Studio building framed up! thoughts?

[cactusslim]

Hello there,
I have been recording with a mobile system for the past few years. I bring the tracks back to a small room in my house to mix. I am now building a mixing space and a spot to maybe do occasional overdubs and my own personal recording in.

Before this past winter I started on the build. It is framed up (concrete floor, walls, roof, shingles, doors, windows are all done), no interior work yet. It essentially looks like a single car garage at:

12ft x 26ft with 10 ft high ceilings. I went with 2x6 walls ( making the interior dimensions 11 x 25) as I wanted to get as much insulation in there as possible due to the cold Canadian winters.

It will remain a Single Room.

I chose to go with radiant in floor heat in the concrete slab which is the floor of the studio.

I plan to do stained pine on the walls instead of drywall.

I have great neighbours who are aware of what I am building (they ask how it is going regularly). I don't plan to "wake up the neighbours", so low to moderate listening level stuff.

I will try to get some pics to post here asap.

Questions:

How do these dimensions look?

what will I be watching for with the dimensions of this room, treatment wise and testing wise?

I have no plans yet in this regard but I have a bunch of old baffles and Roxul safe and sound left over from my last studio space. There are no angled walls in the shell of this building. Should I build in some angles INTO corners, or between ceilings to walls? what would you call them, bulkheads with insulation?

[cactusslim]

Please ignore the mess, it became a bit of a storage area this past winter while it sat there.

However, I should be having the electrical done within the next 2 weeks and be ready to insulate.

1 -

2 -

3 -


1- just shows where I am at on the outside. Roofing done, needs siding.

2 - is the view facing where I picture putting my mixing area. There are 2 windows there. These are the only 2 spots the city would let me put windows and one of my prerequisites was natural light! this looks out into a wooded area behind my home.

3 - this is the back, I went with a garage door because I needed to be able to load in and out lots of equipment for my mobile recording business. I did not really want to have a garage door, ultimately it was a tough decision but I went with convenience for that side of my business. Thinking I can hang heavy fabric or something I can pull across there so you are not seeing that door from inside the room.

that's where I am at.

[Soundman2020]

Hi there "cactusslim", and Welcome!

It essentially looks like a single car garage

More than just "looking" like one, it actually seems to be one! It even has a garage door, which will need to be dealt with if you want to isolate your studio....

I plan to do stained pine on the walls instead of drywall.

Fine, but you'll still need something under that, if you want to isolate your studio.

so low to moderate listening level stuff.

How loud? In decibels. Everything hinges around that. You need to come up with a number that is the difference between "how loud am I?" and "how quite do I need to be?". That number is how much isolation you need, and it alone defines the type of construction you need.

How do these dimensions look?

Not so good for a control room, unfortunately. There's a room mode calculator here : http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm and another one here : http://amroc.andymel.eu/ As you can see, those are not good dimensions for a control room. The modal behavior is not smooth, and the room fails one of the three "critical" tests, used by the BBC. Basically, the room is too long and thin. Since you cant make it wider, you'll have to make it shorter.

what will I be watching for with the dimensions of this room

Firstly, getting close to a good room ratio, one that is within the Bolt area, or close to that, and that passes all three of the BBC tests. But do take into account that all of the dimensions here refer to the final inner surfaces of the room, after the isolation system is built. So they will all be smaller than what you mentioned.

treatment wise and testing wise?

That's kind of the same thing! Testing is what you do to determine what treatment you will need. Some of the treatment is pretty much standard, since all small rooms need it, without exception, but once that is in place, you need to test the room again to see which problems still remain, then design suitable treatment for dealing with those problems. Rinse. Repeat....

I have no plans yet in this regard but I have a bunch of old baffles and Roxul safe and sound left over from my last studio space.

They might be useful, especially the Roxul. For the rest, it depends on what you mean by "baffles"...

There are no angled walls in the shell of this building.

That's fine, and you don't need them. The room is already very narrow, and angling the walls would only make it narrower. Try to minimize the loss of width from the isolation system, so you end up with the final inner-leaf boundary surfaces as far apart as possible.

Should I build in some angles INTO corners,

You will need all of those corners for massive bass traps, so certainly do NOT cut off any angles there! It's a very small room, so it will need massive bass trapping, and corners are the best place for that.

or between ceilings to walls?

