What was the point of mentioning the other projects ceiling height if not to say even 8' really isn't up to snuff either?
The point was simply that low ceilings are always bad, and even not-so-low ceilings can be bad in certain cases, such as the one Greg is working on. Whenever possible, go for decent height.
What's the minimum height for a control room is probably what I should have asked a long time ago.
There is no "minimum" height that will always work, just as there is no minimum length, or minimum width. What there actually is, is a set of guidelines which will allow you to work out a good set of dimensions for your room, in terms of the actual length, width, and height, and almost as important, the way the related to each other: the "room ratio". That's the relationship between the dimensions that governs how well the low frequency modes will be distributed, in terms of how smoothly they are spread around the bottom end of the spectrum. You do NOT want a room where all of the modes are clumped together in the same couple of frequencies! So you carefully choose your dimensions to make sure that doesn't happen. You choose a ratio that is within the "Bolt area", which is a region of a simple graph that shows which ratios are known to be bad, and which ones are good. If your room ratio is within the Bolt area, then your modes will be spread out fairly evenly. If your ratio is outside of the Bolt area, then your ratios not be spread evenly, and will be "clumped together", which will cause major problems for bass response and the overall acoustic signature of the room.
So there are no minimum widths, lengths or heights, but there are good ratios. And there are recommended minimum floor areas, and recommended minimum room volume. You can find all of this in documents such as ITU BS.1116-3, or EBU Tech-3276, or similar documents put out by Dolby and others. They all describe the conditions that a room must meet in order to be usable as a "critical listening" room.
The basic recommendation is for a minimum floor area of 20m2 (roughly 215 ft2), and a minimum room volume of 50m3 (roughly 1800 ft3). By doing the math, you can arrive at the height: if you have a room with a volume of 1800 ft3, and it has a floor area of 215 ft2, the logically the height must be 8.37 feet, which is 8'4". But that is NOT the minimum height for a studio! This is where people start going wrong: taking the math too literally. These are not written-in-stone rules! They are guidelines, recommendations, baseline points. There are many, many reasons why a studio designer might "break" one of those rules, if the room needs it. Designing a studio is all about taking a careful look at ALL of the aspects of the ENTIRE studio, then balancing them against each other, fiddling and tweaking and tuning and optimizing, until you have the best possible compromise, given the circumstances. If that means breaking one of the rules, and you UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, then that's OK. But if you DON'T understand what the consequences will be from breaking one fo the rules, then DON'T BREAK IT! Studio design rules can be broken, but only by those who fully comprehend the consequences of doing that, know how to compensate for it, and have the ability to deal with it in the rest of the design.
For example, the rules say "Never have a room where two dimensions are the same", but I broke that rule on purpose when I designed that control room: the length and width are identical, but that was the only option left open to me after the basic floor-plan was approved by the owner. And he made the decision to approve that plan, fully knowing and understanding the consequences. He had a set of priorities, and ending up with a square control room was the best way to meet those. So I designed the room to have identical length and width, deliberately, breaking that basic "rule", but then I used every trick in the book to minimize the consequences of that design decision! For example, instead of laying it out traditionally, front to back and left to right, I set it up on the diagonal, as a "corner control room". Then I chopped off one corner, to make it seven-sided, instead of six-sided, I splayed two of the walls slightly, shaped the front end as modified RFZ, tilted the glass in the front window, raised the ceiling as high as I could get it, added a hard-backed angled-cloud, included very major, deep, tuned bass trapping, and a number of other things. I also placed the mix position roughly in the middle of the room (breaking another huge fundamental rule that should never be broken), on purpose, because I needed the first-order modal phase calculation that occurs at that spot to help deal with the modal issues I create by making the room square... I broke yet another rule: the floor area is only about two thirds of what the minimum "specifications" say....
So that room "breaks" several rules, but you can see the results. It has better acoustic response than many rooms that are much larger and follow all the "rules"! When the owner and I broke all those rules, we were fully aware of what we were doing, what the consequences would be, and how to work around that. But if a first-time home-studio builder asks me today if it is OK for him to build a square room like that, I would tell him: "No! Don't do that! Bad idea!". I can do it, because I have years of experience that have taught me what rules I can break, which ones I can't, and how to deal with the consequences. But I would NOT advise others to do that, unless they have also learned how. It isn't easy.
For those who don't understand the subtleties and complexities of acoustics, stick to the rules. Build a room with at least 215 ft2 floor area, at least 8.4" high, at least 1800 ft3. Go bigger, by all means, but not smaller. The smaller you make it, the harder it is to treat and tune.
What about John's design? viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5457
Firstly, that is JOHN'S design: One of the worlds leading studio designers, with decades of experience in designing rooms, and he pulled out all of the stops to fit in the best possible room GIVE THE AVAILABLE SPACE. Read the description: he designed that for a friend, to fit into the space that the friend had available. I'm sure John would have loved to raise the ceiling, but there was no space to do that, so he designed withing that limitation. In your case, you do NOT have that limitation!
It has low ceilings, it's asymmetrical and is about the same length as mine.
No, it is not asymmetrical. The front half is fully symmetrical, both visually and acoustically, and the rear half is symmetrical acoustically, if not visually. That room will provide a well-balanced sound stage with a clean, accurate stereo image.
why does his work?
