Can anyone tweak this layout for me?

qiktune · Post by **qiktune** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 7:47 am

hey guys, wondering if anyone could tweak this design for me.Building a house and want to get the layout of the studio right the first time.

Measurements at the moment are (these are going to change slightly once final plans come through)....

CR L 16.4'
W 13.1'

ISO L 8.2'
W 7.8'
ceiling height will be 8' to ISO and 9' to CR.

Guess Im after a good use of available space without feeling claustrophobic.

Anyway, heres a pic and thanks.

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 12:56 am

The angled walls at mix position need to extend just beyond the mix position (your seated position)

Bryan Giles

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 1:24 pm

Actually, Bryan, although extending the splayed walls that far gives a "deeper" RFZ, the mix position itself should be fine as it is. For a worst case scenario, draw a ray from the right nearfield to the rearmost part of the existing splay wall, and match that angle reflecting off the splay - it puts the reflection about 3 feet or more behind the mix position. Same with left nearfield to right splayed wall section. Checking from soffited speakers the same way gives even more of an angle, since the soffited speakers are further forward the reflection will hit further "aft".

I agree that if possible the splayed sections should extend further back, but this will work OK at the mix position... Steve

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 11:54 pm

So Steve let me understand this, the parallel walls that will be at his ears will be ok? even if they JUST have absorption. I have to disagree with you buddy. I have been in those rooms and the Midrange suffers. And not sure if this guy just wants an OK design but one that will yield excellent results for a minimal amount of cash outlay.

I also should add, cunstruction costs are so subjective. I was able to build my entire studio (with my OWN labor) for about $2500.00 for everything. For me that seems miniscule.....

Bryan Giles

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 4:26 am

Bryan, I agree it's not ideal but I forgot to mention the item on the right side (left of the mix position) that looks like heavy absorption - if that's NOT what that is, then there's more "tweaking" needed. If it IS absorption, it would help any flutter, likely to the point of being workable. I was partially just trying to keep Qiktune from more work.

Qictune, If it were me, I'd make a couple of changes for sure - I would bring the splayed walls back as Bryan suggested, so that they extend past a point that's even with the mix chair - Then, I would either build the booth door into that slanted wall, or move it into the study and just have a window into the booth from the Control room.

Noting that your booth wall/door appear to already be built, the very LEAST I'd do is put at least 3" cloth-covered rigid fiberglas (703 or Knauf) on your booth door(Control room side) , confirm that the thick unidentified thing on the opposite wall is indeed an absorber, and build a slat absorber in the booth, on the wall between booth and study, to eliminate that parallel wall - the deeper side of the absorber would go to the left of the drawing. Then there would be no parallel walls in the booth either. 8-10" of splay on the booth wall would do it.

Qik, you got a first name? I'm kind of an English freak, and I hate typing anything with a "Q" in it that doesn't have a "U" immediately after... Steve

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 6:32 am

cool, just making sure we were reading from the same play book. LOL

Bryan Giles

Post by **John Sayers** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 8:34 am

Id eliminate the door to the booth by using the office as a sound lock - I'd also angle the wall between the office and booth as it hasn't been built yet.

cheers
john

Fieryjack · Post by **Fieryjack** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 3:45 am

Bryan/Steve:

Don't the 4 angles at the front of the control room need to be 30 degrees (each one), resulting in a 60 degree angle coming to the mix position?

Just want to get this right since I'm messing around with splayed walls at the front of my control room as well, and didn't know if these angles need to be exact or not....

Thanks in advance. jeff

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 4:31 am

Jeff, there are "technically" 2 sets of angles you are dealing with in the above diagram

The side wall resonators which should conform to the rule of a 12 degree splay minimum (6 degrees /wall/10 feet- Steve did I quite that correctly)

And the soffits. The soffit angle is for speaker positioning. Depending upon the angle you want for your speaker mount. 60 degrees is the normal listening angle. however as you will see when searching other threads here, people play with a 90 Degree listening angle and even shallower degrees (i.e. 50 degrees).

John has a nice diagram showing various speaker angles. Do a search and you should be able to find the thread

Hope that helps.

