Hlep Needed to improve my room. Manchester UK

[limitedheadroom]

Hi folks,

first post here. I've been reading around, there is so much information to take in! I'm hoping you can help me in making some improvements to my room.

I have a small room, and it is far from ideal. There is nowhere possible within the room to set up the studio so the room is symmetrical either side of my listening position. The two horizontal dimensions are very close (at least if I don't include the alcove in the longer side). There is a chimney breast up one wall(no fireplace) and this is not in the centre of the room, so the alcove on one side is bigger than the other, then finally to top it off, the ceiling has a sloping section along one wall where the roof angle cuts into the room, but luckily not by too much.

Unsurprisingly it has a fairly bad low end response in my monitor position. I'm afraid I can't post measurements at the moment as I've filled it while I do some other jobs in my home. I will restore it to take room measurements if needed once I have finished the work in other rooms (stuff all currently placed in studio to get it out the way).

Room dimensions:
Length - 3.35m (up to chimney breast). Alcoves are 36cm deep
Width - 3.47m
Height - 2.7m

I am thinking of building bass treatment up at end with the alcoves, and soffit mounting the speakers, so they sit back in the alcove slightly. Partly to help gain some precious space. I had previously only heard about either super chunk style bass treatment, or limp mass absorber a another resonator type. But it seems what is preferred here is hanging paddles. So I was thinking of something like this in the soffits, but I don't know if there is enough space to do something worthwhile?

Please see the attached image of the room, modelled in sketchup which I've only just started learning from hearing about it reading on this forum, so I'm by no means an expert at it yet. It shows the studio layout, off centre chimney, the roofline at the top of the walls, and I've put in something that might work for the soffits. I already have 8 rockwool panels I made previously and i will also use these, but they aren't shown here. There will be a shelving rack along the rear wall as I need place to put stuff in there!

questions:
1. Is the soffit mounting idea at all feasible?
2. Is there enough space in there to treat the low end behind the soffits.
3. Please suggest a better solution if you have one
4. Are there any other considerations I should be taking into account?

Many thanks for your time
Dan

[Soundman2020]

Hi there Dan, and Welcome to the Forum!

1. Is the soffit mounting idea at all feasible?

Absolutely! Especially if it will help you get better symmetry. There are many threads here on the forum where members have soffit-mounted their speakers: take a look at those, and you'll get some ideas on how to actually implement your idea in practice. But you certainly have the right approach.

2. Is there enough space in there to treat the low end behind the soffits.

To a certain extent, yes. Take a look at the link below to Steve's room, and you'll see how the bass trapping is incorporated into the sections above and below the actual speaker section, in the middle.

However, that won't be enough bass trapping on it's own. Your room is small, so it will need a large amount of bass trapping. The rear wall of any room is always the biggest problem, so you will need considerable additional bass trapping on the rear wall. You can see how that can be accomplished using hangers, in thread about Steve's about his control room in New Orleans . That's a much larger room than yours, but the same principle can be applied. ... without the rear wall diffuser, since your room is too small to use diffusion like that.

4. Are there any other considerations I should be taking into account?

Many! Speaker mounting and bass trapping are just two aspects out of many that you will need to cover as you work through your room design. Other major issues that you didn't mention are isolation, HVAC, and desired overall room acoustic response.... But you are on the right track: Assuming you already have your isolation and HVAC issues solved, or at least partially solved, then the next step is usually to work on the "geometry" of the room, meaning optimization of the relative positions of the speakers and mix position, as well as the initial acoustic treatment.

- Stuart -

[limitedheadroom]

Thank you for your response Stuart. I live in the north of england, and have been making music in that studio for the last 4 years already. To be honest I hadn't thought of including HVAC in the system, there are only maybe about 2 weeks in a year where it has ever been uncomfortable to work in there due to the heat. I've been reading more on this site from you about the importnace so am going to consider a small split system. Something like this:
http://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au/ms ... oners.html (the smaller MSZGE25 one)

I know this isn't going to deal with bringing fresh air into the room, but I have an opening window there!
It says airflow of 68 l/s on the quiet setting. I calculate my room at roughly 3200 litres. That means this should be able to cycle the air in the room in under a minute. Which doesn't seem right! What am I getting wrong.

I mostly work in there during the day and haven't had a problem yet with disturbing the neighbours, they're at work. I like to work quite quietly 98% of the time. The sound from outside is on occasion an issue, but not severe. But I can't see there is space to introduce isolation and still have a useable volume of space! I struggle withe the limited space in the room as it is. If I add treatment to the rear wall it will move that forward, reducing space further. I have to fit all my keyboards, guitars etc in there, and have room to set up a couple of mics and record myself playing. So I think at this stage I will have to accept it isn't going to be a world class room. Sadly my garden isn't big enough to buid a purpose built space in, so I'm stuck with the spare room in the house for the time being.

