John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi,

I've looked through the forum and various websites to try and get information on how to design my room but am still unsure how I work out what I need in the way of treatment. I'm building the room in my basement. The limiting factor is the ceiling height. I can vary the wall distances somewhat, but can't go too much larger. The rough dimensions I have are:
Height: 1960mm
Width: 3200mm
Length: 4800mm

The room will mainly be used by me for electronic music production. My main goal is to have a room that sounds OK. I won't be recording albums or mastering in there. I'm planning on building the walls from metal studs and using 13mm Knauf SoundShield plasterboard and insulation. Ceiling will be 13mm SoundShield on furring channel with rubber mounted clips attached to floor joist above. (My friend is a plasterer and said he can get SoundShield for a good price).

I've looked at RealTraps ModeCalc and http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm, but I'm still not sure how I work out what I need in terms of bass traps etc, and if I should adjust my wall dimensions a bit. Should I wait until the room is built, and test the response before designing the treatment?

Regards,
Stewart.

grapefruit wrote:Should I wait until the room is built, and test the response before designing the treatment?

That's about it. Make sure you stay away from simple ratios and put the dimensions in to Bobs calculator and make sure it doesn't get any real fails.

Also, get sketchup and draw up a blank room...get planning in there. It is super useful and you can post images here for some feedback.

Hi Stewart, and welcome to the forum!

You have a great name by the way... Just need to fix the spelling!

If you adjust the dimensions a little bit, you can get a better room ratio. For example, if you make it 460 x 300 x 196 cm, then that would make the response a bit smoother. There's another really useful calculator that presents the same information in a more visual (and aural!) manner: http://amroc.andymel.eu/

However, those numbers all refer to the final dimensions of the room: the surfaces of the completed inner-leaf. They do not refer to the size of the space that you have to build the studio inside of. So you need to account for the air gap, framing, and drywall thickness when figuring out what those numbers will be. For example, if your current available height is 196 cm, the final finished ceiling height will actually be more like 170, if you build a proper framed ceiling conventionally, or maybe 190 if you build it inside-out, or 180 if you hang id from clips and hat channel.

Also, 13mm drywall is not recommended: it is very thin, too flexible, and has undesirable resonance characteristics. You should only use 16mm or greater. 13mm will not isolate well. You didn't mention how much isolation you need, but if you are looking for the level that a typical home studio needs, then 13mm would not be good.

Regarding treatment: rockindad is spot on! First use SketchUp to design the room, then build it when the design works well, then test it acoustically, then based on that testing decide what treatment to put in.

What is the purpose of the room?


- Stuart -