John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hello everyone,

I have been wading relentlessly through the forum the past couple of weeks in preparation for a small commercial endeavour. Thank you everyone for the resources you have provided, it has been very very insightful watching you all build and design your studios. I can't help but feel excited just watching the spaces go from rubble to in many cases works of art and dreaming that mine may do the same.

I have secured a commercial space with intention of running a music teaching studio, recording studio and small performance space. The total space is 165m2.
It is currently fairly bare but there is some structural concrete walls which I have to keep and I'm not sure how much I can do to the ceiling because of lease arrangements. The total width is 6m and the ceiling is 3 meters high but it drops down to 2.75m in the space that I plan to put my control room.

Sizes as per my design:
Control Room Size - 6.55m, 5.95m, 2.75m
Live Room Size - 13m x 6m (with 2... 3x2m rooms for teaching)

I will be doing two and a half two-leaf walls at this stage using:
90x45mm Timber
2x16mm Gyprock Fyrecheck on each side
Pink Sonobatts R2.7 for insulation
Sikaflex Pro Sealant
All other walls are thick concrete.

I am going to:

Move the kitchenette around corner.

Knock out some walls

Put in two teaching spaces at front of premises, single leaf

put in control room front (where ceiling drops down) and partial side wall (rest of sidewall is concrete)

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put in control room back wall

Move soundlock door forward to line up with where the ceiling drops down the soundlock will be single leave side wall of the control room

Put in more aircon vents and one more return air vent for the live room

At this stage I am trying to avoid decoupling the ceiling in my plans to keep costs down. The area for the control room has a lowered false ceiling which should help with isolation. I am a little concerned about the live room and sound leaking from the roof. Although, there is a band that practices often at night only 50m from this space without any real soundproofing and they haven't received any complaints yet. But if I do have to decouple the ceiling in the live room it be more practical cost wise to build another room instead of having my space open space. But I like the space open for potential performances. I will have to take an SPL meter in there and snare or kick drum and see how things go.

The floor is concrete with some wooden flooring already laid down. Both external walls are thick concrete. There is an underground built in concrete type carpark next to me. So I am not worried about sound isolation from the walls. Only the roof.

There is very little room inside the current ceiling which is ceiling tiles, gyprock, then corregated iron. I will have to add more ducting to the airconditioner system and another return vent for the live room which I am a little worried about as it seems that the ducting goes almost directly outside. I poked my head through one of the ceiling tiles today and there is only about 20/30cm in the ceiling cavity (for the 3m part)

The space is a really good price and am really keen to to make this work. I earn my money through guitar teaching, but I am hoping to make the studio a large source of my income. I have moderate experience and have quality gear so now it's just down to hard work, practice and designing and constructing a professional studio.

I would like for someone to check my design and see if I'm on the right track. And any constructive feedback or design tips would be great.

Questions:

I would like to soffit mount my monitors. Which are JLM BAM1's but am unsure of what angle. I know that many people say 30% but in the sketchup it doesn't look right when my listening position is 38% into the room.?

Would spaying the control room walls be beneficial?

I would like a vocal booth but am unsure where at this stage, I could put it behind the control room

I have been getting quotes for my laminated glass and have been quoted for 1200mm x 900mm for 10mm = $1,606 and for 13mm $1,759. Are those prices reasonable???! Is there any way I can source glass from Brisbane or elsewhere that is cheaper that anyone knows of. What is the optimum size for the glass is my room? Could I get away with smaller? Wider but not as high

I am not very experienced with sketchup so be warned. If you view the floor plan alongside the sketchup files it will hopefully make sense.




Also here is a rough floor plan I drew up.
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9425 ... orplan.jpg

Thanks.

Hi "sammytwright", and welcome!

Just a few comments, random order:

Are the teaching rooms separate from the live room, or part of it? Hard to say, based on the above.

That doesn't seem to make much sense, or I'm a bit thicker than usual in understanding it! How can you have "half" of a two-leaf wall? That would be a single leaf wall... And from the above, it also sounds like you only have a single stud frame with drywall on both sides, so the wall isn't even decoupled. If that's the way you are planning it, you are not going to get much isolation out of that.

Don't knock out any walls until you check with a structural engineer first! Sometimes walls can look like they are not load-bearing, but they actually are, in one way or another.

To me, it sounds like you don't need any real isolation at all, since you don't seem to be planning for it at all. If I'm understanding it correctly, your plan is only for a bare minimum of isolation, similar to what you'd get in a typical house. Is that correct?

If that's the case, then you don't need to spend money on soundlocks and double layers of drywall.

Not really. Drop ceilings with plenums above offer practically no isolation at all. They are sometimes called "acoustic" ceilings, but that's a misnomer: they are fine for typical office acoustics (that's what they are designed for) but no use at all for studios. And even then, their real purpose is acoustic treatment, not acoustic isolation: they are only meant to take the edge off the typical din of office sounds.

