New Studio in Design Phase

[gabo]

I have a friend who is building a new home with a studio in it. They haven't started construction yet, so things can be modified. Although I'm not sure how much due to where the space is being planned within the house, but certainly some modifications could be done.

This home is basically "in the woods" so sound isolation isn't a factor. They can make as much noise as they like and the nearest lightly traveled road is quite a ways off, so loudness or noise aren't going to be problems to solve.

The studio will be used mostly for Rock music, although some folk, bluegrass, acoustic things as well. But they aren't the money makers so mostly Rock.

I have offered to help him with anything I can. We both have a quite a bit of pro/semipro equipment, measurement mics, sound cards, woodworking shops, etc., so we can get good info as we go along.

Here is a pic of the studio with dimensions as a start. The broken line down the center is the peak of the cathedral ceiling. That ceiling is 9' at the sides and 15' 3" at the dotted line center.

At this stage I'm just looking for suggestions and comments on the dimensions and layout. As we go along and get started on construction, I'll add more.

My own first comments were that I didn't particularly care for the control room being wider than it is long. And from looking at room mode calculators, I think the live room might be better even by trimming the width to 16' instead of 16' 6". But that info is from a novice that may not know what he's talking about

Many thanks for anyone who wants to take a look at make some general comments and suggestions to get us going in the right direction.

[Paulus87]

Hi gabo,

It sounds like it's going to be a cool project out in the woods like that, a nice place to record. I would say that you might want to still have a decent level of isolation, you'd be surprised how noisy nature can be. Rain on the roof and walls, wind howling and shaking the building, trees creaking, birds singing, noisy animals, wood peckers, squirrels etc. Especially as at least some of the time you're planning to record acoustic instruments which are a lot quieter than a rockband you might be glad you did isolate at least decent enough to stop normal external noises getting in... rain on the roof is especially loud!

Regardless of this, you'll definitely need to isolate between the control and tracking room(s) as well as reception areas etc. So unless you are planning to build two completely disconnected buildings with no internal common walk way linking them then you may as well isolate the whole place.

Regarding lengthways/widthways for your control room, well both CAN work. It's usually best to have the monitors fire down the length of the room, but it depends on the size of the room and your design concept. If you get to the point where your width is the same as most people's length, then it really doesn't matter that much anymore as your rear wall will still be far enough away from your listening position to accommodate thick rear wall treatment and/or diffusion.

There's two advantages to having a control wider rather than longer which are:
1. If you have a very wide console it will actually fit
2. Your side walls will be a lot further away from your monitors which means your first reflection points will also be further away AND further down the side walls, which means you need less treatment/angles on your side walls to deal with those early reflections reaching back to your ears.

However, you have quite a lot of space to play with so I would try out all sorts of possible layouts before committing. Some things to consider are:

- Having easy access to bathrooms i.e. so you don't need to walk through the control room from the tracking room in order to take a pee, or having access to wheel in big and heavy gear to the tracking room directly from outside instead of through a tiny control room door etc.

- Incorporate some storage areas. If you have the space then a dedicated large room is good for this with easy access to all other rooms, but you can also incorporate some clever storage in your control room and tracking room(s) with a bit of fiddling.

- Try to keep your control room rectangular if you can without any weird L shapes to T shapes. There are other designs such as a traditional RFZ shape with angled walls etc but rectangular is A LOT easier to build and predict, and usually they function better than older angled designs.

- Decide early on if you're going to flush mount your main monitors in your front wall. It's highly recommended that you do, and your whole control room design will revolve around that decision.

- Do not have windows or doors on your rear wall... the best place for windows and doors is usually on the rear of the side walls, always avoiding corners. They can work on the front wall too, for example a window looking into the tracking areas, and they can work as part of your geometric reflection free zone if designed properly... But not on the rear wall.

Excited to see how this project develops!
Paul

[gabo]

Hi gabo,

It sounds like it's going to be a cool project out in the woods like that, a nice place to record. I would say that you might want to still have a decent level of isolation, you'd be surprised how noisy nature can be. Rain on the roof and walls, wind howling and shaking the building, trees creaking, birds singing, noisy animals, wood peckers, squirrels etc. Especially as at least some of the time you're planning to record acoustic instruments which are a lot quieter than a rockband you might be glad you did isolate at least decent enough to stop normal external noises getting in... rain on the roof is especially loud!

