John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Jester,
Ah, yes, plan 3 looks much better to me than plan 1. I realize you have less control room space in plan 3, but you could take up the iso booth space as in plan 4. A 15 x 15 control room is not a bad working space, especially if your ceilings are decently high in the rear. If you can swing the bigger control room, though, that seems like it might be a smarter idea than saving it for a less-oftenly used Isolation booth.

Looks like your smaller control room, if the ceiling is 12' high, should have a low end response of around 25 Hz (meaning, the lowest frequency that you'd be able to hear / capture in the room). That's pretty darned low. The extended response of your 18 x 21 room is not a LOT of gain, but gets you down to about 20 Hz. Both of these are way lower than you'll need in most cases. So the real gain comes from delay, which is pretty much at the ideal level in your larger version. The ideal control room is modeled after the great concert halls of Europe, and I believe the "proper" timing for primary reflections comes at about 22 ms, which requires an average distance between sweet spot and the back wall diffusor of about 12 1/2 ft. Looks like, by chance, that's what you have in the larger model. The next question is functionality.

I went through this with my collegue, Marg, who saw my opportunity to go with a larger room than I had planned. Like you, I started with about a 15 x 15. With my layout, I could have expanded to a 20 x 20, but not without encroaching too much into the tracking room space. I went with ~18' x 18' in the end. And as I settled more with the idea, I have found I really love it. Marg (she pronounces her name with a hard 'g') spends many hours producing music and shared with me the same thoughts you have: Where do you spend most of your life? If it's in the control room, then you should make it comfortable and pleasant. Not only this, but the more recent trends are that the guitarists or band leaders like to do their tracking from the control room, even if their amps are in another room, just because they like to hear how the tracks are laying down. So you have a better facility to share the space with the musicians while tracking, and getting more face-to-face communication. Now to some engineers, this may be worse, rather than better, since they like more isolation from the musicians! Of course, from a paying musician, I'm sure they like the idea of having more to say about the recording. But something to consider.

Another thing I often see is the tendency to go with many different rooms. A lot of people try to put as many different rooms into a space as possible. I think this is fine, if you're sure that's all the space you'll ever need. But just for the record, I've heard a lot of the more experienced studio owners admit that they wished they had made more space for the main tracking room, and less for the iso booths. If you want MAXIMUM isolation between rooms, you'll certainly get it only by making SEPARATE booths, detached from each other. But how much isolation is truly necessary? What is the signal to noise ratio of each room during tracking, really? Can you build a room with floor tracks for removable, semi-dense walls that will allow more versatility? Don't get me wrong. I love separation. There are fewer things dearer to my heart than a well-made studio, by engineers who really put their soul into the design and made sure it was assembled with the the highest expectations. The average house-building contractors have no idea about the BS&T (blood, sweat, and tears) that go into building just a small studio space well. Most people just don't know how much detail and work it is. For this same reason, it is important that you never find yourself wishing things were different, since the change would require even more BS& double T!

Versatility, if worked into the design, will allow you to stay in the same place for a longer time before coming to the place where you need to expand. And if you're truly fruitful, you will very likely find yourself expanding.

Looking ahead, I'd say you need as much big space as you can get, and limit your (permanent) Iso booths to what is absolutely necessary.

I'm not you, and you should certainly do what feels right in your heart, so please don't take these opinions as gospel, but digest it for a while: If the space were mine, I'd personally go with plan 3, but expanding to the larger control room, as this will be a multi-purpose room. And the windows for studio 2 are not really usable for line-of sight communication for the control room - draw a line from your chair, through your window, to a person inside studio 2, playing their instrument. Doesn't do much, does it? But that tracking room 2 window IS good for allowing studio 1 / studio 2 communication. So I'd flatten out that wall. Just make it square and give studio 1 that extra body.

I wouldn't concern myself about the splayed walls, there. The older train of thought was that splaying walls will detract from standing wave problems. However, they've found that stanging waves will STILL be prevalent - just more difficult to calculate (Alton Everest gives brief mention to some of these things in his books). When you know how to calculate what your problem freqs are going to be, you can treat them easier. A high ceiling and diffusors on the walls - especially attacking the Standing waves between those walls - those things will help a lot.

I'd also fit a closet in the space somewhere. Maybe at the back of the ISO booth, or incorporated into the bass trap. Many people don't think about closet space, but believe me, you WILL need it! Maybe even a triangular closet for mics and such in studio 1 near the lower right corner, on the other side of the front of the control room.

Hi Ejbragg, welcome to the board!



It is not so much an older train of thought as it is people who don't understand acoustics thinking that way. The fallacy has been disproven as early as 1954 by Beranek in Acoustics, unless you are much older than I think

Andre

edit: changed several groups of letters into english words.

Eric, while it's true that splaying makes things more difficult to calculate, it's also true that it keeps a room brighter while still controlling flutter - same for getting a true RFZ for mixing without phase cancellations telling you lies -

Also, keep in mind that Mr. Everest, last I heard, was in his mid 90's living in California - near as I can tell, the last two editions of his Master Handbook had some ghost-writing help and quite a few typo's - and 30 years ago when he was younger and writing these comments, the LEDE rooms were all in vogue so "dead" wasn't a "dirty word" -

Still, there are times when I have to consider most of acoustics to be "thousands of opinions cemented loosely together with snake oil" - then, I take several deep breaths, a few more swallows of wine, and read some more (sigh...) Steve

Thanks, Andre.

