John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Dear All,

I'm currently in the process of building my house which will include a home recording studio and I'm looking for advices on how to organize the 35 square meters I have dedicated to this purpose.

Attached are the first sketches I made of what I'd like my future "sanctuary" to look like, based on the numerous readings I've gathered, some friendly advices and unexpectedly eye-opening bar talks!!

I am no professional in the field of acoustics and studio building, so I DO expect this first layout to be imperfect, but I've spent too many hours glued to the screen of my computer to spot said imperfections and at this point I think I need external advice, so... DO NOT HOLD BACK!! Please! Any comment will be highly appreciated!

On my part, I will try to detail hereafter the features of my design, the intellectual path that led me to this specific layout, and my main concerns.

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WHAT I'M TRYING TO ACHIEVE HERE is...

- ...first off, to suit my recording habits and workflow: I am a solo musician/composer who really makes a point of working alone, tracking instruments one by one, mixing & editing tracks on my DAW, going back and forth between the two tasks until the song is completed. This space is most definitely NOT going to be used by anybody else, or for somebody else's projects.

- secondly, to guarantee the best acoustic environment for both tracking and monitoring, considering the attributes of the space I'll be using (a 6.40m x 5.50m room with concrete walls, ceiling and floor; one door, no windows). Isolation is not really a concern as the house is being built in a really quiet neighborhood, isolated from others habitations, and the room itself is quite far from the bedrooms, showers and toilets the house includes.

- thirdly, to make myself WANT to compose. My essential goal, I think, is to create a space I feel comfortable spending countless hours in, immersing myself into music and forgetting the world around! Beyond just technically recording music, I want to use this space as a creative temple, in which I can comfortably sit down, whistle tunes, listen to music for pleasure, even watch movies (what the heck!)... anything to stimulate and maintain a creative momentum.

THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES I've included in regards to these goals are...

- ...My Instruments (Duh!)

- A workstation desk (which I'll be building myself and probably won't look anything like the one appearing on the pictures attached), with a computer/screen, AD/DA, summing mixer and outboard gear... I've positioned the desk so the listening spot sits at 38% of the room length and right in the middle of the room's width.

- Studio Monitors, placed so as to form an equilateral triangle with the listener, detached from the rear wall.

- A TV Screen on the rear wall, which can be used as an alternate computer display

- A Vocal Booth in the corner of the room

- A Storage Room in the other corner

- Acoustic treatment, placed theoretically (at first reflection points, in the corners of the room, on the rear wall behind the monitors, on the opposite wall facing the monitors, inside the vocal booth)

- A comfortably empty space behind the listening seat where instruments will be recorded in turn.

- A split A/C unit placed on one of the long walls

MY CONCERNS regarding this design are...

1. On a theoretical level, is the back of the room (where the sofa lies) well designed in regards to acoustics? I've chosen to include two symmetrical sub-rooms (the vocal booth and the storage room, which I'd really like to include in some way in my final design), and i've angled their walls so as to soften the corners of the room, but it makes the sofa stand in a recess that, for some reason, doesn't feel really conventional from an acoustics point of view... Most of the One-room home recording studio design I've checked just keep the inside space rectangle and the back wall flat.

2. Are there any essential acoustic treatment features i've missed (again, on a theoretical level), or is there some acoustic treatment principle I obviously ignore when you look at my layout?

3. Is it the best layout I can come with in terms of workflow considering my needs?

4. Is the entrance door well placed? I actually can't do much about it, but I may design the interior differently if some huge incoherence regarding this door is being pointed out to me. The first one I can think of is that it stand at a First reflection point...

5. ...let's stop there cause the list of concerns is infinite, it's getting late here and some of you probably fell asleep halfway through my post

Thank you so much just for reading this and for your help if you decide to answer!!! Again, any comment will be appreciated!

Hi there "Eimeo", and Welcome!

Great first post, by the way! .... except for one thing... Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

DO NOT HOLD BACK!! Please! Any comment will be highly appreciated!

That's good news! Unfortunately, some people can't take blunt constructive criticism. and see it as some sort of insult or "aggression".... Go figure! I always assumed (as you do, clearly!) that people come for for help, and don't really care what form that comes in. Sugar-coated explanations and flowery rainbow linguistics are not going to make your studio better! Grabbing your attention with a blunt and to-the-point comment, might. So double-welcome to you, sir! You "get it"!

mixing & editing tracks on my DAW,

Define "DAW": In other words, what gear do you have up at the front end of the studio? Speakers, console (if any), interface, pre-amps, outboard gear, etc. What do you need on/around your desk when you are working?

the attributes of the space I'll be using (a 6.40m x 5.50m room with concrete walls, ceiling and floor; one door, no windows).

Height?

Isolation is not really a concern

Since it is basically a concrete bunker at present, it probably already has fairly decent isolation.

listen to music for pleasure, even watch movies (what the heck!).

So a big screen on the front wall is needed, then?

I've positioned the desk so the listening spot sits at 38% of the room length and right in the middle of the room's width.

38% is not written in stonce by the finger of God himself. It's just a theoretically good starting point. Don't be afraid to change that a bit if you need to, as the design progresses.

