John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Having thoroughly read pretty much every sticky on this forum, I'm scared to actually be posting this now. I'm sure I'll mess something up and get nothing but chirping crickets as a response.

Anyway.. Hi. I'm Jason. I currently own and operate a very small horribly-built one-room studio in the basement of my home which I will be selling soon in order to upgrade. With the new house will come a new studio space which has the potential to be much, much better.

I'm currently recording anything my clients want me to, and I average about 4-5 clients per week. Everything from acoustic guitar to speed metal, to african rhythm sections to small choirs. I'm still waiting for my first bagpipe, though... (more info on that can be found at http://advancedbudgetstudios.com - my current studio's website)

Anyway... About the new studio space... I figure it'll be easiest to explain my wants and needs by forming a bullet-list.

1. The house isn't built yet. It will begin construction most likely within a month, and finish no later than six months.
2. The house will be built on a mountainside, and we will have only one neighbor to the south. Two sides of the home will face mountainside. The other will be road, and across the street, no homes will be built. Our neighbor's home will be about 200 feet from ours.
3. The studio will reside in the corner of the basement of this construction. That corner will be the closest corner to the neighbor.
4. There will be two major sections of the studio space. A): A control room with the dimensions being approximately 24'x15'x8'. B): A tracking room at approximately 24'x22'x10'.
3. I think my tracking room will be big enough to put at least 2, maybe 3 rooms in. A): Vocal booth B): Live tracking C): Dry or dead tracking (I'm not sure about the dead room yet). One of the tracking rooms will need to focus on getting a great drum kit sound.
4. Both the control room and tracking room joined will form a rectangle split approximately at the 1/3 mark. (see attached sketchup) 3 of the 4 walls of that rectangle will be facing the earth. The 4th wall will be facing a living room / cold storage / mechanical room which will have water heater / furnace / etc...
5. The studio space will be used for nothing other than studio recording - so acoustics of this room will be paramount.
6. I plan on recording / engineering audio for a living. Been doing it part-time in a crappy room for 3 years now, and am beyond excited for this new space.
7. My budget will be between $5,000 - $10,000 for the control room. I plan on tracking clients temporarily in the control room, and using the resulting revenue to build out the tracking space until it's finished.
8. We have 5 children, and all children's rooms will be on the opposite side of the home (approximately 30-40 feet away with two walls between the studio and the rooms.)
9. Isolation of the entire studio space from the rest of the home / outside is important, but my family is used to noise. Currently my studio has only normal construction walls, so anything will be better than what we currently have. Neighbors shouldn't be an issue due to the location of the home.
10. Isolation from tracking room to control room is very important, of course. Will use at least two leafs, most likely one with normal construction (basement bearing wall) and another with staggered studs, or some flexible channel set up.
11. Volume in the tracking room could be anything from high-powered amps turned up to 11, to lightly picked acoustic guitars.
12. Tracking room will reside directly below our garage. Slab of reinforced concrete will separate them.
13. Control room will be directly below master bath and closets. Very little traffic up top.

Hmm... What else...?

As far as my construction experience goes, I'm up to learning just about anything. I framed and did the wiring of my current basement and nothing has exploded (knock on wood). So, I'll probably do all the construction myself, but that's negotiable, too.

The bottom line is - I want this studio to be one you'd want to go and pay to have your best music recorded there, and be confident of the result. I've got six months to design it, and I'm studying this forum and others daily. I want it to be the best it can be within my budget, and I'm willing to work at it.

Thanks for reading, and I'll post new sketchup designs as I figure out how to use it better.

One major question I have now, is whether it makes sense to build a wall that facilitates "in-wall" monitors, and how that differentiates from "soffit" mounting. If it makes the acoustics better to do it, then I want to do it, but I'm getting conflicting opinions as to whether it guarantees better acoustics or not. Right now, I'm using monitor stands, and I'll be using Adams A7X monitors for the next few years at least.

Anyway... Thanks for reading, and as I mentioned, I'll be updating my sketchup's as I learn more about how to do it properly.

