Studio Design For ACX Audio Books

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:37 am

First of all, Hello to everyone in this Community! My name is Dana. I just purchased a three bedroom hours in Northern Neck Virginia. I am 12 miles off the main road where I can see the Potomac river from my front porch. The properties that are on the river have 1+ acre lots which gives me plenty of viewing pleasure without 3 x the property tax payment.

My loudest exterior noises consist of birds chirping as we live in a protected bird sanctuary. At this moment I reside 20 miles south of Washington D.C. I am at the point where I have finished my "honey do list" for my wonderful wife and now I get to play with my remodeling projects. I want to design and build a one bedroom studio for recording and then mastering narrators for ACX Audio Books.

I am not looking for a sound booth and even-though I have been recording vocals for over 40 years, it was 99% Preachers and God is a tad bit more forgiving than the ACX. I joined this forum due to the "Profile Requirements". I think like you do. I am already cramming 30 hrs in a 18hr day x 6 days. I found you guys as I have been researching on the best way to do my design.

After spending weeks upon weeks of reading, watching videos and reading tec manuals for pristine room sizing according to audio, that required a science calculator, my head is ready to explode! I just figured that if your profile requirements where that solid, this must be the right place for advice.

My goal is to set the room up in such a manner that when I bring in Narrators, they will have a comfortable recording environment. This is what I have planned out so far, as per the picture below.

The room is 12' 6" x 10' 6" from wall to wall not baseboard to baseboard and the ceiling height is 8' spot on. The only exterior wall is with the window. The top right picture shows where the room on the other side of the wall and this will be my control room. Option A. Cut a 2' x 4' opening out 3' from the floor centered in the 8' wide closet and install a double pane window with the glass in the sound treated room angled down. Option B. Install a USB video camera. (My wife highly recommends option b so she can keep her closet space)

I am thinking of putting a Futon fold out Bed under the window and placing a double filter system in the vent to help with sound treatment when the AC or Heat is on. This vent is the farthest one away from the system and is presently pretty quite when the system is running.

The room has commercial grade Berber carpet that is extremely dense and the house sits on a three foot craw space. I have easy access to add extra insulation if need be in the sub floor area. I am also thinking of placing a few studio noise free chairs in it as well. I will run a 10' eight gang snake from the control room to the treated room.

My wife loves quilts and I was thinking maybe I will start checking yard sales or Craig's list and buy some. I can make the frames and attach them to some of the walls with a 3" standoff from floor to ceiling. Now this is where I am getting extremely confused. My Father told me at a early age that the only difference between an amateur and a pro, is a pro will stop and seek advice when they don't know how to figure something out. I intend to make a very good living doing this and I will except nothing but professional results.

For the life of me, I simply can not grasp the theory of bass traps. Some say put them in the corners at the ceiling and others say run them throughout the entire room. Some say run your acoustical 12 x 12 panels in a checkerboard fashion while others say keep them all the same. Some say suspend the floor and some say why bother if you have carpet. See, that's why my head hurts.

I also will need to hang two 50" monitors in the room as well. I was told the best place was towards the ceiling, tilted down. One will act as a teleprompter and one is so they can view the control room. I would also like to run a wall or ceiling mount speaker system in the room for communication between the two rooms.

Any and all advice is deeply appreciated and if you can help me out, I will sponsor this community when I release my ad campaign in the beginning of October. I know I have probably left out a few things and that is why I do not want to rush into this.

Room.jpg

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 6:21 am

Hi Dana, and Welcome to the forum!

I want to design and build a one bedroom studio for recording and then mastering narrators for Audio Books.

OK, so to clarify: This will be a single room studio, which is basically a control room for tracking and mastering, but will also serve as the vocal room where the narrators will stand while you record them? IS that it?

I am not looking for a sound booth

Smart move! Vocal "booths" are not all that good at all. Small rooms sound bad, and the smaller they are, the worse they sound. Really small rooms, such as "booths" and "closets", therefore sound terrible! It's a fact of life, a consequence of the laws of physics, and no way around it.

After spending weeks upon weeks of reading, watching videos and reading tec manuals for pristine room sizing according to audio, that required a science calculator, my head is ready to explode!

Great! Welcome to the Wild and Wonderful World of Acoustics! Where nothing is ever they way you always thought it was, and everything costs twice as much as you ever imagined... !

I just figured that if your profile requirements where that solid, this must be the right place for advice

I think so too!

Take a look around at the numerous build threads, of studios designed and built by forum members, and you'll see that what you suspect is the way it actually happens in reality. The forum is all about helping people to make their studios great. Unlike very many "acoustic" web sites on the Internet, nobody here is out to sell you anything. John strictly forbids any advertising for acoustic products, instruments, or equipment on his forum. He also refuses to endorse or promote any products himself. The only time you'll see us mentioned specific products by name is when we know those products, and are certain they will do the job for a specific case. So the advice you will get here is not about folks trying to sell you stuff!

You'll also notice that John, myself, and a few other contributors are studio designers: this is what we do for a living, and the evidence that we know what we are talking about is in the studios we have designed. That's not meant as boasting at all! It's merely to point out that you are not in the hands of some guy on YouTube who is trying to still figure out the difference between Mass Law and Mass Loaded Vinyl, and would not be able to recognize a standing wave even if one came up and hit him over the head!

You'll probably also notice that I am very much into the science of acoustics: equations, lab tests, research, testing, prediction, etc., while John is more of an empirical guy, very much into "what has been proven to work", and extrapolation. Two slightly different approaches, but both sound, solid, and with a pretty good track record.

So yeah, we think you are in the right place here!

My goal is to set the room up in such a manner that when I bring in Narrators, they will have a comfortable recording environment. This is what I have planned out so far, as per the picture below.

Could you also do a diagram of that room, with dimensions showing the locations of the important bit? And also mark the places where you are currently planning to put your speakers, desk, DAW, mic, narrator, etc.

The room is 12' 6" x 10' 6" from wall to wall not baseboard to baseboard and the ceiling height is 8' spot on.

12.5 x 10.5 x 8 is a pretty good size for a control room, so it will work decently for a one-room studio. It happens to have a very decent ratio, actually. I'm not sure if you are aware, but there are certain ratios of dimensions that are pretty bad acoustically, such as those where one dimension is a direct multiple of another dimensions, or within 10% of being a multiple. And there are also several "good" ratios. The reason has to do with room modes. A "mode" is simply one way in which the air inside a room can reverberate (= resonate) naturally. Another way of looking at a "mode", is that it is a standing wave that occurs between some of the boundary surfaces of the room. Each mode has a very specific frequency, and if you happen to play that frequency in the room, it will "trigger" the mode, causing the room to sing along with the note... and that's a bad thing, of course, because the room will NOT sing along with notes that don't have a mode associated with them, so therefore some notes will cause the room to "sing along", while others wont. That implies that some notes will sound louder than others. Even worse, after you stop playing the note, the room will carry on singing it for a while! That might be anything up to several seconds in some rooms. And clearly, if you want to mix and master in your room, you only want to hear what is really in your mixes, without the room confusing things badly by singing along too!

Even though you are planning to record the spoken word, not music, the modes will still "sing along" if one of the frequencies in your narrator's voice happens to coincide with a mode.

The issue of "modal spread" is related to how the modes for a specific room are spread out on the audio spectrum. Ideally, you want them spread out evenly, not all clumped together in one place, and no large gaps between them, so that every note has at least a couple of modes associated with it. That way, all notes will ring and sing about the same, with nothing being enhanced more than anything else. And that does indeed happen for mid and high frequencies, because there's a lot of ways that mids and highs can bounce around the room. But the lower you go on the spectrum, the fewer ways there are for modes to happen, and as you go lower still, you eventually arrive at the point where it is impossible for a mode to occur. The lowest frequency where a mode can occur, is defined by the longest dimension of the room. In your case, it is 45.2 Hz, which is a low "F" on the musical scale. Your room does not have "modal support" for any frequency lower than that.

Now for the problem: since there are lots of modes for mids and highs, and they get to be fewer and further between as you go lower, you also find that the highs have man, many modes for each note, the mids have at least a few, but as you go lower you start finding notes that only have one or two modes, then just one, then some notes that have none at all. That's bad. Because now there's a very audible distinction between notes that have modes, and notes that don't. Modal notes sound louder and ring longer. Non-modal notes sound quieter and don't ring at all. That's bad, because in a control room, you want all notes to sound the same, with none being enhanced or destroyed by the room! You want the room to tell the truth, not lie to you! This is where room treatment comes in: by treating the room suitably with the right type of acoustic device at the right locations, you can control the rooms acoustics such that all notes do sound the same. But of course, you have to be careful to only treat what actually needs treating, and NOT treat the things that don't!

That's the art and science of acoustics. Knowing what to treat in each room, and how to treat it to make the room "smooth" and "even" and "neutral". If you are interested in looking at the technicalities of what makes a room "neutral" then google and download the document form the ITU: BS.1116-3. That's probably the best single document on what makes a room neutral, and is frequently used as the design goal of high-end control rooms.

So you need to make sure that you have as many modes as possible in the low end, and that they are spread out evenly. There are simple calculators that can help do this. Here are the two best ones that I use all the time:

http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

http://amroc.andymel.eu/

In your case, the dimensions are already fixed in place, but at least those will help you understand how your room is going to perform, and plan what to do about it. They will also help you understand the rest of this post!

The top right picture shows where the room on the other side of the wall and this will be my control room.

