Preliminary Design Considerations-Basement Aspiring to Amaze

[danieljvogel]

Thank you for the response!

Yes. If you're using them as your suedo rear wall treatment, use 6" thick (so two batts of it).

I think I'm just gonna get a few packs of 703 and go pick it up on my lunch break. Figure with two layers it'll be more like 4", which I'd prefer. But my main question is if my idea of using these in the future studio as the second angled walls is a good idea? It's not for isolation, more for treatment and getting the RFZ zone, as far as my limited understanding goes anyway

Chances are it will work great for your temp room. When it comes to treating your actual control room, you'll probably need an assortment of insulation products in order to target problems.

For this I really mean in the walls for isolation, not elsewhere in the room for treatment. So I'll be using a ton of it, and I just started getting freaked out that I was making a mistake. The R-24 stuff would be good for a superchunk, but it's 6" thick so can't use it in the walls. Maybe the ceiling...but I'm not there yet.

With very heavy/thick material, you could achieve some isolation, but as you know, it won't help with low frequencies at all. It would help with higher frequencies only (like plexi in front of a drum kit at a live show). With your current set up, I would suggest laying guide tracks over a click track and then record one musician at a time. In my experience, unless it's off the cuff jazz improv, it always yields better and quicker results.

I apologize if I'm not explaining this clearly, but this goes to my point above. The two gobos would be to pull double duty - as treatment behind the mix area in my temporary studio, and then as the second angled walls in the mix area of the future studio. And then I guess triple duty, as I could move them around for tracking in theory, but this is the least important use. For the first two, would it be good to have a hard surface? It may be impossible to know right now, just thinking I'd rather include that in the initial planning if it will be helpful.

Your drawing does not show any bass trapping. That needs to be priority number 1. I just leaned up a few 12" wide strips of insulation in two of the corners of my daughters room where I'm doing a little bit of work and REW measurement differences are staggering. They are only about 6 feet long so I'm missing out on tri corner benefits. I can only imagine how much better the room would be with nice wide devices in every corner. Anyway, I would treat your temp room as any other control room and apply one device at a time and take measurements. Targeting first reflections, tons of bass trapping, and of course having that thick rear wall treatment would be no brainer steps going forward.

Excellent point! I was planning on delaying any bass trapping until I'm in the future studio, but maybe I should figure out some treatments for the temp studio that I can re-use as well. Or maybe even just figure out something cheap and temporary that will help for the time being.

Appreciate the help very much, and any further clarification in particular on the wisdom of my double duty walls and the insulation to use inside the actual studio walls would be most welcome!

[Gregwor]

I wouldn't go less than 6" for your rear wall insulation.

R24 is actually 5.5" thick. It's VERY VERY easy to rip to whatever thickness you need.

I doubt you'll be able to reuse the gobos as soffit wings as the wings need to be exact and permanent with very heavy/nice looking material on it's face.

Greg

[danieljvogel]

I wouldn't go less than 6" for your rear wall insulation.

R24 is actually 5.5" thick. It's VERY VERY easy to rip to whatever thickness you need.

Good deal, thanks! I think my Home Depot has only Knauf stuff in stock but I will definitely grab some and try it out. Safe n Sound pretty much sucks to work with

I doubt you'll be able to reuse the gobos as soffit wings as the wings need to be exact and permanent with very heavy/nice looking material on it's face.

Bummer. Though to be clear, my thought is not to mount the speakers in these things, but rather to use them for the walls like the ones in the crude attached pic. I could add slats for reflections and whatever else is needed as well.

[Soundman2020]

You have TWO sets of speakers mounted in your soffits? Why? How will you make that work?

Also, it's not clear if you are trying to d an RFZ style room? If so, your wings are not angled steeply enough.


- Stuart -

[danieljvogel]

Thanks for chiming in! Sorry, I’m not being clear. That last pic is just something I pulled from online, just to illustrate what I’m hoping to use my gobos for. Disregard everything about it except that what my idea is - to make gobos that I can put behind me in my temp studio and then repurpose and use to create those walls in the mix position of the future studio.

[danieljvogel]

Also Stuart -

For what it's worth, in my mind my idea is not too different from the variable acoustic treatment that you described earlier in this thread. I guess I just don't understand why those two wing walls can't be done somewhat in the way I'm describing. I'm not at a point of figuring out the exact details but I would think I can add slats to the front, perhaps on hinged doors so I could open it up if I needed to use it as more of a traditional gobo, and I could have it on locking wheels so it's more or less permanent when it's in place. One of the main reasons this is appealing to me is that I could move them out of the way to make the space more open when I'm writing and tracking, which will probably be 75% of what I do in the room. Is this just a dead end that I should stop thinking about? I'm still aways from finalizing the design of the future studio, let alone building it, but I could get started on these to use in the temp studio, which I will be moving into within a week or two. I started putting baseboards down so it's legit almost done. I hope I'm describing this sufficiently - it's always tough when you're living with the project to convey details adequately

[Gregwor]

Though to be clear, my thought is not to mount the speakers in these things, but rather to use them for the walls like the ones in the crude attached pic. I could add slats for reflections and whatever else is needed as well.

Those walls are referred to as soffit wings or other similar names. As Stuart mentioned, they need to be at exact angles in order to provide a reflection free listening sphere around your head. In most designs you'll find on the forum you'll see that the wings are made of very dense materials. This is because they act together with the baffles around your speakers to extend the baffles out to your side walls ultimately attempting to create an "infinite baffle". Adding slats to these walls will ultimately affect this effect and maybe in your design it would work well. However, the idea is to have them do their infinite baffle job as well as direct sound away from your head and towards the back wall where the back wall can work it's magic.