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

Chirp! Chirp!

Hi Jason, and Welcome!

No crickets today!

So if construction starts in a month, then I guess the plans are pretty much frozen? No chance of changing anything? The reason I ask is because I can't see any logical way to lay out the control room, as the doors and windows are in awkward locations. The best orientation would be facing either to the left, but there's a couple of doors in the way at that end of the room, one of which goes into a "box" (not sure what that "box" thing is), or facing to the right, but there's a door in that wall too, going to the living room. So there isn't any way of laying out out "longways".

And turning to face either up or down is equally disappointing: It can't face up, due to that "box" thing upsetting the symmetry again, and it can't face down either, as the door to the LR would be right where your speaker soffit needs to go.

So if there is any way at all of re-arranging that area, then I'd really think about it seriously. Ideally it should face left, meaning that "box" would have to disappear and the door to the LR would have to move. That looks like the most feasible option. Can you move any of those doors? Can that "box" go? Can you change the shape of the CR? Can you change the location of the split between levels? Etc.

You didn't mention that this is going to be a split-level studio, but that's clear from the SketchUp model. Which brings up one possible practical issue: access. There's only one door to the LR, so the only way to load in and load out instruments, equipment and people is through the CR. If someone in the LR needs to go to the bathroom, answer their phone, or otherwise leave, then they have to go climb the stairs and through the CR to do that, opening and closing four doors along the way: So you'll have people wandering through your control room all the time, plus dragging equipment through it, up and down those stairs, and opening /closing doors continuously. That could be more than just a little annoying, if you are trying to concentrate on the tracking/mixing!

Is there any other place you could add a door directly into the LR? Also, since you say this will be a commercial facility, do you really want your customers coming in through your living room?

The split level also implies that the windows will have to be cut a lot lower than normal in the CR, in order to have good sight lines. That might be fine, but it also might create acoustic issues if you aren't careful during the design.

And those stair might be an issue if this is a commercial facility: You might have to replace that with a ramp, for wheelchair accessibility, as well as using wide doors everywhere (same reason), and having the bathroom fitted out for wheelchair access, too. By the way, where is the bathroom for the studio area? I doubt that your wife and kids will want strangers wandering around the house, and using the family bathroom!

That's roughly 500 square feet of space, and 5000 cubic feet. As a single tracking room, that could sound really nice. Splitting it into three gives you an average of maybe 130 square feet and 1300 cubic feet for each room (considering space lost to the isolation walls). That's not so hopeful. Maybe three rooms is a bit optimistic? Perhaps just splitting it in two would be a better deal? More volume and more height is always better, acoustically, and rooms smaller than about 1500 cubic feet start to get more complicated. That doesn't mean that you can't have a good room of less than 1500 cubic feet: It just means that it won't be as good as it could be, if it were a bit bigger, and treating it will be a bit harder. Just a thought.

Since this is going to be part of the entire house build, 10k sounds maybe reasonable, as there's a lot you can do in the normal "house" part of the build to help you here. But that's only US$ 27 per square meter, so it will still be tight.

OK, but how do your CUSTOMERS feel about having house noises in their recordings? Toilets flushing, water running, people walking around, doors opening and closing, phones ringing, people talking, TV, radio, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, etc. Also wind, rain, thunder, aircraft flying over, cars arriving / leaving, lawnmower, animals... There's an awful lot of things that could ruin your recordings: Would your customers be happy if the the best take ever of their "lightly picked acoustic guitar" gets trashed as one of your kids flushes the loo, then runs down the hall bouncing a basket ball, and cranks up the TV?

In other words, you do need isolation between your studio and the house, as well as between the rooms of your studio. The question is: how much isolation do you need, in terms of decibels?

Great!

Is that also a reinforced concrete slab up there? If not, what? And you are saying that you will be right underneath a toilet, shower, bath, sink, telephone, and perhaps radio and TV.... Hmmmmm....

OK, so isolation is important then!

