John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi Janne,

Thanks for the kind words! My Live Room's finished dimensions are 8' 6" wide at the narrowest point (9' 6" at the widest) by 7' 9" tall (track lights and ceiling panel absorbers will eat up another 4-6 inches) by 16' 4" long. They're not the most ideal dimensions but the whole design was a major exercise in compromise. I'd sooner have more volume than ideal dimensions in a live room.

I actually just picked up my special order of Roxul RHT80 insulation bats. I got 4 bags of 4" thickness and 2 bags of 2" thickness which should provide most of what I need for treatment. As soon as I got them home I put the bags up in the corners (as pictured) and wacked away on the drums for a bit to check out the impact. The bass was totally sucked out of the room! Pretty dramatic.

Now I have to figure out how I'm going to mount them. These bats are nice and rigid - I think they'll be perfect!

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

I've decided to go with a wall panel design that achieves the look that doublehelix went for;

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=78721#78701

I'm going to do two different sizes for the walls, 1'x2' and 1'x4'. I wanted to keep them narrow as I think this will help keep the room feeling spacious, which has been a consideration in everything I've done pretty much.

For lumber I decided to go with the pricey tonge & groove boards (what I should have used for my door jams ) to make sure they stay true and good lookin'. I'll stain them the same dark walnut that has gone everywhere else. Still haven't found a fabric that I'm happy with. I'm thinking I'd like to use linen for my fabric (or a faux-linen which apparently is cheaper) and our local fabric store doesn't generally carry it! Can't anything be straightforward with a studio build?! I'll probably have to head downtown to the 'fabric district'.

So here are some pics of the first prototype going together. The fabric will of course only wrap around the Roxul RHT80 (which has a perfect amount of rigidness btw) leaving the framing exposed (to be stained). Then I'll staple the fabric to the back of the frame.

I think for mounting on the walls I'm going to copy Ro's triangular groove design, although I think I'll keep mine hidden behind each panel rather than running along the wall (I won't be repositioning mine just removing them if more liveliness is desired). The pic at the bottom is his.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

Picked up some fabric today to give a try. Here's a pic of a completed prototype - I think I like it.

The fabric is a little bit more solid then I planned to go with but I can certainly breath through it so I think it should be acoustically transparent enough to work. This will work for the LR and booth at any rate. I might go with a black fabric in the CR. My local store had some black speaker cloth that could work.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

I like the color, esp since it has great contrast with the frame.

Much catching up to do.....

I actually decided to go a different route with the look of the panels. Having the wood framing exposed actually ended up looking too busy, so I went with a fully covered panel. The work I had done staining the frames wasn't wasted though because unstained frames were visible through the fabric. So all frames built after I decided to fully wrap had the front face stained.

I also went with a different (and more expensive fabric). 100% cotton was on sale and the tone of the color was a good fit.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

Mounting the panels...

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

Some more pics of the wall panels up. I actually probably won't keep this many wall panels up permanently in the LR. The idea will be to achieve a balance between high, mid and low frequency absorption (these panels being high). Because of the dimensions of my LR, there is naturally a pretty hefty bass build up. More on that shortly....

In the CR I wanted to create a 'look' with the panels, keeping it symmetrical left and right. I went with a combination of red and cream fabric. These are the first pics of positioning but I end up changing them around a bit as you'll see later.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

Hanging ceiling clouds;

These were made with the 4" thick RHT, making a 2'x4' panel, constructed the same way as the wall panels.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

I bought a Control24 from a guy on the Canadian east coast and an Argosy 90 series desk from a guy on the American west coast, so I really did scour the entire continent for these items!

I was very pleased to see that the Argosy desk uses an assembly system essentially identical to IKEA. And the seller had thankfully kept the assembly instructions too! Very painless assembly!

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

Getting all the equipment in the desk......

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

To try to get some low frequency absorption I wanted to go with a triangular corner trap design. I went through a bunch of design ideas before settling on this one, which I'm very happy with!

The insulation sits behind the wood frame which means the fabric can be stretched cleanly across the frame (without insulation making bulges). Nice clean look!

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

corner trap pics continued....

the insulation isn't actually attached at all to the frame but just sits behind.

_________________
'We're just amateur lovers with amateur friends' - Switchfoot

nice

Yeah... nice

And good ideas here

_________________
Let your Soul fly...

looking really nice How does it sounds after acoustic treatments?

_________________
http://www.myspace.com/moonwagonfin

http://www.miamiwiseguys.com/