Regardless of this, you'll definitely need to isolate between the control and tracking room(s) as well as reception areas etc. So unless you are planning to build two completely disconnected buildings with no internal common walk way linking them then you may as well isolate the whole place.

Thanks Paul, yes you are correct. Since we're in Northern MI, there will be plenty of isolation to the outside world just from the amount of insulation required here these days. We average about 170" of snow per year, so it gets cold!! and of course the isolation between the live room and control room is always something to consider. I guess what I was mostly trying to say is that the overriding design consideration is for "good sound" and not isolation, but in some ways they go hand in hand so no biggie.

Regarding lengthways/widthways for your control room, well both CAN work. It's usually best to have the monitors fire down the length of the room, but it depends on the size of the room and your design concept. If you get to the point where your width is the same as most people's length, then it really doesn't matter that much anymore as your rear wall will still be far enough away from your listening position to accommodate thick rear wall treatment and/or diffusion.

There's two advantages to having a control wider rather than longer which are:
1. If you have a very wide console it will actually fit
2. Your side walls will be a lot further away from your monitors which means your first reflection points will also be further away AND further down the side walls, which means you need less treatment/angles on your side walls to deal with those early reflections reaching back to your ears.

Excellent points!

However, you have quite a lot of space to play with so I would try out all sorts of possible layouts before committing. Some things to consider are:

- Having easy access to bathrooms i.e. so you don't need to walk through the control room from the tracking room in order to take a pee, or having access to wheel in big and heavy gear to the tracking room directly from outside instead of through a tiny control room door etc.

- Incorporate some storage areas. If you have the space then a dedicated large room is good for this with easy access to all other rooms, but you can also incorporate some clever storage in your control room and tracking room(s) with a bit of fiddling.

- Try to keep your control room rectangular if you can without any weird L shapes to T shapes. There are other designs such as a traditional RFZ shape with angled walls etc but rectangular is A LOT easier to build and predict, and usually they function better than older angled designs.

- Decide early on if you're going to flush mount your main monitors in your front wall. It's highly recommended that you do, and your whole control room design will revolve around that decision.

- Do not have windows or doors on your rear wall... the best place for windows and doors is usually on the rear of the side walls, always avoiding corners. They can work on the front wall too, for example a window looking into the tracking areas, and they can work as part of your geometric reflection free zone if designed properly... But not on the rear wall.

Excited to see how this project develops!
Paul

Excellent points all. Thank you for a start on things to think about, and yes it is going to be a fun project. We had a nice day about a week ago (nice for winter here is 35 degrees, so all relative) and had a bonfire there on the property with some friends to commemorate the first trees being cleared for the place!

It'll be another month or so before he can break ground, but design and "thought work" are good things to do now.

gabo

[Gregwor]

It'll be another month or so before he can break ground, but design and "thought work" are good things to do now.

If you want to start the build in a month, you're going to have to dedicate several hours a day to your design so you're ready in time! A single control room is one thing but man, to design an entire facility in that time without experience is going to be a big job. Is there budget to hire John Sayers himself to design it? He might be able to squeeze you in and have it done in time??? I realize that you might want to save money and try to do it yourself, but imagine designing it incorrectly, spending a fortune building it and then have it perform poorly! It might be cheaper to hire John in the end! If you still want to design it yourself, I recommend reading this book, then come up with some different layouts and post them here for us to give you our thoughts on the designs.

http://www.roletech.net/books/HandbookAcoustics.pdf

Probably one of the most important things I can suggest is to have the ceilings as high as possible... like 15 feet tall if possible.

Greg

[gabo]

It'll be another month or so before he can break ground, but design and "thought work" are good things to do now.

If you want to start the build in a month, you're going to have to dedicate several hours a day to your design so you're ready in time! A single control room is one thing but man, do design an entire facility in that time without experience is going to be a big job. Is there budget to hire John Sayers himself to design it? He might be able to squeeze you in and have it done in time??? I realize that you might want to save money and try to do it yourself, but imagine designing it incorrectly, spending a fortune building it and then have it perform poorly! It might be cheaper to hire John in the end! If you still want to design it yourself, I recommend reading this book, then come up with some different layouts and post them here for us to give you our thoughts on the designs.

Probably one of the most important things I can suggest is to have the ceilings as high as possible... like 15 feet tall if possible.