Because John MADE it work! He DESIGNED it to work, taking into account the limitations of the physical space, and compensating with several design features that you probably didn't even notice. You do NOT have the same space constraints, so there is no reason to make yours like that. And if you really do what to make yours like that, then go ahead! Copy that design EXACTLY, don't change a thing, and it will work just fine! But if you change something without compensating, then it won't work the same as that room.
my point in saying i'm not building a million dollar mastering suite was not the monetary bit but the complexity of it.
If you want to keep your room simple, then build it big! If you want to make it complex, then build it small. It's that simple.
the second example I've been following for a while and don't understand how that didn't get shot down at first with the amount of space for the control room and the shape.
You don't understand it, because you were not privy to the many conversions the owner and I had at the start when discussing his priorities for his studio, and therefore you are not qualified to comment on the decisions that he and I made when designing that studio. You are also not qualified to comment because you don't understand acoustics well enough yet.
The owner and I went through a total of ELEVEN different design concepts that I drew up for him over a period of a few weeks, until we finally decided on this one, as best fitting his needs and priorities. I'm not going to question the priorities of a customer who hires me to design his place. I might suggest changes, point out reasons why it would be good to do it different (which I did in this case), but I'm not going to "shoot down" his priority decisions when they are valid. I might decline to do the design of the decisions are just plain silly, but in this room, that's not so. His decisions are valid, even though it meant creating an unconventional control room. So I had to design around those, with the result you see. The owner had a fixed size piece of land of a fixed shape that he could not change for legal reasons, so I designed out to the limit of that. He also has neighbors close by, so I designed for maxim isolation. He also needed a bathroom built in, and it had to be in a certain location so it could legally be connected to the water and sewer lines. He had a fixed budget, and a fixed maximum roof height, and the studio had to fit in aesthetically with the existing buildings. But his number one priority was to have the largest possible live room within that space, with all the other rooms taking second place. That was his decision, and it is certainly valid: He needs that space so he can fit in the number of musicians that he plans to record on some occasions. So the I oversized the HVAC system as well, to allow for maximum occupancy, and taking into account the climate of where the studio is located. The over-sized HVAC placed limits on the maximum possible ceiling height. Etc. Etc. Etc. We discussed and balanced and compromised on all of those parameters, and went through that series of eleven different layouts, some of which included a separate vocal booth. He dropped that, once he saw how much space it would take up. The layout you see on his thread is the result of many, many, many hours of discussion and optimization, and looking at alternatives, playing around, modifying, compromising, improving. tweaking, etc.
If you must know, at the time of those discussions, the owner did indeed express his concern about the corner-design control room. Not because o the size, but because of the layout. He had spoken with some of the musicians and engineers who would be using his studio, showing the the rough outline, and some of them were unsure that such a control room layout would work. I assured him at the time that, yes, if it was tuned right, it certainly could work, with certain limitations. I assured him that it could be tuned for reasonably flat response, despite being "square", and it would have good acoustics, good modal control, and still not be "dead". He trusted me to do that, and you can see the results on his thread: we are already meeting the specs for much larger control rooms, and there's still a couple of things left to do.
The only reason why you think that such a design should have been "shot down at the start due to the space and shape", is because you don't have a clue what went on when the place was designed, and also don't understand acoustics well enough to be able to judge if that is a workable design or not. Sorry to be harsh, in-your-face, but that's the truth. I don't take kindly to having my designs criticized by people who don't ave a clue what they are talking about.
Just suggesting can there be a happy medium of simplicity and function
I recently did a room where the acoustic height of the ceiling is 9'6", deliberately designed like that to minimize modal issues. The total area occupied by the CR is 144.3 ft2, or only 67% of the SMALLEST recommended size... And the room volume is only 1378 ft3, or only 77% of the "standard" volume. The room is simple in concept, it is functional for the purpose for which it was designed, and it didn't cost a million dollars. It works because, despite the small size, and all of the broken "rules", it has been designed to work.
I Guess it's back to the drawing board pretty much giving up on the whole loft open to the live room idea.
Why do you want that open loft area? What is the function of that? Can that function be eliminated? Can it be accomplished some other place outside of the actual isolated studio area? If you do eliminate it, what are the consequences? Can you live with that, or is it critical to the operation of the studio? Is the loft more important for the purpose of the studio than having a control room where the mixes translate very well? Balance the priorities here: If the main purpose of the studio is to produce music that sounds great wherever it is played, then the loft goes. If producing great music is not a priority, and having a loft is the number one priority, then the loft stays and the CR has a low ceiling, with all the negative results of doing that.
figured I could make 7' ceiling work if it was inside out and dead.
The control room cannot be dead. It must meet the specifications for the decay rates, ITDG, reverberant field, diffuse field, direct field, etc. A dead studio or an unbalanced studio is uncomfortable and fatiguing to work in. The ceiling can only be as dead as is needed to meet the goals laid out in ITU BS.1116-3 and similar.
Can't really raise the ceiling without making the loft useless.
Compromises... balance... adjustment... consequences... priorities... those are the things that a studio designer has to juggle, to come up with the best solution that takes into account all of the parameters, and all of the goals.
Your studio will only ever be as good as the amount of time you put into the design. If you really want it to be as good as it can be, within your budget, and making the best use of space, then I'd suggest that you buy and read two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. The first one will give you the background in acoustics that you need to be able to design a studio, and the second one will give you the basics for actually designing it and building it.
- Stuart -
