John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

First of all, thanks for having this forum. I have done a fair amount of reading on this subject recently thanks to the info here and elsewhere but wanted to get some feedback on my current idea for treating my room, and feedback on my individual space if possible. I have upgraded to Focal CMS-50 monitors (not pictured) and am looking to take the next step to being able to produce reliable mixes at home. I will be doing some tracking, mostly vocals or direct in guitars and bass, but mostly plan on mixing projects I've tracked elsewhere at a moderate to low volume in this space. Isolation is not a priority as I don't have the budget and I plan on doing most things at a moderate to low volume, but any reduction as a result of the room treatment would be welcome. My monitors are currently placed in the optimal spot for minimizing noise to neighbors, as it's the only unshared wall in the room.

It's a windowless basement room but it's a bit odd shaped. The main area is 13' wide by 10' long roughly, but when you enter the room there is a more narrow area with a large walk-in closet (that used to be a bathroom) on the left and a small rectangular closet on the right (from the viewpoint of the first pic below). The closets create a smaller 5 1/2' x 5 1/2' square between them that's also part of the room. Also, the bathroom side juts out a foot closer to the far wall (where the control desk is facing) than the closet on the right, so the main area is not totally square either.

It's going to be used as more of a multi-purpose room shortly as well, we are bringing our exercise bike and a bigger flat screen TV down there (to the left of the mixing desk), and my wife has some sewing and jewelry making supplies at a desk against another wall (but I'll move that off the corner). It has low ceilings- 8'2", and has a (poorly done) suspended ceiling tile system. Unfortunately there's not enough space to move the desk and monitors more toward the middle to get them off of the wall either. Here are some pics to give you an idea (the room is in flux right now so kind of a mess):

Here is a view when you walk in the room, larger bathroom-closet on the left and smaller closet on the right (out of frame):


Here is a view facing the wall to the left of the mixing desk:


View facing the wall to the right of the mixing desk:


View facing the room entrance:


So here is my current plan for treatment, but I'd love to get either reassurance that I'm on the right track or other ideas on the best solution. My budget is around $600 so I will be making 9 frameless panels of 4" thick owens corning 703 myself- 4 panels in the corners mounted mid way up the wall, 2 panels at the side walls' early reflection points, one panel above my desk, and 2 panels on the larger back wall of the walk-in closet (the corner panel alone will cover most of the opposite back wall with the small closet). I'll be using this method in this video (but with 4" thick panels without the aluminum on one side):

Building a frameless broadband absorber - YouTube

I will be mounting the panels using these fasters from ATS Acoustics (who I will also be ordering the 703 from, can't find suppliers in Denver):

flat walls:
http://www.atsacoustics.com/media/images/product_detail/ats_rotofast_instructions.pdf

corners:
Rotofast Insulation Cloud Anchors

Does this seem like a good approach? Other options within my budget? I also thought about just resting the 4' tall corner panels on the floor and stuffing pink insulation behind them, but I'm not sure if that would work better than the panels by themselves mounted halfway up the wall (more level with the listening height). Also since I can't really get the monitors off of the wall much due to my space, would a panel behind them or something else help to alleviate issues associated with having monitors against the wall? My monitors do have a "desktop notch" switch that does either -2,-4, or -6 DB reduction at 160 hz with a Q of 2 if that would help at all. The manual recommends using that if they're near a wall.

So there it is, thanks for reading through my long winded post (if you made it this far). Any help is very much appreciated, and thanks for taking the time!

Hi "NBarnes21", and Welcome!

Sad to say, but treatment inside the room will do practically nothing to isolate the room. Isolation and treatment are two very different and diametrically opposed issues, that use the exact opposite materials from each other. Most materials used in isolating are not much use alone in treatment, and most materials used in treatment are not much use alone in isolation. So you shouldn't expect any difference at all in the amount of isolation you'll get from the treatment.

As long as the front half of the room is symmetrical, and you have your system and your head set up on the center-line, then you should be OK: It's nice to have the rear half symmetrical too, but not imperative. But symmetry in the front half is critical. I'd suggest that you think about how to get the walls around the front half of the room to be symmetrical with each other.

That's probably not the best location for it: remember the symmetry rule? So I'd suggest that you either get two exercise bikes and two flat-screen TV's, arranged symmetrically, or figure out other places to put them. One possibility would be to mount the TV centrally, between your speakers, to retain symmetry. I guess you could also replace your chair with the bike, and peddle that while you mix, but comfort might be an issue! In fact, you could even hook up the bike to a small generator, and use that to power your DAW!

The ceiling tiles are probably not doing you any favors. Even if those are so called "acoustic" tiles, they still aren't what you need for a studio. Any chance of getting rid of that ceiling?

Probably not necessary to do that, if you roll off the bass correctly. The best place for speakers is mounted IN the walls themselves (soffit mount, a.k.a. "flush mount"). Second best is at least a couple of meters away from walls. Third best is right up against the front wall, like yours. And last on the list is between 0 and 2 m from the wall. So leave them where they are.

Speaking of speakers: Those stands don't look very sturdy! Your stands should be massive, and very heavy. Most people use concrete or sand-filled supports for their stands.

If those are intended to be bass traps, they'd be more effective at the top and bottom of the wall, where the tri-corners are. That's where all room modes terminate, and also the place where you get a "free" 18 dB boost in effectiveness, due to the walls. The greatest effect is gotten by doing the entire corner, floor to ceiling.

Perfect! That's a good plan. The panels on the rear wall should be spaced away from the wall by several inches, for maximum effect.