So how badly will their sound affect your recordings? For example, if you are trying to recall soft, romantic vocals or quite acoustic instruments, would their loud thumping bleed in your mics be a problem?

I don't understand: Why can't you just isolate that open space? You have a very large room with high ceilings, so completing a proper isolation wall around that is not going to take up a huge amount of that space. You'd still have a very decent sized open space, even after the isolation is complete. Is there another reason why you can't do that?

Is teh wood laid directly on the concrete, or is it laid on a frame over the concrete, with air in between? Important! From the photos, it looks like laminate flooring, not wood flooring, but that might just be the photo quality.

It's the same thing: the roof rests on the walls, so any sound getting into the roof is in the walls too. Isolation can't be done on only some sides of a room, any more than a fish tank can be built by putting glass on only some sides of an aquarium frame. You have to treat all sides, or it won't work.

Not much isolation there! And things like rain, hail, wind, thunder, aircraft overhead, etc. must be pretty loud inside. Are they going to be an issue in your recording sessions?

Soffit mounting is a great idea, so stick with that for sure! And yes, getting the geometry right is a large and frustrating part of studio design! But there's a few points to take into account hear: the 38% "rule" is not a rule: it's a guideline, a starting point. It is the location where, theoretically, the modal effects of the room are least intrusive. But it isn't written in stone, you won't get arrest by the 38% police if you have to move a bit, and if you splay your walls (as you will do with soffits) then it isn't really valid any more anyway!

Second, the 38% position is where your EARS are supposed to be, not where the apex of the equilateral triangle falls! That apex (the intersection of the acoustic axes of the speakers) will fall a few inches/centimeters behind your head.

Third, if you have to adjust the angle a bit, then do so. The angle police won't arrest you either! If you need to toe-in slightly more or less, then that's fine. It will change the sound stage and sweet spot a bit, but as long as you are aware of what it is doing, then you can probably live with it.

I thin you mean "splaying" not "spaying"!!! (I doubt that the walls will attempt to reproduce anyway... )

But yes, splaying can be beneficial for many reasons: flutter echo, RFZ design, matching soffit angles, adjusting room volume, looking cool, etc. Of the above, in my opinion the most useful reason is RFZ design. If you go down that road, then you will certainly need to splay your side walls considerably, but you can get away with just doing the front section (you don't need to do the entire side walls): If you are trying to treat flutter echo, then you can use a smaller angle (no less then 5° or 6° on each side, total of 10° or 12° degrees).

Perhaps, but are you sure that's the thickness you'll need? You won't know how thick to get it until you figure out the full isolation plan, and know the surface density of your walls. Also, 1200mm x 900mm makes for pretty big windows: are you sure you need them that big?

You sure can! Saving money on glass is a good idea. You can make them as small as you want, or as large as you can afford. The deciding factor is normally sight lines: how much of the live room can you see from the mix position, for each size of window. If you don't mind a slightly restricted view of the live room, then go with smaller glass.

I looked, but there's a lot I'm not understanding: There seems to be a mixture of one-leaf, two-leaf and three leaf walls in different places, but none of them are complete: for example, the control room seems to have a two-leaf wall at the front, a three leaf at the back, a two leaf on the right side, and a single leaf on the left: So basically the entire room is a single leaf design, since that is the weakest part. Which begs the question: Why use two-leaf in some places if others are only single leaf? That's a waste of money. If one wall of the room is single leaf, then you might as well make them all single leaf, since doing only some of them as two leaf is pointless.

That shows your speakers angled at 45°, not 30°! And they are not aiming at your head, either. The intersect seems to be at a point somewhere in the middle of the console, so your head will be outside the sweet spot like that.

If you go for an RFZ design, then I can see a nice place for it! It would do double duty as both soundlock and vocal booth, but you might be able to live with that...

You have a really nice space there, with great potential! Excuse me while I turn green with envy... If planned and built right, that has every chance of being a great studio.


- Stuart -

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

Wow, thanks soundman. You have given me a lot to think about.



Excellent point, please excuse my noobiness but regarding the concrete walls I am now understanding that they are not going to be beneficial to my design. What I should be doing is building a room inside my room with all two-leaf walls and ceiling for both my control room and live room. Keeping the teaching rooms separate.

The concrete outer walls will be a third-leaf though, will they not? So should I be thinking about single-frame inside out walls for both rooms seeing as the outer shell of the building is concrete? And it would also save some money.



I didn't explain myself very well at all but I was meaning that I would have double framed walls as described in Rods book. Each double-framed wall would be:
2xLayers of 16mm Gyprock on one side,
Stud filled with Pink R2.7 Sonobatt insolation
Air gap 10cm
Stud filled with Pink 2.7 Sonobatt Insolation
2x Layers of 16mm Gyprock

But now I think I have a cunning plan to do 2x16mm Fyrecheck OR 1x16mm Fyrecheck and one 13mm layer with inside out walls. Less money spent on gyprock and timber framing, a little more space, still good isolation between rooms as it still is two leaf between rooms but I guess the compromise is a little less isolation from the outside world though?