Greg

Thanks Greg. Yes the facility is actually a "home" and there are many people involved in the entire build. The studio is a space in the house that is outlined in the drawing. There are opportunities to tweak the space to some degree, but it's somewhat constrained by the entire build, so mostly minor tweaks can be done to the studio portion.

I think of this build as more like a remodel than anything else, as it's similar to having a space that is demo'd and ready to build inside of. If we wanted to move a wall a foot this way or that way, it's probably doable. And tweaking the layout of the control room or other pieces within the scope of the space is possible.

The ceiling, as it currently stands, is a vaulted ceiling 9' on the edges rising to 15'3" in the center. If you look at the drawing, that ceiling profile extends through both the live room and the control room.

This ceiling profile is being dictated by the truss's that are being used in the entire structure.

Thanks, gabo

[Paulus87]

Hi gabo,

It sounds like it's going to be a cool project out in the woods like that, a nice place to record. I would say that you might want to still have a decent level of isolation, you'd be surprised how noisy nature can be. Rain on the roof and walls, wind howling and shaking the building, trees creaking, birds singing, noisy animals, wood peckers, squirrels etc. Especially as at least some of the time you're planning to record acoustic instruments which are a lot quieter than a rockband you might be glad you did isolate at least decent enough to stop normal external noises getting in... rain on the roof is especially loud!

Regardless of this, you'll definitely need to isolate between the control and tracking room(s) as well as reception areas etc. So unless you are planning to build two completely disconnected buildings with no internal common walk way linking them then you may as well isolate the whole place.

Thanks Paul, yes you are correct. Since we're in Northern MI, there will be plenty of isolation to the outside world just from the amount of insulation required here these days. We average about 170" of snow per year, so it gets cold!! and of course the isolation between the live room and control room is always something to consider. I guess what I was mostly trying to say is that the overriding design consideration is for "good sound" and not isolation, but in some ways they go hand in hand so no biggie.

Regarding lengthways/widthways for your control room, well both CAN work. It's usually best to have the monitors fire down the length of the room, but it depends on the size of the room and your design concept. If you get to the point where your width is the same as most people's length, then it really doesn't matter that much anymore as your rear wall will still be far enough away from your listening position to accommodate thick rear wall treatment and/or diffusion.

There's two advantages to having a control wider rather than longer which are:
1. If you have a very wide console it will actually fit
2. Your side walls will be a lot further away from your monitors which means your first reflection points will also be further away AND further down the side walls, which means you need less treatment/angles on your side walls to deal with those early reflections reaching back to your ears.

Excellent points!

However, you have quite a lot of space to play with so I would try out all sorts of possible layouts before committing. Some things to consider are:

- Having easy access to bathrooms i.e. so you don't need to walk through the control room from the tracking room in order to take a pee, or having access to wheel in big and heavy gear to the tracking room directly from outside instead of through a tiny control room door etc.

- Incorporate some storage areas. If you have the space then a dedicated large room is good for this with easy access to all other rooms, but you can also incorporate some clever storage in your control room and tracking room(s) with a bit of fiddling.

- Try to keep your control room rectangular if you can without any weird L shapes to T shapes. There are other designs such as a traditional RFZ shape with angled walls etc but rectangular is A LOT easier to build and predict, and usually they function better than older angled designs.

- Decide early on if you're going to flush mount your main monitors in your front wall. It's highly recommended that you do, and your whole control room design will revolve around that decision.

- Do not have windows or doors on your rear wall... the best place for windows and doors is usually on the rear of the side walls, always avoiding corners. They can work on the front wall too, for example a window looking into the tracking areas, and they can work as part of your geometric reflection free zone if designed properly... But not on the rear wall.

Excited to see how this project develops!
Paul

Excellent points all. Thank you for a start on things to think about, and yes it is going to be a fun project. We had a nice day about a week ago (nice for winter here is 35 degrees, so all relative) and had a bonfire there on the property with some friends to commemorate the first trees being cleared for the place!

It'll be another month or so before he can break ground, but design and "thought work" are good things to do now.

gabo

Insulation (no matter how thick) and isolation are not the same thing at all. Insulation is not what does the “sound proofing”, for that you need lots of mass, then an insulated air cavity and then more mass again. I am starting to agree with Greg, you are not ready to build this place out, at least if your aim is to construct a professional facility, I fear you will make a very expensive mistake due to rushing. It would be a real shame as your building has incredible potential to be a fully pro studio! You’re lucky to have such high ceilings and tonnes of square footage and we can all help you to make it as good as it can be but it will require you to take your time.

