John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi Glenn

Question please?

In the hallway along the Live and CR, we will need to drop the ceiling to run ducting, power cables etc etc.

How should we join the ceiling to the outer leaf of the Live and CR, I assume joining to the new structure and decoupling it some how would be better than building another frame (wall) to support the hallway ceiling as that will create a third leaf?

Just a bit unsure?

Thanks

Don't join it. Use silencer boxes to make the connection between the rooms and the duct work. If using hard ducting, use isolation couplers to ensure there is not a hard connection.

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Glenn

Hi Glenn

Sorry but I mean we need to run power from the front of the building, through to kitchen/toilet/office/storage room at the rear of the building + ducting from the Live and CR to the rear of the building.

In the rear of the building the hallway ceiling has been lowered and the power is run.

So we still need to run Ducting to the outside, which will go along that hallway? So how can we drop and support the ceiling in that hallway to hide the power and ducting?

Thanks

In the hallway - just use a drop ceiling. Ceiling tiles on suspended frame. This way it's easy to do maintenance as well.

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Glenn

Suspened ceiling with tiles, yes I suppose that's a possible solution. I really don't like the look of ceiling tiles though - but can live with.

At the rear of the building for the hallway ceilings they dropped, boarded and skimmed - but they put in about 4 hatch's throughout for future access / maintenance. That's what I wanted to do for the rest of hallway and training room ceilings.

I suppose suspended ceiling with tiles in the training room is the only option as well - otherwise would have to join it to the rear CR wall?

What about the the wall for training room - how should this join to the CR? (picture below)

1 more question please?

For the live room the inner wall it's 6x2 framing, and for the the CR it's a double 4x2 wall. I assume the 6x2 is more isolation for live room and reason for not having a 6x2 for CR is simply due to trying to save space and make the CR as big as possible?

Oh sorry the actual question was - do I use thicker rockwool for the 6x2 walls. For the 4x2 i'm going to use 100mm 45kg Rocksilk RS45 which I have found for £3per m2 - so for the 6x2 frames should I use a 100mm and a 50mm together?

Thanks

Hi Guys

I have started a bill of materials.

Does this look right so far?

I have just guessed a few things for the moment.

I know I am missing loads of items, if you could let me know what I missed, that would be great.

Appreciate the help

Thanks

You could do a light plaster with hatches on the hallway just suspend it... Yes, the 2x6 and 2x4 were selected for space but also the live room span is larger. Yes, the insulation could be stacked. The other option is using pink insulation in the walls and the rigid stuff in the treatment frames.

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Glenn

Ok, thanks - think I have found some 150mm RW3 for the 2x6 frames though. Can I also fill the air gap with Pink stuff or have I read that wrong somewhere?

Will fill the corner traps and other treatment frames with RW45?

The ceiling was always going to be suspended, but on the studio wall how do i join the edge of the ceiling to the wall - so I don't have a gap. The same with the training room wall, would I use some kind of isolation between the wall assemblies?

Hi guys

Was a pretty hectic end of year - not had any time to work on this since November.

We are planning on getting all the framing done shortly - still need to finalise the Air Con, electrics and complete the bill of materials

Also finally got an answer from the original designer - is email reply below, it's good for a laugh.

" bit disappointed really.
when you've designed out all my flaws and downright errors I hope you'll let me see what you come up with, and how you're going to build it within budget!!

As I have already explained to you, the notion of designing rooms by ratio is rooted in the economy of calculation necessitated by the age of the slide-rule. Room ratios ONLY work for the distribution of AXIAL modes, tangential and oblique modes scaling with area and volume respectively. My first few rooms were done that way, 25 years ago, until I started to realize that each ratio only worked for one size. Some simple calculations (use a spreadsheet) will quickly show you that doubling the dimensions of a shape will give a totally different shape of modal distribution, and not just the same shape shifted down an octave.

With regard to the width and height being close, you will recall that it was reluctantly and at your request that I reduced the width along the party wall. That said, and as I have already explained at some length, use of suitably tuned reradiators on the side walls would mitigate this.