Whoaaaa!!! I though you said it was a "one room studio"???? But here you are, adding another room to it? Ummmm..... I could swear that you said: "I want to design and build a one bedroom studio for recording and then mastering".... so where did the other room come from, all of a sudden?

All along I've been assuming that this was a "one room studio", but now it turns out that it's a TWO room studio!

So, just to be sure: do you have any other rooms hidden in there, that might suddenly pop out and surprise us?

OK, so you are not actually doing a one room studio: you are doing a two room studio, where one room will be the vocal tracking room, and the other room will be the control room.

All of the stuff I said above applies to your control room, not to the vocal room. The control room must be neutral, must be large, must meet the specs in BS.1116-3, most have good modal spread, must have good treatment to make it neutral, etc.

But that does not apply to the vocal room. That's a different thing entirely. The vocal room needs to have good acoustics for vocals, not neutral acoustics for mixing/mastering!

Option A. Cut a 2' x 4' opening out 3' from the floor centered in the 8' wide closet and install a double pane window with the glass in the sound treated room angled down.

That sounds like a good option for me, if you plan to make this into a commercial facility where you'll be recording professional voice talent. It also sounds like a good option if you hope to compete against other studios in the cities and towns around you. If your place looks and sounds like a couple of converted bedrooms with a video screen, and your competition is professional studios, or well-designed project studios, or even nicely done home studios, then guess where people would rather record?

Option B. Install a USB video camera.

Only one? So would that be so you can see the talent, or so that he/she can see you? And why would you prioritize one direction over the other? In my experience, studio recording flows smoothly when there is good visual contact between everyone and everyone else. If I were voice talent, and all I could get was a disembodied voice in my headphones telling me what to do, I'd be a bit disoriented. Not to mention insulted... On the other hand, if I can see the mix engineer through the glass, then I'd feel a lot more comfortable, respected, and inclined to perform well. We would be able to communicate visually and by hand signals to keep the flow going smoothly, instead of having to stop and start all the time...

I'd say build your wife another closet some other place in the house...

I am thinking of putting a Futon fold out Bed under the window and placing a double filter system in the vent to help with sound treatment when the AC or Heat is on.

I'm thinking it would be better to design proper acoustic treatment for the room, including an HVAC silencer system so the AC and/or heat can be on WHILE you are recording, not just in between takes!

This vent is the farthest one away from the system and is presently pretty quite when the system is running.

Then put a silencer on it, to make it completely quiet!

Vocal mics are sensitive things. Especially large diameter condensers. They will pick up the sound of air moving, and fans running, rather well, and that will end up in your recordings.

The room has commercial grade Berber carpet that is extremely dense

Pity. That will have to go, of course. Carpet has no business at all in a tracking room. Actually, carpet is a pretty good way of trashing your room acoustics, since it does the exact opposite of what small rooms need. Small rooms need a lot of bass trapping (the smaller the room is, the more it needs), some controlled absorption in the mid range on a descending curve (more at low mids, less at high mids), and little to no absorption in the high end. Carpet does the exact opposite: It sucks out all of the high end wonderfully, absorbs some of the mid range randomly on an ascending curve, and does nothing at all to the low end. So not only is it useless, it actually makes things worse. Carpet makes your room sound dull, boomy, thuddy, muddy, lifeless, and dry. It will suck out your highs, wreak havoc on the mids, and make the lows sound like someone thumping a wet cardboard box inside a concrete pipe....

Secondly, it is on the floor, which means it destroys the reflections from the floor that your brain relies on to build an "acoustic picture" of the room. All your life, wherever you go, your ears are exactly the same height above the floor, and your brain is very, very accustomed to figuring out the acoustic signature of the room based on the reflections it hears from the floor. If you sit down, your brain recognizes that, and adjusts it's "image" of the room accordingly. It does not use the ceiling or the walls for that, because the distance from your ears to the walls and ceiling changes all the time, many times per second as you walk around, so the "signature" is not constant or consistent. Ceilings are different heights, and when you walk outdoors, there is no ceiling at all! But there is still a floor, and it is still the same distance from your ears as every other floor.

If you have carpet on the floor, your brain no longer has any reflections to use for this. And mics are really good at capturing the "acoustic signature" of a room. Much better than our ears!

So forget the carpet. You'll find it really hard to have a good acoustic setup in a room with thick carpet on the floor. Take a look at some photos of high-end pro studios: how many of those have thick carpet on the floor?

There's a reason for that...

and the house sits on a three foot craw space. I have easy access to add extra insulation if need be in the sub floor area

Insulation is great for keeping the room warm, but does practically nothing to isolate a room. It's a common misconception that putting mineral wool of fiberglass insulation on the walls will stop the sound from getting in or out, but in reality it does about zero for that. Yes, it's great stuff for treating a room, and excellent as a damper inside tuned MSM walls to greatly improve isolation, but when used all by itself it does next to nothing to stops sound.

Think of it this way: If you spill water in your kitchen, then a porous sponge is a great way of mopping up that water and getting rid of it. But if you put that same sponge across the end of the tap in the sink and turn it on, the sponge does nothing at all to stop the water getting through...

My wife loves quilts and I was thinking maybe I will start checking yard sales or Craig's list and buy some. I can make the frames and attach them to some of the walls with a 3" standoff from floor to ceiling.

Those would make nice covers for your acoustic treatment, but would do next to nothing to actually treat the room.

My Father told me at a early age that the only difference between an amateur and a pro, is a pro will stop and seek advice when they don't know how to figure something out. I intend to make a very good living doing this and I will except nothing but professional results.

Smart man!

For the life of me, I simply can not grasp the theory of bass traps. Some say put them in the corners at the ceiling and others say run them throughout the entire room. Some say run your acoustical 12 x 12 panels in a checkerboard fashion while others say keep them all the same. Some say suspend the floor and some say why bother if you have carpet. See, that's why my head hurt

... and all of them would be wrong!

... in one way or another...

OK, here's the deal: Bass trapping is all about dealing with room modes. I explained those above: low frequency standing waves that form in your room at certain frequencies, and because there are not enough of them, they trash your recordings. You cannot get rid of modes: they are a fact of life, and are set in stone by the dimensions of the room. So you can't make them "go away" (well, you can, but you'd need a bulldozer to do that....)

However, what you CAN do is to "damp" those modes so that they don't "sing along" any more. Basically, you put a sock in their mouth! A very big, thick sock. Since modes are large dangerous animals that fill the entire room, you need large dangerous treatment to damp them. It's that simple.

OK, more technical stuff: I already mentioned that modes are caused by the boundary surfaces around your room: the four walls, the ceiling and the floor. If you could change the position of a wall, then the modes associated with that wall would also change. And if you put treatment on a wall, then the same things happens: you will damp the modes associate with that wall. But ONLY the ones associated with that wall! Putting thick absorption in your left wall will do nothing at all for the modes that are associated only with the ceiling and floor, nor will it help the modes that are associated with the front and back walls.

But think about corners: A corner is a place where two walls meet. So if you put treatment in a corner, then you will be affecting the modes associated with BOTH of those walls, not just one of them. And if you put it in the corner where thee surfaces meet (two walls an the floor, or two walls and the ceiling), then you will be dealing with the modes associated with all THREE of those surfaces! So obviously, the most effective place to put bass trapping in any room, is in the corners. Especially the "tri-corners" where three surfaces meet. And that's also why the most effective form of bass trap for general modal issues, is the "superchunk", which is a triangular bass trap that completely fills a vertical corner in the room, from floor to ceiling, and extends out along both walls a couple of feet. That's the single most effective type of treatment you can put in your room for dealing with modal issues.

So if you listen to those folks that tell you to put bass traps on the walls, you'll only be dealing with some bass problems, not all of them. And they won't be very effective anyway...

The folks who are telling you to checker-board treatment on opposing walls, are not talking about bass traps: they are talking about dealing with flutter echo, which is an entirely different animal....

And the folks who are telling you to float your floor are not talking about treatment at all! They are talking about isolation, which is something entirely different. And it¿s a BAD idea to try to do that anyway, unless you are one of the very few cases that actually needs it, and you have very deep pockets. Here's why: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173

And finally, the folks telling you that putting carpet on the floor is great for making a bass trap, are either very ignorant of acoustics, or certifiably crazy. (or both): Here's why:

carpet-absorption-spectrum-RIVERBANK-S00.jpg

That's an actual test of real carpet done in a highly respected independent acoustic test laboratory, and it shows the plain truth. Carpets are "high suckers" and nothing else. Notice that the absorption in the lows is nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Carpet is dead useless as a bass trap, and will totally mess up your room in other senses.

So there's the elusive truth about bass traps that most people won't (or can't) tell you. Bass traps are best in tri-corners, because that's where all the room modes terminate, but they are also pretty darn good in all other corners. There are twelve corners in a room...

OK, one more thing about bass traps: they do not suck up bass exclusively. They are like giant vacuum cleaners that suck up everything in sight, including the mids and highs! (OK, they don't actually "suck up" anything, but it's a good mental picture of what happens in reality in a room that has badly designed bass traps). Yes the affect the lows (unlike carpet) but the also affect the highs (better than carpet), and that's a bad thing, for the same reason that carpet is bad. So you have to do something about that, to prevent them from "sucking up the highs". There are many ways of doing that, but two good ones are to tune your bass traps so they only affect lows, by putting carefully sized and carefully located wood slats across the front of the bass traps to reflect back some mids and highs, or to put plastic across the front of the bass traps for the same reason. But you have to be careful here: your final goal is to have a well balanced room that is lively enough for vocals to sound good, but not so live that it is harsh, and is dead enough that low frequencies are not a problem, but not so dead that it sounds dull and lifeless.