You've probably read this elsewhere on the forum already, but it doesn't hurt to say it again: this forum is a treasure chest, a gold mine, of solid, "sound", correct information on designing and building studios. What you see here is based on the science of acoustics, not the "science" of internet myths, legends and snake-oil. You'll find stacks of references to acoustic research done by some of the best organizations and people in the acoustic business, as well as studios done by some of the best studio designer on the planet (starting with John himself). So it looks like you found the right place!

If you don't already have them, the I'd suggest that you get two books to help you with your quest. First is the Bible: not THE Bible (although that's highly recommended reading too), but rather the Bible of acoustics: "Master Handbook of Acoustics", by F. Alton Everest. It takes you from basic concepts through to analyzing the acoustic response of your finished room, and it is meant for folks who don't have much background in acoustics, and who hate complicated mathematical formula. It is easy reading, and clearly explains some complex concepts.

The other book is "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros" by Rod Gervais. That's more of a practical guide on how to actually design and build your studio. Rod is a member here on the forum, and drops in occasionally.

Those two books will give you a solid basis for doing what you want.

It's the same thing, basically. More correctly called "flush mounting", and highly recommended. Soffit mounting (as it is normally called, even though incorrectly!) is about the best thing you can possible do to your room to turn it into a great studio, next to having good layout and treatment. It totally eliminates all the artifacts normally associated with speakers and how they interact with walls, such as reflections, phasing, comb filtering, power imbalance, etc. It tightens the bass, gives you a great stereo image, a clear, accurate sound stage, and is a Very Good Thing To Do.

The basic different between simple "in-wall" monitors and full soffit mounting is that "in-wall" implies just that: putting them in the flat front wall, whereas soffit mounting implies angling the left and right sections of the wall correctly, with the speakers in them, to have the best possible setup that follows EBU, ITU, SMPTE and other alphabet soup recommendations. I'd seriously consider that for your room, if you want it to be the best it can be.

It does not have much effect on room acoustics (although it does have some effect), but it sure does have fantastic effects on the sound, and even more so if you set up your room following the principles of RFZ design.

Let me explain: One of the principles of good control room design is to maximize direct sound and minimize reflections. You ONLY want to hear the sound that comes straight from the speakers, clearly and undistorted, not affected by the room at all, not colored, not modified. Just pure, clean speaker. Anything that the room does to that sound means that you are not hearing the truth: you WANT to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... for about 20 ms. After that, you WANT to hear some of the room, but only in a neutral, subdued way. So the room should be designed such that no reflections at all can get to your ears for at least 20 ms after the direct sound, and even then it must hit your ears at a level 20 dB below the direct sound. So you do want some room reverberation, but controlled, delayed, low level, an neutral. A "dead" control room is unpleasant. So is a "live" one.

OK, so if that's the goal, then the room and everything in it should be designed to direct all reflections past your ears, not at them, and keep them away until at least 20ms, also making sure that they hit enough absorption/diffusion along the way to attenuate them by 20 dB. That's the goal. One way of doing this is with "RFZ" based design, which mans "Reflection Free Zone". Its a fancy way of saying that all the surfaces in the the front half of the room are angled to reflect sound away from your ears to the back of the room, where the treatment is. Another part of it is putting the speakers in soffits, so that they cannot send any energy towards the front wall, where it would just bounce back at you. If you were to put your speakers on stands, then half of the sound power below the baffle step frequency simply "wraps around" the speaker and heads for the front wall, where it bounces, suffers phase changes, interacts with itself, creates interference patters, comb-filters itself, and does other nasty things, then arrives at your ears all muddled up, in way less than 20 ms. It blurs and muddies your perception of the direct sound, and can easily mask subtle stuff going on in your mix that you just won't be able to hear. If you put your speakers in soffits, then all of that simply goes away: it is non-existent. Not there. Doesn't happen. All you hear is the direct, clean truth from your speakers, un-muddied by those SBIR and other effects.

In essence, the front panel of the soffit acts as an extension of the front panel of your speaker (the "baffle"). Technically, the soffit panel is called an "infinite baffle", since it makes the sound waves think that the front of the speaker is infinitely large, or at least much, much larger than the original, small and problematic front baffle of your speaker.

