my name is Fred, I'm from France. I plan to build my own studio.
I record, mix, produce and master for 25 years near full time. In these domains, I've got experience and still learn everyday with passion, but in acoustics I'm far less experimented. Well...just have modestly build experimentally 2 recording studios from scratch in every home I lived in -- but also worked professionally regularly in high class acoustic environnements, so I know how it is supposed to "sound" when studios are very well made. Have read about acoustics few books, and experimented at home to fix some issues, constructed absorbers and diffusers, made measurements, saw and heard the differences. So I perhaps only know the fundamentals that a sound engineer must know, but I am absolutely not skilled at all for designing and calculate sizes, angles and so on to achieve the best results. In fact, this is my first serious attempt to create a studio, I mean, not from scratch, but conceived and calculated the best I'll can. I've just bought recently my own house, which is big, and hope to get for the first time a quite decent studio. This is my wish. It won't be perfect, since ceilings are already limited to 3m height most of the time inside. But this will be whatever far better than what I had at home before.
Unfortunately, as this is a house, the biggest rooms are already surrounded and made in heavy material so I have to manage with (don't have the budget to break and reconstruct heavy walls, and for some of them, no way to do so technically even with budget because some are bearing walls). I have to deal with what I have in terms of heavy structure. For instance the inclined roof on the 40m2 room, which is intended to be my mastering room. I want it constructed as a RFZ mixing room because I always found them to be more accurate, more analytic acoustically (less comb filtering) than so-called "mastering rooms" which are often too live for me). Notice that I will have also to mix (digitally) there. So RFZ control-room is my first goal.
The rest of the building is 3m height, and it will be the recording part with another control room (a bit smaller in terms of X & Y but 3m ceilings and less natural light).
Well, anyway, my priority is to create first of all the mastering / mixing room inside the room with angled ceiling.
And I need to understand number of things as you see before drawing something good !!
so this topic will be centered mainly on this Mastering / mixing room.
To begin with,
THE SIZE : 8m (Lenght) x 5m (Width) x 2,30m to 3,20m (Height)
Size are external measurements. Knowing that concrete walls are made of 20cm thick concrete.
Here are two pictures I took very quickly in order to show you the room.
The windows will be replaced with brand new higher ones (220 cm x 150 cm) with highest sound isolation properties. Of course, I plan to covered them with translucend acoustic treatment. It can be absorber type (tissue), it can also be translucent diffusors made of plexiglass.
This will depend of the needs in acoustical domain.
Just for information, this house is in the country, so outside noise level is not a problem (except some farm animals sometimes, but this is quite negligible), and the studio noise won't be a problem for neighbours since they are very far away from my home.
I'm working on drawings now..Not easy, I'm learning.
But I have several questions in which I can't find answers, this is why I write to you here.
First question :
As far I searched, I did not find room mode calculator which can take account of inclined roofs such mine. Can you help me to find one if by fortune, it exists ?
Second question : concerning thermal insulating in recording studios.
In acoustic books that I have, I never saw anything about thermal insulation. It is perhaps supposed that thermal insulation is always made on the outside, so there is no need to build insulation walls inside.
in France, most of the houses and buildings were and still are isolated inside because of the price (3x espansive for external technologies). Also, the current standards of thermal insulations inside building impose to place everywhere on the fiberwool a thick microporous plastic leaf (vapour barrier) which allows the moisture to escape but blocking the air leaking (to avoid air currents, I don't know if it is the right expression). and the we put plasterboards. This is for ordinary buildings. For recording studios I don't really know.
But I can't affort external insulation so I have to manage with this factor.
In the old days, plasterboard, outside the fact it acts a rigid wall in the houses, had the role of blocking air leaking from the outside.
Nowadays, with plastic vapour barrier everywhere, if it is properly done, we can avoid putting plasterboard if needed. For instance, we can put directly stretched fabric, or anything else. So, in a recording studio, there is no longer need to have after thermal insulation wall, a second layer of glassfiber for acoustic treatment. I don't know if I'm very clear but this is difficult for me to explain in english. I never really saw how old recording studios were build in france (never opened a wall...) but I think they solved the problem with no separate thermal insulation, but more heating in winter. Now energy costs are constantly and dramatically increasing, so we have to take in account. Here in winter we can reach -15°C sometimes. Not often but this happens. Whatever -5°C in the night is the rule several months per year.
So if we avoid plasterboard second wall, we will have plastic vapour barrier on the surface. This won't prevent LF absorption, which is good, but of course this will act as a reflector in the HF domain. And of course this is optically ugly. This can be covered of course with stretched fabric or whatever else needed for acoustic purposes.
Question (maybe a bit obvious, but just to confirm my thoughts) : is it a problem to have [excepting the windows and the door] absolutely everywhere around the studio at least 160 mm thick fiberglass and on the roof 280 mm all long ? Of course we can put more fiberglass locally where it is needed and advised (corners, front wall). But where it is no needed, the only possibility is to put plasterboard, if something rigid is needed, or any kind of diffusor or abfusor.
If I well understood, will it be right so ?
I have already other questions, but let's begin with the basic or "newbiest" ones, after I will go further in details.
Hope those questions won't be too "newbie" levelled...
Thanks so much in advance for your answers and advises.
Best regards from France,
Fred
Yes yes yes! Absolutely!