Once again, that's the art of acoustic treatment: using the right tools and tricks to balance the sound in the room, for the intended purpose.

I also will need to hang two 50" monitors in the room as well. I was told the best place was towards the ceiling, tilted down.

Let me guess: you were told this by someone who is NOT a professional voice talent narrator!

I'm not sure if you have spent much time standing in a room, staring upwards at the ceiling corner all day, but if you ever do that, make sure you have a supply of neck braces handy, and some good pain killers to deal with the pain in your neck!

(Not to mention the strange sound you'd get from his voice, due to having his esophagus fully extended all day...)

Take a look at where they put the teleprompters in TV studios, political rallies, event halls, ADR studios, voice-over booths, etc.: in front of the presenter, where he can read it easily and comfortably! Put it on an adjustable arm, roughly in front of where your talent will be standing, with a large range of movement on the arm, so that the talent can adjust it himself/herself, to the position where that he/she finds most comfortable.

One will act as a teleprompter and one is so they can view the control room.

You'll only need one, not two, since you'll have a real window into the CR, through which your talent can see you, and you can see him. The teleprompter on its long movable arm can go next to that, on one side or the other. Then the talent can choose the best position, where he can see the teleprompter screen, and also see the window.

I would also like to run a wall or ceiling mount speaker system in the room for communication between the two rooms.

Headphones. That's normally the way communications is handled in studios. That way you can talk to the talent WHILE he is recording without the sound of your voice getting into the mic. And also if you ever plan to do voice-overs or ADR, the same applies.

You can also have a couple of return speakers in there, for sure, especially if you might ever want to record instrument in there, or do ADR work. But most of the time your talent will be on the cans. (Does that phrase give away my antiquity ???

Does anybody still use that expression? )

I know I have probably left out a few things and that is why I do not want to rush into this.

Let's start with that sketch of your COMPLETE studio layout, showing BOTH of the rooms in your one-room studio (

), as well as any others that you forgot to mention, and take it from there.

- Stuart -

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:41 am

Thank you so much for your quick reply. I just wish you would have went into a little more detail.

Now that you know I have a sense of humor, YOU ARE THE MAN!

OK, so to clarify: This will be a single room studio, which is basically a control room for tracking and mastering, but will also serve as the vocal room where the narrators will stand while you record them? IS that it?

You have already figured that out.

Whoaaaa!!! I though you said it was a "one room studio"???? But here you are, adding another room to it? Ummmm..... I could swear that you said: "I want to design and build a one bedroom studio for recording and then mastering".... so where did the other room come from, all of a sudden? All along I've been assuming that this was a "one room studio", but now it turns out that it's a TWO room studio!

I do apologize however as I did state: "The top right picture shows where the room on the other side of the wall and this will be my control room". After re-reading my statement I can see where it was misleading.

The forum is all about helping people to make their studios great. Unlike very many "acoustic" web sites on the Internet, nobody here is out to sell you anything. So yeah, we think you are in the right place here!

I knew I was in the right place after reading the "Read this first if you want help". I am going to implement that verbiage into my forum sometime this evening when after I finish the diagram you requested.

Could you also do a diagram of that room, with dimensions showing the locations of the important bit? And also mark the places where you are currently planning to put your speakers, desk, DAW, mic, narrator, etc.

I am on the road and my laptop crapped out. I went to a 24 hr Walmart and purchased another at 2 am. I spent 30 hrs straight learning windows 10 so it may take me a few hours to meet your request. My average work time is between 30 and 40 hr blocks.

12.5 x 10.5 x 8 is a pretty good size for a control room, so it will work decently for a one-room studio. It happens to have a very decent ratio, actually. I'm not sure if you are aware, but there are certain ratios of dimensions that are pretty bad acoustically, such as those where one dimension is a direct multiple of another dimensions, or within 10% of being a multiple. And there are also several "good" ratios. The reason has to do with room modes.

I was aware of the ratio but did not have a clue about the modes and I did run my dimensions in the second website you mentioned. Two things I understood from the results. While I could interpret some of the date, I realized at that very moment, I was out of my league and I needed to stop, regroup and seek professional advice. The second thing was, if I understood the data correctly, it showed me where the prime recording location was in the room and with some properly placed sound treatment, the modes would increase.

That's the art and science of acoustics. Knowing what to treat in each room, and how to treat it to make the room "smooth" and "even" and "neutral".

That is what I need help with. The recording room. The control room will be the last step as I mix and master with "cans". I did recognize your statement as soon as I read it.

So, just to be sure: do you have any other rooms hidden in there, that might suddenly pop out and surprise us?

Not at this time but October is a long way off.

It also sounds like a good option if you hope to compete against other studios in the cities and towns around you. If your place looks and sounds like a couple of converted bedrooms with a video screen, and your competition is professional studios, or well-designed project studios, or even nicely done home studios, then guess where people would rather record?

I will be going will parts of option b. If I install the window it will be out of viewing range according to the mode calculator. My closest competition is 2 hrs away. My business plan is to train and employ local talent. My first recording will be from a young Lady who will be starting the 4th grade this year. I have Attorneys looking in to this to make sure no laws are broken.

In my experience, studio recording flows smoothly when there is good visual contact between everyone and everyone else. If I were voice talent, and all I could get was a disembodied voice in my headphones telling me what to do, I'd be a bit disoriented. Not to mention insulted...

I have been in many multi-million dollar studios and many have video motioning setups. After the Narrator reads and practices the script once or twice and gets the flavor of the reading, most will need very little communications or directions from my end during the recording process.

I'd say build your wife another closet some other place in the house...

That sounds like something a single man would say. LOL. I have been happily married for 32 years to a wonderful woman for one reason only! "HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE".

I'm thinking it would be better to design proper acoustic treatment for the room, including an HVAC silencer system so the AC and/or heat can be on WHILE you are recording, not just in between takes!

I will google the product after I finish this post. That's the solid advice I need! Again, YOU THE MAN!

Pity. That will have to go, of course. Carpet has no business at all in a tracking room. Actually, carpet is a pretty good way of trashing your room acoustics, since it does the exact opposite of what small rooms need.

Do you have any recommendations for the flooring? I have the experience as well as the professional tools to lay Hardwood Flooring as well as the new "Floating Floor Systems". If I remove the carpet and I have no problem doing so, as per county code it will have a min of 3/4 inch plywood or osb board. If that could be a reality I can finish the floor with wood filler and sand it smooths as frog hair, tape it off to create a black and white pattern to resemble a chess board.

Insulation is great for keeping the room warm, but does practically nothing to isolate a room. It's a common misconception that putting mineral wool of fiberglass insulation on the walls will stop the sound from getting in or out, but in reality it does about zero for that. Yes, it's great stuff for treating a room, and excellent as a damper inside tuned MSM walls to greatly improve isolation, but when used all by itself it does next to nothing to stops sound.

If I do need to remove the carpet, then this will no longer be an option.

Think of it this way: If you spill water in your kitchen, then a porous sponge is a great way of mopping up that water and getting rid of it. But if you put that same sponge across the end of the tap in the sink and turn it on, the sponge does nothing at all to stop the water getting through...

Your analogy was PURE GENIUS! As soon as I read it, the light bulb went off in my head! Your explanation was the best I have ever heard.

Smart man!

He had a 6 grade education when he had to go to work in the mines in WV as his father split and there were 7 mouths to feed. He joined the Marines at 17. One tour in Korea and 3 in Vietnam, he retired at the age of 37 holding the title as of this very day of the Youngest Command Sargent Major in the modern day Marine Corps history. He paid a heavy price. I was thirteen before I even had the chance to know him.

However, what you CAN do is to "damp" those modes so that they don't "sing along" any more. Basically, you put a sock in their mouth! A very big, thick sock. Since modes are large dangerous animals that fill the entire room, you need large dangerous treatment to damp them. It's that simple.

This is where I am giving you the green light to advise me as what I can do to get the Best, with what I have to work with.

So obviously, the most effective place to put bass trapping in any room, is in the corners. Especially the "tri-corners" where three surfaces meet. And that's also why the most effective form of bass trap for general modal issues, is the "superchunk", which is a triangular bass trap that completely fills a vertical corner in the room, from floor to ceiling, and extends out along both walls a couple of feet. That's the single most effective type of treatment you can put in your room for dealing with modal issues.

I will adhere to your advice to the letter!

There are twelve corners in a room...

I lost a steak dinner on a bet over you statement 2 decades ago. I have since recovered my losses many times over. You brought back a very fond memory!

Once again, that's the art of acoustic treatment: using the right tools and tricks to balance the sound in the room, for the intended purpose.

BINGO and that is the advice/recommendations I am looking for.

I'm not sure if you have spent much time standing in a room, staring upwards at the ceiling corner all day, but if you ever do that, make sure you have a supply of neck braces handy, and some good pain killers to deal with the pain in your neck! (Not to mention the strange sound you'd get from his voice, due to having his esophagus fully extended all day...)

That never entered my mind. Thank You Again!

Take a look at where they put the teleprompters in TV studios, political rallies, event halls, ADR studios, voice-over booths, etc.: in front of the presenter, where he can read it easily and comfortably! Put it on an adjustable arm, roughly in front of where your talent will be standing, with a large range of movement on the arm, so that the talent can adjust it himself/herself, to the position where that he/she finds most comfortable.