Will do. There are some that I am quite sure I will be alright to do because the previous tenant put them in.


You're right, it is laminate flooring and it is laid directly on the floor which according to Rod's book seems to be a good thing.

Aircon ducting and return air vents?
I would like to put in additional venting, am I going to have a lot of issues with this as there is not much space in the ceiling as it stands. Maybe only 20cm in the space where the live room will be. Above the control room would be around 50cm I pressume, but I haven't poked my head up there yet. The ducting just goes STRAIGHT OUTSIDE on the roof! How will I deal with that? Could that in any way be a good thing?

Regarding building a ceiling for the control room.
I would have to build under the beam shown in this pic for my ceiling, which would lower my ceiling height approximately 30cm. Bringing my 2.7m ceiling down to a little below 2.4m as I can't build hard up against that.





I would like to go for an RFZ design I think. Splayed walls not spayed and a soundlock that doubles as a vocal booth sounds like a promising idea. As for the nice place for it, would you be so kind as to elaborate?


Thanks very much Stuart, its great to hear that the space I've secured is workable. I feel like I'm a getting little more on the right track. I am reading Rod's book and things are making a lot more sense. I guess the hard thing is just biting the bullet and making the decision to spend so much money. I want to do this right but I'm sure others would agree it is quite daunting and scary looking at the figures but... it's super exciting!

I've been talking through things with my dad who will be giving me a hand with construction and he is constantly telling me to cut costs here and there. "I don't understand why you would need this and that, it's adding up, alot of $ mate!"

Thanks
Sam

I have been thinking more on building inside-out walls for my studio space. And have made a complete re-design to get away from a big beam which would lower my ceiling height.

As a result I have a new rough sketchup design for the framing. It doesn't have the gyprock drawn in yet, I'm finding sketchup a little tricky.

I am thinking of having INSIDE OUT WALLS in the studio - gyprock on the outside
and OUTSIDE IN (I guess) Walls for the Live Room - gyprock on the inside

Is this something that can be done?
The file was 28kb too big, couldn't figure out how to make it smaller without losing stuff.


http://www.2shared.com/file/c0HwWu3l/purged_final.html

one suggestion - in the inside out walls can be useful where you need to combine treatment and isolation in one assembly, but it might be you need a mix - training rooms use inside out and studio uses normal construction so the air gaps are bigger etc.

design looks good, maybe raised the CR ceiling to incorporate the cross beam (wrapped) so you have more volume. the door into the CR - would that be through the middle of the side wall? (hint).

_________________
Glenn

Thanks Glen for your time I really appreciate it,

I'm glad the design is looking better, I will put that door in !

I'm unsure exactly what you mean. I understand that the inside out walls are useful for treatment and isolation in one assembly. Can they provide the same amount of isolation to normal walls?

But what do you mean about the mix?

Do you mean that the front two rooms, the small rooms which I will use for teaching could be inside out rooms. And the live room and control room should be normal construction?
Normal construction is just gyprock on the INSIDE of each wall, insulation on the outside of each room with air gaps between rooms, is that correct?

In that case would I be correct in thinking that the live room SIDE walls would just have an airgap and then concrete walls such as:
From inside the room....

Gyprock 2x16

Studs with Insulation (maybe held in with wire)

Airgap

concrete outer shell wall.

I would not have to gyprock the other side because of the concrete outer wall (of the building) is the second leaf?
And then my control room would just be the same. Decoupled from the live room and the buildings concrete walls and ceiling with gyprock only on the inside.

What are the advantages to this method, just the increased air gap, so better isolation?

How would I wrap the cross beam without losing isolation. Do you mean build hard up against the crossbream and caulk around it?

Would I be able to get away with using 70x45mm Studs for the control room walls celing as the ceiling won't be a such a big span???
The cheapest quote I've been able to get so far for 90mm x 45 mm is $4.60 per linear meter! In NSW they're paying less than half of that.

inside-out walls can provide good isolation especially when coupled with high mass exterior walls like block and concrete. however in framed walls, the air gap when it's an option is your better bet for isolation so having the inside out walls in the smaller training rooms is a good choice and in the live room and perhaps CR, having the walls with the drywall inside and the larger air gap is advisable.

_________________
Glenn

Thanks,

How would I wrap the cross beam without losing isolation. Do you mean build hard up against the crossbeam and caulk around it?

Aircon ducting and return air vents?
I would like to put in additional venting, am I going to have a lot of issues with this as there is not much space in the ceiling as it stands. Maybe only 20cm in the space where the live room will be. Above the control room would be around 50cm I pressume, but I haven't poked my head up there yet. The ducting just goes STRAIGHT OUTSIDE on the roof! How will I deal with that? Could that in any way be a good thing? I might have to get a picture.