There is just so much going for soffit mounting that I simply don't understand people who say they don't like it. I guess they've only even seen it in places where it was badly done, or not calibrated, or the rest of the room was bad, or something. Or maybe they don't understand the concepts, and expected something else than what soffit mounting actually does. If they expected it to change room acoustics, for example, then they sure will be disappointed! That's not what it is supposed to do

Done right, it will knock your socks off with the clarity and depth of detail you find in your music! If you look at some of the builds here on the forum, you'll frequently see comments from people who have done it, saying things like "Now I'm hearing stuff in mixes that I did before, that I never knew was there!" or "Stuff I did before sounds awful! I never realized how bad it was! I re-mixed it, and now it sounds fantastic, everywhere I play it". Or "Commercial recordings sound incredible now! Hearing subtle details I never heard before". Etc.

So that's why you should soffit mount: not to improve room acoustics, but to ensure clarity, accuracy, stereo image, soundstage, detail, etc.

But that's just the first 20 ms. Then comes "the rest".

There's an issue with mixes called "translation" that you might already be aware of. but it has nothing to do with releasing your songs in Russian and Portuguese! It means "does this song sound the same wherever I play it?". Maybe you have noticed that sometimes your mixes sound great in your room, but lousy when you play them in your car, on your stereo, on ear buds, in a club, etc. everywhere you go it sounds different, not good, except in your room where it sounds great. So your mixes are not "translating" well because your room is not telling you the truth. It is coloring the sound in some way, and you are subconsciously compensating for that, so it sounds good in your room. But when you take it to some place that does NOT color the sound the same way (as in "all other places on the planet") then it sounds lousy, since the compensation you added is now evident, and unwanted. So the other goal for your room is that it should be neutral. It should not change the sound at all. So not only do you want clean, clear, precise, focused sound coming at you in your reflection free zone, you also want the "subdued reverberation, 20 ms later and 20 dB down" to also be neutral, uncolored, even, smooth, etc.

That's why the rest of the room needs to be designed and treated to ensure that it adds nothing, and takes nothing away. All it should do is keep the sound bouncing around while it attenuates it evenly. You want the room response to be more or less flat across as much as the spectrum as possible, within +/-10 dB, and hopefully much better (+/- 6dB would be great, but not so easy).

But that's the frequency domain: You also want it smooth in the time domain, so that no frequency band "rings" for any longer or shorter than any other frequency band. Or rather, that they all "ring" for roughly the recommended times. That's sometimes called the RT-60 time, which isn't really correct, but people understand it better than "octave band decay times".

There are other issues too, but what I'm trying to say is that the room should be designed to work together as a whole, not a bunch of individual parts, and soffit mounting your speakers is a really good starting point.

Nice! Good choice. They should work well in that room. And they do have the necessary controls on the back to allow them to be soffit mounted, which is an important point. Any sub to go with them, to fill out the low end?

So I guess the biggest issue I see in your current layout is that the control room is not usable in its' current incarnation. I'd really try to fix that, within the possibilities of the design for the rest of the house. I'd also think about the access issues, and about what can be done to the house design itself that would benefit the studio. For example, it would be great to bury all your signal cable conduit in the floor concrete, to simplify wiring between the rooms. Ditto with the electrical plan: figure well in advance where your distribution panel and electrical conduit for the studio will be, and specify star-grounding with the electrical contractor, so he knows he has to do that. Also specify duct silencer units (mufflers), internal duct lining, over size ducts, low velocity plus high volume air movement, oversize registers, etc. with the HVAC contractor, so he knows to do that as part of the main house system, instead of trying to kludge it together afterwards for the studio. All that kind of stuff should be done now, while you still can put it into the main house plans at little to no extra cost. Trying to adapt later, after it is built, is not a good idea, will cost you much more, and will never be as good as it could have been.

The good thing is that you still have time to do all that, hopefully. Although the learning curve for acoustics is pretty steep, and you only have a month until construction starts, so you sure do have your work cut out for you on that front!

