John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Let me lay out for you my soffits. At ear height, I am about 50" off the ground. So I built my soffit where 44" off the ground the ledge for the speaker is built. Per John's Specs....

Realize I layed my speakers on their side. (I Just prefer to hear them that way) That made the horzontal plane (HF and LF Driver center point) at about ear level for me.

I mix at about 74 to 83 db max. I really enjoy mixing at these levels especially siunce I soffited my speakers. SO for sonic and mix reasons, I have found soffiting my speakers to be better than anything else I have done.

The Bottom is WELL defined, the mids are GREAT, etc... I could go on and on. I too had your concern, see Mackies have a rear Passive radiator. But buil;ding this soffit has had no negative effect on what I hear and how my mixes translate.

What is the distance from you to the soffits?? My room is a small room. about 10.5 ft by 13.5 ft prior to build. My speakers are about 5' apart now and about 5' feet from me. (The equidistant Triangle we hear so much about. SO you would just have to reposition mix position to adhere to this basic rule.

I have a desk design to mount the cabinets. I am telling you, you cannot compare the difference between soffit sound and free field sound of your speakers. It is NOT overkill. Maybe visually, so jazz up the soffit and make it pretty, but the sound is the most important thing and you will LOVE IT!!!!

Keep them at ear ht and you will not have to angle them down.

And my room is my baby too. All who have seen and heard it Love it. Engineers and laypersons.

Just for infomation, My desk puts me about 5' from the front wall, the desk is 30" deep, and sits about 18" or so from the wall. That lefgt me with enough space to have a Bass, Gtr and Keybd player in the CR for a session.

Bryan Giles

Below is a sample soffit build of another guys studio located on John's site.

giles117 wrote:What is the distance from you to the soffits...My desk puts me about 5' from the front wall

I don't have that luxury since I am very limited on space in the control room. As you can see from my drawing, the desk is about foot and a half away from the front wall. This is to give me enough room for my back not to be up against the rack bay and allow for the couch in the rear.

giles117 wrote:Keep them at ear ht and you will not have to angle them down.

That's how I run mine now, but looking at were my soffits would be and keeping the speakers at the correct level, they might be firing into my computer monitors and the bridge on my desk. If my budget can swing it, it would be nice to have a pair of 3-way speakers mounted in soffits for the clients and producer in the rear seating and for referencing. I need to talk with my partner and see what he would like.

Again, if you could, please note my drawing to show me how you thing the soffits should work. in the pic the console looks alittle smaller than mine, it 7.5' long in reality the one there looks like 5'.

Ok, I am confused, this is new construction or are you retrofitting an existing room? If it is new construction in this space, then you really have nothing to worry about, mayb change the placement of your equipment racks.

I have mine to the sides of my mix position. They are 14 spc racks and hold all I need. Do you have pics of your current set-up? If this is a retrofit. If this is a new build QUIT FRETTING :=)

Bryan

Which drawing are you refering to?

The 1st one or the one modified from John's Design????

One Last Question... How far is the Front of the desk (the side you sit on) from the wall??

The facility will be going into an empty space. The way John layed it out, with the size of the rooms is perfect. I can't stand having racks to my sides. Having the racks right behind me is something I have always commended to the studio I worked in. It's also going to double a kind of producer's desk. Considering the limited space in the control room, I can't see how the racks would fint comfortably on any side.

The image I posted later of just the control room is the one I am talking about. The one with the brown rack in the middle. My partner and I are set on this layout for the room based upon what we have come to prefer over the years in different rooms.

Ok, Well his design shows a control room of about 15' in depth, so that should work fine for you and you'd still have room behind those racks WITH the soffits built.

I can not express to much.... You will love the sound you get.

Bryan

I see now how the soffits work from this picture. Makes sense now. I have to figure out how they will play into my room.

Only thing is for how we want it laid out, 15 feet isn't eough. It's cramped at 15. My calcs say should have 18.5 in order to be comfortable. I might be able to loose 2 feet into the storage and iso booth. Hopefully things will work out nice and I can get a 25'x30' space and be real happy and afford the extra space needed in the control room.

This is my suggestion

cheers
john

Oh yeah!!! I like that allot! That looks very nice John. All I would do is divide a little space at the bottom of the vocal booth for storage. This should be the design. Let me discuss it wirh my parnter tomorrow. Thanks so much!