If I get time I will try to do some designs that you are free to use or not, which will at least get you started.

Paul

[gabo]

Insulation (no matter how thick) and isolation are not the same thing at all. Insulation is not what does the “sound proofing”, for that you need lots of mass, then an insulated air cavity and then more mass again. I am starting to agree with Greg, you are not ready to build this place out, at least if your aim is to construct a professional facility, I fear you will make a very expensive mistake due to rushing. It would be a real shame as your building has incredible potential to be a fully pro studio! You’re lucky to have such high ceilings and tonnes of square footage and we can all help you to make it as good as it can be but it will require you to take your time.

If I get time I will try to do some designs that you are free to use or not, which will at least get you started.

Paul

Thanks Paul, and Greg for the input. Based on your sound advice we'll take a couple of steps back, a few deep breaths, and take our time. I already feel like your guidance is helping get us in the right frame of mind and get us moving in the right direction.

I sincerely look forward to any ideas you might have.

Thanks, gabo

[Paulus87]

Insulation (no matter how thick) and isolation are not the same thing at all. Insulation is not what does the “sound proofing”, for that you need lots of mass, then an insulated air cavity and then more mass again. I am starting to agree with Greg, you are not ready to build this place out, at least if your aim is to construct a professional facility, I fear you will make a very expensive mistake due to rushing. It would be a real shame as your building has incredible potential to be a fully pro studio! You’re lucky to have such high ceilings and tonnes of square footage and we can all help you to make it as good as it can be but it will require you to take your time.

If I get time I will try to do some designs that you are free to use or not, which will at least get you started.

Paul

Thanks Paul, and Greg for the input. Based on your sound advice we'll take a couple of steps back, a few deep breaths, and take our time. I already feel like your guidance is helping get us in the right frame of mind and get us moving in the right direction.

I sincerely look forward to any ideas you might have.

Thanks, gabo

Just a quick question, the studio is going to be attached to the house, right? If so, do you need a rest room in the actual studio part or can the one in the house be used? Same question regarding potential storage areas, if the studio is attached to the house then can there be storage areas for example in a room next to the studio? Just trying to gauge exactly how much space can be used for the studio rooms in stead of utility areas. Obviously the bigger the better for both control room and tracking rooms.

Lastly, what monitors and console/workstation will be installed? That will be important to know for working out your RFZ.

Thanks,
Paul

[gabo]

Just a quick question, the studio is going to be attached to the house, right? If so, do you need a rest room in the actual studio part or can the one in the house be used? Same question regarding potential storage areas, if the studio is attached to the house then can there be storage areas for example in a room next to the studio? Just trying to gauge exactly how much space can be used for the studio rooms in stead of utility areas. Obviously the bigger the better for both control room and tracking rooms.

Lastly, what monitors and console/workstation will be installed? That will be important to know for working out your RFZ.

Thanks,
Paul

I'll verify, but my understanding is that there is NO need for bathrooms and minimal storage. Right now he has the one 7'10" x 4'4" room in the control room for the minimal storage needed.

So basically everything on the layout is fair game for studio space.

As for console, it's not a big traditional console. It's a DAW, RME UFX II interface with a 16 channel presonus faderport and several outboard racks of Neve summing mixers, 500 series rack modules, and mic pres.

As for monitors, I'm not sure the brand but they are powered mid sized monitors.

Thanks, gabo

update - I was correct, there is no need for bathrooms or storage anywhere in the studio. There is a connecting hallway to this entire area with bathroom and storage in it. So even the 7' 10" by 4' 4" space is not needed for storage. The entire space can be studio. The monitors are going to be replaced and he has not made a decision on what to purchase yet, so that could potentially be another suggestion.

update 2 - Existing monitors are Event 5" monitors with a sub. New monitors will be similar in form size, maybe a little bigger, but not really big monitors.

[Paulus87]

Just a quick question, the studio is going to be attached to the house, right? If so, do you need a rest room in the actual studio part or can the one in the house be used? Same question regarding potential storage areas, if the studio is attached to the house then can there be storage areas for example in a room next to the studio? Just trying to gauge exactly how much space can be used for the studio rooms in stead of utility areas. Obviously the bigger the better for both control room and tracking rooms.

