John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hey guys!

I'm far from an acoustics expert and am seeking some help with the studio acoustics for a control and a rehearsal/recording room me and my colleagues are trying to build.
The problem is the shape of the room, because it's a barrel vault or hangar like shaped. We don't really have other options so we would really like to get the best out of this room. It's not even that small (see links below for drawings with measurements and a quick rendering me and my friend did).
I just have no idea where to start with a room shaped like that even thought I have some ideas. The sound is supposed to be accumulating in the middle of the room as far as I understand? And this is were I need your help.

I was kind of a thinking of doing it this way:

- Recording room: solution I was thinking about was by putting frames with stone wool down the middle with spacing between them on the ceiling across the whole length, put absorbers on the sides across the whole length with spacing between them and some bass traps on the bottom across the whole length.
Would that work? What would you suggest?

- control room: no ideas. :/ It's better to turn the desk towards the curved wall or towards the wall separating recording room from the control room?
Can you apply LEDE or reflection free zone type of treatment to such shaped rooms?

http://imgur.com/6DKBsvD
http://imgur.com/jcjH2Wk

Hi there "serenadeoflies" Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

I just have no idea where to start with a room shaped like that even thought I have some ideas.

The only realistic layout for a control room like that would be to rotate your orientation 90°, so you are facing down the length of the "bunker", with the ceiling curving symmetrically overhead from left to right, peaking in the middle, above your head. That at least gives you reasonable symmetry, and decent length to the rear wall.

The curved ceiling is an acoustic nightmare! A curve is about the worst shape you can have, acoustically, since it focuses sound. It it going to need some carefully designed and creative treatment on that. You'll basically have one single gigantic modal response from that, with several smaller related modal "things" going on. Before treating it, I would first run a test with the REW acoustic software, to see what it is really doing, then design the treatment based on that.

towards the wall separating recording room from the control room?

Yep! That's the way I would do it.

Can you apply LEDE or reflection free zone type of treatment to such shaped rooms?

LEDE is a concept whose time came a want a couple of decades ago. It turned out to be unpleasant to work for long hours in a LEDE room, since it does not sound natural: Extensions of LEDE, including RFZ, are much better. You can probably implement RFZ partially in there, but it would be a real challenge to do so! That's going to take some very careful design to make it work, due to the curved ceiling. I think it could be done, but I cant say for certain: that would need a lot of analysis first, to figure it out. It's just a hunch I have that it should be possible.


- Stuart -