John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi all,

my name's Jochen and I've been looking at building a basic studio/rehearsal room in my detached one car garage. I'm primarily a guitar player/songwriter and would be using the space to practice, record demos and some freelance guitar tracking stuff (acoustic/electric/banjo/dobro etc). I actually tracked the guitar tracks for our last album in the garage over the summer and it wasn't the most comfortable experience!!

The garage sits about 1 metre from our boundary and our closest neighbours' external wall is about 9-10 metres away.

At this point in time the garage is sitting on a concrete slab that I'm guessing is about 100mm thick. The whole thing is framed with 70x50 hardwood, sheeted in 6mm fibre cement sheeting on the outside (open studs on the inside) and has a new corrugated colorbond metal roof with insulation blanket http://www.insulation.com.au/products-1/permastop between the roofing sheets and timber frame.
The garage is 5860mm long, 3820mm wide and 2085 high at the top of the walls. Roof is pitched to a peak at 2900mm. There is a metal roller type garage door at the front and an access door at the front of the left side. I'm looking at building a wall across the room about 800 from the garage door to take that out of play. Below are a coulple of photos of the inside of the garage as well as a current floorplan.


I haven't had a chance to measure sound levels with me playing electric guitar yet but I did do some measurements with a stereo going in the garage to get some idea of where levels are now. I cranked the stereo up (U2's sunday bloody sunday) and added bass boost and it measured at 94.8db (peak over about one minute, C weighted, slow response). I then took measurements outside the access door (76.1db) and outside the garage door (81.6db). Also took some ambient noise readings: 48.5db inside, 55.3 outside the access door and 56.2 ouside the garage door.

I basically want to get enough isolation to allow me to a) play/track guitar in there whenever I feel the need and not annoy the neighbours b) isolate from the outside world so I don't get the neighbours lawnmower or my dog on that perfect take and c) then treat the room to get a reasonably accurate monitoring environment. I probably don't want to spend more than about 5000 AUD initially, though realise once I start...

My initial thoughts were to build mainly a control room with a booth big enough to isolate a guitar amp and maybe track vocals in, but it would be cool to be able to track a small kit (although this is not a big priority). I'm pretty sure the wife thinks she can use it as an extra "sleepover" room too when its done

My main reason for posting is to figure out initial construction of the walls/ceiling. I don't really have a lot of mass to start with here! That's causing me my main concern and I don't want to put time and effort into something that might end up a waste of time.

I have managed to score about 150 sesiliant clips though (leftover from a project my company was involved with) and was thinking of using those on the walls and ceiling with channel, two sheets of 13mm gyprock and 100mm soundscreen batts in the cavities (wall and ceiling. Also looking at vaulting the ceiling to gain a bit more height. That would give me about a 115mm air gap between the outside sheet and first sheet on the walls, about 195mm between the angled sections of ceiling and the roofing sheet and about 580mm from the flat section of ceiling to the roofing sheet.
I have followed alot of the builds here and understand the MSM concept, but I guess my worry is that i don't really have alot of "initial mass" on my external leaf to start with. Because of the negligible mass of the outer leaf should i be looking at a MSMSM system instead? Or should I try to "beef up" the existing external leaf of the system? Though this might be out of the question given the steel roof...

This will obviously never be a commercial recording facility but it would be cool to end up with somewhere i can go and play/create (and escape the wife and kids for a while ).

Thanks in advance for looking over my late night ramblings.

Regards,

Jochen

Sort of started answering some of my own questions. I've been reading through Rod's book and combing through more threads on this amazing forum. The more I read the more I learn (or get more confused).
Just going to concentrate on beefing up between the studs of the existing building while I continue to think about the interior design a bit more. Still have a few queries about the ceiling/roof though.
If I add layers to beef up the roof between the existing joists but leave the insulation blanket there, would that count as an air gap thus creating in effect two leaves. Or would the gap be negligible in the final system because the blanket and gap are so thin?

Cheers,

Jochen.