Lastly, what monitors and console/workstation will be installed? That will be important to know for working out your RFZ.

Thanks,
Paul

I'll verify, but my understanding is that there is NO need for bathrooms and minimal storage. Right now he has the one 7'10" x 4'4" room in the control room for the minimal storage needed.

So basically everything on the layout is fair game for studio space.

As for console, it's not a big traditional console. It's a DAW, RME UFX II interface with a 16 channel presonus faderport and several outboard racks of Neve summing mixers, 500 series rack modules, and mic pres.

As for monitors, I'm not sure the brand but they are powered mid sized monitors.

Thanks, gabo

update - I was correct, there is no need for bathrooms or storage anywhere in the studio. There is a connecting hallway to this entire area with bathroom and storage in it. So even the 7' 10" by 4' 4" space is not needed for storage. The entire space can be studio. The monitors are going to be replaced and he has not made a decision on what to purchase yet, so that could potentially be another suggestion.

update 2 - Existing monitors are Event 5" monitors with a sub. New monitors will be similar in form size, maybe a little bigger, but not really big monitors.

Hi Gabo,

With the info you provided I've come up with a rough design, just one potential layout though there are a few more I have in mind which I'll try to get round to drawing so you have some options/ideas... depending on the answer to my questions here.

The main thing to establish now is what to do with your ceiling. Since it is a cathedral ceiling you have a few options how best to use it, and a lot of it depends on the design of your roof. You see it would be really great to use all of that height as part of your control room volume, and fill a large portion of it with acoustic treatment. However...

1) If you are going to isolate the space in order to get some sound reduction then you will need to decide whether you are going to have a cold roof design or a warm roof design. If the latter then this makes things easy as you will not have to deal with vents, so your isolation shell will not be compromised and you can construct your inner leaf just below the outer leaf and use all of that height.

If you have a cold roof design then you will need to deal with vents. Typically you would build the inner shell below an outer shell ceiling, and there would be a loft space above with the roof and the vents. This roof is sort of like a third leaf, but a very leaky one. It does not contribute towards your isolation. This would take up a large amount of your height and so none of that height could be used for your acoustic volume for your control room.

Another way to do it with a cold roof design is to attach battens to the roof rafters, leaving a 50mm gap between the battens and the roof deck and then attaching your drywall to the battens underneath. This would maintain an air gap which would create a pathway from your soffit vents to your ridge vent.

So there's 3 options for you there.

2) If you go with either the first or third option that I detailed above then the ceiling profile will follow the roof profile, and therefore you only have two orientations for your control room in order to maintain symmetry (which is very important in a control room). If you go for the second option (which means less volume but a flat ceiling) then you will be free to position the control room in any orientation/angle you like, which could give you more options and better use of space. However, it would also be more complicated to build and your cavity depth would vary above your ceiling.

So now on to the design I've come up with...

It's sort of inspired by the balanced non environment concept, with some twists.

The dimensions of your control room were worked out using an average height since it is a cathedral ceiling. These dimensions provide you with an excellent modal spread, pass all 3 critical listening environment tests, has a room volume of ~3000 cubic feet (which is excellent!) and there are no double incidences (apart from along some small points of the angled ceiling, but that is unavoidable due to it being angled).

There are windows on the side walls which form a geometric reflection free zone, they are surrounded with deep broadband trapping. They allow you to see into the hallway and the small iso booth. These windows are optional and could be completely done away with if you prefer, in which case the broadband trapping would just continue straight up the walls without any cut outs for the windows.

The monitors are flush mounted in a hard/soft wall. Basically a massive bass trap with vertical slats. The slats are there to make the environment more comfortable to work in as they will allow the engineer to hear 'self noise'.

The listening position is 37.5% of the room length, from the front wall. Your reflection free zone is massive (about 11' wide!) due to the absorbers and the angled side windows.

There are some angled slatted absorbers on the side walls behind the listening position which are there to reflect some sound to the back of the room and make it sound a little larger. There's also some slatted corner traps on the rear wall with fairly thick treatment behind the couch.

The speaker soffits have acoustic hangers behind the slats, and the idea is to have more hangers in the ceiling. Your whole ceiling would be a massive bass trap.

