes it pleasant to mix in the room for long periods of time), then the level gradually declines smoothly all the way down to nothing. (Yes, the noise floor in that room really does allow measuring that amount of detail, down to -90 dB with REW).


And finally, some more esoteric graphs that are a bit harder to explain, but rather impressive for those who understand them: Excess group delay:

First, the full spectrum (smoothed 1/6 octave): And then just the low end: It's not easy to describe what group delay really is, in understandable terms, but you can think of it as showing how much each frequency has been delayed by the entire signal chain, by the time it gets to your ears. It's related to phase, of course. It's sort of showing you how faithfully the system gets the sound to your ears without changing the timing or phase relationship between the various parts of the signal.

And one more for the real connoisseur: minimum phase. If you don't know what that is, then google it, as its really hard to explain. If you do know what it is, then please note that it's pretty much flat across the entire spectrum (roughly 80 Hz to 15 kHz), except for the two extremes. The total rotation is from -180° at 30 Hz to about -480° at 20 kHz, so roughly 300° across the full spectrum, end to end. Not even one full cycle.
So that's it. That's the final outcome of this room design, construction, and tuning process. There's more on the Studio 3 website itself, if you are interested.

One final tidbit of info: Rod and I have never met, never spoken on the phone, and I have never even been to this studio! All of that you see was accomplished over the internet, remotely, through e-mail, photos, videos, SketchUp, and REW. I mention that, because some people who are looking for studio designers think that it is essential to have the designer on-site, "doing stuff" in person. It isn't necessary at all! I think that's abundantly clear from this project...

Hope that's useful, for everyone interested in how this exceptional control room actually turned out. Rod DeMoss (the studio owner) did a fantastic job of building this place, with excellent attention to detail, exactly the way I designed it, even when he thought I was certifiably crazy, or overdosed on caffeine, with some weird treatment device that I wanted him to build.... He does justice to my signature (see below)! There's not even the slightest hint of "that'll do" in his build.


Of course, the REAL test is to actually go there and record something, then mix it! Feel free to contact Rod and book some studio time with him. Hopefully, you'll be just as impressed in real life, as the graphs show.


- Stuart -

Wow, I am sold. That studio looks amazing, like studios should look... inviting and warm, and accurate, and professional, and starting from a set of dimensions and geometry that is or would lead most acoustical folks to tell you to run away from. Which says a lot about my years of lurking here and what I have seen, solutions that actually work, are sound, use math and all the principles and has forged a near DIY ethic into a realm that so many say is just beyond most folks comprehension.

Primarily, that studio is beautiful. And the intent behind it should be the model for all modern facilities, giving access to anyone, regardless of status or financial ability to pay for time.

Amazing work to the owners, Stuart and John for giving this platform to all of us to be inspired by in our temples of sound spaces we love!

Best,

David @
Revival

Thanks for the kind words, David. And welcome to the forum!

Yes, the original geometry was not very "acoustic friendly", but we did manage to tame it quiet well. Starting with a blank slate would have made it easier, for sure, but as you pointed out, even with the not-ideal geometry, with careful design and tweaking it is possible to get pretty darn good results. There's additional details of how we did it, on Rod's website. At his request, I wrote up a sort of "the making of" story of the design and construction of the studio, and he posted that on the website. You might find it interesting.

- Stuart -

Hey Stuart,

Yea, thanks for pointing that out, I just read that on his website... very telling of the connection as to why this place and you all came together. Rod’s whole facility which has even more over the top’ness frankly outside the studio, this is what is needed for artists today. Yes, maybe Blackbird’s mic closet is what impresses people. But, truth can be had in $500-$1000 microphones. Where you cannot attain truth is in a room that has had merely $500 of value tossed into via foam or bad advice.

In reading your write up, the final eq treatment applied to the neutral room is interesting. I guess most major rooms have this, and I admit that I believe still rooms do have to be both able to be used to hear absolute truth, as you say as harsh as that is to hear for the first time. But, also present something to clients that is exciting and hyped. If a room can throw a switch for that, that to me is where it’s at. But, eq treatment in control rooms is something I would like to understand more about... or at what point do you say, we are flat enough, or we can’t get any flatter without eq’ing the room now?