Not quite that old! I was only born about 11 years after that 'discovery', so I suppose I could still be dubbed a pup by many.

Knightfly,
Fill me in on the 'brightness of the room', please. Is this info posted somewhere I can get to (don't want you to have to explain something that's spelled out elsewhere). How does splaying walls affect brightness, exactly? As for flutter, I again have to defend with the word 'diffusion'. Even diffusors can be built to encompass angles. I don't wish to steer anyone off a cliff, for sure, and I don't wish to discount anyone else's suggestions. [Eric winces in anticipation of counterattack.]

Speaking of wine.... I'll try not to spill mine with the oncoming slap. Yet please hold back nothing. I have a need to know, you know!

Sorry, no slaps - this board is a "violence-free zone", and I enforce it by boycotting anyone who either starts (or even comments on) any flame crap - there are enough other "little boys measuring body parts" boards out there, and apparently everyone here feels the same way...

What I meant by the "brightness" comment - if you can accomplish flutter-free sound and RFZ conditions without having to resort to absorption, you won't kill off near as much high frequency in the room - then, you can add absorption ONLY for the purpose of balancing the reverb times.

Diffusion - fine for larger rooms, but a lot of our members have nowhere near enough distance in their smaller rooms for diffusion to work well - some people get along with diffusion in close quarters, most do NOT. Less than 10-12 feet from a diffusor to your head is generally not a good way to go.

Then, we get into surround - I'm still kicking around the idea of reversible inserts for the front wall surfaces in a CR - hard side out for stereo RFZ, absorbent side out for 5.1 mixing (ambience added back with surround speakers per the current "guru" papers on this)

HTH... Steve

Well I think I am going to follow the wisdom of the forum and leave some splayed walls. I have come up with yet another design that I think is the one! I had to encroach in to my workshop space but I'll live. What do you think? (plan 5)

I think this will come out very, very nice!

And FWIW, this has been a great thread!

_________________
=8^{DC

"Enjoy Every Sandwich!"
-- Warren Zevon

Great design. I just wonder if there are any need for you with a corner bass trap in the live room, at the South east corner, it look like a good space for it. But as you have John involved do I assume anyway that you have seen the possibilities of a bass trap. Looking forward to see PICs as you progress, a sweet studio. I will continue to dream and learn.

_________________
Kaj

I am going to be putting bass hangers under the stairs. So each of the tracking rooms will get a bass trap. I figure once the rooms are built I will analyze them and add any any necessary treatment. Seems like it is next to impossible to really know exactly how a room is going to sound before it is build.

One big thing I keep going back and forth on is floating the floors. The big pluses I see are better isolation, space for running conduits, and something to fasten to walls to. On the downside they are a big expense, will lower my ceiling height, (currently 8' 4")and there seems to be some debate about how well they work. I am willing to do them but am not sure they are justified. If the consensus was that they will always yield great results then I would have no doubts and just do them. But there seems to be quite a bit of debate. In fact on the recording.org forum there are a few threads that suggest floating the floors might cause a lot of problems. I am very interested in hearing from people that have floated their floors what their results have been, whether they have achieved good Isolation and good sound.

Another option I have considered is floating just the control room or just the drums.

Has any one come up with a formula for figuring out how much weight it takes to compress a 1"x1"x1/2" puck of 60 dur. rubber 20-30%? It would be easy if I could find some way to covert durometer to PSI. Anyone?

Looks nice, Jester. Practical layout, and it kicks butt!

I'd record there!

E

Great then that is the one I will use!

Anyone have any thoughts on the the floor?

Steve? You do a lot of these calculations. I'm a lot less up to par on construction applications. Did you have a number for Jester on the floor pucs, or a vote on the floating floor?

I understand your pain, Jester. A few inches and extra expense. Your own suggestion sounds like a pretty good alternative - floating the CR.

Eric

Why not use the classic approach detailed in the stickies?

Get a sample and stack wieights (weights, books, etc) and measure the deflection? A ruler would be accurate enough for what you are going for.

Andre

Guys, according to the info available here -

http://www.earsc.com/HOME/engineering/T ... asp?SID=61

I was being overly cautious about NOT loading isolators enough to cause them to act as a proper spring - more like 5-15% maximum, at least for the EAR products... Steve

Well it's been a while since I have posted but I have been slowly working away. I am getting close to putting up the walls and have a few questions. I pulled all if the insulation out of the ceiling and the walls and I am wondering if I can reuse it or if I should replace it with rockwool. The ceiling had Johns Manville R-19 Kraft-Faced, Formaldehyde-free Thermal and Acoustical Fiber Glass Insulation. The Walls had Owens Corning R-13 Fiber Glass batts. Even if I reuse the insulation in the walls they will be double walls and will have rockwool in the second half. So what do you think I should do? I hate to waste insulation but I will do what I need to do.

Thanks,
Lief