Dog + Bear Studio build

[stevev]

Thanks for having a look at the build and for the wall advice John. As I've got eight walls to put up I'll try different ways with the first few and see what suits best for my situation. I'm getting the feeling it's a bit 'six of one, half a doz of the other' if I'm doing it maually. hmmmm....maybe a duct lifter isn't such a bad idea

[stevev]

wall 1.jpg

so the first wall for the live room is up. I'm finding a 4wd hi-lift jack, and some steel props are working really well for lifting. I'm working by myself on this, so the ratcheting jack works really well as it enables me to lift to a certain height, then place the props and re-position the jack. Once it's above shoulder height it's a reasonably easy push to vertical.

[stevev]

live room 3 walls.jpg

three walls for the live room up, with the frame for the fourth, middle wall being built tomorrow. I'm keen to see what sort of TL i'm going to end up with, as I can gaurantee that these are some heavy walls.

[stevev]

live room ridge.jpg

the fouth wall and ridge beam for the live room are in, and yes, it's a heavy lift for a one man operation! 200x65 laminated beam at 4.2m. You can see the window cavity in the bottem right corner.

[stevev]

live room ceiling.jpg

internal ceiling construction is underway.

[stevev]

The live room is close to being complete (isolation wise) which means i'll be moving on to the control room reasonably soon. The control room will be the same construction as the live room regarding isolation, ie: inside out construction, 2 layers of 16mm gyprock. I wanted to start throwing around some ideas for the finished layout for the control room so I've got a plan ready when it comes to treatment.

Here's a plan of what I'm thinking at the moment.

control room acoustic plan.jpg

It's basically a mix of the control room plans from John's 'Garage studio one and two' , but tweaked to fit the dimensions of my room. The floor is concrete and the ceiling will be completely soft as well. Monitors are KRK V8's, and will be soffit mounted using's John's SAE soffit mount plan.

I'm having trouble figuring out what to do with the back wall. Should it be absorbtion and cloth faced, or a slot resonator, or something enitely different? As always, any other advice and ideas on the layout are welcome

[Soundman2020]

Are you trying to do an RFZ design? If so, you seem to be confusing your speaker soffits for bass traps. The shape looks right, but the construction looks wrong.

If you are doing RFZ, then the rear walls should be thick absorption, spaced away from the wall if possible, and maybe even angled forwards, if you like the look of that.

The rest looks good to me.


- Stuart -

[stevev]

Thanks for the tip on the rear wall there Stuart, and yes I am going for an RFZ design. The monitors will be soffit mounted as per John's design in the manual.

In John's plan for 'garage studio one' (which is 95% what mine is based on) he has the monitors in what looks like a soffit and labelled 'bass trap', hence me doing the same. Am I reading his plan wrong at all in that one?

[Soundman2020]

In John's plan for 'garage studio one' (which is 95% what mine is based on) he has the monitors in what looks like a soffit and labelled 'bass trap', hence me doing the same. Am I reading his plan wrong at all in that one?

Naah, you got it right: John has a special design for his soffits, where he incorporates a hanger-based bass trap into the lower section of the soffit. You can do both, but it has to be done carefully. Search the forum, or look at his famous Recording Manual, and you'll find the basic design for that.


- Stuart -

[stevev]

You can do both, but it has to be done carefully. Search the forum, or look at his famous Recording Manual, and you'll find the basic design for that.

thanks for clearing that up Stuart. I'm sure i'll be spending a fair bit of time trawling through all the soffit-mount threads when the time comes

[stevev]

trench.jpg

this is about half of the power trench for the studio. It's amazingly helpful to be able to loan a mini-excavator for this part of the job. even though the digging is reasonably easy around here, it still took me a good 4-5 hrs to put in the 50meters of trench.

electrician is lined up to start in a couple of weeks, so i'm furiously trying to get the walls up for the control room to be ready for powering up.

[stevev]

middle wall.jpg

the control room side of the middle wall went up today. 220mm air gap between the leaves and filled with insulation. It's a nice feeling as it's the first bit that actually looks like a recording studio, with the big air gap and wide doorway and window

The last wall for the control room should go up tomorrow and will just about deplete my stock of acoustic sealant. 24 tubes of the 828ml (28oz) green-glue sealant. looks like i'll have to order another case to get the ceiling's done.