Again, I will follow your advice to the letter. I have 4 iPad's and they have very nice apps for doing this and it will be much cheaper then a 50" monitor.

Headphones. That's normally the way communications is handled in studios. That way you can talk to the talent WHILE he is recording without the sound of your voice getting into the mic. And also if you ever plan to do voice-overs or ADR, the same applies.

I have an eight channel headphone amp that will work great for this.

You can also have a couple of return speakers in there, for sure, especially if you might ever want to record instrument in there, or do ADR work. But most of the time your talent will be on the cans. (Does that phrase give away my antiquity ??? Does anybody still use that expression? )

I do!

Let's start with that sketch of your COMPLETE studio layout, showing BOTH of the rooms in your one-room studio ( ), as well as any others that you forgot to mention, and take it from there.

[/quote]
I will try and have it to you by 12 am est. Like I said, October is a far way off.
I can not thank you enough for your SOLID ADVICE Stuart!

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:17 pm

I just wish you would have went into a little more detail.

Darn! I thought it was a little short on detail... I'll try to do better next time, and write a few more volumes, just to make sure...

I do apologize however as I did state: "The top right picture shows where the room on the other side of the wall and this will be my control room". After re-reading my statement I can see where it was misleading.

I'm still confused, since I'm still getting conflicting info. So let me ask in the simplest way I can think of:

Will your facility include a control room (where you have your DAW and yourself, and where you'll be pulling the magical levers and twiddling the mysterious knobs to mix/master) AND ALSO another, additional, separate room, on the OTHER side of the glass window, where the narrator will be located as he speaks forth words of wisdom? IS that the case?

If not, then I don't understand the purpose of the window.

And if that IS the case (separate control room and vocal room) then that's not a single-room studio: it is a two-room studio. Because there are two rooms in it: one is the control room, the other is the vocal room.

I knew I was in the right place after reading the "Read this first if you want help".

I can't tell you how nice it is to have a new member who actually reads that and takes it to heart! We get quite a few new members here that seem to live in unknown, anonymous places, thus proving that then did not read a single word of that, and especially not the part in big blue letters!

So thanks for taking the trouble to read and comply. And that's one reason you got such a fast, detailed response. As those rule say: we try to put as much effort into our response as members put into their posts.

I am on the road and my laptop crapped out. I went to a 24 hr Walmart and purchased another at 2 am. I spent 30 hrs straight learning windows 10 so it may take me a few hours to meet your request. My average work time is between 30 and 40 hr blocks.

Slacker! Only 30 hours? Sheesh!!! You could at least try to put some effort into it!

(Sorry, couldn't resist... )

I was aware of the ratio but did not have a clue about the modes

It always helps to get a better grasp of what you are doing, when you understand the theory of WHY you are doing it. Understanding modes is important to understanding ratios. People who don't understand modes properly often think that the solution to their modal problems is to "get rid of the modes", but that's entirely backwards. That's like trying to solve the problem of a piece of string that is too short, by cutting the ends off! The issue that many people don't get is that we have modal problems in our room because we don't have enough modes, not because we have too many! If we could somehow add more modes to the room, so that every single note has at least three modes, then there would be no modal problem at all! It's only because there aren't enough modes to go around in the low end, that we have problems. Too few, not too many.

if I understood the data correctly, it showed me where the prime recording location was in the room and with some properly placed sound treatment, the modes would increase.

Sort of but not really. Modes fill the entire room. Each mode is a "standing wave". The simplest modes are "axials", called that way because they form along one of the three "axes" of the room. They form between two walls on opposite ends of the room (I'm considering the ceiling and floor to also be "walls" here, as it's a lot easier to write about them: So think of all six sides of the room as being called "walls"). So an axial mode forms between two opposite walls. And it fills the space between those two walls, which means it fills the entire room. And since it is a standing wave, the peaks and valleys always form at the same points in the room ever time the wave goes past. So as you walk around the room, you will move to different points on that standing wave, and therefore you'll hear different parts of it. At some points, where there is a pressure peak, it will be very loud, while at other points, where there's a pressure null. it will be very quiet, and at a point exactly half way between the peak and the null, you'll hear at normal volume. So, you'd think that the best spot to put your chair would be at the point where that happens: neither peak nor null, just normal level. And that would be correct.... for that specific mode! But that spot in the room might be terrible for another mode! It might turn out that the location where there is neutral response for the 1,0,0 mode, also happens to be the place where there is a peak for the 0,0,2 mode, and a null for the 0,1,0 mode. So there is no such thing as a "perfect" location in the room to put your chair. However, there is a theoretical "best" spot, where most of the lowest modes are at their least offensive, and that is at the point located 38% of the room length, away from the front wall. But don't take that as a universal rule or a "law" that must be followed! You won't find it in Leviticus or Deuteronomy. It's just a guideline, a good place to start, but NOT the place where most mix positions end up.

So it's not that there's a perfect spot where the modes are low: not at all. The modes are everywhere. And each mode can also have harmonics as well. So the lowest order mode that can form in your room, as I already mentioned, is 45.2 Hz, and that is your 1,0,0 mode. It forms between the front and back walls, with a pressure null in the exact center of the room, 6'3" form both the front and back walls. But there will also be another mode at twice that frequency, 90.4 Hz, which is your 2,0,0 mode, and it has two nulls that form at 3'1-1/4" from the walls with a peak in between. Then there's the the next harmonic, at three times the base (3 x 45.2 = 135.6 Hz), that's your 3,0,0 mode, and it has ... blah blah blah... Each harmonic of the SAME basic mode will have peaks and nulls in different places in the room. So there's not perfect spot.

And even if there was a perfect spot, where all modes are magically at the "normal" level (no peaks or nulls at that special pixie-dust spot), it would STILL be lousy, because the modes will still "ring". Since they are standing waves, they "store" energy, and when the note that caused them stops, the energy carries on bouncing around for a while, slowly dying away.... So even though you sit at your perfect rainbow-unicorn location where there are no nulls or peaks, the mode will still carry on ringing, at the "normal" level...

In other words, you can never win. As long as you have undamped modes in your room, it will be bad. The only solution is to "damp" the modes so they cannot ring, and that in turn will also help to reduce the level (loudness) of each modal frequency. Some people think they can solve the problem another way: by using "room correction" software, but that's silly. That only works if the room is ALREADY treated perfectly. If you try to do it in a room that has lousy acoustics, with no treatment, then it will make things worse, not better.

That is what I need help with. The recording room. The control room will be the last step

So it IS a two room studio! Gotcha!

There really are two rooms in there. One is the control room, and the other is the vocal room. And there's a window between them.

as I mix and master with "cans".

Wellll.... I'd not be able to agree with that! Mixing on cans might be possible, but won't ever be very good.... but mastering on cans is a wash. Not even for plain vocals (no music). You want the vocals you record to sound natural, as they would in a typical room where the audience would be listening, such as maybe a bedroom, kitchen, living room, car, office, etc. So how will you know what the voice sounds like in a room, if you are listening on cans?

My mention of cans was for the talent, not the engineer. The engineer needs to listen in a real room, so he can hear what the mix sounds like in a real room...

If I install the window it will be out of viewing range according to the mode calculator.

Ummm.... not sure at all what that means! Why would the modal response affect your window position? Or your window sight lines? Sorry, I'm not following at all...

That sounds like something a single man would say. LOL.

Bad guess! Not single, for well over 33 years! My eldest daughter is a doctor, and my youngest is half way through university (business school). But fortunately. my long-suffering wife puts up with my construction projects, especially when there's something she wants on the other side of the dust and the noise...

I will google the product after I finish this post.

It's not a product that you buy: it is one you build yourself...

Do you have any recommendations for the flooring?

Good quality, thick, laminate flooring on an acoustic underlay works nicely, and can look great.

it will have a min of 3/4 inch plywood or osb board. If that could be a reality I can finish the floor with wood filler and sand it smooth....

I wouldn't do that. That's your sub-floor, not your finish floor. I'd go with laminate. Other options are ceramic tile and linoleum.

Your analogy was PURE GENIUS! As soon as I read it, the light bulb went off in my head! Your explanation was the best I have ever heard.

Thanks!!

Glad it helped you to wrap your head around the issue. In many ways, sound does behave like water, so I have quite a few water analogies up my sleeve. Glad you liked that one!

This is where I am giving you the green light to advise me as what I can do to get the Best, with what I have to work with.

Are we talking about the vocal room, or the control room? That's two different acoustic environments, with two different acoustic needs. The control room absolutely must be acoustically neutral at the mix position, not changing the sound at all. No "coloring". The room cannot be allowed to take anything away from what comes out the speakers, nor add anything to it.

But that's for the control room. The vocal room is different: "neutral" would not be good for that.

It needs to be a bit more live, with some character, some variability, and warmer, more diffuse response. I would go for superchunk bass traps in a couple of corners, partially covered with plastic to not kill the highs too much, hard floor, partially soft ceiling (clouds, or curved diffuser panel, or both), an angled slot wall (tuned to the mid range) across one end of the room, thick absorption on most of the other (opposite) short wall, some controlled absorption on one of the long walls, with slot "wedges" or maybe some type of diffuser on the opposite wall, and see how that goes. It would give you a liver room, more conducive to good vocals recording, but with a variable grade across the room, giving you flexibility for different situations. One side of the room would be more dead, the other more live, one end would be more muddy, the other more diffuse. Depending on what mic you use, where you put it in the room, and which way you orient it, you could have quite good control over how the room "sounds" in the mic, from pretty dead with very faint, late, low level, diffuse ambience, to pretty live.