But you have a nice project, and there is every reason why it should work out well, if built right.


- Stuart -

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

Wow... Been here for less than a day, and I'm in love with this place already. Thank you for your very in-depth (and quick!) response, Stuart! I wish I could sufficiently respond right now, but I'm too tired. I just finished reading your response, and I'm about to fall asleep. I plan on responding in-depth tomorrow.

THANK YOU! (more later)

--Jason

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

Yeah, my response have been know to have that effect!


- Stuart -

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

Heh... Nice, man.

Okay... I'm not sure I can write quite the novel which you surprised me with, but I did spend a few hours with the suggestions you had and mocked up a bit of a better sketchup design to hopefully put the whole "what is that box" and "asymmetrical" problems to bed. We'll see...

Anyway... I'm gonna start reading your post again, and comment where I think it's beneficial..



The plans aren't frozen at all. I want this done right, so whatever needs to be done can probably be done (unless it can't. I'm not a designer, or an architect, so I don't know the limitations.) The concrete has yet to be poured, and I haven't signed off on any specific layouts yet, so I imagine that if it can be changed, we can still change it.

* The "box" is a restroom. It's gonna be plumbed there unless I tell em' otherwise. I'd obviously like a restroom so clients don't have to go through our home.
* All doors can be rearranged, but the new sketchup I've attached to this post has some of them already rearranged.
* Shape of the CR is completely negotiable, but I"m not entirely sure it's possible (or financially wise) to put the wall separating the CR and the LR anywhere but where it is, since it's separating a 10-ft ceiling and an 8-ft ceiling. I don't know, though. I'm pretty sure we can't make the whole space 10', as we are pretty stretched financially as it is (unless, of course, doing so will make the overall studio that much better)



Yup. One room is 10' tall, the other will be 8' tall. If that's what you mean by "split level", you're right. Also, it's going to be impossible to put an external entrance into the LR, so we're stuck with the only access to the LR being through the CR. As annoying as it may be, I've come to terms with this. (Unless I've missed a possibility that I haven't thought of... The bottom line is - we have one outside entrance to the studio, and it makes most sense for it to be in the CR. I've made the assumption that having the 10' ceilings would be much more beneficial as a LR than a CR, but if I'm wrong, then we can split up the current LR, and put the CR in it, and make the current CR into a portion of the LR.... or something... I just want this sucker to be acoustically as sound as it can be.



Umm.... I don't think so. We've got one external door (leading outside of the house, not just the studio), and I think it makes sense to put it in the CR, so people banging on it don't end up ruining a tracking session. I'd rather just have it annoy me as I'm listening to the tracking, rather than have it ruin the track itself. (and the customers will be coming in from a door on the outside of the house. They won't be going through the home to get through the studio - see new sketchup)



Sadly, I don't think I'll have the space for this. Not sure what legalities that might raise, but I'm aware of at least 2 studios in the same area which don't have wheelchair access. Very good point, though. (see new sketchup for bathroom)



It's good to finally have some numbers. So... 3 rooms is a bit much... How about a very small vocal booth, and a room just barely big enough to fit a medium-sized drum kit (probably 10'x10'), and leave the rest as a big-ish room? I have yet to give much thought to the tracking room, as it will be built after the control room is completely finished. My reasoning behind 3 rooms is having the ability to simultaneously and separately track 3 people in the LR, and possibly one more in the CR plugged in direct..? I hardly ever have anyone wishing to use that approach, so if having that ability will sacrifice sound quality, I might just have to do a vocal booth and live room. We have time to figure that out later.



First off, very good points. Yes, it will need to be isolated. Good call. In dB, I'm not sure. I don't know enough about it. Umm... Considering where I'm located, I think the worst thing I'll have to deal with is a very loud car coming up the road. The road I'm on is essentially a dead-end, with my home being built at the "end". There won't be any traffic... I guess something else to consider is the garage-door being opened and closed, as the LR is directly below the garage. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be building some sort of 2nd ceiling for isolation. I'll also be building a two-leaf wall which faces my home, but I think that's it as far as double-walls go..? I'm probably missing something.