- Studio Monitors, placed so as to form an equilateral triangle with the listener,

Careful with that "equilateral triangle" thing! It's not actually correct. You see it all over the place, on the internet, in YouTube videos, even in text books.... but it does not actually apply to humans. It only works for people who have had their ears surgically transplanted onto their eyeballs...

Here's why: when you look at those "equilateral triangle" diagrams, you'll see lines coming out of the speakers and intersecting at the middle of your head, at a nice clean 60ª angle. Now look at where those lines meet the circle that represents your head... they spear your eyes! In other words, those diagrams put your EYES on-axis to the speakers, instead of your EARS. It seems sort of obvious and logical that the speakers should be aimed at your ears, not your eyes.... eyes are not notably useful at detecting sound waves...

In other words, the speakers need to be either re-angled or move further apart such that the acoustic axis of the speaker is pointing at your ear, not your eye. Duh! I never have figured out why anyone would aim a speaker at their eyes... that's sort of like trying to see in the dark by poking a torch out of your ears!

If you do that (re-angle the speakers correctly), then the acoustic axes will no longer intersect inside your head: they will intersect at a certain distance behind your head. That distance should be about 18", give or take. It also turns out that you don't want the acoustic axis aimed exactly at the center of your ear hole: It's better (psycho-acoustically) to have it aiming just a bit outside of your ear lobe, sort of grazing past the edge of your ear, or even a bit further away.

"But!!!!", you say, "That means my speakers won't be toed-in at an angle of 30° any more!" Yup. That's correct. Why would you need them at 30° anyway? There's no legal requirement to do so (I promise you that the Speaker Angle Police will not arrest you!)- There's no law of physics, or of acoustics either, that makes it imperative to have your speakers angled at 30°. There's nothing wrong with 25°, or 31.6°, or 37.975424367°, or even 42.65465465°! They are not illegal, and the world won't come to an end if you have an angle that is not 30°. All that happens is that you change the width/depth of your sweet spot, and you make your stereo image and sound-stage wider or narrower. That's all. If you narrow down the angle, then the stereo image is narrowed down too, and the sweet spot becomes larger. That's good if you commonly spend a lot of time moving your head around, forwards and backwards, side to side, while you mix. On the other hand, a larger angle means a wider stereo image with better separation on the sound stage, but a smaller sweet spot. Which is good if you want high precision in your panning and placement of instruments, but not so good if you move your head a lot while you mix.

It turns out that it is entirely reasonable to have your speakers angled anywhere between about 20° and 45°. Personally, I try to keep things in the range 25° to 40°, as I find that much or or less than that is a bit too extreme for most people. That's a very useful range.

detached from the rear wall.

Why? (Trick question....) And how far? Unless you can get your speakers at least 2.5m from the front wall, you'll be creating problems with SBIR in the low end. Any distance between about 0.7 m and 2.2m is bad for SBIR. Your room is not big enough to be able to do that, I think: I don't see any way that you can get your speakers 2.5 from the front wall and still have your mix position at around 38% while also having your speaker angles at around 30°...

The only other option is to put the speakers tight up against the front wall, except for a 10cm gap.

- A TV Screen on the rear wall, which can be used as an alternate computer display

Why do you want it on the REAR wall? You'd have to turn around in your seat to see it! And then you'd have the speakers behind you...

1. On a theoretical level, is the back of the room (where the sofa lies) well designed in regards to acoustics

It's reasonably OK. It's not ideal, but it probably is workable, if you have suitable treatment. Having the sofa against the wall in any room is already a bad place, due to the bass issues next to the wall, so that position in your room would not be ideal anyway, even without the booths. Putting the booths on each side does not improve things, but it doesn't have to make things a whole lot worse if you design that carefully and treat it suitably.

is there some acoustic treatment principle I obviously ignore when you look at my layout?

Diffusion in small rooms? You need a distance of at least 3m between the face of any numeric-based diffuser and the ears of the engineer (or anyone else doing critical listening). I don't think your room is big enough to do that.

Also, you don't seem to have enough absorption on the rear wall, and your bass traps in the front corners are way too small. It's not a large room, so it will need a lot of bass trapping. I would make those at least 70cm across the front face, and preferably 90.

Also, did you check your modal distribution on a room ratio calculator? How does it look?

Your isolation booth is not going to have much isolation, since the walls are rather thing and there's only one door. Also, there's a clash between that door and the shelving on the right wall of the CR.

5. ...let's stop there cause the list of concerns is infinite,

- Stuart -

Thank you Stuart for such a thorough reply!! I feel really grateful that people like you willingly and freely sacrifice an hour of their time to help complete strangers in need like me!! I live in a relatively isolated part of the world (Tahiti) where professional advice on sound recording is hard to come by, you can't imagine how valuable your answer is to me! Thank you SO MUCH!!

