John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

First off, thank you all for the wealth of information here. Long time lurker, first time joining and posting. My name is Brian, and I am in Muskegon, Michigan, USA.

I had a decent studio setup in my old house, but my wife and I recently moved. Unfortunately it was a downsize, and so I lost most of my studio space. Below is a rough layout of my current house. I marked off the room that I am thinking will be the control room. I am prioritizing mixing over tracking. I'll move tracking in and out of other rooms in the house as needed.

The control room is 144 inches long, 125 (corrected from my original post, I'll update the diagram soon) inches wide, and 92.5 inches tall. The wall on the right (when looking at the diagram) has a 36" wide window roughly centered on the wall. The exterior of the structure on this wall is made of cinder block (8" thick). There is 5/8" drywall on top of the cinder block, spaced off of the block with 2"x2" studs spaced 16" apart, and loose insulation in between. Assuming the wall with the window faces east, the north, west, and south walls are 5/8" drywall on 2"x4" studs spaced 16" apart with no insulation in between. On the north and west walls there is also 5/8" drywall on the other side. On the south wall there is a bathroom walk in tile shower on the other side of the wall with tile backer board and tile. To the left of the shower on the south wall is a closet with 5/8" drywall on the other side.

The ceiling of the room is 1/2" drywall with 14" of blown in insulation on top. The door into the room is solid MDF (32" wide). The floor is 1" thick 10" wide planks of tongue and groove pine on top of old linoleum, which is on top of a plank sub floor. Below the sub floor is a 3 foot deep crawl space with a dirt floor.

I'm not too worried about sound spilling out of the room. I haven't really set a budget, but off the top of my head, under $2,000 (US dollars) would be nice. If there was a strong argument to spend more and reap great benefits, I could pretty easily be persuaded.

My questions:

First, is this room too small to make sound good? A lot of the rest of the house has tall vaulted ceilings, and open spaces that I think will translate well for tracking. However, I'm worried that this room is too small to be worth putting a lot of effort into. I'm hoping I'm wrong!

Is there anything I should do structurally to the walls/floor/ceiling?

What type of acoustic modifying things should I add and where (bass traps, etc.)?

I'm assuming monitors on either side of the window, with the desk in front of the window?

Anything else that you think would be helpful, I'm all ears, and would appreciate if very much (for tracking in the rest of the house too)!

Thanks,
Brian

Welcome!

Great work with the construction info!

First, is this room too small to make sound good?

Your room is just under half the size of recommended for a great listening room. So yes, I would say it is too small to make it sound "good". I wouldn't say it can't be usable though.

What type of acoustic modifying things should I add and where (bass traps, etc.)?

There are some standard things you can do such as:
- bass trap every single corner of your room (all 12)
- add as thick of absorption as you can across your entire rear wall
- add 4" insulation behind your speakers on your front wall
- add insulation for your first reflection points

You will have to take acoustic measurements to see how your room is performing and then add other elements to the treatment from there.

I'm assuming monitors on either side of the window, with the desk in front of the window?

It depends on measurements. You want the speakers as wide as you can get them, but there are guidelines about certain percentages to stay within.

You will want to shoot down the long length of your room. So facing the window would be your best bet.

Anything else that you think would be helpful, I'm all ears, and would appreciate if very much (for tracking in the rest of the house too)!

If you type your dimensions into Bob Gold's Room Mode Calc, your room fails 1 of the 3 tests. This will cause some havoc with your modal distribution. This just means your room won't sound as good as one that passes the tests. You will have to treat the daylights out of the room.

Unfortunately, if you need all 3 bedrooms, this is your best bet for a mixing room. If it's the biggest room you have available, then you have to make it work the best that it can and live with it. You're in the right forum to make it the best it can though!

So first things first, empty out the room, set up your speakers, take some pictures and some acoustic measurements following the REW instructions on this forum and post some results.

We all look forward to seeing some REW files/pictures!

Greg

Thanks Greg, much appreciated!