Creating gobos that can double as soffit wings sounds pretty crazy to me. If I were you, I'd build the gobos and use them in whatever manner you feel will work in your temp room. Once it comes time to build your actual room, rip the insulation out of the gobos and reuse whatever materials you can. I just don't see your double duty design being worth the hassle at this stage of the game.

Greg

[danieljvogel]

Thanks Greg! Seems most of my brilliant ideas are not quite as brilliant as they seem in my head Again, for what it's worth, the slats were just spit balling - if there was a way to make the double duty gobos work, I would do that. But I feel I'm in danger of this if I keep pursuing this idea:

I think a reasonable plan for me now in this case is to make pretty standard broadband absorbers out of 703 and do some experimentation with those in my temp studio. I feel like I will be able to reuse those no matter what. Then I can go from there, either building gobos or otherwise trying to add some treatment to that room with an eye to at least repurposing the materials like you suggest. At the end of the day I've never done any proper acoustic treatments on my previous studios, so this seems like a good way to get my toes wet and observe the effects of various treatments while I make music in my temp studio, and continue to plan and build the future studio.

And I have another idea that I also think is brilliant for the absorbers. I'm a painter too, and I was hoping to use a painting as the outer fabric to make them look cool, but after looking around, that seems not to be a good option. So I think what I'm gonna do is get some black fire retardant muslin from a theater company and splatter bleach on it, Jackson Pollock style, hopefully creating a cool visual effect without changing the acoustic properties of the fabric. Please don't tell me this won't work either...I can only handle so much disappointment in one day

[Gregwor]

Good stuff! Just make sure you can easily breathe through the muslin. If you can't, then you can't use that material.

Do you have a measurement microphone for room eq wizard yet? You'll want to take a measurement before you put up ANY treatment. There are clear instructions compliments of Stuart on the forum for you to follow to take measurements. You'll be blown away seeing the difference even one bass trap makes



Greg

[danieljvogel]

Nice! Yeah, I read about the breath test, so I'm hopeful the stuff I found online will be ok. It's only like $15 for a decent amount of it so not a disaster if it won't work.

I think I do have a mic that I can use. It's been awhile since I read through all of that but I'll try to figure it out hopefully next week once I get my stuff set up, and before I start on treatments. I don't want to spend too much time of this temp studio, but this will also be good practice for the future studio.

[Soundman2020]

It's been awhile since I read through all of that but I'll try to figure it out hopefully next week once I get my stuff set up, and before I start on treatments.

Refresher on how to do that:

How to calibrate and use REW to test and tune your room acoustics

- Stuart -

[danieljvogel]

Thanks Stuart! Sounds like fun Hopefully by next week I can take some measurements and start building my absorbers. I'm thinking at this point of doing four 2" broadband absorbers and four 4" "bass traps", which I understand from reading around do not really trap bass at all. But I feel like that's a doable project and will be fun, and all of that can be reused in the future studio. I'm assuming I'll also do superchunks in there, and probably more, but this would be a good start. But I'll plan to get the measurements first to make sure I'm not wasting time or money. But I'm pretty certain the temp studio will sound like absolute garbage and I don't want to spend too much time perfecting it because every bit of time I put into it is time I'm not using towards the future studio.

[danieljvogel]

Hi again! Just wanted to post again to say that this thread/project is not dead, just still experiencing the oft-predicted delay and project creep. It turns out that I am basically renovating this entire basement, plus other parts of the house, on my own. Woo hoo! I've still been making music in my little temporary room and for the past little bit have been working to finish yet ANOTHER part of the basement that is not my studio. So my current plan, which will surely be delayed, is to start the studio for real in 2020. As always I appreciate all your guys' help, and I will be back with updates and questions once I'm further along. And in the meantime I'll re-learn everything I've already forgotten from last year when I started this odyssey! But I'm telling you, at the end of this there will pictures of the best studio I was able to make, and the change from before and after will be pretty sweet

[Soundman2020]

Glad to hear it is still on-going! And still aspiring to amaze!

Studio building often goes like this: it takes much longer than you ever dreamed it could, is a lot harder to do than you ever dreamed it could be, and costs a lot more than you ever dreamed it might cost... But at the end, you'll have a great room where you can happily make music... and amaze your friends!.


- Stuart -

[danieljvogel]

I'm baaaack! OK, another year has almost passed and I still have not started my studio! It's not ideal, but the rest of the basement is almost finished at least!

Anyway, I wanted to stop back in to let y'all know I am still doing this, and it's just predictably taken waaaaaay longer than I had hoped. But I am reasonably, possibly naively, confident that I will start before the end of the year. The main reason for my current delays were that we decided to spend most of the spring working on outdoor projects, and the piece of the basement that will be used for storage turned out to be a priority, because we have a huge storage unit in our driveway, and after two years it needs to go! Both those projects are nearly done so the studio is next up. Oh, I also had to work on a bunch of music in my crappy temporary studio

I will post more about this in the near future but I have also pretty significantly simplified my plans. I will not be completely building the "room within a room" in my current thinking - it's just too much work, and at the end of the day, the tradeoff in isolation is worth the extra space and actually getting this project done. I'm a little disappointed, but mostly at peace with the decision.

So I hope everyone is well and hanging on through these tumultuous times! I'll be back in touch in the coming months with an update and some questions about my revised approach. Thank you!!

-Dan