The ceiling-wall corners are also very valid places for bass trapping, and you will likely need to do that too, so just keep those available. There are 12 corners in a rectangular room, and all of them are useful, acoustically. So keep your doors and windows well away from the corners too, such that they won't interfere with the placement of your bass traps.

I should be having the electrical done within the next 2 weeks and be ready to insulate.

How can you do any electrical work, when you do not yet have the inner-leaf in place??? All electrics are done on the inner leaf, not the outer leaf. All of the outer-leaf will be totally covered up and inaccessible once the inner-leaf is in place, and you cannot cut holes in the inner leaf! You can have one single penetration of the inner leaf for the main power feed to enter the room, but from that point on, it is all distributed entirely within the room, with no further holes cut for anything. All outlets, switches, and lights are done inside the room, without cutting the inner leaf in any place. Assuming you want good isolation for your room, of course.

The biggest question here is: how much isolation do you need?

1- just shows where I am at on the outside. Roofing done, needs siding.

sliding windows??? So you don't need any isolation at all?

These are the only 2 spots the city would let me put windows and one of my prerequisites was natural light! this looks out into a wooded area behind my home.

Windows are fine, and the view is great, but sliding windows are neither. You'll have to replace those with single pane fixed windows that do not open. Sliders are no use at all, for isolation. The glass needs to be absolutely sealed in place. And the same applies to your inner-leaf windows, that you will put opposite those two, in your inner-leaf walls.

3 - this is the back, I went with a garage door

... then you certainly do not need any isolation at all! Your neighbors must also be very, very kind to you, and you must not have any issues with outside sound coming in, such as wind, rain, hail, thunder, aircraft, traffic, neighbors, dogs barking, lawnmowers, radios, kids playing, etc....

A garage door is just thin piece of metal or wood, and has a huge gap around it on all sides. It does not seal. It does not isolate. And it takes up a huge amount of space, meaning that the area that it opens into is not available for your studio. The inner leaf will have to start further in than the point where the garage door reaches when fully open. on the other hand, that solve solve your length problem! Assuming that door comes in about 7 feet, you cold leave a bit extra room for the actual isolation wall, shorten the studio area so it becomes about 14 x 10 x 8, and you'd have a much better ratio... You could use that area between the door and the studio for storage.

ultimately it was a tough decision but I went with convenience for that side of my business.

Convenience against acoustics is usually not such a good trade-off. That's the case here.

Thinking I can hang heavy fabric or something I can pull across there so you are not seeing that door from inside the room.

Heavy fabric would not be much use, acoustically. That door is at the rear of the studio, opposite the end where the speakers are, so it would need very think absorption on it: at least 6 inches. Plus it would need the large superchunk bass traps on either side, in the corners... but there are no corners, since the door runs practically wall to wall!

In other words, that door was not a good decision at all.

If you want to keep it, your best bet is to place the actual isolation wall several feet in from that, but a pair of normal hinged doors (solid core, not hollow core) back-to-back right in the middle of that wall, and then then treat the interior accordingly: superchunks in the rear corners, floor to ceiling, and the rest covered in thick porous absorption, perhaps with some form of high frequency diffusion or reflection in front of it. Then use the area between the garage door and the isolation wall, for storage of your live sound gear.

That would be the best bet right now.


- Stuart -

[cactusslim]

OK. Thanks for all the info Soundman!

Some attempts to resize smaller came up worse than my initial 25 x 11 x 10 on that calculator.

I'm not sure I know exactly what I want to see with this calculator, the dark green areas are "neutral" (good)? and then areas to worry about start at light green to red from bad-worse correct?

so, what if the room was 21x11x10 (LxWxH)? That would look more like this:



When I type in my initial dimensions this looks much better I think.

Of course this is not addressing the isolation issue. Ideally I am just looking for a useable space to mix in. I'll figure out what that means in decibels.
Thanks again!

[rockindad]

Stuart is referring to the information below the graphic you've shown here (scroll down). Under the heading of 'R.Walker BBC 1996' there is three ratio tests. You want a pass on all three of those to be in the ball park or usable. Mess with your numbers - well, length of the room specifically in your case, to get a 'pass' on all three tests.

Scott