I re-measured this morning, and found that I gave some bad information, the width of the room (the wall with the window) is 125 inches. Sorry! I played around with the Bob Golds website, and it looks like I can get the dimensions to pass all 3 tests with these numbers now.

I do have one other possibility. I could take half the garage. I don't mind parking outside, but my wife would still need her space. This would give me roughly a 11x18 foot area with a 9 foot ceiling (which is just open rafters above, and could be raised. The tricky part would be the garage door still needs to open and close, so the listening room ceiling would likely need to slope under that.

Do you think the garage has a lot more potential? If it was just going to be a little better, I'd probably stick with the bedroom, but if it could be a lot better, I would change gears.

I ordered the presonus prm1 and galaxy spl meter per the REW post. Looking forward to doing some testing. I also found a local building supply company that will order me 703 in any quantity, so DIY bass traps are probably in my future.

Thanks!

it looks like I can get the dimensions to pass all 3 tests with these numbers now.

Excellent.

Do you think the garage has a lot more potential?

The floor area is much better, yes, but here are concerns with the garage:
- You'll have to build a room in the garage. This will require building permits, HVAC, electrical, etc. It will eat all of your budget up before you've even started to treat it acoustically.
- Your height will end up being shorter than your current room due to the garage door rails.

I ordered the presonus prm1 and galaxy spl meter per the REW post. Looking forward to doing some testing.

I also found a local building supply company that will order me 703 in any quantity, so DIY bass traps are probably in my future.

Greg

The test results are in, hopefully I did this correctly - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mi5giuoz14ll ... vNlLa?dl=0

Here are some pictures for reference. I'm working on decluttering, but it's a constant battle with a 5 year old that thinks every room is her playroom. Also, the desk is pretty much centered in the room. The window is off center. I'm not even OCD, and it bothers me quite a bit!

The test results are in, hopefully I did this correctly

Unfortunately you did not do it correctly. Your level is way too low. Follow the instructions again. The test should produce 80dB for each speaker and 86 dB together.

Also, put all of the tests in one file instead of 3 separate ones.

Thanks!

Greg

Thanks for the quick feedback, take 2 tomorrow!

Updated REW measurements added to the dropbox link (all in one file, and calibrated to 80db)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eptdq76y1iec9 ... .mdat?dl=0

Hi Brian, and Welcome!

Updated REW measurements added to the dropbox link (all in one file, and calibrated to 80db)

Nope! You do have all three measurements in one file, yes, but you still have not calibrated correctly. There are on calibration files included in your MDAT file, and your levels are now way too high.

Take a look:
The horizontal line shows the 80 dB level (OK, it's off slightly, at 79.9, but whatever....). All of your curves are way, way, way above that. At least ten times louder.

It seems that either your sound level meter is severely broken, or you are not following the procedure correctly. I'm not sure which procedure you are following, but here's the correct one: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122 . Follow that, very carefully, paying close attention to each step, and your levels WILL be correct.

That said, one thing is very clear from your data so far: you have a major imbalance between your left and right speakers. Look at the red and green curves on the graph: if your speakers were doing the exact same thing, then the two lines would be almost perfectly on top of each other, but they aren't. There are large differences. For example, at around 50 Hz and again at around 120 Hz your left speaker is nearly twice as loud (subjectively), yet around 280 Hz it is quieter. That could be due to the room, or to the speakers themselves, or to the signal chain. Something is not symmetrical, and symmetry is critically important for good mixing. So part of the process of fixing your room will be to figure out what is causing that.

So please do the complete procedure again, include the soundcard calibration file in the MDAT itself, and do the measurements at the correct level, where you see 80 dBC (slow) on your hand-held sound level meter, for each individual speaker, and 86 dBC (slow) when both of them are on.


- Stuart -

Thanks, happy to be here! Sorry to waste your guys' time with the bad tests.

Hopefully third time is the charm - https://www.dropbox.com/s/znnpkzbzr7f3m ... .mdat?dl=0

9-20-18 - added some new measurements after moving the speakers and listening position around a few times. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7hgh8hfkpwnz3 ... .mdat?dl=0