I lost a steak dinner on a bet over you statement 2 decades ago. I have since recovered my losses many times over. You brought back a very fond memory!

Cool! I certainly won't refuse a steak dinner, if you'd care to repeat the experience!

That never entered my mind. Thank You Again!

Good studio design is not just about acoustics or isolation: it's also about functionality. When I'm working on a design for one of my paying customers, I spend a lot of time trying to think through how the studio will actually work: who will need to walk where, when, what might be in his way, will he be carrying something, is the door wide enough, is there a shorter path, can everyone see each other, is someone in an uncomfortable location, would it be better if the door opened the other way, etc. The studio doesn't only need to sound good and look good, it also needs to work efficiently with people in it! I've sen some terrible designs, where the engineer would have to walk a long path, through several doors, twisting passages, around obstacles, to get from the control room to the drum booth, just to tweak the position of a mic, then walk back again to listen in the control room to see if it is right.... rinse. repeat. ... I've seen designs where someone sitting in the vocal booth has to walk through the live room and the control room to get to the bathroom, or just to go outside to answer their phone... Etc. Studio design is about much more than just sound.

I can not thank you enough for your SOLID ADVICE Stuart!

You are welcome! That's what the forum is all about: to help get people started on designing their places, so they can build it right. And to give them sound advice (pun intended! ).

- Stuart -

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 2:27 am

Hey Stuart. We had some bad storms roll in yesterday evening and the www just came back on this morning.

Darn! I thought it was a little short on detail... I'll try to do better next time, and write a few more volumes, just to make sure...

You have single handedly change my entire perspective of how a track room should be set up.

I'm still confused, since I'm still getting conflicting info. So let me ask in the simplest way I can think of: Will your facility include a control room (where you have your DAW and yourself, and where you'll be pulling the magical levers and twiddling the mysterious knobs to mix/master) AND ALSO another, additional, separate room, on the OTHER side of the glass window, where the narrator will be located as he speaks forth words of wisdom? IS that the case?

I just learned after read a few threads on this wonderful forum that I should have said a "track room AS WELL AS a control room". Sorry about my rookie mistake.

I can't tell you how nice it is to have a new member who actually reads that and takes it to heart! We get quite a few new members here that seem to live in unknown, anonymous places, thus proving that then did not read a single word of that, and especially not the part in big blue letters! So thanks for taking the trouble to read and comply. And that's one reason you got such a fast, detailed response. As those rule say: we try to put as much effort into our response as members put into their posts.

Well, without trying to get pats on the back. I went back and read them twice more. Funny how things work when you play by the rules.

Slacker! Only 30 hours? Sheesh!!! You could at least try to put some effort into it!

(Sorry, couldn't resist... )

I know. I was up till 2am and then crashed. My wife said she called around 3:30am, no answer. Again at 5am, no answer. She call three more times and her call 9am woke me up. She said if I had not answered that call, she was calling the Police to see if I had a heart attack or something to that effect.

It always helps to get a better grasp of what you are doing, when you understand the theory of WHY you are doing it. Understanding modes is important to understanding ratios. People who don't understand modes properly often think that the solution to their modal problems is to "get rid of the modes", but that's entirely backwards. That's like trying to solve the problem of a piece of string that is too short, by cutting the ends off! The issue that many people don't get is that we have modal problems in our room because we don't have enough modes, not because we have too many! If we could somehow add more modes to the room, so that every single note has at least three modes, then there would be no modal problem at all! It's only because there aren't enough modes to go around in the low end, that we have problems. Too few, not too many.

Once again you made the light bulb light up in my head!

Sort of but not really. Modes fill the entire room. Each mode is a "standing wave". The simplest modes are "axials", called that way because they form along one of the three "axes" of the room. They form between two walls on opposite ends of the room (I'm considering the ceiling and floor to also be "walls" here, as it's a lot easier to write about them: So think of all six sides of the room as being called "walls"). So an axial mode forms between two opposite walls. And it fills the space between those two walls, which means it fills the entire room. And since it is a standing wave, the peaks and valleys always form at the same points in the room ever time the wave goes past. So as you walk around the room, you will move to different points on that standing wave, and therefore you'll hear different parts of it. At some points, where there is a pressure peak, it will be very loud, while at other points, where there's a pressure null. it will be very quiet, and at a point exactly half way between the peak and the null, you'll hear at normal volume. So, you'd think that the best spot to put your chair would be at the point where that happens: neither peak nor null, just normal level. And that would be correct.... for that specific mode! But that spot in the room might be terrible for another mode! It might turn out that the location where there is neutral response for the 1,0,0 mode, also happens to be the place where there is a peak for the 0,0,2 mode, and a null for the 0,1,0 mode. So there is no such thing as a "perfect" location in the room to put your chair. However, there is a theoretical "best" spot, where most of the lowest modes are at their least offensive, and that is at the point located 38% of the room length, away from the front wall. But don't take that as a universal rule or a "law" that must be followed! You won't find it in Leviticus or Deuteronomy. It's just a guideline, a good place to start, but NOT the place where most mix positions end up.

So it's not that there's a perfect spot where the modes are low: not at all. The modes are everywhere. And each mode can also have harmonics as well. So the lowest order mode that can form in your room, as I already mentioned, is 45.2 Hz, and that is your 1,0,0 mode. It forms between the front and back walls, with a pressure null in the exact center of the room, 6'3" form both the front and back walls. But there will also be another mode at twice that frequency, 90.4 Hz, which is your 2,0,0 mode, and it has two nulls that form at 3'1-1/4" from the walls with a peak in between. Then there's the the next harmonic, at three times the base (3 x 45.2 = 135.6 Hz), that's your 3,0,0 mode, and it has ... blah blah blah... Each harmonic of the SAME basic mode will have peaks and nulls in different places in the room. So there's not perfect spot.

And even if there was a perfect spot, where all modes are magically at the "normal" level (no peaks or nulls at that special pixie-dust spot), it would STILL be lousy, because the modes will still "ring". Since they are standing waves, they "store" energy, and when the note that caused them stops, the energy carries on bouncing around for a while, slowly dying away.... So even though you sit at your perfect rainbow-unicorn location where there are no nulls or peaks, the mode will still carry on ringing, at the "normal" level...

In other words, you can never win. As long as you have undamped modes in your room, it will be bad. The only solution is to "damp" the modes so they cannot ring, and that in turn will also help to reduce the level (loudness) of each modal frequency. Some people think they can solve the problem another way: by using "room correction" software, but that's silly. That only works if the room is ALREADY treated perfectly. If you try to do it in a room that has lousy acoustics, with no treatment, then it will make things worse, not better.

Well you just answered four of my future questions. I think this mode thing is able to be understood by me, but it is going to take some homework on my end and I have no problem investing my time to further my audio education.

Wellll.... I'd not be able to agree with that! Mixing on cans might be possible, but won't ever be very good.... but mastering on cans is a wash. Not even for plain vocals (no music). You want the vocals you record to sound natural, as they would in a typical room where the audience would be listening, such as maybe a bedroom, kitchen, living room, car, office, etc. So how will you know what the voice sounds like in a room, if you are listening on cans? My mention of cans was for the talent, not the engineer. The engineer needs to listen in a real room, so he can hear what the mix sounds like in a real room...

I do understand what you are saying and why you are saying it. Honestly you have brought me up and taught me more on such a professional level in two days, and even though I was so bright as a youngster that my Father called me son, I can only work on one room at a time. If I don't, i will not retain the valuable information you have already taught me as well as the weeks of homework I will need to do to understand 70% of what you are saying. Please don't get me wrong, your teaching style is FANTASTIC, it is on my end not yours.

Ummm.... not sure at all what that means! Why would the modal response affect your window position? Or your window sight lines? Sorry, I'm not following at all...

Because I am an idiot! I thought the modal calculations were telling me where to put my set up. If I understand the data correctly now, it is simply giving me the areas in the room that are effected by certain freqs.

It's not a product that you buy: it is one you build yourself...

Already on it. I watched a vid last night on my iPhone where the person took 4" round ducking and run several gentle curves in it to baffle the sound of the air coming from the vent. It reminded me of the Bose commercial that showed how they had something like 23 feet of audio tubing curled up inside their table top am/fm/cd player.

Good quality, thick, laminate flooring on an acoustic underlay works nicely, and can look great.

I will order it today. YOU THE MAN!

Thanks!! Glad it helped you to wrap your head around the issue. In many ways, sound does behave like water, so I have quite a few water analogies up my sleeve. Glad you liked that one!

This is where I am giving you the green light to advise me as what I can do to get the Best, with what I have to work with.

Are we talking about the vocal room, or the control room?[/quote]
The track room. I was reading some other post and I found a link to this pic. I can do this and make it look store bought.

studio.jpg

Cool! I certainly won't refuse a steak dinner, if you'd care to repeat the experience!

PM me your address Brother, its on me!

I can not thank you enough for your SOLID ADVICE Stuart!You are welcome! That's what the forum is all about: to help get people started on designing their places, so they can build it right. And to give them sound advice (pun intended! ).

You are a funny funny man and I like that! I did up a diagram but I need advice on how to find the right location. It will consist of a track desk that will seat two people. I will use two iPads as teleprompters on mic stands adjusted to a comfortable reading angle along with two Rhodes desk mount boom arms. I will also install a flush mount (4) xlr inputs as well as (4) 1/4 inputs and (4) speaker in jacks for headphones.

