John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi guys,

We're in the process of building a new studio for our band and was hoping that some of you with experience in studio design may have an answer to some question I have. I'm not sure about some of the terms, I hope I used them correctly. I've made a webpage with some pictures and drawings (to scale):

http://www.prognosis.nl/studio/

The purple outer walls are brickwalls and are there to stay. All the other
stuff drawn is not actually there yet so can be changed.

1. Should the dividing wall (yellow) between control room and recording/rehearsal room be a brickwall or what I think is called a 'dry wall' made of 'plasterboard' (plaster on cardboard stuff).
By dry wall I mean a wooden frame with dry plasterboard screwed to them. Perhaps two seperate dry walls with two independent wooden frames. Originally I was looking for the best sound isolation possible but I'm wondering if this is really neccessary considering our location (see pictures) and the times we will be using this. I'm thinking that perhaps a dry wall may work as a kind of bass-trap, whereas a brickwall will simply reflect most of he bass energy right back into the room.

2. Since all facing walls are perfectly parallel, would it be a good idea to make this walls very irregular by applying some plaster to them so that the surfaces are no longer parallel and the irregular shapes breaking the soundwaves? I'm not sure this will work for low-frequency soundwaves, perhaps the irregularities don't affect these waves and the wall may still be seen as essentially flat. What else can we do to prevent standing waves?

3. As shown in the 3-D sketch I'm thinking of putting bass traps pretty much all around the room and then above the bass trap have irregular plaster and then aurelex-type foam. Is this a good idea? I don't want to deaden the room completely, is there any indication what percentage of wall should be bass-trap, auralex or just plain (irregular) plaster?

4. Regarding the control room I'm a bit concerned about the alcove to the right as this causes sever distortion in the symmetry of the room. Is this really bad? Should we close the alcove and put another door in? This would also improve the sound insulation to the rest of the building in case we do use this studio when there's others around.

5. This is actually pretty much the same as question 1: What type of dividing wall would be best for the control room? I will be using Mackie HR824 monitors that have a setting for halve-space use. However a halve-space bordered by a brickwall is certainly different from a halve-space bordered by a drywall.
Perhaps a single brickwall with an addition drywall construction on each side would be an idea? This is really the main issue I think. The other stuff we can sort of try out and play with, this diving wall is going to be build and once build it's not going down.

6. Also, should the mixing console be exactly in the middle of the control room? To what pains should I go to make this room completely symmetric?

7. The entrance to our studio is actually a garage door. I'm thinking that this may be a good thing because hopefully this will allow a lot of the bass energy coming from the monitors to escape. Is it a good idea to cover the garage door with auralex-type foam?

8. What about the placement of the bass-traps in the control room, is this OK? Should I put some bass-traps on the ceiling as well? Same for the recording room.

9. Would it be a good idea to cover the window with some auralex foam during mixdown?

10. What about the size of the window?

11. Is it really that much better to have the monitors on their own stands rather than on the mixing desk to prevent spill (reflection agains the mixing table/desk)?

12. I've also included a drawing of a properly shaped control room from an AES document, you may recognize it. There are two problems with this:

- We cannot build walls in this area that will reach the
ceiling becauseof the garage door mechanism
- I'm not sure my fellow band member will want to sacrifice
this much space for a better sounding (?) control room
- I know the control room should perhaps be rotated 90
degrees BUT the garage door is relatively thin. I'm
thinking that if I cover it with foam the bass energy
will go right through it and the high frequencies
will be absorbed, thereby making this room extend virtually
beyond the garage door. What do you think about this?
- If we do go for this shape, can/should these walls be
drywalls rather than brickwalls?

13. I'm going to use my current Mackie HR824 monitors but I don't think these can be flush mounted since a lot of the bass energy comes from the passive radiator at the back, it does not have a bass-reflex port at the front. Any thoughts on this?

14. We were planning on putting 'felt' (not really but close) floor tiles on the floor rather than having bare concrete. Is this a good idea, should we use something else or should we use a different type of carpeting? I don't think a wooden floor will fit in our budget. We can get the felt tiles for free.

I realize these are a lot of questions, obviously I will be happy if you can answer just one or even just part of a questions.

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have,
Arjan van Gog

Forgot to mention this: We will be using it for weekly rehearsals as well as recording. We play a modern variation of progressive rock type stuff. The only acoustic piano to be recorded will be my digital Yamaha P200. There will be lots of electric guitar, some acoustic guitar, and of course electric bass (probably DI'd), acoustic drums and vocals. I would like to get as good a drum sound as possible from just the two overheads to get a nice stereo image and only use the snare/tom/bass mics to provide extra punch where needed. I don't think we have space for a seperate vocal booth so I'm thinking to hang up foam in once corner when doing vocal recordings.

I would also like to be able to do a decent mix of our recorded material in this control room and do some simple 'mastering' (fiddling with knobs really) to get a rough idea of what it may sound like if we were to get it mastered professionally.

I forgot to mention something else: We can only enter through the large garage door. I did draw a door in the upper right but we can cannot get in that way. We can get out and into the cantine of the building but that's it. It's important that this door remain usable since otherwise we need to use our own limited space to lounge in.

Arjan - you need to fire your speakers down the long wall like this

cheers
john

Johns right about turning your control room 90 deg. I learned this lesson the hard way . My control room is 11' long and it is always a problem with low frequencies sounding weak. I'm no expert at this but I beleave there is a certain minimum distance you need from your monitors to the back of the control room.

thanks

John, re your response of firing the speakers down the length of the room ( and I dont mean any disrespect to Arjan )....but dont you get frustrated saying the same things over and over again?