I enjoyed that write up though, for these are spiritual and divine creations, and given sound and music transcends without it ever really being able to be seen makes all the sense in the world.

Best,

David

I never thought I would have said this when I was studying in the university, but these graphs look so sexy... WOW, really...

Kudos to you, Stuart
And John, obviously

these graphs look so sexy... WOW, really...

Thanks! Very much appreciated! (And I think I probably wont tell my wife that somebody thinks my graphs are sexy... )

Kudos to you, Stuart
And John, obviously

Don't forget Rod DeMoss! He's the owner of Studio Three Productions. I just designed the place, based on inspiration from John's acoustic concepts and some of his his designs, but it's Rod who actually built it! Sometimes I'm sure he thought I was certifiably nuts, and I should have been locked up in a padded cell, with some of the convoluted stuff I designed for him to build, or things I asked him to do to the studio... But he did it anyway, with good humor, high precision (mostly... ) and great workmanship... with the results that you see. It's only because he followed the designs so carefully that we got the results we did. He deserves a very large chunk of the credit, too!

Check out Rod's web site at the link. There's much more to the studio than he posted here. It's a real oasis out in the beautiful countryside, for taking a break away from it all, while you track and mix your album. If you are ever out that way, be sure to drop by and have a cup of coffee with Rod. OK, bad idea: skip the coffee (Rod has some strange ideas about what can legitimately be called "coffee"... ), but certainly do go out there, chat with him, and take a look around the studio!


- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote: Don't forget Rod DeMoss!

Indeed.. No design would be a proper design without excellent execution You are the man actually, Rod!

Soundman2020 wrote:To put all those graphs above into perspective, here are the graphs for the original, untreated, empty room:

First, the ORIGINAL full-spectrum frequency response, in the untreated room:

spl-untreated-room-20-20k.jpg

- Stuart -

Congratulations! Looks like a lot of effort that beautifully paid off.

Reffering to your starting point - what would you say contributed the most to geting rid of this nasty null at c.a. 150 Hz (possibly ceiling-floor mode?)

Hi "msieczko". Welcome to the forum!

Congratulations! Looks like a lot of effort that beautifully paid off.

Thanks for the kind words!

Reffering to your starting point - what would you say contributed the most to geting rid of this nasty null at c.a. 150 Hz (possibly ceiling-floor mode?)

I'd have to check the MDAT files to be sure, but from memory it was two things, mostly. First was the mountains of absorption that went in above the visible ceiling, as well as around the wall tops, in the form of horizontal superchunks, and secondly it was the ceiling cloud. If I have time tomorrow, I'll pull out the old data files and see which had the most effect, but it was a combination of those two, I'm pretty sure.

- Stuart -

Wow, Some amazing comments! Somehow I lost my link to the forum, and I haven't been getting updates.

For all of you that have visited the website and had a look around I appreciate all the amazing kind words. There was a tremendous amount of work that I had no earthly clue was required when Stuart asked me who was going to build it. I of course thought it would be any other build like I've done for 30 years: boy was i wrong!!! (But first a more pressing matter and that's coffee, I understand that Stuart is from a way way down there country but i thought they had access to coffee and not that hand mixed junk called crapichino. I need to send him some good roasted coffee and directions on how not to add that cream and sugar stuff, geez. )

Stuart was given a tough task since I had already had built a few of the rooms previously for other uses: it was his ability through our Father above that made it all perfect, and i do mean perfect. My son brings music in all the time to listen to, just to hear things he's never heard before that were done in studio that can't be heard in an average space.

Please spread the word to those you know in the US that need an accurate laid back experience to enjoy. With 10 acres, ponds, saltwater pool and much much more, the place isn't used much because people don't know its here, As a small business I don't have the advertising budget to get the word out and the local community is content with bedroom and basement quality. Any help the great forum members can give would be so greatly appreciated and a testament to John, Stuart and the forum that built this place.

I hope you all caught that Stuart and I have never met, talked on the phone, or video chatted. This amazing facility was all engineered, designed, built and tested via internet, and my internet connection is a mind blowing 10m download and 1m up. Hire Stuart because he's not only the best studio design guy, but the best friend and mentor you can get!!!

be blessed

Rod