Is impossible to get help in creating something that doesn't go the whole nine?
Not at all! It's just a matter of choosing which is more important. You can have good isolation, good acoustics, and good looks. That's not a problem, and that's what studio design is all about: making sure all three aspects are taken care of. But the "good looks" part comes at the end, once the isolation and treatment needs have been decided. If you look around the forum, you'll see many different styles of decoration, from rustic to modern, some with lots of visible wood, others with no visible wood, some dark colored, some light colored, some with contrasting colors. some have lots of glass, some have no glass at all. Some have very spartan looks, with just basic simple lines, others have "busy" looks, with lots of visible details. Some have bright lighting, some have subdued, soft lighting. It all depends on the personal tastes of the owner. There's a hug range of things that can be done in terms of decoration, look, style, aesthetics. But once again, all of that is done around the underlying necessity of making sure the room sounds good. Just like a chef that would never think of putting some pretty decoration in the plate that would taste disgusting, or poison the eater, so too an acoustician would never use a decorative object or style in the room if it would make it sound bad or "poison" the acoustics.
That's the message I'm trying to get across. Rooms can and should and do look great: just not at the expense of the acoustics. I have been in many wonderful looking architectural masterpieces... that sound like crap! Because the architect gave first priority to aesthetics, and non to acoustics. I have also been in equally wonderful looking architectural masterpieces that sounded fantastic, where the architect had designed the aesthetics and acoustics together. And of course, I've also been in some rooms that sounds spectacular, but looked like the inside of a dog's breakfast... where no architecture was involved at all! So that's what I'm trying to say here: good studio design is about both: first getting the room to sound good, then working with that to get it looking good to.
For example, a large room, such as you are talking about, will need a lot of diffusion. Perhaps large Schroeder diffusers, or poly-cylindrical diffusers, or maybe simple geometric diffusers... They could be made visible to the room, and built from raw unfinished wood recovered from a demolition site if you wanted a very rustic look, or they could be carefully sanded and varnished to warm tones that complement the wall, ceiling and floor colors if you wanted that type of look... or they could be totally hidden behind fabric fronts, so they are not visible at all in the room. In all three cases, they would perform just as well, from the acoustic point of view, but would fit three totally different aesthetic styles. That's what I mean by "form follows function". First you figure out what type of treatment is needed, and the location in the room where it has to go in order to do its job acoustically, then you take a look at the various ways each device can be built, the various options that could be used in terms of materials, colors, finishes, etc. and figure out which combination best fits the aesthetic you want for the room.
That, as opposed to the incorrect path some people take, where they happen to see something they like and decide to put it into the room anyway, without thinking about what effect it will have on the acoustics. For example, a couple of years ago I designed a home studio for a guy in Canada, and after it was finished he went out and bought a very nice looking, very large, thick fluffy throw-rug, to completely cover the floor between the chair and the sofa... and it trashed his high frequency response! All of a sudden he lost all the clarity in the highs, and lost the spatial clues in the stereo imaging... we figured it out pretty quick, of course, and he took his rug back to the store, and swapped it for an equally nice looking but much more acoustically suitable rug, that was smaller, thinner, less fluffy, and properly located in the room. And he got his high-end back again.
That's what I'm trying to get across here: he decided on a decorative item that destroyed his carefully balanced room acoustics, rather than first thinking about the acoustics of the room, then going to look for a decorative item that would complement that, and also look good. He could, indeed, have used that nice thick rug if he wanted to, but then we would have had to modify the acoustic treatment in the rest of the room to compensate for the lost highs. He decided not to go that path: his room still looks just as good, just with a different rug.
Studio design is all about trade-offs: You an indeed have a room that looks wonderful, isolates beautifully, and sounds perfectly accurate, precise and acoustically clean... but it will cost a lot of money to do that. So if "low cost" is the number one priority for you, they you have to decide which of the other aspects you will "trade-off" in order to get the costs down: Will you settle for a room that is not well isolated? Or a room that does not have good acoustics? Or a room that does not have the look you wanted? Those are your choices. Something has to give, so it's up to you to decide which one. Or maybe it will be "some of all three": Maybe you'll decide to sacrifice some looks, some isolation, and some acoustics. Or maybe you'll decide that all three are very important, so you'll go looking for more money.