Those might work, but I have one word for you: French cleats. (OK, two words!). You are on a tight budget, so just use home-made french cleats to mount them. That also gives you a bit of flexibility, since you can slide the cleats a bit sideways even after they are mounted, to ensure that the panels are in the best possible spot.

Same for the clouds: chains and hooks work just fine.

Yes it does! With some caveats, mentioned above, plus maybe other suggestions that others might come up with.

That would act somewhat like a superchunk, so yes, that's a good idea.

It sure would! It won't make a magical difference, but it certainly will help.

IT not only will help, but is also a necessity! try that at both the -4 and -6 dB setting, and do a REW analysis of the room in each position, to see what gives the best results.

The manual is right! That's to reduce the baffle step compensation that is built into your speakers, since you wont need that, as your speakers are close to the wall. That corrects the power imbalance caused by NOT having the speaker mounted in an infinite baffle.

Whew! Sweating and wheezing, but I made it to the end!

Seriously, that was a great first post!


- Stuart -

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

Thanks a TON for all that helpful info! Unfortunately the ceiling will have to stay for the time being, we may end up ripping it out and replacing with dry wall but that would be a bit down the road. If we do end up doing that I'd grab some more panels to mount on the ceiling. The monitor stands are the On Stage brand, they weren't terribly expensive but seem solidly built, they're not filled with sand or anything so I'm sure there are some reverberations happening there. What would you recommend for replacement stands down the road? I will experiment with moving the bike elsewhere but we are already tight on space as it is and have a kid on the way so some stuff has to move down to my beloved man cave .

I realize it's not the ideal space or budget to do it totally right, but I'm trying to get as close to ideal as possible within my budget. I would like to eventually have 2 panels in each corner so the bass trap goes floor to ceiling, and stuff behind it with insulation, so that could be the next upgrade when I have some more funds to work with.

There may also be another issue going on there, depending on your floor, or anything else that the stands might be touching. At high monitoring levels, the vibration in the stand can be transmitted into the floor/wall/desk etc. by direct contact, and since sound travels through solids much faster than it does through air, it is actually possible for you to hear that BEFORE you hear the direct sound from the speaker, under some circumstances, as well as hearing the effects afterwards too, as ringing or resonance.

So isolating your speakers from the stands, and using heavy, massive stands helps to eliminate that too.

One good idea that you'll see here is simply to stack up some cheap hollow concrete blocks, and wrap some attractive cloth around them to hide the "ugly" factor. Another is to use a large diameter PVC pipe (waste pipe) attached to some type of firm base, and fill that with sand. Other folks use commercial stands of various types that are made from hollow metal extrusion, and fill those with sand. There's lots of ways of skinning a cat, as the saying goes! Anything that puts a lot of mass between your speaker and the floor will work. It's also a good idea to use some type of suitable rubber between the speaker itself and the stand. Best is Sorbathane (but pricey!). Next best is neoprene, followed by some other types, but you have to get the right type and cut it to the right dimensions for your speakers: It's all about having the right loading on the rubber so that it compresses the right amount to isolate correctly.

I sympathize! Yeah, I remember how that can be. Been there, done that. Man-caves are only man-caves until the babies come along, then they turn into family-caves...

Anyway, the most important thing is to try to keep the space in front of your ears uncluttered and symmetrical. There should be as little as possible in that zone, as it can mess up your perception of the sound. Once common modern concept of studio design is "RFZ", meaning "reflection free zone", where the idea is that you only here the direct sound form the speakers, nothing else: no reflections at all, until they have bounced around the rear of the room and been attenuated. The original criteria was that those reflections should not get back to your ears until the had bounce around for at least 20 ms, and even then only arrive at a level 20 dB below the direct sound. That "20/20" criteria is not easy to do, so it is often relaxed to 15/15, but even 10/10 is good. You should be able to achieve that in your room, with a bit of luck, provided that there's nothing up front that could distort that, and send reflections your way too soon or too loud.

That's what the forum is all about! Helping each other out with ideas on how to squeeze the best acoustics out of each red cent in your pocket!

Your basic plan is good, and if you implement it right you should be able to get pretty decent sound in there. Once you have things set up, download REW and run a couple of tests to see how the room is performing, and post the results here. We can then help you analyze the results, and suggest the next step. In fact, download REW now and run it anyway, in the room exactly as it is. That gives you a "baseline" against which you can measure the changes that occur each time you do something in that room, like adding treatment or moving furniture around. The nice thing about REW is the price: FREE! There's not much that comes for free in studio building, so that's very welcome. It's a great little software package that does a darn good job.

That will make a big difference to the room. Small rooms always have serious modal issues in the low end, and therefore need LOTS of bass trapping. And the room corners are the best places to put it. Don't forget there are actually 12 corners in a room.... we tend to think only about the 4 obvious ones, and ignore the other 8, but all 12 are good candidates for trapping...


- Stuart -

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

Thanks for the link to REW, gotta head to radio shack to get an SPL meter first though. Will post results after i get all this stuff rolling. Thanks again!.

bit of a curve ball here- was looking at the GIK Acoustics site (http://www.gikacoustics.com/) and noticed that it would run me $560 total to get 4 pre made 4" thick bass traps and 3 2" thick absorbers. I'd be getting 2 fewer panels overall, and 3 of them would be 2" thick instead of 4", but it would come out to roughly the same cost all things said and done and have the added benefit of wood frames and no labor on my end. Would those 7 panels be ample? 4 4" panels in the corners. 2 2" panels at early reflections, and one 2" back wall panel?