There are ceiling soffits (dashed line) which can conceal your HVAC and silencer boxes as well as double up as more bass trapping.

Of course the floor will be reflective.

The doors I have opening out of the control room instead of inwardly. You'll notice that the hallway and machine room/store do not have double walls. Although some people here may disagree with me I really do not see the need for you to have double walls here, the entire studio will be completely isolated from the house due to the perimeter wall and the walls for each room of the studio, and you do not really need isolation between the control room/tracking room and hallway/machine room IMO. However, if you were going the full hog you could easily just put up some more walls here and then every space would be completely isolated. You would also need double the amount of doors if you were to do this though.

Anyway, hope this helps a little...let me know if you have any questions. I won't be offended if you do not use any of the design, but it's there if you want it.

Paul

[Paulus87]

I forgot to mention the treatment behind the couch...

I was thinking to save space and to tackle the "lack of bass at the couch" problem you could build some steel plate absorbers. These are basically 1m x 2.5m x 1mm (thick) steel plates sandwich between layers of insulation which touch the actual walls. These are effective down to 40hz and below but they only take up 20-30cm of space.

Paul

[gabo]

Paul - First... WOW!! Thank you so much for all the work and thought put into this! Now I'll try to answer some questions and maybe have a few back.

Hi Gabo,

With the info you provided I've come up with a rough design, just one potential layout though there are a few more I have in mind which I'll try to get round to drawing so you have some options/ideas... depending on the answer to my questions here.

The main thing to establish now is what to do with your ceiling. Since it is a cathedral ceiling you have a few options how best to use it, and a lot of it depends on the design of your roof. You see it would be really great to use all of that height as part of your control room volume, and fill a large portion of it with acoustic treatment. However...

1) If you are going to isolate the space in order to get some sound reduction then you will need to decide whether you are going to have a cold roof design or a warm roof design. If the latter then this makes things easy as you will not have to deal with vents, so your isolation shell will not be compromised and you can construct your inner leaf just below the outer leaf and use all of that height.

If you have a cold roof design then you will need to deal with vents. Typically you would build the inner shell below an outer shell ceiling, and there would be a loft space above with the roof and the vents. This roof is sort of like a third leaf, but a very leaky one. It does not contribute towards your isolation. This would take up a large amount of your height and so none of that height could be used for your acoustic volume for your control room.

Another way to do it with a cold roof design is to attach battens to the roof rafters, leaving a 50mm gap between the battens and the roof deck and then attaching your drywall to the battens underneath. This would maintain an air gap which would create a pathway from your soffit vents to your ridge vent.

The roof will be a cold roof something like you described in the last paragraph. What happens is, at the top of the wall, a rigid foam barrier is spaced about 2 inches off the bottom of the main roof. Once the rigid foam is constructed, the entire thing is sealed with spray foam. So it winds up pretty thin and still maintains an air gap on the back side of the roof from the vents. I have attached a couple of pics showing one. That one doesn't have a vaulted ceiling, but the concept behind the roof is the same.

So there's 3 options for you there.

2) If you go with either the first or third option that I detailed above then the ceiling profile will follow the roof profile, and therefore you only have two orientations for your control room in order to maintain symmetry (which is very important in a control room). If you go for the second option (which means less volume but a flat ceiling) then you will be free to position the control room in any orientation/angle you like, which could give you more options and better use of space. However, it would also be more complicated to build and your cavity depth would vary above your ceiling.

So yes, the concept is to keep the ceiling profile following the roof profile.

So now on to the design I've come up with...

It's sort of inspired by the balanced non environment concept, with some twists.

The dimensions of your control room were worked out using an average height since it is a cathedral ceiling. These dimensions provide you with an excellent modal spread, pass all 3 critical listening environment tests, has a room volume of ~3000 cubic feet (which is excellent!) and there are no double incidences (apart from along some small points of the angled ceiling, but that is unavoidable due to it being angled).

There are windows on the side walls which form a geometric reflection free zone, they are surrounded with deep broadband trapping. They allow you to see into the hallway and the small iso booth. These windows are optional and could be completely done away with if you prefer, in which case the broadband trapping would just continue straight up the walls without any cut outs for the windows.

