John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

My music room is 18’ x 12’ x 8’4”. To keep wife happy I plan on building two side wall panels of 4” OC703 at 4’ x 6’. Plan is to cover these with some sort of art or picture. Better than three 2x4 panels to look like one big piece of art. The purpose of the sidewall panels is hopefully to cover first reflection points identified with the mirror trick and to absorb some bass.

There will be two corner super chuck bass traps to ceiling at two rear corners. These will be roughly 24" x 24" x 31" triangles 8' high. Not able to place corner traps in the forward corners or at other wall ceiling junctures. Not able to do ceiling clouds.

Desk on front wall is 56” wide by 40” deep with one or two 2’x4” 4” panels behind it. My Back at mixing desk is approx 38% into room with 4x6 window at rear about 10’ behind. There is a rubberized black out shade in front of the rear window.

I plan on two 2x4 4” gobos to place in front of rear window if needed.

Vinyl floor - 5/8" Sheetrock all round. I did not plan on testing with REW and despite Mr. Winer’s “how to” I am not sure how to use it anyway

Questions

1. I know of three companies that do acoustically transparent art on grill cloth - but very expensive: Acoustimac , woodshedstageart and bags of love. Do you know of any others? Acousticmac is $16 sq/ft. Woodshedstageart is $9 sq/ft

2. Wife wants 31” dresser on one side wall for guests. Speakers will sit on desk on isolation stands at ear height approximately 36”. ??? If I mount the 4x6 panels at 32” from the floor will they be effective for reflection free zone?

3. For the two side wall 4' x 6' x 4' panels, I have two choices. I can build 2" thick panels and mount them 2" from the wall or I can build 4" panels and mount them flush to the wall. Am I better off with 4” OC703 mounted flush to the wall or 2” OC703 mounted 2” from the wall?

generally speaking the acoustic center of the speakers should be at your ear level. if your speaker manufacturer doesn't indicate an acoustic center, assume the location between the HF driver and the LF driver. many times this results in the speakers set so the acoustic center is about 42" off the floor. devise your stands as needed.

i recommend the 4" thick absorbers. even though the 2" w/ 2" gap has some benefits, with limited options for treatment, you'll need as much overall absorption as you an get since a lot will have to be done with wave propagation on the walls (tangential traversal).

GIK also does art based absorbers. reach and see if they do the custom art on just fabric.

why no ceiling clouds? a couple of 2x4x4" absorbers on the ceiling will help a lot. also with art could be like a mini-Sistine chapel

Maybe I should actually do the image of God reaching out to man on the ceiling. That might go over with the spouse. The problem with a ceiling cloud over the mixing/recording position is that there is a ceiling fan there.

hmmmm maybe move the ceiling fan? probably not good to have one operating over your mix position anyways.