Bryan Giles

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:11 am

Yeah, Bryan, pretty close - the way it works out is that if you offset one end of a 10 foot long wall by one foot, the resulting angle is slightly under 6 degrees. Using those values just makes it easier to lay out.

Others have claimed that they successfully kill flutter with as little as 3 degrees, John has told me that 5 seems to be minimum from his experience so he recommends 6 degrees.

If we're talking about walls, yes it's 6 degrees PER WALL - for ceilings, I would do at least 10 degrees, (since it's not convenient to also slant the FLOOR

), 12 would be better. For the common problem of low ceilings, about the best that can be done is a fiberglas "cloud" - if there's room, the thicker the better - no hard backing and spacing the cloud away from the ceiling also helps even out absorption.

As to soffits, seems like I read one of Barefoot's posts where he recommended several woofer diameters of flat surface in all directions from the speaker (like 4 or 5 diameters) in order to avoid either losing the soffit advantages or creating a "horn effect" which would narrow the sweet spot. Don't take my word on that part, it's one of a long list of "clarifications" I still need to get done... Steve

qiktune · Post by **qiktune** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 5:00 pm

Thanks for the replies and insights guys.I'm just about to shoot off again so hopefully I can go into a bit more depth later this evening.

Firstly, that thing against the wall in the CR is nothing (my 8yr old daughter was trying to be helpful and I forgot to remove it from the pic when I saved it).

Thanks for the drawing John...as far as the "sound lock" goes I really would like to keep that open if I can as its a feature of the entrance (one of the things my wife fell in love with when we first viewed this house) and since she never asks for ANYTHING yet indulges my EVERY musical whim....I'd like to at least give her that.

Re: the splayed wall debate.

Another possible option I guess would be to put sliding doors to the ISO/CR walls which negate the need for a window but also allow for the angle of the walls to extend further toward the back.

...I really gotta go.Will add more later

Thanks guys

Brett

Fieryjack · Post by **Fieryjack** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 4:04 am

Steve:

With reference to your mention of how to treat low cielings with "clouds" at 10-12 degrees: If one is using cloth covered 703 for this purpose (4" thick??) are they horizontally "stepped up" higher than one another, or do you fasten them together making one large piece of 703 that slopes up? What angle do the clouds themselves need to be at versus the overall slope if you know what I'm saying?

Thks, jeff

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 12:02 pm

Jeff, "how to treat low cielings with "clouds" at 10-12 degrees:" - That was an EITHER/OR, not both - 10-12 degrees would be for the ceiling itself, if there's adequate headroom to do it. If not, then spacing absorbent "clouds" a few inches off the ceiling will help kill some of the parallel surface problems with absorption. I've seen clouds done all at the same level, and I've seen stepped versions - if you mount a cloud forward enough so that it's up against the front wall, you should gain some bass trapping by mounting the 703 low in front, high in rear (toward the rear of the room) so you have more depth between the wall and the absorbent.

There doesn't seem to be much advantage to angling 703 to control reflections, except possibly at really shallow angles of incidence where it's absorption isn't as good as quoted.

If what you were asking is about mounting clouds beneath a SLOPED ceiling (assuming there's enough headroom) you would probably see some slight smoothing of absorption response by mounting the clouds stood off the ceiling and level with the floor, but stepped so that each cloud's front edge was the same distance from the ceiling, with each cloud's REAR edge further from the ceiling. Aw, crap, can't even talk right tonite - here's a rudimentary drawing of this last scenario -

Hope that helped... Steve

Post by **John Sayers** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 2:15 pm

don't forget guys that you can have a plywood backing on a cloud and still have 703 on the bottom surface. You can angle them to break up a parallel ceiling.

cheers
john

Fieryjack · Post by **Fieryjack** » Thu Nov 20, 2003 3:00 am

Thanks John & Steve (drawing was very helpful). One other question...if I'm planning on track lighting on the ceiling of the control room, is one or two feet sufficient space between the 703 clouds (in between the lengths) sufficient so as not to a) cause a fire and b) reduce effectiveness of overall cieling treatment? Just trying to get my ducks in a row.

Qiktune, didn't mean to cause your thread to digress..... Thanks, Jeff