Hey Jochen, good idea posting up here before you start building

roguesounds wrote:If I add layers to beef up the roof between the existing joists but leave the insulation blanket there, would that count as an air gap thus creating in effect two leaves. Or would the gap be negligible in the final system because the blanket and gap are so thin?

This is where you have to be really careful That roof construction doesn't look like it was made to handle a lot more weight than what is already on it. It looks like it is trussed, but it's hard to tell from the photos. The truss also looks quite basic and not engineered to take the kind of load that you would be adding to them.

Getting some professional, onsite advice about what load you could expect your roof to handle is probably the first thing you need to do before you start adding mass up there. If you can't add any more mass to the roof then it's not going to be much use to add it to the walls on their own.

Is it possible to seal up the external shell airtight? it looks like you've begun to do that already.

roguesounds wrote:two sheets of 13mm gyprock and 100mm soundscreen batts in the cavities

100mm soundscreen is good. right density fibreglass. 13mm gyprock will be no good for you as you don't have enough mass in the outer shell to start with. To get the kind of isolation you want, you'll need 2 (if not 3!!) layers of 16mm Fyrchek plaster hung on a completely detached internal frame (walls and ceiling).

roguesounds wrote:My main reason for posting is to figure out initial construction of the walls/ceiling. I don't really have a lot of mass to start with here! That's causing me my main concern and I don't want to put time and effort into something that might end up a waste of time.

smart move, and at the moment your weakest point is the roof in terms of being able to add mass. Again, the first step is to find out if you can safely load that roof up with any more mass. That will dictate how much mass you can add to the walls (as it will be the same. there's no point in adding more mass to the walls if you can't add it to the roof). That will then give you an idea of what type of construction you will need to use for your internal room.

It sounds like you need around 40-50db transmission loss and that's achievable with what you have. You just need to make sure you get it right every step of the way, that's where it takes time and patience (and $'s. I don't think 5k will get you where you need to be, but it's a start ). Maybe post up a few more shots of the room if you can.

cheers,

steve

Wow, can't believe it's been a year already since I posted this!

First and foremost, thanks Steve for you answers and suggestions!!!!

Lots of things happened in the last 12 months so studio was put on backburner. I changed jobs, my band toured fairly extensively and my wife and I welcomed another son.

Back to the garage. Due to the limitations of the structure, i've been rethinking the whole thing fairly extensively. I'm going to concentrate more on treating the space acoustically rather than massive isolation. As for the guitar, I'll build an isolation box/booth in one corner to house the guitar amp/cab.

I had the roof framing structure looked at and i can hang 1 layer of 16mm fyrcheck from the roof structure. So I'm going to do that using the resilient clips and channel with insulation batts on top. 1 or 2 layers of 16mm fyrcheck on the walls on resilient clips and channel, insulation batts in the walls and seal it all up.

We are looking at recladding the outside of the garage, so when that happens I'll screw on a layer of OSB or similar before the new wheatherboards which will add some more beef to the walls.

Then concentrate on treatment. I'm mainly going to be using the space for songwriting and tracking guitar, mando, banjo, dobro etc, so i'm more interested in getting a nice sounding room. Just want to keep out as much ambient noise from outside as possible.

Cheers,

Jochen.

roguesounds wrote:I had the roof framing structure looked at and i can hang 1 layer of 16mm fyrcheck from the roof structure. So I'm going to do that using the resilient clips and channel with insulation batts on top. 1 or 2 layers of 16mm fyrcheck on the walls on resilient clips and channel, insulation batts in the walls and seal it all up.

Hang one layer of 16mm all around (ceiling and walls) on resilient mounts with your cavity insulation between your two leaves and see what kind of transmission loss you get. Seal up the outer leaf before you hang your internal layer.

If you aren't going to build a fully decoupled frame for your internal leaf then there's only so much isolation you're going to get. I'd peg it at maybe 35 db, which would be okay for acoustic guitars, dobro (maybe not mando depending on the instrument) but forget anything amplified.

roguesounds wrote:We are looking at recladding the outside of the garage, so when that happens I'll screw on a layer of OSB or similar before the new wheatherboards which will add some more beef to the walls.