Studio1.jpg

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:50 am

You have single handedly change my entire perspective of how a track room should be set up.

There's many ways: I just highlighted one But I like to design my rooms with flexibility in mind, to cater for as-yet-unthought-of situations that might arise in the future. For example, right now you are envisioning your studio as a two-room vocal studio, for audio books. But what happens if one of your voice-talent guys says: "Hey, I also play the guitar and sing, and I think your place would be cool to record my demo album. Can I rent it?".... You might want to be able to do that as well. And if your room is NOT designed to be good ONLY for spoken word, then that's a real option. If it is designed with other possibilities in mind, it not only makes it a place where you could potentially record other things, but it also increases the possibilities for improving your vocal recordings, by simply adjusting your mic positioning. Perhaps a female narrator would sound better on a U47 placed really close to her mouth at the dead end of the room, while a deep male voice might sound better on an SM-58 right up at the live end of the room, facing the slats... You get to experiment, to play around, to learn your room, and to thus make better recordings, even if it is "just" spoken word.

Once again you made the light bulb light up in my head!

Some more technical tidbits about modes and rooms that might help. Remember I said that the ideal situation would be to have lots of modes for every note in the spectrum? Well, in large rooms that can actually happen. If the longest dimension of your room is more than enough to provide support for even the lowest note, and the other dimensions are also large, then you won't have a modal problem at all! Of course, the room has to be REALLY large for that to happen. Those rooms are usually called "concert halls"...

OK here's the thing: There is theory behind all this stuff to, and a guy called Schroeder figure out some equations and stuff about modes and rooms, and a guy called Sabine figure out how absorption works and equations for that, and then guys with names like Sepmeyer and Louden and Bolt figured out good ratios of dimensions for rooms, and a guy called Bonello figure out some more stuff about how modes should be arranged in a room, and some of those guys have been honored by the acoustic community. And therefore: the unit by which we measure acoustic absorption is the "sabin", in honor of Mr. Sabine. 1 sabin is the amount of absorption you would have if you cut a hole exactly one foot square in your wall. Since sound would go out of that hole and never come back, it is "gone forever", so that's a great unit for measuring absorption.... (except it's a lot more complicate than that, and 1 sabin is not really like that... but anyway... ). We also have the "Bolt area", in honor of Mr. Bolt the scientist (not Mr. Bolt the Olympic runner!). Mr. Bolt analyzed hundreds of possible "room ratios" to see which ones have the best outcome, then came up with some equations to describe which ones are "good" and which ones are "bad", and if you plot his equations on a piece of graph paper, you get the "Bolt area". If you then see where YOUR room ratio lies on that graph paper, you can be pretty sure it's likely a good one if it is inside the "Bolt area", and you'll probably find it isn't so good if it is outside the Bolt area. And there's the Bonello plot, (or Bonello chart, or Bonello diagram) that shows how the modes happen to fall into one-third octave bands in your room, and came up with equations to do that. So if you look at the his graph for your room, and the curve rises smoothly and exponentially to the right, then you have a good room, but if the curve looks like the mountains of the moon, then you better get that bulldozer I was talking about, and start again....

And finally, there's the Schroeder frequency: That's the frequency where things start falling apart in your room. It marks the point where there are plenty of modes to go around above that frequency, but not enough below that frequency. So it is related to the dimensions of the room (the hard, solid, rigid, massive "walls" on all six sides), but it is also related to the treatment inside the room: the number of sabins of absorption on each wall.

All of those details are shown on the room mode calculators, mentioned by the names above. You'll see the Bolt area and the Bonello plot and the sabins of absorption, and the Schroeder frequency, .... and those are all important for analyzing and understanding your room.

If you are interested in getting into this stuff a little more thoroughly, I'd suggest two books: "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. The first one will give you the background that you need to know about how sound waves REALLY behave, and what you can do to tame them. The second one is about how to actually design and build your studio, in terms of nails, studs, insulation, drywall, techniques, methods, tools, etc.

Honestly you have brought me up and taught me more on such a professional level in two days, ... retain the valuable information you have already taught me as well as the weeks of homework I will need to do to understand 70% of what you are saying. Please don't get me wrong, your teaching style is FANTASTIC, it is on my end not yours.

Yeah, it does take a while. A while back, another new forum member said ti felt like "trying to drink from a fire hose". A very apt description, I think! Most people never really think about sound, or how it might interact with a room. And they just assume that it moves around in intuitive, easy-to-understand ways, and behaves in a simple, orderly fashion. But it doesn't! Sound doesn't behave very well at all, in fact! It flat refuses to be the way we think it should. It's not intuitive, goes places it isn't supposed to, does NOT go places where it really should, and in general behaves like a recalcitrant grumpy 2-year old throwing a tantrum!

So don't feel alone: It's a huge subject, some of the concepts are not at all easy to grasp, and it can seem a bit overwhelming the first time you REALLY start to look into it.

Also, don't get too hooked up in focusing on modal behavior! Modes and ratios are just one of MANY aspects that you'll need to take into account when you design your room treatment. Modes are important, yes, but there's no need to go nuts over them: your rooms have fixed boundaries, I get the impression that you have no plans to move your walls or ceilings around, so the basic modal distribution in your rooms is already fixed, with nothing you can do about it. The only way to change the modal distribution, is to move the walls, floor or ceiling, so that they are at different distances from each other. There's some other things you can do to "upset" the modes, so they aren't such a huge pain (such as flush-mounting your speakers inside angled front walls in the Control Room), but I'm guessing that you are not considering that right now. So there's nothing you can do to change the modal distribution, and your real job is to damp it: attenuate the intensity of the modes (amplitude) and also the decay rates (time).

Here's another fire hose for you (in addition to the 17 I already gave you....): If you really want to get into this in detail, then you could run an acoustic analysis on your room. It's not that hard, the software is free, and it will reveal all of the ugly truth about your rooms, which will put you on the correct path to fixing the problems. You can download the software to do this for free. The software is called "REW", it really is absolutely free (I have no idea why the author released it like that, but I'm extremely grateful to him, because it is MUCH better than some other acoustic software that costs a lot of money). You can get it here: http://www.roomeqwizard.com/ and I wrote up some instructions on how to use, which you can also get for free, here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122

If you are up for that, then give it a go, with your room as empty as possible of furniture and things, including you! Run the rests without your wonderful presence inside the room, since the human body can indeed affect the room acoustics, and the measurement thereof.

If I understand the data correctly now, it is simply giving me the areas in the room that are effected by certain freqs.

Right. I'm assuming that you are using Ande Mel's "AMROC" calculator: For each mode, it shows the pressure peaks and nulls in the room. As you move your cursor over the lines that represent each mode in the graph at the top, it shows you the 3D diagram of where the peaks and nulls of the standing wave are, for that specific mode. If you have your speakers turned on on your computer, it will even play the tone of the exact frequency of that mode.

where the person took 4" round ducking and run several gentle curves in it to baffle the sound of the air coming from the vent.

That's the "cheap and nasty, quick and dirty" way to do it, but it's also the ignorant and not-very-effective way to do it. A good silencer is based on several principles. One of them is to have multiple 90° bends (because air can go around corners easily, but sound can't), but that also increases the static pressure in the duct (back pressure, or resistance to the flow of air), which is bad for the fan that's trying to drive the air, and bad for isolation, because it creates air turbulence, which is noisy!

So another principle is that the twisty part of the duct must be a lot wider than the the rest, so there is no increase in static pressure. Another is that if you have a sudden change in corss section, that creates an acoustic impedance mismatch, which causes sound waves to reflect back up the way they just came, cancelling themselves out due to phase inversion.... So it's a really good idea to have the round duct suddenly widening out into a square section that is much larger than the round part, then do that again at the other end of the silencer: narrow it down again suddenly. Etc. Yet another principle is to absorb high mid and frequency noise throughout the box, by using proper duct liner on all the interior surfaces, because duct liner is a product that is specifically designed for this application, and leaves a smooth surface that are can flow over without too much resistance, while it still absorbs the noise of the air moving....

That's why real-world silencers in properly designed home-studio HVAC systems., look like this:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 0&start=45
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 9&start=74
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 25&start=2
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 42&start=5
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 61&start=0
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 5&start=98
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... &start=157
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=13821
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 8&start=44
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 2&start=16

Those were all resigned and built by forum members. And all of them turned out to be VERY effective. Because they are based on solid principles of acoustics, and solid principles of HVAC design. Not based on some guy with a camera and a YouTube account experimenting in ignorance, and getting it wrong, but thinking he did something wonderful!

The track room. I was reading some other post and I found a link to this pic. I can do this and make it look store bought.

Definitely! And that is definitely a John Sayers designed room, or one that is deeply inspired in John Sayers philosophy. And I'll bet good money that that room sounds incredible!

Here's another curve ball for you: if you really wanted to get fancy, you could have variable acoustic devices in your room. With those, you can flip, slide, rotate, open, close, cover, uncover, or in some other way change the response of certain devices in your room, as needed. Here's a variable acoustic module I designed for one of my customers a couple of years back, for his vocal room:

Devices under construction: Here there are "wing" panels that can either swing over the center slot wedge module, or swing out to the sides. They wings are half-open in this view:

Variable-acoustic-panels--construction--half-open-SML.jpg

Here's the completed device, in the finished vocal room. In this image, the wings are fully open, against the side panels, with the slot wedge completely exposed to the room. You can also see the curved reflectors hanging from the ceiling, which are also part of the room treatment.

