My Control Room Build
Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2021 7:54 am
Hello, everybody. Longtime lurker, first time posting.
This is my control room build. This has been a challenging project for me and has been 2.5 years in the making. I first contacted an engineer for the design and a first phase was designed for me. This included soffits and a ceiling cloud. I gotta say, me and the engineer, we just didn't get along. Our work ethics were just misaligned. Besides, I had to learn carpentry from scratch, which took me a long time, leaving the engineer hanging also. Long story short, I'm trying to finish the design by learning acoustics myself.
The basics of it are:
1. Rectangular room (3.45M (L) x 2.80M (W) with a slightly slanted roof (2.40M (H) on the front wall, 2.50M (H) on the back wall)
2. I'm just trying to get a really tight control room, that means almost no recording required. By tight I mean the flattest possible freq. response curve, the most uniform reverberation time possible, and to learn any other measurement I might haven't learned yet.
3. The purpose of the room is to do my production and mixing. I mainly compose music for video games and movies.
Initial plan:
The ceiling fan is long gone, and the sofa might go too depending on required treatment.
There is a window, and the floor is made of laminated (it's kind of a plastic material? I really don't know how to translate the name of material) wood imitation. It's kinda floated, kinda not floated as the actual concrete slab is not really flat due to poor construction, so in some points there is direct contact between the wood imitation and other points have small, leveling stacks of wood.
The initial measurements done using REW under designer's directions:
The design:
consist of two-part soffit design, framed using 2x4 pine wood. The design relies on flush-mount speakers with a baffle sandwich of 3/4" plywood, MLV, and 3/4" plywood. The speakers are enclosed in the middle using 1/2" MDF and surrounded by loose-fitting rockwool. The speakers are a pair of Yamaha Hs80s, enclosed in a MDF box with venting holes.
I have built most of the corner pieces, and by now, all the 1" rigid OC and plywood hangers are correctly fastened, the baffle sandwiches mounted, and the grill-cloth panels done. Also the ceiling cloud is constructed. I'm starting with the "middle" frame part.
Now, the challenge I'm facing right now is that the engineer didn't disclose with me his proprietary decoupling system, and hasn't answered in almost 3 months now. I just know that there's sorbothane involved. The incomplete design has no instructions on how to decouple speakers. From what I received, I have to figure out why there's a gap between the MDF speaker assembly and the support below, and why there are small "wings" on the box itself. In this image I've updated the MDF Box to contain the Sorbothane Padding.
After reviewing many threads here, I've decided to decouple the speaker from the MDF enclosure using Sorbothane pads which I'm going to calculate for the weight of the speaker (21 Lbs) divided by the area of contact (for the bottom. For the sides and top, I'm going to use the 20% compression design rule). Then, I saw some threads use a system of 2x4s to fasten the MDF box to the framing itself. I will ignore the little "wings" of the speaker box and update the framing using the 2x4s for rigidity (white boxes in attachment). I would just have to make a proper hole on the support to allow airflow from the bottom.
In a nutshell: Is this a good idea? Is there a better way to decouple the speaker? I can update the framing if needed.
I'll try to answer any question and post any missing detail.
Thanks.
This is my control room build. This has been a challenging project for me and has been 2.5 years in the making. I first contacted an engineer for the design and a first phase was designed for me. This included soffits and a ceiling cloud. I gotta say, me and the engineer, we just didn't get along. Our work ethics were just misaligned. Besides, I had to learn carpentry from scratch, which took me a long time, leaving the engineer hanging also. Long story short, I'm trying to finish the design by learning acoustics myself.
The basics of it are:
1. Rectangular room (3.45M (L) x 2.80M (W) with a slightly slanted roof (2.40M (H) on the front wall, 2.50M (H) on the back wall)
2. I'm just trying to get a really tight control room, that means almost no recording required. By tight I mean the flattest possible freq. response curve, the most uniform reverberation time possible, and to learn any other measurement I might haven't learned yet.
3. The purpose of the room is to do my production and mixing. I mainly compose music for video games and movies.
Initial plan:
The ceiling fan is long gone, and the sofa might go too depending on required treatment.
There is a window, and the floor is made of laminated (it's kind of a plastic material? I really don't know how to translate the name of material) wood imitation. It's kinda floated, kinda not floated as the actual concrete slab is not really flat due to poor construction, so in some points there is direct contact between the wood imitation and other points have small, leveling stacks of wood.
The initial measurements done using REW under designer's directions:
The design:
consist of two-part soffit design, framed using 2x4 pine wood. The design relies on flush-mount speakers with a baffle sandwich of 3/4" plywood, MLV, and 3/4" plywood. The speakers are enclosed in the middle using 1/2" MDF and surrounded by loose-fitting rockwool. The speakers are a pair of Yamaha Hs80s, enclosed in a MDF box with venting holes.
I have built most of the corner pieces, and by now, all the 1" rigid OC and plywood hangers are correctly fastened, the baffle sandwiches mounted, and the grill-cloth panels done. Also the ceiling cloud is constructed. I'm starting with the "middle" frame part.
Now, the challenge I'm facing right now is that the engineer didn't disclose with me his proprietary decoupling system, and hasn't answered in almost 3 months now. I just know that there's sorbothane involved. The incomplete design has no instructions on how to decouple speakers. From what I received, I have to figure out why there's a gap between the MDF speaker assembly and the support below, and why there are small "wings" on the box itself. In this image I've updated the MDF Box to contain the Sorbothane Padding.
After reviewing many threads here, I've decided to decouple the speaker from the MDF enclosure using Sorbothane pads which I'm going to calculate for the weight of the speaker (21 Lbs) divided by the area of contact (for the bottom. For the sides and top, I'm going to use the 20% compression design rule). Then, I saw some threads use a system of 2x4s to fasten the MDF box to the framing itself. I will ignore the little "wings" of the speaker box and update the framing using the 2x4s for rigidity (white boxes in attachment). I would just have to make a proper hole on the support to allow airflow from the bottom.
In a nutshell: Is this a good idea? Is there a better way to decouple the speaker? I can update the framing if needed.
I'll try to answer any question and post any missing detail.
Thanks.