Whilst it's not a bad idea to beef up the walls, if you can't beef up the ceiling as well then there's no real point to it. It might help isolate your acoustic instruments a little better from the neighbours, but again, if you start cranking the amps up then the sound (mostly bottem end) will go straight out the weakest link in the building and that'll be the roof. You're also going to be getting ambient (especially rain on the tin roof) noise through the ceiling.

roguesounds wrote:Then concentrate on treatment. I'm mainly going to be using the space for songwriting and tracking guitar, mando, banjo, dobro etc, so i'm more interested in getting a nice sounding room. Just want to keep out as much ambient noise from outside as possible.

Get your shell built and then download REW and do some tests on the room to see what kind of treatment you're going to need. Is this going to be setup as a control room for mixing at all? The layout will need to be fairly specific for that. If you're just going for a reasonably stable tracking room then it'll be a bit simpler.

all the best,

Steve

stevev wrote:Whilst it's not a bad idea to beef up the walls, if you can't beef up the ceiling as well then there's no real point to it. It might help isolate your acoustic instruments a little better from the neighbours, but again, if you start cranking the amps up then the sound (mostly bottom end) will go straight out the weakest link in the building and that'll be the roof. You're also going to be getting ambient (especially rain on the tin roof) noise through the ceiling.

Rain noise is something I'm worried about. Still working on seeing if we can get enough strenght in the roof structure to be able to beef up between the trusses straight underneath the roofing.

stevev wrote:Get your shell built and then download REW and do some tests on the room to see what kind of treatment you're going to need. Is this going to be setup as a control room for mixing at all? The layout will need to be fairly specific for that. If you're just going for a reasonably stable tracking room then it'll be a bit simpler.

Funnily enough the test mic i ordered arrived this morning. I'm going to take a few measurements of the room as it is now to see where it started. I do want to use the room for mixing. Ideally it will be to record/overdub guitars etc and also mix my own stuff. I've been working on a layout but I'm finding myself over thinking the treatment the more I read about it, so I come up with something and then read some more and second guess myself! I think I'm going to base it on one of John's small studio designs and go from there...

Thanks again!!

Jochen

roguesounds wrote:I've been working on a layout but I'm finding myself over thinking the treatment the more I read about it, so I come up with something and then read some more and second guess myself! I think I'm going to base it on one of John's small studio designs and go from there...

smart move. John has a few great designs for small studios, and his designs ain't broke so they don't need to be fixed You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just adjust the sizes to fit your space and you'll be looking pretty good.

Have you got sketchup? If not download it and make up a few drawings of what you're looking at doing so the forum can give you a few pointers on layout and construction before you start.

all the best,

Steve

Hey guys,

so not sure if it's wise to continue on such an old post??? But anyways...

so since last posting our youngest son has undergone open heart surgery, I've toured the states and with the band i was in for years, quit that band (due to sick son), I've changed jobs and we're just completing a complete bathroom renovation. Few makes me tired just thinking about it all. In between all this I've been making slow progress on the "studio".