Vari-acoustic-room--completed--SML-ENH.jpg

And here's a graph of the acoustic analysis we did on that room with the wings open to various positions, that shows how the decay times change as the wings are opened and closed:

vari-room-rt60-plots-all-positions-t20.jpg

I'm not saying that you should do that, or even that you need it: I'm just giving you yet another fire hose, so you can maybe get more ideas about your room, and see more options....

I did up a diagram but I need advice on how to find the right location. It will consist of a track desk that will seat two people.

This is the control room, or the vocal room? If that's the vocal room, the first thing that will have to go is the ceiling fan... You don't want that thing up there, whumpping away right above your mics!

! (And your HVAC system will supply the airflow you need anyway...)

I will use two iPads as teleprompters on mic stands adjusted to a comfortable reading angle along with two Rhodes desk mount boom arms. I will also install a flush mount (4) xlr inputs as well as (4) 1/4 inputs and (4) speaker in jacks for headphones.

Sounds like a good plan! But in the interest of the "maximum flexibility" and "thinking way ahead" philosophy, I'd suggest increasing your channel count. What happens if you ever want to record drums in there, for example? Or your guitar-playing narrator wants to bring in a couple of buddies with keyboards and electric guitars? Have some extra channels on your patch bays and snakes "just in case". I would put at least ten channels of XLR on there, so you can cover a full drum kit with a typical studio mic'ing setup. Yep, it costs a few extra dollars to do that now, but once it's done, it's there and available, whenever you need it, without having to chop holes in the wall again in the future to do that.

Maybe you noticed that I'm a big fan of flexibility in studios?

- Stuart -

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Fri Aug 11, 2017 3:48 pm

I just highlighted one But I like to design my rooms with flexibility in mind, to cater for as-yet-unthought-of situations that might arise in the future. If it is designed with other possibilities in mind, it not only makes it a place where you could potentially record other things, but it also increases the possibilities for improving your vocal recordings, by simply adjusting your mic positioning. Perhaps a female narrator would sound better on a U47 placed really close to her mouth at the dead end of the room, while a deep male voice might sound better on an SM-58 right up at the live end of the room, facing the slats... You get to experiment, to play around, to learn your room, and to thus make better recordings, even if it is "just" spoken word.

You have wonderful incite! Now you have me checking, rechecking and than checking my design again. I like that. I will be inviting the local Elementary as well as High School Music Teachers over for a tour and offer the room to the Kids free of charge.

So it is related to the dimensions of the room (the hard, solid, rigid, massive "walls" on all six sides), but it is also related to the treatment inside the room: the number of sabins of absorption on each wall. All of those details are shown on the room mode calculators, mentioned by the names above. You'll see the Bolt area and the Bonello plot and the sabins of absorption, and the Schroeder frequency, .... and those are all important for analyzing and understanding your room.

If you are interested in getting into this stuff a little more thoroughly, I'd suggest two books: "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. The first one will give you the background that you need to know about how sound waves REALLY behave, and what you can do to tame them. The second one is about how to actually design and build your studio, in terms of nails, studs, insulation, drywall, techniques, methods, tools, etc.

I will pick up the two books asap. I wonder if they are offered in audio format? I will find out.

Yeah, it does take a while. A while back, another new forum member said ti felt like "trying to drink from a fire hose". So don't feel alone: It's a huge subject, some of the concepts are not at all easy to grasp, and it can seem a bit overwhelming the first time you REALLY start to look into it.

Thanks. It helps to know that others have struggled as well. I do however have full expectations that your guidance as well as this community will get me where I need to be. After all, "That will do" Isn't Good Enough"!

Here's another fire hose for you (in addition to the 17 I already gave you....): If you really want to get into this in detail, then you could run an acoustic analysis on your room. It's not that hard, the software is free, and it will reveal all of the ugly truth about your rooms, which will put you on the correct path to fixing the problems. You can download the software to do this for free. The software is called "REW", it really is absolutely free (I have no idea why the author released it like that, but I'm extremely grateful to him, because it is MUCH better than some other acoustic software that costs a lot of money). You can get it here: http://www.roomeqwizard.com/ and I wrote up some instructions on how to use, which you can also get for free, here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122

If you are up for that, then give it a go, with your room as empty as possible of furniture and things, including you! Run the rests without your wonderful presence inside the room, since the human body can indeed affect the room acoustics, and the measurement thereof.

I have already checked into it. I read your advice on another thread. I will buy the mic recommended.

Right. I'm assuming that you are using Andy Mel's "AMROC" calculator: For each mode, it shows the pressure peaks and nulls in the room. As you move your cursor over the lines that represent each mode in the graph at the top, it shows you the 3D diagram of where the peaks and nulls of the standing wave are, for that specific mode. If you have your speakers turned on on your computer, it will even play the tone of the exact frequency of that mode.

Yes and Yes.

That's the "cheap and nasty, quick and dirty" way to do it, but it's also the ignorant and not-very-effective way to do it. A good silencer is based on several principles. That's why real-world silencers in properly designed home-studio HVAC systems., look like this:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 0&start=45
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 9&start=74
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 25&start=2
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 42&start=5
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 61&start=0
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 5&start=98
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... &start=157
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=13821
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 8&start=44
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 2&start=16

Those were all resigned and built by forum members. And all of them turned out to be VERY effective. Because they are based on solid principles of acoustics, and solid principles of HVAC design. Not based on some guy with a camera and a YouTube account experimenting in ignorance, and getting it wrong, but thinking he did something wonderful!

I looked at all of them and I will start the build next week. One question. Can this be mounted in my craw space next to the vent? That's where all my duct work is located.

Here's another curve ball for you: if you really wanted to get fancy, you could have variable acoustic devices in your room. With those, you can flip, slide, rotate, open, close, cover, uncover, or in some other way change the response of certain devices in your room, as needed. Here's a variable acoustic module I designed for one of my customers a couple of years back, for his vocal room:

Devices under construction: Here there are "wing" panels that can either swing over the center slot wedge module, or swing out to the sides. They wings are half-open in this view:
Variable-acoustic-panels--construction--half-open-SML.jpg
Here's the completed device, in the finished vocal room. In this image, the wings are fully open, against the side panels, with the slot wedge completely exposed to the room. You can also see the curved reflectors hanging from the ceiling, which are also part of the room treatment.
Vari-acoustic-room--completed--SML-ENH.jpg
And here's a graph of the acoustic analysis we did on that room with the wings open to various positions, that shows how the decay times change as the wings are opened and closed:
vari-room-rt60-plots-all-positions-t20.jpg
I'm not saying that you should do that, or even that you need it: I'm just giving you yet another fire hose, so you can maybe get more ideas about your room, and see more options....

Yes, you have released the CRACK-EN! I will build them with the wing design. I will check with you when I get closer to that point.

This is the control room, or the vocal room? If that's the vocal room, the first thing that will have to go is the ceiling fan... You don't want that thing up there, whumpping away right above your mics! ! (And your HVAC system will supply the airflow you need anyway...)

I will remove it this morning.

Sounds like a good plan! But in the interest of the "maximum flexibility" and "thinking way ahead" philosophy, I'd suggest increasing your channel count. What happens if you ever want to record drums in there, for example? Or your guitar-playing narrator wants to bring in a couple of buddies with keyboards and electric guitars? Have some extra channels on your patch bays and snakes "just in case". I would put at least ten channels of XLR on there, so you can cover a full drum kit with a typical studio mic'ing setup. Yep, it costs a few extra dollars to do that now, but once it's done, it's there and available, whenever you need it, without having to chop holes in the wall again in the future to do that.

Maybe you noticed that I'm a big fan of flexibility in studios? - Stuart -

[/quote]
Done and done my friend. I was also thinking maybe putting in a 8 channel 1/4 wall plate in for headphones. I have a 8 channel headphone amp. Do you think it would be better to just recess the amp in the track room and let the individual adjust their own input level? Thanks again Stuart!!!

Phase 1. Track Room.

IMG_4603.jpg

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Sun Aug 20, 2017 4:39 pm

OK. I have made a little progress from my last post. I have the new floor down, the ceiling fan removed, the 18 inch by 48 inch control room window cut out and studded up. I also have the new closet built as per Stuarts suggestions and I have recessed a bookshelf to keep it out of the control room.

IMG_4637.JPG

IMG_4646.JPG

IMG_4726.JPG

IMG_4727.JPG

IMG_4664.JPG

IMG_4715.JPG

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Thu Aug 24, 2017 5:56 am

I will pick up the two books asap. I wonder if they are offered in audio format? I will find out.

I would suspect not: they are both very visual books, with diagrams, charts, photos, equations, graphs, etc.

But then I saw this photo:

plugs-trash.isolation.jpg

... and realized that you didn't get the books before you built that wall, because if you had, you would have realized what a big mistake you made here... Those electrical outlets basically trash your isolation.

After all, "That will do" Isn't Good Enough"!

Yup! And the above "won't do". Huge holes in your wall sheathing means that you might as well not have any wall there at all! The basic rule of isolation is that "If air can get through, then so can sound". You could get half a hurricane through each of those massive holes.

I studios, you can allow precisely one single penetration of the wall, to bring in the electrical feed. From there, it is distributed inside the room using surface-mount electrical raceway systems. You'll need to pull out all of the boxes, carefully fill in and seal the holes to replace the lost mass and seal air-tight, then re-do your electrics.

Better take a close look at those books! They do warn you about this type of issue.