This is a composing and mixing room for me to work in for my sound design/composition work for the most part. SO while it is a professional space, it's only me who has to deal with the inconvenience. So i think Isolation is probably out of the question at this stage. Hopefully I can get a dedicated space down the line at some point and do it properly.

My budget is also very much limited for the moment!

As for the type of room response you mentioned. I guess I would like something that is controlled and flat (as much as is reasonably achievable). At the mooment I have such bad low end problems particularly, it takes an age to get a mix that translates at all. With loads of external mix checking, and to-fro-ing. I want to try and get that low end controled, improve the stereo imaging and smooth it all out. But I don't know what that equates to in terms of

I'm going to do more reading around the other links you sent and alter my plan. Try and come up with a more complete approach to the acoustic treatment. Also speak to some local fitters about the HVAC options.

Thanks again, the drawing board awaits!

[limitedheadroom]

So after some other things that have prevented me from moving on this for a little while I've got back to it and revised my plan.

I've designed something that I hope will be suitable for the back wall. See below, thoughts on this?

Rear Wall insides.jpg

Rear Wall full.jpg

If it goes all the way to the ceiling it will be 2.7m tall. And with the rockwool facing included it will be 60cm deep. The rockwool I was thinking of using is 50mm, I can't spare any more space in the room, so if the facing should be thicker I would have to redice the width of the panels a little. The first two images show how I anticipate this looking. What material is best to build the hangars from? Should I use 20mm rigid rockwool insulation to face them or something softer? Also, the board in the middle, is 9mm fibreboard OK for this, or is there something better?

As this can't be full width of the room, should the sides be left acoustically open, or built with wood?

I've worked out the angles properly for the Flush Mounts for the speakears. I still have more work to do to figure out the construction of all of this properly. Looking at John's guide on building these he suggests that the space below the speakers is open and filled with hangars. How large does the rigid area on the front need to be? Can I extend the hangars up behind the speakers to increase their area? His guide also says the top space should be filled in with insulation. Would I be better adding more hangars down from the ceiling in my design. This looks like a large area just to fill with insulation, which of course I can do if that's the best use of it.

Studio Overhead.jpg

The shelves you can see in the alcove there, the one on the right is built in to the brickwork and is extremely hefty. It will be very hard to remove, so I've added something on the left side for symmetry, but I could remove this if it's not worth it.

Studio Full.jpg

Studio & Furniture.jpg

Any thoughts on where it's going?

Thanks

[DanDan]

Points to Ponder.
Brick Walls reflect LF strongly, plasterboard not so much.
How about completely filling the two alcoves around the speakers with absorption?
I could hypothesise many benefits to such a soft soffit arrangement.
Could you revise the direction or location of that door placing the filled alcoves behind?

DD

[limitedheadroom]

Sadly I can't move the door, and therefore swapping the room's orientation isn't practical. I can certainly fill the alcoves completely so will look into that first and my rear wall treatment and go from there I guess.

What are the best matierials for making the hangars in the rear wall treatment? Should the padding on the hangars be loose fibre, or rigid fibre insulation? Also, what is best to build the core of the hangar from? Some kind of low density particle board, or play wood or something like that?

Thanks

[SGleason]

What are the best matierials for making the hangars in the rear wall treatment? Should the padding on the hangars be loose fibre, or rigid fibre insulation? Also, what is best to build the core of the hangar from? Some kind of low density particle board, or play wood or something like that?

There's a thread on using Homasote for this purpose. Homasote is a 1/2" (12 mm) board made from pressed recycled paper. Its 125 Hz absorption coefficient of 0.55 works well with the more absorptive (HF) materials that you would be using with it.

Unfortunately, Homasote is not available in the UK. Interestingly enough, there is a company in the UK called Sundeala that may well be the great grandfather of Homasote, as the Homasote recipe was acquired from the UK in 1909.

https://www.sundeala.co.uk/sundeala-sheets/

Their uncolored substrate looks exactly the same but there is not much technical data on their site.

Steve

[Soundman2020]

Funny you should mention Sundeala, Steve! Just a couple of hours ago I was talking to a client in the UK about how to do his hangers, and he had found Sundeala all by himself! Unfortunately, he can only find it in 9mm sheets, not 12mm, so we are going with that. I'll let you know how it works out, once he has his hangers installed and the REW testing done.


- Stuart -

[limitedheadroom]

OK, thanks for the tip. It does look on the manufacturer website that they only make 9mm sheets, which is a shame. I wonder if it might be worth sticking two together?

I look forward to finding out how you get on with the data there Steve.

Dan