I beefed up between all the studs and between the roof framing with two layers of 13mm plasterboard (13mm because I got a crapload of it for nix!). The ceiling also got a layer of Earthwool R2.0 75mm "Acoustic" insulation before the layers of plasterboard. Had the roof framing inspected for weight rating and made the suggested upgrades to support the weight I'm planning to hang, roughed in electrical and installed insulation (Earthwool R2.5HD 100mm Batts) in the wall cavities.
Even though the room is small in comparison to some of your projects, I was still a little concerned about getting air in and out (especially in the summer months). With the door open there would be no real issue which would be the case most of the time when I'm not tracking, but when I am (and also at night when I'm practising etc and i want to keep the door closed), I reckon it will get stuffy in there pretty quick. Even with just the beefed up external leaf and insulation it made quite a difference to temperature (and ambient noise levels) inside. My plan was to install a small ventilation system just to keep air circulating when i shut the doors. This consists of an intake at one end of the room and an outtake at the other. I have a small storage space at the rear of the studio space as i built a wall to get around having an old garage roller door. So there is now about a 1.2m space between the rear studio wall and the garage roller. This area contains the new sub board and shelving etc. I have installed an inline fan in this area to suck fresh air in from the outside then into a silencer box in the external leaf of the rear wall. I have mounted the silencer for the internal leaf in the ceiling space, the two silencers connected by insulated flexible ducting. For the exhaust I'm going go mount both silencers in the ceiling space tab the opposite (front end) of the studio space. So silencer through ceiling internal leaf connected to second silencer Via flexible duct) penetrating outer leaf at gable.I did some more research and then set about building four silencer boxes for a basic ventilation system. . It blows into the rear half of the room. The outake is passive and the vent is at the front of the room and vents through to the outside rear of the garage. It's not going to set the world on fire but now that the room is pretty much sealed, it does actually work!! After running the fan for a while the positive pressure builds up and you can feel warm air coming out of the exhaust side outside. No noise either -bonus!
I have planned to install a small split system a/c in the future (wiring in place for this) but have been using a small portable a/c over the last summer which cooled the room quite well. It's not something you'd keep on while tracking but it does the job. Only drama with that is it needs to vent outside!!.

Next up I have installed 16mm "fyrcheck" plasterboard on to the furring channel (on resilient clips), brought out all the wiring and sealed up with lots and lots of mastic. It's a flexible sealant called "firesound" which I've used for sealing pretty much everything. Have framed and installed a new solid core door (the internal of what will be two doors). Flooring wise its an old (and uneven) concrete floor. I put down a layer of builders plastic (as a moisture barrier and have laid 500x500x5 carpet tiles for now which will serve as an underlay for laminate floorboards. Having spent many winters out in that garage i know the floor gets quite cold so the tiles will hopefully serve as a bit of a thermal barrier.
Now that everything is sealed up (I get that resistance and whoosh when opening and closing the door now!) i ran a couple of tests for my own curiosity to see how much difference the new walls etc have made. BIG difference as far as sound leakage goes. Ran music through my HS5's at roughly 90dbc inside and it was just audible outside the door (only 1 door at the moment) and not audible at all at the front, rear and opposite side of the garage. I took the meter outside and was getting readings between 48 and 65dbc but I suspect this was mainly ambient "neighbourhood noise. Pretty happy with that. Also did the "mower test". Ran the mower outside the door side of the garage and could hear it but very quiet. Could not hear it at all when it was around the rear of the garage (which will be the "listening end". I'm hoping once i install a second solid core door it will cut that right down. So as far as my meagre isolation expectations are concerned, I'm pretty happy with that. I can pretty much do what i need to in there as far as what i wanted to achieve (track guitars, vocals etc without external disturbances penetrating to the inside or me annoying the neighbours!

I cleared everything out yesterday and ran some tests with REW (followed Stuart's Instructions) in order to get some baseline readings of the room. I want to begin treating the room now to get it to a point where i can use it to track guitars/bass/vocals and do some mixing. This is where I'd be begging you kind gents for some input if possible. I have already begun building some "superchunks" for the front two and rear right corner (the other has the door) as its a given (from what i have learnt on here) that i'll need heaps of bass trapping but I'd really appreciate some help interpreting the REW data!!! I am more than happy to learn along the way as i don't want to have to come asking every time, but initially some assistance to help read and understand so that i can then continue to plan my treatment and come back for help as i need it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ts7g0s18w1mp0 ... .mdat?dl=0


Thanks in advance for any help!

Regards,

Jochen.

Oh, and yes I realise that these base measurements are going to be moot once the laminate floor goes in. I’m posting the initial tests to see wether I’m getting correct readings with the equipment: MacBook Pro, minidsp UMIK-1 USB (with cal file), audient ID14 into Yamaha HS5’s. Will be looking at a set of Adam A7X’s later on in the year (budget permitting).