You guys around here have a lot of patience for the newbies

Brett

Hi John,

Thanks for the redesign. If possible I would surely do it like this, in fact in my own post I already anticipated that you would be telling me to turn the control room 90 degrees (see question 12). However this is not possible for the following reasons:

• - The garage door cannot be removed. We rent this place and whilst the owner is very friendly and accomodating and will let us do a lot, like building walls in it, this is not an option. I wish it was.
  - The small door you painted where the garage door is cannot be put there, it folds up in sections. I already asked, a regular sized door is not possible in that type of garage door. Again, this is the only way we can enter the building.
  - You removed the door to the right. This is our only way to make use of the cantine of this facility. Without that door we will be forced to include stuff like a fridge, coffeemachine etc etc in our own limited space
  - My fellow band members will not acccept a control room taking up so much space. We will be using this place a lot more for rehearsing than for recording. We will only be recording ourselves.
  - I know, understand and appreciate the need for a well shaped and sized control room. However, the shape I used is from the SAE studio plans pages (THE CONTROL ROOM):
  
  http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... /Plans.htm
  
  I'm not sure about the exact size of the SAE control room, but the shape is different from what you drew. In particular, it's not as long as your control room, it's much more box like. I don't doubt that a longer control room is better, but is this SAE design no good? I'm not sure of the absolute minimum size of that shape so that could be the problem, perhaps the SAE room is meant to be as long as yours and much wider.
  However, are you sure there is no logic in what I suggested in question 12? Doesn't the thin garage wall in my original design represent an escape route for the lower frequencies? Heck, on a warm day I could even leave the entire door open.

I appreciate the time you put into this John, in fact I can hardly believe you are doing this. If possible I would use your design but considering the above I don't see how. I need to compromise between what I want, what is technically possible and what my fellow band members want.

What about my second attempt. Yes, the control room is still shorter than what you are telling me, but this is the SAE shape. I'm not sure if this will be any better or worse than my original design since now I don't have a thin door to let the bass energy escape behind me.

Can't I makeup for the shorter SAE control room by including lots of bass traps and other absorbers at the rear wall? I've been looking at the bass traps from Ethan for this.

Qiktune, no offense taken but the only reason I was suggesting this layout is because of what I noted in question 12 about the thin door and because of the either incomplete or conflicting information from the SAE and other sources. I think that when you design for a particular place you cannot cover every issue seperately, you need to view them in relation to each other. How you solve one problem will likely affect how you solve another and in the real world you have to compromise. Also this is not my own private space and how we are going to use it is ultimately not up to me. I want to present a design that will give me an acceptable control room and rehearsal room so that it won't get dismissed immediately by the others.

Thanks again,
Arjan

I fully understand - your next drawing was going to be my next suggestion :)

cheers
john

What draw program do you guys use ?
Thanks !

I use CorelDraw (version 11) on a Windows PC. Not sure if it's the best for the job but I've been using it for years (since version 5 or 6) so I know my way around it.

You've learnt it well mate -nice drawings.

I don't use a CAD program because I draw my plans - like I did on a drawing board with pen and ink

cheers
john

Arjan,

I think it's better to keep the live room away from that garage door. Otherwise you're going to have noise bleeding in from the outside while you're trying to record (cars, rain, etc.). Sound isolation from the outside isn't so critical in the control room.

As you suggest the thin garage door will transmit a lot of bass energy, helping to reduce standing waves. However, it will reflect high frequencies. So, your first design is not so good because you will get very strong early reflections from the rear. And since the garage door needs to function, there's no good way to absorb those reflections.

So how about something like this?



It's just a slight variation on John's design. Your building entrances are not obstructed. It maintains the good live room isolation. Standing waves across the control room will be reduced. You have easy access between the two rooms via the sliding doors. And the asymmetry in the rear of the control room is beyond the point of early reflections, so it will have little effect on you're monitoring. If you're really paranoid about it, you could arrange the rear bass traps to create more symmetry.

Thomas

PS - I also posted this over at the RO to share with folks there as well.

Thomas,

Thanks for responding to my last post. I was starting to wonder if there were going to be any more replies so I was very happy to see yours

I think it's better to keep the live room away from that garage door. Otherwise you're going to have noise bleeding in from the outside while you're trying to record (cars, rain, etc.). Sound isolation from the outside isn't so critical in the control room.

I was a bit concerned about that. I also didn't like having to go through the live room to get in/out of the control room or the cantine.

As you suggest the thin garage door will transmit a lot of bass energy, helping to reduce standing waves. However, it will reflect high frequencies. So, your first design is not so good because you will get very strong early reflections from the rear. And since the garage door needs to function, there's no good way to absorb those reflections.

I've taken a close look at the garage door and I think there will be no problem attaching thick Auralex pyramid foam to the door elements. Would this, combined with the bass-passing-through properties of the whole thing, be enough to reduce the standing waves problem sufficiently? I discussed this with my fellow band members and they definitely will not accept a control room so large, I even had some trouble having them accept the original design.

I might even be able to construct a large pyramid/wedge structure on the inside of the garage door (or perhaps use movable Gobo's), but since that would make the whole structure heavier and thicker I'm not sure if that would be of any help as it could cause more bass to reflect instead of just passing through. Any thoughts on this?

Thomas,

Barefoot wrote:
Anyhow, I just wanted to give this perspective. I have to run now, but I'll address the specifics of your layout in my next post!

Any chance of you making that next post? I'm interested in anything you have to say about my layout and theories.

I realize that to some it may look like I don't want to be helped, given all the advise I have received so far, but I'm afraid I can't help it: I'm the kind of person who wants to understand the why and how of things. My understanding of how sound waves work has grown a lot but it's still difficult to make the jump from theory to practice.