It most likely won't have concrete. It'll most likely be just wood "I" beams that are used everywhere.Yes to the bathroom and running water, but that will be the CR, not the LR. I'll make *sure* the LR won't have running water through the walls. I can handle it in the CR. Also, it'll be the master bath, and the kids won't be using it. Radio / TV, yeah, but the wife doesn't like listening to the TV / Radio loudly. I think some rockwool in the ceiling, and maybe a flexible channel of sorts up there will do.



Thank you! I'll be buying and reading these forthwith!



Thank you!!! I'll definitely be mounting my monitors in-wall now.



Let's do as much as we can with the CR / LR layout, and I'll present the idea to my builder. As of right now, I don't think anything is frozen, and I *know* the foundation hasn't been dug yet, let alone anything else. I'm up for any ideas on layout. I'll call my builder on Monday to see if the CR / LR wall can be moved at all... As far as the rest, I'll simply cut and paste the relevant sections in an email to the builder and see what he says.

Can't thank you enough, Stuart. You've helped me loads already.

*NOTE* The builder has let us know that the whole house has been flipped left to right. Hence, the LR / CR have been flipped on the left / right axis, so everything in the new sketchup is backwards now from what the original was.

Please take a look at the new sketchup for additional clarification and ideas... Am I completely off-base in putting the monitor wall / flush mounts there?

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

A new mock-up that I've been working on...

The listening position is 8.5 ft back from the 2nd wall in the front (where the speakers are attached) (which is 38% back)

The angle of the two walls angling in to the front to create a more complete RFZ (I hope) are at 6 degrees each.

I took out one of the windows to the LR.... (still gotta figure out line of sight, but I'm much more concerned about acoustic quality than line of sight at this point. If it's possible to have both, then I'll have both, but if I have to choose between one or the other, it's gonna be acoustics)

Any ideas / suggestions / complaints about this?

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

It's looking much better, but those sidewall angles don't look to be enough to me. Imagine lines shooting out form the speakers at all angles, and bouncing off those walls: You'll see that there are still direct paths for those "bounced" lines to reach your ears. That low angle would be fine of the room were very wide, but for narrower rooms the angle needs to be bigger in order to create that reflection free zone.

The 6° recommendation is mainly for dealing with flutter echo, but you normally need quite a lot more to create an RFZ.

You can have both, I think. instead of just angling the inner leaf of the side wall (as you have it now), angle BOTH leaves, so they remain parallel. Then its easy to put in a window that will be facing a different part of the live room, and will give you better visibility in that direction.

Another option is to angle the entire room. That may look unusual, but it sure can improve your use of space! Construction is a bit more complicated, but no big deal: any good contractor should be able to build walls with angles other than 90°.

For example, if you bring the rear of the control across to the right, then you could move the bathroom to the other side of the CR, where it would be accessible from the LR. Right now, people in the LR have to go through the CR to get to the bathroom...

Another possibility that comes to mind looking at your sketches: you could move the entire CR over to the right, saving all that space for the passageway, and put the entrance from the living room in the middle of the front wall, between the speaker soffits... Passages are wasted space, and that space can be put to much better use acoustically, for either the LR or the CR.

When you say "8-ft" and "10-ft", are you talking about the initial available height of the overall space, BEFORE you build the rooms? I.e., the height of the outer leaf? Or are you talking about the final height of the inner leaf ceiling for each room? You are going to lose some height in building the inner leaf: the question is "how much will you lose?" It might be just a couple of inches, if done right and if you don't need too much isolation, or it might be as much as one foot, of there are restrictions imposed by the building structure (eg, HVAC ducts, piping, joists, support beams, etc.) that get in the way. Those are things you need to take into account now. Tell your architect to keep that area entirely clear from such problems, and to run all the house systems elsewhere.

Correct. Well, height is important for both, but if you have to choose then it generally is better to give priority to the live room.