The monitors are flush mounted in a hard/soft wall. Basically a massive bass trap with vertical slats. The slats are there to make the environment more comfortable to work in as they will allow the engineer to hear 'self noise'.

The listening position is 37.5% of the room length, from the front wall. Your reflection free zone is massive (about 11' wide!) due to the absorbers and the angled side windows.

There are some angled slatted absorbers on the side walls behind the listening position which are there to reflect some sound to the back of the room and make it sound a little larger. There's also some slatted corner traps on the rear wall with fairly thick treatment behind the couch.

The speaker soffits have acoustic hangers behind the slats, and the idea is to have more hangers in the ceiling. Your whole ceiling would be a massive bass trap.

There are ceiling soffits (dashed line) which can conceal your HVAC and silencer boxes as well as double up as more bass trapping.

Of course the floor will be reflective.

The doors I have opening out of the control room instead of inwardly. You'll notice that the hallway and machine room/store do not have double walls. Although some people here may disagree with me I really do not see the need for you to have double walls here, the entire studio will be completely isolated from the house due to the perimeter wall and the walls for each room of the studio, and you do not really need isolation between the control room/tracking room and hallway/machine room IMO. However, if you were going the full hog you could easily just put up some more walls here and then every space would be completely isolated. You would also need double the amount of doors if you were to do this though.

Anyway, hope this helps a little...let me know if you have any questions. I won't be offended if you do not use any of the design, but it's there if you want it.

Paul

Offended!! Oh my gosh NO!! Thankful, yes... offended, NO.

The one thing that we'll have to mull over a bit with this design, is that the control room winds up some 3+ feet longer than the original thoughts. Which is great for the control room, but it shrinks the live room down to about 13 feet wide. That's something we'll have to talk through a bit. These days there are lots of things that get done in the control room, so maybe that's a good thing. Just need to envision it a bit.

The steel plate absorbers sound interesting, definitely up for something like that. Once we get the room dimension settled, I'll have plenty of questions about trapping and other ideas. One thing we're keen on is to make the "live" room as live as possible within reason. I have some diffusion and other ideas, but all in good time.

Thanks, gabo

[gabo]

Paul - On a personal note, I hope you and all your family and friends are doing ok in Wales with the virus. Fortunately I live on a dead end road in a remote area and have a lot of space and toys, so all is good here.

In my past life, I worked in Northern England for about 3 years back in the early 2000's and have lots of friends over there. Hopefully we can get past all this in a reasonable time.

gabo

[gabo]

Well I'm learning a bit, still a very long way to go, but you gotta start some where, right?

I took Paul's drawing and ideas and tried to work up something that keeps the live room as big as we would like. I'm trying to keep a lot of the ideas Paul presented. But angled the side walls, took out the windows, and left an open space on the sides at the back of the control room.

I have no idea what the open sides will do to the acoustics. The ceiling height is not shown on the drawing, but it's 15' down the centerline of the control room and that extends through to the live room. The ceiling at the far left/right sides is 9'. Any feedback on this layout would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, gabo

[Paulus87]

Hi Gabo,

Thanks for the kind comments. Yes thankfully we're all fine, the country is in lockdown now but we've been in our own self isolation for a few weeks already as a precaution due to a lot of pre-existing medical issues. Which part of northern England? I am originally from Bristol in England. I hope you're all safe and well too.

It's just rough, but how about something like this instead?

It would give you a bigger tracking space, and you would actually be able to utilise the entrance space to the studio as a second tracking space. The idea is there is a sliding door between this entrance tracking space and the control room, with a 3' door between the entrance tracking space and the main tracking space. You could easily put a small sliding door there too if you prefer, the main advantage being you can see through into the main tracking space, or use doors with windows.


On the control room side walls there are angled windows/sliding doors so that you can see into the tracking space/control room/outside. The angle will prevent flutter and also extend your reflection free zone.

My thinking is the roof/ceiling line won't be a problem since I neglected the fact that you have trusses and not a cathedral ceiling, so if you decide you want to fully isolate the space then the bottom of those trusses (-2" or so) will be your internal shell ceiling height anyway. If you decide not to isolate leaving the trusses exposed then you can fill that area with treatment anyway, so the angle won't be a problem, and the angle at the front of the control room will help with your reflection free zone.

I have one more idea that I'll try to draw up for you soon, I'm a little busy with my own build right now taking advantage of all the extra isolation time.

Paul