To answer your questions:

Define "DAW"

My definite setup is quite theoretical as up until now I have done everything in-the-box with zero outboard gear, a cheap mic (Rhode NT1-A), a modest interface (Roland UA-25EX), and an AKAI 4000DS Tape recorder which I exclusively use for sound coloration... BUT, the building of my house (which is actually happening as we speak) and more importantly of the home studio that it will include is also the opportunity to upgrade my gear and get closer to the professional environment I've always craved for. At the moment, I'm still juggling with budget issues, technical specs and personal ambitions but i'm getting closer to knowing what my ultimate setup will look like, and it should definitely include: A performant OS-based computer with Pro Tools HD, an Avid HD Native PCIe Core card and a Lynx Aurora 16-HD AD/DA converter; A summing mixer (ideally the Neve 5060 centerpiece, with a satellite 5059 mixer if needed); A Neumann U87 Mic with a Neve 1073 PreAmp (Additional Preamp upgrades should include a Chandler Limited TG2-500 Pre); Two Pairs of monitors (One in the range of the Neumann KH120 and the second probably Auratone 5C); A power conditionner; Several outboard units, mostly dynamics, and mostly in the 500 series format (Smart Research C1LA Bus Comp, API 550a, Chandler Ltd Little devil comp, Inward Connections The Brute to name a few)... My beloved Tape recorder will also most definitely remain on my desk!
The general Idea is to have a Hybrid Setup which still relies heavily on my DAW for editing & mixing, mixed with an analog-based summing system.

Height?

Of course... 2.96m! I Guess reading the forum rules would have spared me that oversight

Unless you can get your speakers at least 2.5m from the front wall, you'll be creating problems with SBIR in the low end. Any distance between about 0.7 m and 2.2m is bad for SBIR.

Noted! I'll position my speakers 10cm from the front wall as you suggest. Btw I had no Idea what SBIR was before your reply, that's how useful your answer is to me XD

Why do you want it on the REAR wall? You'd have to turn around in your seat to see it! And then you'd have the speakers behind you...

My bad, I meant on the FRONT wall of course, as it appears on my 3D model.

Diffusion in small rooms? You need a distance of at least 3m between the face of any numeric-based diffuser and the ears of the engineer

If I position myself at roughly 38% of the room's length, that leaves 4.03 meters between my ears and the rear wall where the diffuser should be placed, so it should be enough shouldn't it?
That still doesn't mean that a diffuser on the rear wall is absolutely necessary, that I am aware of. Again, the acoustic treatment has been purely theoretically decided and I'm not planning on purchasing anything before the actual room has been built and any testing has been done.

Also, did you check your modal distribution on a room ratio calculator? How does it look?

Following your advice, I did. But I have to admit I don't understand much of the data that's been sent back to me. I've attached the results, I guess you'll have a better understanding of them. Could you tell me - if not what every number actually means - at least how to use those info?

Your isolation booth is not going to have much isolation, since the walls are rather thing and there's only one door. Also, there's a clash between that door and the shelving on the right wall of the CR.

Right, I didn't anticipate the wall thickness for the two booths at the rear but that's a parameter I should definitely include.
It doesn't show really well on the 3D model but the Vocal Booth door and the shelving actually don't clash, I made sure of that... It's very tight tho
Also, It's been pointed out to me that my vocal booth might be to small and might generate a "small box-like" sound with issues regarding the bass spectrum, do you concur? Do you have general advices regarding vocal booth design or could you point me towards good information sources?

Again, thank you so much for your answer and the ones to come, that really really much appreciated!!
Merry Christmas!!

E.

If I position myself at roughly 38% of the room's length, that leaves 4.03 meters between my ears and the rear wall where the diffuser should be placed, so it should be enough shouldn't it?

Yes, that should be fine.

Following your advice, I did. But I have to admit I don't understand much of the data that's been sent back to me. I've attached the results, I guess you'll have a better understanding of them. Could you tell me - if not what every number actually means - at least how to use those info?

What it is telling you is that you have reasonably good modal distribution, the room ratio is almost within the Bolt area (which is good), there are no serious modal overlaps, the cross-over point between modal behavior and diffuse behavior is a nice low 98 Hz, assuming that you treat the room with about 712 sabins of absorption, which could be accomplished with roughly 55 - 60m2 of porous absorption that has an absorption coefficient of 0.4, and that your room can be pretty nice if treated well!

Also, It's been pointed out to me that my vocal booth might be to small and might generate a "small box-like" sound

Yep. It would need heavy treatment to deal with the bass issues, and that will leave it rather dead. You could add slats and other tricks to liven it up a bit, but it will still sound a bit closet-like.

do you concur?

Yep!

Do you have general advices regarding vocal booth design or could you point me towards good information sources?

Vocal booth design is sort of a special case of live-room design, but very, very, VERY small live room with lousy acoustics! There's not much you can do to fix that; the room sound for any room is mostly determined by the low end response, and in a small room the low end response is somewhere between "terrible" and "non-existent". There's a few tricks, but all they do is put a band-aid on a heart-attack... The REAL solution to fixing he "small boxy room sound" is to make the room bigger. Sorry, but there's no magic potions available to fix this. What most people do is to make the booth dead, then add a bit of reverb artificially, in the mix.

Again, thank you so much for your answer and the ones to come, that really really much appreciated!!

Merry Christmas!!

... and Happy New Year!!!


- Stuart -