OK so hopefully this will help. It's not 100% but very close. Gives you all a better idea of the room. The ceiling is vaulted 2370mm high at the highest part. The highest part extends 900mm from centre (both directions, then slopes down to top plate height both sides. (still working on how to draw that in).

I've added what I thought i would start with treatment wise...
Dropbox link to sky file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xx50smo8r0vhb ... 2.skp?dl=0

OK so hopefully this will help. It's not 100% but very close.

Several comments about that:

1) Your mix position appears to be too far forward. There's good locations for it (in terms of whereabouts you have your head in the modal response pattern), and there's bad locations. That looks like a bad one... Way too close to the front wall.

2) Your speakers are on top of the desk: bad idea! That's the source of several nasty artifacts. Get your speakers off the desk, on to stands behind the desk.

3) You will likely need absorption panels between the speaker and the front wall. The speakers do need to go up against the wall, like you have them: yes, that's correct. But in that case you should also put at about 4" of good broad-band absorber between the speaker and the wall, to hep¿lp deal with some of the issues caused by that situation.

4) Have you considered flush-mounting your speakers? (A.K.A "soffit mounting") That's one of the best ways of getting dramatic improvement in your room acoustics and speaker response.


- Stuart -

Hi Stuart, first of all, thanks so much for your input.

Soundman2020 wrote:Several comments about that:

1) Your mix position appears to be too far forward. There's good locations for it (in terms of whereabouts you have your head in the modal response pattern), and there's bad locations. That looks like a bad one... Way too close to the front wall.

2) Your speakers are on top of the desk: bad idea! That's the source of several nasty artifacts. Get your speakers off the desk, on to stands behind the desk.

The desk etc. was straight off sketchup and I imported it as a bit of an indicator and didn't really place it in the room properly! Was the first/closest desk I found. It had everything on it. A bit lazy on my part (still learning to use sketchup)! My actual position is at the 38% position (thats where i took the initial REW measurements), and can adjust from there. Will edit sketchup to mount speakers on stands and put desk/chair in correct spot.

Just on the speaker on desk thing: is the "nastiness" reduced by a smaller speaker if it was sitting on say, an isolated mount? (i.e. I'm currently using Yamaha HS5's because my old 8" monitors died a few years ago)

3) You will likely need absorption panels between the speaker and the front wall. The speakers do need to go up against the wall, like you have them: yes, that's correct. But in that case you should also put at about 4" of good broad-band absorber between the speaker and the wall, to hep¿lp deal with some of the issues caused by that situation.

Will definitely do that. So the absorber would go directly behind the speaker with the speaker centred to the absorber? How much of a gap between the face of the panel and the rear of the speaker? Or would it be hard up against the panel?

4) Have you considered flush-mounting your speakers? (A.K.A "soffit mounting") That's one of the best ways of getting dramatic improvement in your room acoustics and speaker response.

I had thought about it but with currently only running 5" monitors and not knowing exactly when i'll have the budget to upgrade i figured it would be a guessing game building soffits for speakers i don't have yet (if that makes sense). It's something i would definitely revisit when i upgrade speakers though! Would building soffits later negate any side/rear wall treatment I install now?

Cheers,

Jochen

Moved some things around...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0v8w7h9vtq7i ... 3.skp?dl=0

The desk etc. was straight off sketchup and I imported it as a bit of an indicator and didn't really place it in the room properly! Was the first/closest desk I found. It had everything on it. A bit lazy on my part (still learning to use sketchup)!

Ahh! That wold explain it...

My actual position is at the 38% position (thats where i took the initial REW measurements), and can adjust from there.

I'm sure you already know this, but the 38% "rule" is not carved in stone: it a good guideline, but you are allowed to move around a bit from there...

Just on the speaker on desk thing: is the "nastiness" reduced by a smaller speaker if it was sitting on say, an isolated mount?

