If you missed update 2 check it out first.

OK So now where are we.

Downstairs the carpenters are all working away building the frames and ceilings etc to make up the general infrastructure of the three rooms. Massive amounts of 16m drywall and copious amounts of insulation have gone into the wall structures and Mark has followed it all with endless quantities of sealing and sanding off.

Now we reach the point in any studio designers field where we have to start the unassumed and often unaccredited area of our endeavour - that being the interior designer.

It should first be understood what we are building here. This is not a commercial studio. It is a music room for Ameril and his family and is in essence an extension to his home. It's not designed with a front office or a street front - it's a home studio for someone who can afford to have a little more than most.

I have used sliding cavity doors for example which are an acoustic nightmare yet I have included them to create that feeling of a living room as opposed to a rigid door sealed studio atmosphere. When all the doors are open the building will have an open feeling and Amirel can work on his piano in the main recording room and feel that he is still in his own home. I now must incorporate that feeling into the acoustic wall treatments that I have decided upon.

I have been playing around with the design of the slot resonators I want to put into the rooms. I found when drawing them they had an old English Gentleman's feel about them with all the timber etc. yet one night I discovered that if you angle the timbers not only do you create a variable gap between the slots but you create a whole new approach to shape and proportion and I came up with this as a style and approach to the interior design. I call it jap-deco!!

Now I had a direction as this kind of wall had good acoustic properties in that the slots covered the full range of the lower mids i.e. 200 - 800 Hz. The white areas were to be cloth over insulco so it absorbed the frequency range above the slots thus creating a broad band absorber down to 200HZ.

When I followed this style into the room shapes and the wall treatments I came up with the rear wall of the control room treatment using the same style.....

 

The blue and white sections are the cloth finishes whereas the remaining (apart from the windows) are to be slots in all shapes and sizes. We now have a joinery company starting work on these panels in natural Australian timbers. The floor will be Australian Tasmanian Oak which will be a blonde hardwood floor finish.

The doors and all wall units will follow this pattern

 

The different studios require different treatment. The Booths on the left of the control room will be treated to be tight and dead with a short decay time whereas the larger room on the right of the control room will become a more ambient room. I have designed a set of panels to go down this wall that will act in two ways. In one mode it will be a reflective diffusing surface with plywood panels and slot resonators yet when, opened like doors, the wall will change into a dead absorbing wall thus:

These panels will now run down the west wall like so....

 

These are called variable bass absorbers because in this mode they absorb low bass through the panels and low mids through the slot resonators. When the panels are opened it presents an entirely different face to the room with cloth absorbers thus....

 

Thus I intend to control the absorption of the room by opening and closing the panels. So we are all waiting now - the carpenters are now putting the final cavity doors in and we will start on the speaker mounts in the next day or so.

I have found a textile artist Nina Bishop who will create the cloth coverings for the walls. She will do the section behind the couch in the control room (blue) and the whole of the north wall in the vocal booths. She has a unique style and an artform and dying process that Ami and I feel will enhance the studio atmosphere.

 

Now you can check out Update 4