- Stuart -

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Thu Aug 24, 2017 6:39 am

I would suspect not: they are both very visual books, with diagrams, charts, photos, equations, graphs, etc.

But then I saw this photo:

plugs-trash.isolation.jpg
... and realized that you didn't get the books before you built that wall, because if you had, you would have realized what a big mistake you made here... Those electrical outlets basically trash your isolation.

Ya, its called a house. You know, "Home Studio". I do need to consider the resale value of the home if I decide to sell in 4 or 5 years.

Yup! And the above "won't do". Huge holes in your wall sheathing means that you might as well not have any wall there at all! The basic rule of isolation is that "If air can get through, then so can sound". You could get half a hurricane through each of those massive holes.

Hugh holes? Really? They are called outlets, you know, where you can plug monitors as well as your computer into. Again, I am thinking resale value here. I am quite sure very few people would want to buy a house that only has one outlet per room in it. Maybe in your country, not mine.

Better take a close look at those books! They do warn you about this type of issue. - Stuart -

Thanks for all your help. I will take it from here. Like I said, you talked me into putting a see through window in and then criticize the three outlets that were there to begin with. They are in the control room. How about the 12 xlr flush mount box, was that a waist of money as well? It will require a MUCH bigger hole then the outlets. It's a house and it will do just fine for what I need it to do. This will be my last post. Take care.

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Thu Aug 24, 2017 7:21 am

Wow! "Chip" "shoulder". Ummmm....

Perhaps you should have actually made an effort to read and understand what I wrote, rather than lashing out in ignorance....

So glad you appreciated the FREE help you got here!

- Stuart -

Dana Tucker · Post by **Dana Tucker** » Thu Aug 24, 2017 4:10 pm

Wow! "Chip" "shoulder". Ummmm....

No chip, I just have no time for sarcasm.

Perhaps you should have actually made an effort to read and understand what I wrote, rather than lashing out in ignorance....

I read it twice. While I may be ignorant concerning sound design, the www will provide the education I need to correct that issue. I wrote nothing out of anger and it seems you can not "receive" as well as you "give".

So glad you appreciated the FREE help you got here! - Stuart -

I have paid my way through life since the age of 15. While it may not seem like much, it was set up to be paid monthly for 12 months. The first donation was made two weeks ago.

js.png

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Fri Aug 25, 2017 3:09 am

No chip, I just have no time for sarcasm.

And yet you replied with blatantly glaring, dripping sarcasm!

Even though there was no sarcasm at all in what I wrote: I merely pointed out an error that you made in your construction, and I pointed out what you would need to fix it. Where exactly did you see any sarcasm in that? Since when us dry humor the same as sarcasm?

I do need to consider the resale value of the home if I decide to sell in 4 or 5 years.

So what's the problem with that? Why would a neat surface-mount raceway electrical system reduce the resale value of your house? I'm not following your logic...

Hugh holes? Really?

Yes, really. That's exactly what they are. Huge holes in your isolation wall. Huge holes in your mass. "Mass" is what provides isolation, and that's why you used thick, heavy drywall: to put a massive "shell" around your room, to stop sound getting in and out. If you cut a hole in that mass without compensating for it, then you have give sound a path to get in and out, completely bypassing the mass. Here's a simple illustration: Sit inside your car at some very noisy location, perhaps where loud music is playing close by, or noisy machinery. With all your windows closed, listen to how loud the sound is inside your car. Now open one of the windows about an inch, and listen the the dramatic increase in sound level. That's about the same increase you will get from cutting a hole the size of an electrical box in your wall. In other words, it's a huge hole that trashes your isolation.

They are called outlets, you know, where you can plug monitors as well as your computer into.

Ummm... and your point is? You can plug in your monitors and computers just as well to a proper surface-mounted electrical system. Why did you think that would be any different, from the practical point of view? The only difference is that surface-mounted raceway systems so not cut huge holes in your wall. They only need to be scrwed though the drywall into the studs, to hold them in place, and that has no effect at all on isolation, since the mass and seal remains the same.

Again, I am thinking resale value here.

Again, I don't see an issue here.

I am quite sure very few people would want to buy a house that only has one outlet per room in it.

Why would you only want to put one single outlet in each room? I'm not following you at all. That would be rather silly. And I don't recall ever having said that, or even anything remotely like it. Maybe you should read over what I wrote one more time....

Maybe in your country, not mine.

Oh, that's not a problem at all, thanks! The country where I live has the some of the strictest, best, ost sophisticated, and safest building codes on the planet! Far superior to what you have in your country. That's why in a Magnitude 8 earthquake buildings don't fall down here, or even suffer any major damage, whereas a far, far smaller Magnitude 6 is a major disaster in your country, causing wide-spread damage. I remember a few years back, a company from California bid on a local contract to build a power stations here, and were told that there design was not up to our standards, as it did not meat the seismic standards. The reply from the bidding company was more or less along the lines "But it meets California earthquake codes, and we already built a couple like this in California". The response from the RFP administrator said basically: "Sorry, that's California, where the building codes are way sub-standard for what you need here. Beef up your design to meet code, or withdraw your proposal." They withdrew...

So I'm not in the least concerned that what I would recommend for a paying studio design customer that meets the building code (including electrical outlets) here where I live, would be way better than what is needed for a sub-standard code, such as in your country.

I will take it from here.

Ummmm... Ok, if you insist.... That' doesn't seem to work out too well for most people. Many, many forum members come here because they first tried to do it on their own, then tried to do it with help from "the internet", and failed miserably both times. They they come here, get solid, correct, advice, and build wonderful places. Here's a few that might interest you: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 42&p=40923

Like I said, you talked me into putting a see through window in and then criticize the three outlets that were there to begin with.

I'm not sure what your point was at all, there! In what way are windows comparable to electrical outlets, acoustically? Windows are massive, thick, heavy glass plates, sealed into massive, thick, heavy frames, that are in turn sealed into the massive, thick, heavy wall sheathing. Please explain how that is comparable cutting a hole in the drywall, and putting in a thin, light-weight, low-mass, un-sealed box, with no frame and no seal to the leaf? I must be missing something, as I don't see any similarities at all.

How about the 12 xlr flush mount box, was that a waist of money as well?

No. Why?

It will require a MUCH bigger hole then the outlets.

Ummmm.... no it wont, if you mount it correctly. It only needs a small hole for the cable, and that should be done in the correct fashion for cable penetrations into studios, to maintain the surface density (mass) and air-tight seal of the leaf.

I'm also wondering, if you are so concerned about maintaining resale value, how that would be affected by having a huge patch panel embedded in one wall. You seem to be suggesting that a large bunch of ugly audio connectors in a box part way up one wall would have no effect on resale value, yet a nicely done surface-mount electrical raceway system would destroy the resale value! How do you figure that? Personally, if I were looking to buy a house, I would not be at all worried about surface-mounted electrics (I'd actually view that as a plus, since it makes all future wiring of any kind so simple and clean), and I'd be horrified to find a large, hideous patch-bay poking out of one wall!

It's a house and it will do just fine for what I need it to do.

And yet, you are going to great trouble and expense to modify part of it into NOT being a house, presumably because you realized it would NOT do fine for what you needed... Which is pretty clearly explicit in your original post!

While I may be ignorant concerning sound design, the www will provide the education I need to correct that issue.

And yet your original post says: " I found you guys as I have been researching on the best way to do my design. After spending weeks upon weeks of reading, watching videos and reading tec manuals for pristine room sizing according to audio, that required a science calculator, my head is ready to explode! I just figured that if your profile requirements where that solid, this must be the right place for advice. ... Now this is where I am getting extremely confused. ... For the life of me, I simply can not grasp the theory of bass traps. ... See, that's why my head hurts. ". So it would seem that you already went down that path, and found that it was no use (as many others have also found, then turned to the forum to get the real answers they need). Instead, you found the answers you needed right here, then got all upset when an answer came along that you didn't like... Even though the very reason you joined up was because of our rather strict forum rules, that pull no punches! Yet when you got an answer yourself that pulls no punches, you get in a huff, and want to walk away?

The first donation was made two weeks ago.

I'm sure John will be very grateful for that, and I'm grateful that you are helping out John in that way, since the expenses of running the forum greatly exceed the income he gets from donations, such as yours. But I won't ever see a penny of that, since my work here is purely voluntary. I don't work for John, and he doesn't pay me a cent for administrating the forum. Nor would I want him to! I'm quite happy to do it for nothing, as I really enjoy helping people make their studios the best they possibly can be. That's reward enough, as far as I'm concerned. (Plus the occasional forum member who hires me to design their studio as a paid project).

While it may not seem like much,

It will certainly be appreciated, and it's a lot more than most members donate, even whey they get a boatload more help that you have gotten so far! You'd be surprised at how man members want a total freebie: getting pages and pages of solid, personalized advice, using it to build great studios, then not even donating a single cent. Some don't even say "thank-you", even though they got professional advice worth thousands of dollars. I find it hard to figure out ungrateful people like that: Did they just forget to say thanks and donate a few dollars? Did they not appreciate what we did for them? Were they never brought up to say "please" and "thank you"? Did they maybe think that they were just entitled to get whatever they wanted at no personal cost? After all, it's just the Interne, so it must be free! I have no idea what drives some people to behave like that, but it happens so frequently here, sadly... so it's really nice to find a guy like you, with integrity, that "gets it", understands value, has morals and ethics, and happily makes a long-term commitment to show his appreciation.

- Stuart -

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