John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I completely redid the Sketchup model for my studio rebuild. I went to the space and checked all dimensions and noted some architectural features that I had forgotten about (beams, column, etc.), so this is as close to exact dimensions as I can get. I also, thanks to Greg, I figured out how inferencing works in Sketchup, so everything is lined up "fairly well." This model reflects what I propose to do for the initial framing. I realize that door jack studs, headers, etc. aren't in the model, so please assume the framing will be done properly.

Excellent! I wish you would have posted a 1200px wide picture so we could see more detail though!

1. Should I splay the side walls of the control room (with the doors) further out? Right now they are parallel to the walls of the adjoining rooms.

Ray trace and see how those wall angles affect your reflection free sphere around your head. That will be your answer.

2. Is the double front wall of the control room an issue? I had two "humps" showing after I added the soffit mount areas, so I put the outer wall in there, as I kind of like the way it looks as you come into the studio. I can hide the humps with cloth if it is an issue.

That front wall should be your outer leaf of your control room. So, it should connect to your building structure.

3. You will notice that the model doesn't have the soffit mounts properly framed. I am reading up on the two popular soffit mount threads, John's and Barefoot's

Stuart's design is better than both of these in my opinion. You float your speakers inside of a speaker enclosure (Sorbothane) and then float that enclosure on a shelf (Sorbothane) that is part of your soffit frame. Through the shelf and the enclosure box you have venting holes like John's design. This also allows you to have hangers above and below the speaker area that doubles as acoustic treatment and a path for the convection effect for ventilation.

4. I read through the thread regarding floating floors, but I believe, from experience, that they have a huge effect on sound transmission in this particular building. I don't know why, but they apparently do. When I first obtained this space, at the building's owner's insistence, I hired a structural engineer, and he signed off on all weight and code issues assuming floated floors for all rooms. I then built the two of the exact same room (2 roughly 13L x 10W x 8.5H rooms) one with a floated floor and one without, and the difference was quite profound when walking around the building with someone banging on the drums or playing an amp cranked way the hell up.

If you do this, I'd recommend doing it in the way you'd build a drum riser. Or, better yet, you might be able to actually build a small drum riser to put your instruments/amps on during tracking. That would save you a lot of time, money, and ceiling height!

Greg

Thanks again, Greg! I will thoroughly go through your comments, and incorporate your suggestions, especially the Stuart soffit mount idea. Speaking of which, I am in the process of becoming a client of Stuart's and will be continuing to post what we are up to in terms of design (unless it's one of his proprietary secrets ). I will post the build photos, as well, when I begin. I have found this forum extremely helpful, and hopefully this thread can give others some ideas they can use. For now, I post a 1200px wide photo of the model. I thought we were supposed to stay at 700, based on what i read, but am glad to know we can go bigger! Here 'tis...



Thanks again.

Steve

Hi all, I am rebooting this thread. the first post has been revised with my current plans, etc. Thanks!

Steve