Re flutter echoes, I stand by my earlier comments. You don't get them if you don't have a sound source BETWEEN the parallel surfaces. We're not soffit mounting, btw, we're flush mounting. Go look it up, a soffit is a structural UNDERSIDE (from sub fixus, suffixus, Latin, fixed underneath) eg a ceiling. Soffit mounted speakers radiate into pi/2 steradians or less. Flush mounted speakers radiate into pi steradians (or 'half space'). Nobody has sofft mounted their speakers since about 1970. Infinite baffle? Not if your cabs are vented. RFZ? The whole point of the diffuse front room configuration is that it is impossible to create a true rfz, and that the effect of the room on sounds made by its occupants is at least as important to the perceptual process as is its effect on the sound from the speakers.

Staggered stud partitions: we don't have space for a staircase, a corridoor, a foot of wall, and a control room in the width of the building. Yes. walls with better isolation are possible. To maintain the room width this would mean using steel and/or lead sheeting; tripling the cost of the wall to get about 4 dB that you don't really need. Fully decoupled studwork is only of more than marginal benefit when separated by at least 500mm. The same goes for counterswung doors (who is responsible for the images? the doors are a joke in poor taste)
I used to be cautious about ceiling construction, but a client persuaded me some years ago by standing on the middle of a 14' 3x2 propped at its ends, which deflected by less than an inch. Also bear in mind that the chipboard layer provides a tension member below the spar, approximately doubling its strength in flexure. We have built dozens of ceilings like this. I can only suppose that the quality of US 3x2 is such that we would only use it for slate-battens here.

Likewise the silencers. Dozens built, all worked superbly. The whole point is that it works without FORCING the air to do anything. The pressure drop at full flow is too low to measure. It works entirely by impedance mismatch, like a handgun silencer (they still worked last time I looked)

Mr1 makes comments based on the indicatives for the speaker flares, when you havent decided what speakers you're using, so I haven't finalized that bit. His comment is flawed anyway, since reradiatios at the back will shift the mode he is concerned about. Just like Mr2, he hasn't read the surface treatment schedule, or else doesn't know anything about membrane absorbers.

Please tell me who these people are, just so I can forewarn others. They are going to cost you a lot of money if you follow their advice.

Good luck finding green glue in the uk. "

you can use the pink insulation in the walls. do not pack it to avoid coupling. use the rigid stuff for the room treatments. for the joining of the walls, the exterior walls can be joined and the interior walls joined, just not joining interior to exterior. if you need stability, use isolation brackets on the inner walls to support them. seal everything.

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Glenn

interesting. it would be interesting to see the entire conversation you had and the set of plans you received but of course it's your property so you'd probably want to restrict general access to it. of course nothing stops your designer from joining us on this forum (unless he's previously been banned ) to discuss the design as we're generally open to all professional input (sans marketing - which is why this site rocks in the first place).

GG in the UK apparently is less of an issue now as a number of folks in the UK have had luck getting it for a reasonable price.

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Glenn

Wow. Pity I missed this when it was going down! Looks like it was interesting

Yup, it sure is!

The comments on room ratios are curious, to say the least! Who cares about trying to find dimension that work via slide-rule, when it is so easy to calculate and check modal spreads with any of the dozens of tools out there on the internet? Funny! What does size have to do with it any more? Just plug in the dimensions, and look at the results. If the modal spread doesn't look good, than adjust the dimensions until it does. Not hard to do!

:) Actually, they work for all three types. He might want to take a look at recent work done modes. Nobody today considers only axials! funny!

Interesting concept: use "re-radiators" to deal with modal issues that could have been avoided by proper design up-front!

Absolute garbage! How does he plan to stop sound from bouncing around the room? Maybe he isn't aware that wave fronts are spherical, not planar? FUNNY!!!! How does he plan to place the speakers so that they do not produce sound between any two parallel surfaces?

Strictly speaking, that is correct. But the term "soffit mounting" has been so badly mis-used to refer to flush mounting, for so long, that EVERYONE knows what you mean these days when you refer to "soffit mounted speakers".

