John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Helloo,
This is my home studio in my backyard in a double car garage that i have converted to a studio mainly for home use.
I have been playing music for a long time, mixed many live bands, and built 2 recording studios from the ground up.
I am very happy with the isolation of this building and never had a complaint from any neighbour.

The studio Room is 5370 long x 3110 wide x 2400 High
currently there is some acoustic treatment in the room, but looking to further the treatment on the major wall opposite the window and either side of the adjacent walls.
i am going to rip the carpet up, and maybe paint the floor or put floorboards down.

My objective is to keep the room as live as possible without all the muckiness.
I have added photos for all to see.

There are corner diffusers added in 2 of the corners and 1 more to go in the other 2. the 2 that are installed made a huge difference to the sound immediatly, previously i had made acoustic clouds and hang them on the wall, i was not overly happy with the sound hence the change.

if there is anything i have missed i am happy to add.

thanks
Adam

So

Done lots of research, and i think i am going to go with a Red Bull Academy type design.

Will post some pics when finished!

thanks

Room is Cleaned out , carpet Ripped out and First coat of paint gone down!

Hi Adam, and Welcome!

I didn't see any actual questions in your post, so not sure if you wanted to ask anything, or just wanted to post your construction details?

currently there is some acoustic treatment in the room, but looking to further the treatment on the major wall opposite the window and either side of the adjacent walls.

If you are talking about the control room, then the normal way of doing that is to first test the room with acoustic test software, such as REW, to determine what the problems are, then design the treatment devices to deal with each problem, such that the final acoustic response meets the ITU BS.1116-2 standard (or at least gets as close as possible). That will ensure that the room is acoustically neutral, and suitable for mixing. It is never a good idea to treat a control room "by ear", since the result will never be good. Human ears don't have the ability to identify the specific issues (frequency, phase, decay rates, etc.). We can determine that it doesn't "sound good" or "the bass isn't tight" or "there's not enough air", but we don't have the physical capability to determine that the problem is an SBIR issue at 129.3 Hz causing a 22 dB dip in the frequency response with a Q of 3, or that there is comb filtering in the high mids, or that there's a phase difference between the left and right speakers at 300-500 Hz, or etc. if you can't identify the actual parameters that are out of whack, then you can't design the method for fixing them. So you need to run the REW analysis, analyze the results, compare that against what it should be, then design and build specific device that will accomplish that.

If we are talking about your tracking room, then you still need to do the analysis with REW to determine what the problems are, but there's no standard (like BS.1116-2) to compare against, since live rooms are subjective, not objective. Live rooms are tuned by experience and goals, not so much by specific frequencies, phases or response curves.

i am going to rip the carpet up, and maybe paint the floor or put floorboards down.

Excellent idea! Carpet is terrible, acoustically: it does the opposite of what most small rooms need.

When you say "floorboards", I would strongly suggest that you do that with proper laminated flooring over a suitable underlay. Don't do any type of flooring that has air spaces in it or under it, as that could potentially create resonant cavities that do nasty things to your isolation, or your acoustics.

There are corner diffusers added in 2 of the corners

I don't see any diffusers at all in your photos! The only things I see in your corners, are slot walls. Those are partly reflective and partly absorptive, with some minor diffusion at some frequencies. If the air space at the back is sealed, then they are also tuned Helmholtz resonators, which is an entirely different kettle of fish! You'd have to tune them specifically to the problematic frequencies (or ranges). If not, then they'd be tuned at random, which is a bad idea: they would be treating problems that don't need treating, and not treating problems that do need it.

previously i had made acoustic clouds and hang them on the wall, i was not overly happy with the sound hence the change.

Terminology problem! Clouds are hung under the ceiling, not on walls! Hence the name...

Done lots of research, and i think i am going to go with a Red Bull Academy type design.

Which one? Got a link to the specific one you are talking about? They have done quite a few....

- Stuart -

Thanks Stuart for the response much appreciated!

Ok..

yes i am looking to do the control room, but not yet, would like to treat the tracking room first.

Sorry yes my terminology is wrong i did mean to say slot wall in corners. they are not sealed.

Ripping the carpet up and painting the floor made the room sound alot better. we had rehearsal with my band and although a litlle live without treatment on walls it sounded and looked better.

Red Bull in Melbourne is the one i am referring to, was not aware that john had done other ones or that i could find on here.

So my questions are -

should i test the tracking room first with software?

i know what i want from the room, and the only thing i can hear is the old slap echo, hahaha. but there is probably more going on.

Thanks

Quick Question

I was thinking about putting slot resonators on every wall. on the opposite wall of the window would be 2 of them .

these would be 1200 wide and to the top of the roof, basically the same as what I've done in the corner and the same as red bull in melbourne.

I will see if i can draw something, not my strong point lol.

here is my Crap Drawing of the tracking room. I have no idea how to use Smart draw i tried it, or Sketchup yep tried that.

So i went back to good old pen and paper hahah. well u get the idea.

Would this work?





Thanks
Adam

Sorry yes my terminology is wrong i did mean to say slot wall in corners. they are not sealed.

If it is not sealed, then it's just slats in front of a bass trap. A slot wall is tuned, unsealed slats are not. Complicated!

Ripping the carpet up and painting the floor made the room sound alot better. we had rehearsal with my band and although a litlle live without treatment on walls it sounded and looked better

Excellent! It's amazing how little things like that can make such a big difference.

should i test the tracking room first with software?

You could, yes. It would help to understand it better.

I was thinking about putting slot resonators on every wall. on the opposite wall of the window would be 2 of them .

I would not do that. You generally don't want all four walls to sound the same. If you treat your walls differently, then you can have different "zones" in the room: some more live, others more dead, some reflective, others diffusive. That gives you a lot more flexibility when you are tracking, as you can move any instrument around to find the best location for it.

- Stuart -

Cool Much appreciated Thanks