The last wall for the contol room is also the bare minimum I need to have done for the electrician to wire up. He's booked in to start the 2nd Nov, so it looks like i'll have some time up my sleeve and maybe be able to get some ceiling done as well.

[stevev]

wiring connections.jpg

all wired up and everything went nice and smoothly . The system is also star grounded. The electrician didn't think it was 100% necessary but was still happy to do it as this is the one and only chance we'll get. His thought's were that the Australian earthing system is adequate enough to prevent ground loops. I know next to nothing about electical wiring, but maybe John or someone else could shed some light on the Australian earthing system and whether it's necessary to star-ground here.

Amongst other things, Dave the electrician also came up with the idea of being able to power up the monitors from the ganged switch which incorporates the lights as well. Brilliant idea which means they're ready to soffit mount without any mucking around. It really pays to get a sparky who is interested in studio work and I'm incredibly grateful for his expertise

lighting.jpg

All the lighting is LED and the live room is dimmable.

monitor position.jpg

Time to take the control room for a test drive even though it's not completed. Mostly I wanted to try out the wider angle for the monitor placement. I've ended up with around an 80 degree spread to get myself at 38% of the room length and the monitors in a good position for soffit mounting.

I've never listened to a mix with as wide a soundstage as that, but i've got to say, I'm very happy with it. I spent quite a few hours listening to old mixes I'd done as well as some other CD's and it sounds really nice. Looking forward to getting in there once it's all fitted out.

Next thing is to get the air-cons fitted and finish the internal ceilings. Then time for some REW testing and room treatment.

[RJHollins]

Been following your build progress ... and it's looking good.

You mention 'ganging' monitors and lighting

It has always been recommended to keep audio 'power' separate from things like lighting, computers, microwaves, HVAC, etc. The amount of 'trash' these things return to the electrical is something you'd not want in any of your audio power.

Adding to this ... 'dimmer switches'

These are notorious for causing havoc in most anything audio !

Maybe the 'electrical' Guru's will specify the details ... for the moment, I'd keep your wiring option open till this gets looked at.

As to monitor spread and positioning ... something to be mindful of:

The further the spread, with the required toe'ing in, will come at a price ! A narrowing of the 'sweet spot'. It may sound spansive at the exact center seating position ... but other areas can quickly be hearing mostly off axis. It becomes difficult to move left or right to make adjustments without the sound-field and response changing.

If you get too wide, a producer or musician sitting to your side will not hear what you hear at the center point. Things also become quite different as you move further back into the room.

This may coincide to a reason that most control rooms are preferred to have monitors shot down the long wall. You can 'overspread' the monitors to the point where you end up going against that.

You should also check a 'mono panning sweep' where you slowly sweep a signal left to right and listen to the positioning and the acoustical LEVEL as you sweep. You can spread to far as to have a 'hole' in the middle.

The 60 degree equilateral is a good guide line ... probably more so than thinking the 38% as a rule.

Of course ... if mixes translate without surprise to the outside world ... that is good. But I would also watch how the panning translates with YOUR actual work. No doubt the wide spread makes commercial recordings an experience, but how you adapt your panning is more important.

Sorry for raising all the cautions and warnings. Just suggesting that you experiment with placement and angles to find the best fit for your working environment.

Sincerely.

[stevev]

Thanks for keeping track of the build RJ

It has always been recommended to keep audio 'power' separate from things like lighting, computers, microwaves, HVAC, etc. The amount of 'trash' these things return to the electrical is something you'd not want in any of your audio power.

The monitor's do indeed have a seperate power circuit of thier own. The 'ganged' switch which has the lighting in it is a unit which has 5 switches in it that are all completely independant, but encased in the space of a single surface-mount box. There is no electrical connection between any of the ligthing and the monitors or their respective earths.

As for dimmers....it's nice and easy to get access to the dimmer switch, so if it causes any interference it'll be going out the door!

The 60 degree equilateral is a good guide line ... probably more so than thinking the 38% as a rule.

I was really trying to stick with the 38% on this as I didn't want to get pushed to far back in the room, or worse, to the middle. Perhaps a bit more testing with monitor placement is required here and i'll try a mono panning sweep tomorrow and see what results I get. Thanks for the advice RJ, much appreciated:)