Really?

Not true. Ask Barefoot. It can be done, and is done. But let me try to understand: he plans to flush mount speakers with using an infinite baffle???? How on earth does he plan to pull that off??? Funny!

I didn0t even understand that part. What is he waffling about there? why would it be impossible to create an RFZ with a diffuse front? Notwithstanding that his front isn't diffuse anyway!

Ummmm.... and what does that have to do with staggered studs? It all it takes is an extra inch... And the benefits are well worth it.

Ummm.... not it would not. It would mean using a proper MSM wall, which uses pretty much same materials he already showed, but just dimensioning them and placing them correctly.

:) Actually, the cost would not change, and the improvement would be more like 20 to 30 dB.

Really??? Wow! No WONDER all of those designs by John's and Glenn's and Rod's and Andre's and Eric's and Ethan's and .... are so bad! If only they would have listened to this joker, they would have been able to actually get 34 dB of isolation, simply by increasing the air gap to 500mm! Oh but wait a sec... they are getting way up in the 60s and 70s of isolation, with only 10cm.... Hmmm... FUNNY!!!! Big time funny!

He saw a 1 inch deflection with a 70 kg load, and figured that would mean it is safe for a load of several tons???? Hoo boy! Aren't you glad you didn't let him build your place?

Well, that's great if you happen to plan on firing bullets down your air duct, I guess. But fortunately for those who just want to silence their air ducts there are silencer that are a lot simpler to build, and that work just great. I'm also wondering how you manage to get air past an impedance mismatch without forcing it to do something, such as changing speed, pressure or direction, for example....

What on earth is this "re-radiation" he keeps on talking about? Does he mean "reflection"? And how can you "shift a mode" with a reflection? Modes are due to the dimensions between the physical boundaries of a room. Modes ARE reflections. You can't change them with reflections. That would be like saying you are going to make water flow faster by making it wetter! You can only change mode by changing on or more of the dimensions of the room.

:) He plans to use the wall surfaces as membrane absorbers? Oh wow.... the mind boggles.

Thanks for the laugh!

How's the design coming on, by the way?


- Stuart -

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I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.

Actually Stuart, I often use the walls as membrane absorbers to cheat on interior space if it's an option... Also the 2x3 with OSB can be used for short spans and tight space constraints.

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Glenn

Hi All

Hope all is well – well nothing regarding the build of this actually got off the ground here, one thing after another - I’m sure a lot of you know what it's like - months just slip past. Just crazy I started this thread 3 years ago!

Anyway the plans have all changed again!!

But I do believe it's for the economical best, getting access to the studio's was a massive issue - more a security issue, but it would have limited how often we could rent the studio out - meaning majority of the time the live room would simply be unused.

Also the training rooms would majority of the time have been empty - so with this new idea we can utilize the space and turn around a much larger income than that of a live room and training room could of - but the good thing is we can still have a studio, or a mixing, mastering, Post Prod Suite

Basically we are going to turn that floor into additional sales floor or more accurately a Studio and Pro Audio Equipment floor. So we will now have 3 floors in the premises

Basement - Live Sound and Lighting
Ground Floor - DJ, Music and Lifestyle
1st floor - Studio, Keyboards and Pro Sound

The stairs will go in were the chill out room would have been and that will be a direct access from the shop on the ground floor for customers to go between

So basically the studio will go were the live room is - and we simple won’t have a live room. Thinking the studio may have 2 entrances, one from rear of the building - giving access to the toilet/kitchen and maybe another side entrance on the opposite side, possible a double glass sliding door that would look onto the sales floor. The reason for this is we can use the treated space for sales purposes, we take gear in there to test for customers when the studio is not in commercial use. Definetely be good when customers want to test high end Monitors and Outboard gear in well treated environment to have a proper listen before they purchase. Plus customers can see into a proper working studio.

Obviously double glass doors is not going to be ideal but we could have a thick curtain that we can pull over when the studio is in use. Also the exit on the other side is right in the back corner, right were the bass trapping would be – so have to work around these factors.

Anyone’s first opinions, or thoughts please?