Or you could decide to sacrifice size, in order to keep good acoustics, good isolation, and also good looks. Just
down-size the room: if it is smaller, it will be much cheaper to build (less materials, less labor, faster). If it is smaller, it needs less diffusive treatment (which is expensive) and more abortive treatment (which is less expensive). So it could be good acoustically, good for isolation, good looks, not so expensive, just smaller.
OK, so you say that this is not going to be a permanent studio, and does not need to be perfect. Fair enough: if you are prepared to live with an acoustically inaccurate studio that does not isolate very well, and doesn't look very good, then you can save a lot of money! Just throw together something basic, knowing that your mixes won't translate so well, your neighbors might complain about the noise when you play loud, and doesn't look as wonderful as you would have liked either. If that's the way you want to build it, then that's entirely your choice! Nobody can say that that's a bad choice for you! If that's what meets your needs, then certainly we can help you build it like that. Not a problem.
But there's another option that you might not have considered: you could build it in a modular fashion, so that all of it can be taken apart and re.used when you leave, instead of just tearing it all down and throwing the bits in the trash. It is possible to build the walls as modules, the ceiling as modules, the HVAC system as modules, and the acoustic treatment as modules. That would be more expensive again, of course, but then when you do move out, you can take it all with you and either re-assemble the entire studio just as it was but in another location, or re-use the modules to build an entirely different studio.
That might be the best of all worlds, as you would not have to compromise so much on anything (except money!). If your biggest concern is losing all of your investment when you move out, then a modular room makes perfect sense, as you just take it apart and load the modules on a truck, and take it all with you.
It's an option worth considering....
Surely their are some things to do to improve upon "building walls at totally uneducated dimensions and loading in gear".
Yes, that too is possible! If all you want to do is to throw up a couple of walls to close off your area from the other areas, but without much isolation, then add some treatment to make it sound better, without making it sound world-class, then yes, absolutely, that can be done!
In that case, you wouldn't need to be very concerned at all about room ratios. Choosing a good ratio is only important for high quality rooms, where good smooth clean modal response is needed. If that's not the case, then don't worry too much about it. Modes are only a big issue where high acoustic precision is needed, but if you don't need precision in this room, then just choose dimensions that are reasonable: not direct multiples of each other, and not within 10% of being direct multiples, and you are done. (Also don't make it very long, very wide, or very high: the longest dimension should never be more than about 2.5 times the shortest dimensions). You don't need to fiddle around beyond that, if modal response and precision mixing are not necessary.
Same for isolation: if you can live with annoying your neighbors when you turn up the volume, then you don't need to go the full "room in a room" route. That's only needed where good isolation is important. As a point of reference, a typical house wall (wood studs with drywall on each side) gives you about 30 dB of isolation. If that's all you need, then that's easy to do. If you are prepared to keep the volume turned way down inside the studio, or if you can get away with turning it up and not having the neighbors want to kill you, or calling the cops on you, then simple coupled walls or single-leaf walls will work just fine. You only need to go to two-leaf walls and ceiling if you want higher levels of isolation, around 50 dB or more.
There are some "in between" options too, that will get you slightly better isolation for just a bit more money, such as using resilient channel, or RSIC clips plus hat channel, on the walls and ceiling, or adding an extra layer of drywall on each side. Those don't make an astounding difference, but they do increase isolation usefully.
I have thought about HVAC of course!! In fact new AC has to be installed.. Im quite concerned about that being a transmission line for the audio going strait to a friends bedroom.
Correct! They way to deal with that is to put "silencer boxes" (sometimes also called "baffle boxes") on the ducts, at the point where they pass through the walls. There are many examples on the forum of how to do that. And there are also several other aspects of HVAC that you'll see discussed in those threads.
So to summarize: maybe a modular build might be your best bet, or otherwise just down-sizing it to something you can afford. As well, if you don't need high isolation or good acoustics inside the room, then you could save money by just doing typical house wall construction and very basic acoustic treatment.
So you do have options, and it's only a matter of choosing how much quality, how much isolation, or how much aesthetics you are willing to sacrifice to fit your budget.
- Stuart -