There's many issues with having speakers on a desk or meter bridge. One of them is, as you guessed, decoupling: If a speaker is sitting directly on the desk, then it can potentially transmit vibrations into the desk, which makes it possible to have an issue with "early-early" sound: sound that arrives at your ears BEFORE hte direct sound from the speaker (because sound travels much faster through solid materials, such as wood and metal, than it does through air, so those vibrations in the desk could be re-transmitted into the air at the front of the desk, arriving at your ears before direct sound). But even if you don't get early-early sound, you still get vibrations, which you will hear, and do mess up the clean direct sound. Isolation pads can help with that, if they are chosen correctly (beware of the "one size fits all" vendors...). However, that's not the biggest issue: reflections from the desk surface is the biggest issue. With the speakers in that location, there will be strong reflections form the desk surface getting to your ears, an that's no good at all!. In addition, for the same reason, there will be comb-filtering going on: as you move your head up and down, of forwards and backwards, you will hear changes on the relative frequency response, due to the comb-filtering effect. Now, some people say that comb filtering doesn't matter that much, since your brain can get used to one pattern and then sort of ignore it... and that's true! So, as long as you can clamp your head in a vice while mixing, such that you never more your ears to a different part of the comb-filtering pattern, you should be fine! But if you are like normal people, that move around all the time, then maybe that's not such a good thing... Then there's another effect: With speakers on the desk, the overall frequency response will end up with a dip in the mid range at some point, that depends on many factors. You can compensate for that dip, probably, with judicious use of EQ... provided that you are able to identify correctly, and tailor a filter to deal with it. And finally, there the issue of what I call "roughness": As the sound travels over your desk surface, it will encounter numerous obstructions, small and large, that deflect, diffract, reflect, diffuse, absorb, and generally modify the overall sound on it's way to your ears, in multiple different ways at different frequencies. This shows up as small but important deviations in the frequency, phase and intensity of the sound. In simple terms: your frequency response in the mid range looks like the mountains of the moon! Ups and downs all over the place. You can't equalize that fully, and it's generally a mistake to even try, unless you really understand what you are doing.

Getting your speakers off the desk and into stands eliminates some of these issues, and reduces others to various extents, so the final result is a great improvement. "All of the above" constitute the reason why many mastering engineers don't have a desk in front of them at all, or have a very low profile "minimalist" desk: they want to hear the cleanest possible sound, so they get everything they possibly can out of the path from speaker to ear.

Will definitely do that. So the absorber would go directly behind the speaker with the speaker centred to the absorber?

Right!

How much of a gap between the face of the panel and the rear of the speaker? Or would it be hard up against the panel?

No gap at all! The rear corner of the speaker should be right up against the panel, touching it. You want the speaker as close as you can get it to the front wall, for this reason: SBIR, or "Speaker-Boundary Interference Response" is an issue caused by low frequency sound heading out backwards behind the speaker, hitting the front wall, then returning. It causes a very large dip in the frequency response, due to phase cancellation, and that dip depends on the distance between the speaker and the wall surface. For distances of a few feet, the dip is way way down low, in the region of drums, bass, keyboard low end, etc. You won't hear the frequency where the dip occurs, or will hear it greatly reduced: Sometimes known as "bass suck-out" among other names. You can't successfully treat such low frequencies with absorption on the front wall, because the frequency is too low and the effect is so powerful. So either you have to move the speaker so far away from the wall that the frequency is below the bottom of the hearing range, and that would be a distance of about FIFTEEN feet. Not possible in small rooms. Or you move the speaker up as close as you can get it to the front wall, which moves the dip up higher in the spectrum, hopefully to a point where you can treat it, at least partially, with absorption. If you can get it with a few inches of the wall, then the frequency will be up into the mid range, and treatable. For example, if your speaker cabinet is 11 inches deep, and you get a 4" gap behind it, that places the speaker cone 15" from the wall, so the SBIR dip will be at 220 Hz, which is treatable, but also less noticeable: A dip in the mids isn't as glaringly obvious as a dip in the low end.

