John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

OK. I've re-thought my CR ceiling.
Dimensionally, I can make this work.
My concern is the treatment of the return on the ceiling.
What you're looking at in the drawing is a longitudinal section through the Control Room. The window is the front.

Anyone care to advise?

Michael, are you SURE there's only ONE FOOT between the peak and the tail of the return? Something doesn't look right...

And yes, I'd absorb the crap out of that, especially if that angle is correct - otherwise it'll probably mess you up... Steve

Yes, I'm sure.
Its just not drawn to scale.
The only other thing I could do is have the peak closer to the front.

OR, run a ridge beam down the center of the room, and have rafters return to the side walls at the 10' height. It would look like a gable end if you were facing the front of the CR.

(Keep in mind my monitors are soffit mounted, and angled downward.)

Nah, if it's really that steep I'd DOUBLE DEFINITELY trap it - maybe something like this...

Double trap?

Single trap, but DOUBLE DEFINITELY... :=)

Although, I guess with the inner liner it could be considered a double trap -
hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe....

sorry Michael, I don;t know much at all about this stuff, but I was gonna ask you why you constructed your ceiling like that. If i'm not mistaken, you built this from ground up, did you?? That bit in the middle where the peak is would just bounce the sound back to the mix position, wouldn't it?? Or am I reading your plan wrong?? If that wasn't there you probably wouldn't have to use that much trapping now in that spot.
As I said, I know very little, and thats why I asked....there's probably purpose in doing it the way you did so I might learn something..

All the best
thanks

"...I was gonna ask you why you constructed your ceiling like that..."
I haven't built the ceiling yet. The design for the ceiling has always been in question.
With the Control Room being a true "room within a room" I have several options available.

My original plan was to have a flat ceiling at 10' with bass trapping above it utilizing hangers in the air space between the CR ceiling, and the "true" ceiling of the structure.
Another option was to "cloud" and absorb the interior ceiling, and yet another option was to drop a false ceiling.
Another idea, subsiquently nixed by John and Knightfly, was to do a coffered ceiling, or stepped ceiling.

There is however a point of potential conflict between the bottom of the siccor trusses used to support the structure's roof, (the interior ceiling) and the top of the trusses or rafters used to support the Control Room ceiling.
This point of potential conflict happens on the left CR wall at around 10 feet back from the front of the CR.
That stops me from having a ceiling that rises all the way to the back of the CR. I can have the ceiling rise for a ways, but at some point, I must return to thje 10' height to avoid that interior truss.
Before that, and beyond that, I have all the room in the world!

Here, I'll go take a picture...... (talk amoungst yourselves)

OK, from the picture:
1.) Looking up at the CR front wall from the live room side showing 16' ceiling.
2.) CR Right Side
3.) CR Left Side
4.) Potential area of conflict along left side.

In the smallest dimension, there's about 10" of clearence there at the truss, and the top plate of the CR wall.

Michael,

I don't know too much, but here's a thought. I've attached two diagrams. I can see from your pictures that my height estimate of 12' at the rear of the CR might not be quite possible, but it could be maybe 11'+, so it would still be sloping upwards towards the rear of the room.

Here's what the side profile would be like:

Thanks for the input egcc, but that plan doesn't really work for a few reasons.
1.) You fractured the geometry of the control room, not to mention its modal response. This is a 5.1 surround sound control room, and the rear speakers now have no soffits for mounting.
2.) Neither do the front ones.
3.) You can't get around the console.
4.) Too much space between the exterior wall and the control room wall.

Well, there's others, but you see what I mean?

The control room walls are framed up!
So are all but one of the other interior walls, and thats the main wall that separates the drum room and the control room, from the live room.

The outside has been caulked up, and primed, ready for paint (this weekend). A patio cover will finish off the outside.

I'm actually at a point inside where I'm ready to "seal up" the inside of the rear exterior wall of the main structure.
Electrical rough in is going to happen any day now followed by A/C.
Then I can ROCK the joint, a little final plumbing, some paint and polish, Then the fun work starts! TREATING AND TUNING, AND CABLEING...

We have a pretty good design worked out for the ceiling, I'm just kicking around other ideas before committing to the actual framing.
Lot of steps to go through yet, but its comming right along!

Thanks for your interest.

Could you turn the control room around 180 degrees to make room for the slope you want? (Flat panel TV on the wall with closed circuit TV to tracking rooms)

On the other hand, if you face toward the middle of your building as you have planned, you have a lot of room over the front half of the control room. Instead of thinking one long mild angle upward to the middle of the room, break it up into shorter steeper angles to keep the reflections away from the listening position. Then do the false ceiling with hangers on the rear half of the ceiling, as shown on the sae site.

........>........<##
.....X...............<##
../.......................<##
|.............................<##
|.)..)..)......................|#
|......... M...................|#

Lee

Jeez, what a problem to have, all that available space

Knightfly has it right, double insulate the area to make sure its completely dead.

I'd pack a lot of auralex or homemade equivilent up there.

Maybe you can taper the angle a bit, and use diffusers instead?

Better yet, stuff it with Mineral wool/AFB/Rockwool Whatever brand name it goes by where you are at. Auralex is not dense enough and the mineral wool is WAY more cost effective.

Bryan Giles

Michael, in refernce to my posts - you misunderstood, so let me explain. In the first picture, croom1a, I was suggesting the location of two CEILING BEAMS, which would gently slope upwards from your front wall to whatever height is available at the back wall. This has no effect on the room shape, geometry, modal response, etc. It's just in the ceiling. The second picture, croom1b, was a profile showing how the ceiling beams would slope upwards from the front of the room to the back. There would be some 'interesting' framing from the outside of each beam to the outer wall on each side of the CR.

Basically the ceiling would be a flat surface sloped upwards from the front to the back of the CR, and the ceiling outside each roof beam would slope down to your CR side walls. Hope that makes more sense now.