John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi there great board, and great designs.
I was hoping you could offer me some advice on my current studio plans. I lifted this image from another website and it has the same layout as my studio exactly except for the dimensions, which I have inserted on to the image with my limited photoshop ability. The dimensions are taken from the inside of the double walls that we will be building. The big problem with this studio as I see it is ceiling height (8ft before hung ceiling) and I would like your opinion on the control room and overall layout. The control room was calculated using the golden section trapagon ratio's. Does a 6ft-8ft sloped ceiling offer any acoustical problems? Should it be totally absorbent? The Studio is based on a half golden section/half golden trapagon approach as seen by the sloped ISO booths, also we were thinking of beveling the ceiling as such-----> /\/\/\ <-------of course not as extreme and each slope taking place over a 6ft span. I wish I could describe this better but I'm no draftsman. Thanks.

Any suggestions you may have would be very appreciated.

Flip

I would take a look at the Mix Magazine studio directory to see how many studios have a ceiling like "VVV". There aren't many. If there are peaks, there may be one, like in a control room design made popular in the 70s (Westlake, etc). The peak was designed to come down, just behind the mix position. It was never be up like a vaulted ceiling, because it acts like parabolic reflector, focusing a beam back into the room, instead of away from the listening/performing area. When looking at designs, consider that the angles, splays, etc are not the physical walls, but the acoustic treatment.

All you really need to break up the flutter between two parallel surfaces is to splay the surfaces 1' out for every 10' of length.

It would be better for a project room to have parrallel walls some times, and deal with the flutter echo with treatment. Most often people put too many odd angles in their rooms, and all it does is create problems by increasing reverb and relection times, which will take more treatment than having parallel surfaces.

Thankyou very much for your prompt reply, okay then that will certainly eliminate more work. Its so easy to get caught up in the wall and ceiling tweaks after viewing all the elaborate designs, and cool looking control rooms I've seen posted here. But frankly I'm glad I don't have to make all those cuts anymore.

Cheers, Flip