John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello Everyone,

First and foremost it is wonderful to see all those passionate people gathered in this great place thanks to John.
Being only a sound engineer and musician my knowledge of Acoustics is more on the "need to know" basis as there is not enough time in one life time to do it all. I am sure this place will be fundamental in getting my "Workshop" to sound the way I imagine it should.

In my initial "introduction" post I mentioned another space I planned to use. I have since changed plans and will now use our double car garage that I plan to adapt.
I do not plan to build separate rooms there as as I am a big fan of big spaces and do not mind to spend some time with musicians on occasion that I will record them. I will do a lot of mixing (in Stereo and 5.1) and composing (film, TV music etc). The space has around 40m2 and has a pyramid hip type of roof which I intend to open up. The basic room dimensions are 5,8m by 6,92m and the height is for the moment 2,8m. Once we open up that area above I will be able to check and post precise measurements.
The two sliding car doors will be replaced with a wall an the left side and a sliding glass door on the right one. This to allow for equipment to go in and out of the studio and to allow some extra light - I like natural light. There will also be a window on the roof on the same side.

The area above the room and the locker will become a mezzanine that I will use as storage. The part where the studios roof space touches the rest of the house will be sealed with a thick wall to provide good isolation form the rest of the house.

The actual isolation that will be necessary remains to be checked. While I do plan to record some drums and loud guitar amps occasionally sound isolation will not be a big issue. We live in the countryside and I only work during the day. Once we clear the garage
and take care of the two car doors I will do some real life testes to see just how loud it gets.

I will have a fair amount of keyboard instruments around the space - rhodes suitcase, wurli, an old farfissa and an upright piano. Also a couple of digital keyboards on stands. My workstation is mainly digital with some preamps and a couple of compressors. One surround system, a couple of stereo systems and a few monitors. I will keep the footprint of the whole set up to a minimum in order to provide as few reflective surfaces between the speakers and myself as possible.

I suppose that the opening of the roof will force certain speaker set ups by its natural symmetry. I am still at the beginning of the process and I want to go slowly, checking out the sound in there and planing for adjustments in order to keep a certain balance of frequency/rt60 values. I plan to record there as well and will most probably like to have some sort of variable acoustics.

I will be using a fair amount of active studio speakers being that I am a co-founder of a company that manufactures them. The place is used for my daily work as well as a shooting range so to speak

If you have any initial thoughts on this project I would be happy to listen.

I have a question. My initial thought is to insulate the roof with 30cm of rock wool. Do you think this is enough or should I do more?
Any suggestions on alternative ways of installing it in order to augment its acoustic efficacy?

Hi there " krisg", and welcome!

I will do a lot of mixing (in Stereo and 5.1) and composing (film, TV music etc). The space has around 40m2 and has a pyramid hip type of roof which I intend to open up. The basic room dimensions are 5,8m by 6,92m and the height is for the moment 2,8m.

You should probably take a look at the ITU BS.1116-2 document, to see the specifications that a control room needs to comply with, in order to be usable as a high quality critical listening room.

sound isolation will not be a big issue. We live in the countryside

So it does not ever rain where you live? No wind? No thunder? No hail? No aircraft flying overhead? No cars around? No animals? No noise in the rest of the house, such as doors opening and closing, vacuum cleaners, radio, TV, phones ringing, people talking, etc?

I will keep the footprint of the whole set up to a minimum in order to provide as few reflective surfaces between the speakers and myself as possible.

It's not just those surfaces that you need to be worried about: it is the entire room. Here too BS.1116-2 can show you what a room needs to be like, acoustically, in order to be usable as a studio.

planing for adjustments in order to keep a certain balance of frequency/rt60 values.

I hate to seem repetitive, but BS.1116-2 tells you all about that too! It shows you exactly what the frequency response of the room needs to be and exactly what the decay times need to be doing as well.

I plan to record there as well and will most probably like to have some sort of variable acoustics.

That would be a good idea. Then you can move the variable panels to get the precision neutral characteristics that you need for mixing, and move them to other positions to change that response a bit for tracking, which obviously needs very different acoustics.

I have a question. My initial thought is to insulate the roof with 30cm of rock wool. Do you think this is enough or should I do more?

"enough" for what? What density of rock wool? What are you trying to achieve with that? It would be good for general room acoustics, yes, but it still needs to be properly balanced to create the conditions that a control room needs.

Any suggestions on alternative ways of installing it in order to augment its acoustic efficacy?

Well, you can't change the efficiency or efficacy of the absorption, but you can change the effective frequency range by leaving an air gap behind it. The larger the air gap, the more effective it is down to lower frequencies.

I'd also suggest two books that you probably need to read: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais.


- Stuart -

Thanks for your answers Stuart

krisg wrote:Thanks for your answers Stuart

You are very welcome! It's goo to hear from you again, after nearly a year. Is your project still going ahead? I sure hope so, as you have an decent sized space there, and it could be pretty good!

- Stuart -

Yes. I have gone through with it. I have obtained a pretty decent acoustic environment in which I love recording. It looks like that.


I do have a couple of issues (SBIR I would think that I need to deal with). As for the rest the speakers seem to sound quite nice.