Here's a real case: With the blue line, the speaker face was 40" form the front wall, and you can see the large dip at 85 Hz. For the yellow line, the speaker was moved to be 4" from the wall at the rear, with absorption, placing the speaker face at about 15". You can see that the dip is far less serious, and moved up to about 220 Hz. That's the PRIMARY SBIR dip: you can also see the secondary SBIR dip at 2x85=170 Hz has completely disappeared. And also the third dip, at 3x85=255 Hz... gone! (There were other things going on between those two tests: it's not just SBIR! Don't get confused by that. Just focus on the actual SBIR issue, and how it went away by moving the speaker and installing absorption).

I had thought about it but with currently only running 5" monitors and not knowing exactly when i'll have the budget to upgrade i figured it would be a guessing game building soffits for speakers i don't have yet (if that makes sense). It's something i would definitely revisit when i upgrade speakers though!

Then design your soffits so you can replace the speakers easily! I've done that a few times: made the soffits "modular", where you can simply slide out the actual module that holds the speakers, and is larger than the biggest speaker you would ever need. For example, at Studio Three Productions, they started out with Genelec speakers originally, and that's what I designed the room for originally, but they thought the would upgrade at some point, so I designed the soffits "modular". About a year later, one of the Genelecs went flaky, so they decided to upgrade, and we selected Eve Audio SC-407's, which are MUCH larger, and I wanted to mount them vertically, not horizontally. But it was easy to do: they built new soffit modules, mounted the SC-407's in them, then simply switched out the modules with minimum down-time for the studio, and carried on working right away. Just a few hours. We then changed the room treatment and re-tuned it for the new speakers, to get optimum acoustics again, as studio time permitted, but the actual swap was done in a very short time. You could do something similar...

Would building soffits later negate any side/rear wall treatment I install now?

Not really. You'll need the side wall, rear wall, and ceiling treatment anyway, regardless of having flush-mounted speakers or not. You might need to modify it at bit, to deal with the changed acoustic response of the room, but that's not a big deal. What the soffit WILL do for you, is make your small speakers sound larger, eliminate a whole bunch of ugly artifacts (including SBIR from the front wall....), and is arguably the single most important thing you can do to your room to improve acoustics.

Moved some things around...

Getting better! But make your desk smaller... as small as you possibly can. Desks have an effect on the room acoustics: the smaller and more "open" it is, then less it will affect the room response...



- Stuart -

Hey Stuart,

once again thanks so much for your insights and thorough answers. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into explaining everything!

I'm sure you already know this, but the 38% "rule" is not carved in stone: it a good guideline, but you are allowed to move around a bit from there...

yeah just a starting point.

Getting better! But make your desk smaller... as small as you possibly can. Desks have an effect on the room acoustics: the smaller and more "open" it is, then less it will affect the room response...

It's funny how you don't (at least i hadn't) give the actual desk too much thought when it comes to the acoustics. I do realise that obviously the bigger the desk the more surface area/surfaces for sound to hit/bounce off. Was thinking of something along the lines of this: but I guess the monitor shelf/rack space will no doubt play havoc with the acoustics. Found this which is a lot more low profile: I like the idea of building soffits but I'm not sure how long we'll be at our current house (just about finished renovating the main house and my wife is already looking to upsize! LOL) and I don't want to over capitalise at the moment (it's my first real studio build with more to come I'm sure). I'm under no illusion of this being anything more than a "home studio" and I'm honestly happy if i get a half decent sounding room. I've recorded guitars for two albums and done quite a few other overdubs in this garage before I even started the build!! I'll get the timber (laminate) flooring in in the next few days and re measure the room. Would it be feasible to finish the super chunks in the three corners or should I wait until I measure the room with the timber flooring in?

The rear wall was going to just be a "timber pallet wall" but I figured it would be more beneficial to make it a big slat resonator (as you probably figured out in the sketchup). Am I thinking along the right lines here? The room is obviously too small to make the rear wall diffusive/reflective? And am I on the right track with adding slats to the super chunks? My thinking is that I don't want to kill the room too much either with all the trapping going in.

Thanks again for all your time and wisdom!