John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

hi,

i'm looking for some input on what to do with my proposed basement studio. i have checked a few similar designs, but my room has a couple of mass concrete 'benches' (lower than desk height) and i have no idea how this will change things..

i've included a sketch of the room, with my ideas to date, although nothing is fixed, any comments would be much appreciated.

thanks,

jon

jon - do you use both doors?? i.e. is it possible to seal one off

cheers
john

yeah, unfortunately i need both doors. the one at the top is the main entrance, and the one at the bottom leads to a small ceiling level window which is required by building regulations as a fire exit. i can add treatment to the door, but not block it off entirely.

this arangement means that i don't have enough room to use symetrical corner traps, what's the best way round this?

OK - then how high is the ceiling?? could you use that area for treatment??

cheers
john

floor to ceiling is 2340mm, not great, but i'm free to treat that in any way suitable (ie; i don't mind obscuring/cutting the height of the emergency door as long as i can get out of it! although i'd prefer not to have to do this)

thanks for your input,

jon

Cool jon - for a room that small you need a lot of treatment - i.e. the smaller the room the more treatment is required. Instead of making panels I'd look at treating whole walls and even sections of the ceiling.

cheers
john

thanks for the pointers. i've had a good look through the example studios and tried to apply this to a smaller room.

how about this for a starting point? not really sure what to put on the ceiling, but that kind of space allocation works ok.

i've put high absorbtion behind the speakers as i can fix this to the door. should i place a different kind of panel centrally? it's all guesstimation from my end, although i like the shape i'm heading towards

cheers,

jon

Now you're talking jon.

cheers
john

ok, now for some detail...

i'm asuming that the most important treatment will be the side walls, which i'm aiming to be 'broadband low-mid frequency absorber's' as you show on the SAE site (thanks for the great info btw!)

from the formula i can see that varying slot width and box depth (achieved by angling the surface) affect the resonant frequency. do you think that varying these two factors will be enough (ie: i hope i don't have to vary slat width and slat depth too, i'm no DIY hero!) - what slot widths (and standard slat depth) would you suggest for my room??

i'll probably make two pannels either side to keep it structurally rigid, so i could mix up a fair number of slot widths (see dodgy diagram!)

the rest of the treatment pretty much defines itself due to practicality. what kind of absorber would you suggest for the ceiling (i'm thinking more slots at the moment, but maybe at different fequencies??)??

that leaves the floor - a) carpet, to soak up more highs or b) wood to keep it 'live'

thanks for all your help, i feel like i'm beginging to get a grasp of this, but to be honest i'm a bit worried i'll put in a lot of work and miss something important without checking the steps with someone who actually know's what they are doing!!

jon

The depth varies because of the angle the slots are at so there's one variable. The next easiest variable is the slot width. If you use the same width timber (slat width) you can still create a broadband just using the first two variables.
Try 6' x 1" slats with 1/16", 1/8", 1/4", 1/2" slot widths.

or - here's an example where the slat width is varied



cheers
john

great, i think i can manage that. i'll have to limit the angle to 10 deg throughout to get things to fit, hope that doesn't drastically alter performance..., i assume that i evenly distribute the different slot widths to get even absorbtion.

i'm thinking of using the same kind of absorber slots in the ceiling as shown on my section, unless you think that would be overkill! would i set up the slats to run along the length of the room (might look a bit wierd) or across it?

just the floor to go. i have no idea here. most studios go for wooden floors, but then most of them are big enough not to have treatment over all the surfaces!

a) wood parquet on concrete for 'live' sound
b) carpet for more high damping??
c) wood + rug for a combination???

getting there

yeah - 10 degrees will be enough in this case. Just make sure that behind you is dead as a dodo.

cheers
john

ok, drawing everything together how does this look, keeping the sloping ceiling resonator as before?

i'm going to go for a wood floor and throw rugs down if i get problems.

looking good mate.

cheers
john

thanks for all your promptings and the excellent info available, i think i'm ready for a trip to the timber yard.

here are my final(?) drawings - now is the time to point out anything worth changing!

thanks again, your help has been essential!

jon