Big-ish live room is certainly the goal, and a tiny vocal booth is a good idea for getting there (although that means it will have to be very dead, acoustically), but "room just barely big enough to fit a medium-sized drum kit" is not a good idea, and neither is "probably 10'x10' ". Let me explain:

Drums need space to sound good. Even if you close mic everything, you'll still pick up some room sound (especially in the overheads), and small rooms just do not sound good. You COULD do such a "mini-drum booth" for tracking reference tracks, and then move the kit to the main LR for the final recording. But I'd rather try get a decent sized drum booth, and maybe move the iso-both (vocal booth) up to the "second level", where the CR is. Maybe sacrificing a bit of space from the CR would allow you to do that. Especially if you are going to angle your front wall more radically, to get an RFZ: that leaves an otherwise unusable space outside the angled CR wall, but it's ideal for part of a vocal booth...

On the "10 x 10" part, that would be a really bad idea! Considering the ten foot ceiling, that would make your drum room into a perfect cube That's the worst possible shape for a room, acoustically. The dimensions should never be the same, and never be multiples of each other. If they are, then all of the room modes, in all axes, will occur at exactly the same frequencies, so the room will ring like a bell at those, with major modal dips and peaks. In a 10 x 10 room with 10 foot ceiling, you'll have major modes at 56 Hz, 80 Hz, 113 Hz, 126 Hz, 138 Hz, 160 Hz, 178 Hz, 203, 211, 226, etc. All the way up the spectrum. 80, 113 and 126 are right around the fundamental note of the kick drum. 203, 211 and 220 are in the area where snares are often tuned. Floor toms can be around 138, 160, 178. Etc. That room would be most unsuitable for drums!

Instead, you should vary the measurements a bit, to get away from the cube shape, and towards a shape that spreads the modal problems more evenly. You don't need to take things as far as yo would with finding a good ratio for your control room, but you still need to take this into account and avoid building in acoustic problems to the rooms.

I would suggest maybe going the other way, and building just a live room and a decent sized drum room. You can use the drum room for vocals or as an isolation booth for cabs, but you can't use a vocal booth for drums! And drums are usually the major problem when recording like that: take them out of the picture, and it's a lot easier to set up some of the other instruments with gobos to separate them, then record vocals in the control room. So if I had to sacrifice anything, it would be the vocal booth.

Yup, you are missing something! Isolation is a total envelope: you can't isolate a room by just building a wall across one side, towards the most problematic area: unfortunately, if you do that sound will just take the easy path around that wall, through the other sides that you didn't isolate. So the entire room has to have a shall around it, which is just a stud frame with drywall on one side. That implies walls and ceiling. The walls will be sealed to the concrete slab floor. The new ceiling rests only on the new walls, and is not supported by the house structure. You do both all of the rooms the same way: each is built as its own frame-and-drywall structure, and they do not touch each other, or the rest of the house. They are all independent. If they did touch something else, then they would not isolated as the sound would be transmitted through the parts that touch.

So think of each room as being a separate entity, a "box" that sits on the concrete floor, with no contact between them.

Once again, isolation is an "all or nothing" proposition. If there is water running in pipes above the CR, then it will also be audible in the LR, unless BOTH are isolated correctly. That sounds strange, but sound is strange! Sometimes it behaves in ways that you never expected it to.

It's not complicated to isolate your rooms correctly, once you understand the concepts. And there are methods for optimizing room size and losing as little space as possible to the isolation.

:) Please don't take this the wrong way, but I always get a little concerned when people say things like "I think that'll do"! Generally, it implies that they are missing something about the acoustic principles involved. Like I said above, sound behaves in unexpected ways, and some of those are not intuitive at all. It's no exaggeration to say that you are setting yourself up for failure if you intend to isolate your room like that.

For example, resilient channel does have it's uses in isolation, but only if it really is proper acoustic resilient channel (RC-1), and only if it is used as part of a complete isolation system. Just putting that on the ceiling above the CR and doing nothing else wold be a waste of time, effort, and money, as it would not isolate. On the other hand, doing it as part of the full isolation plan for the CR, correctly combined with isolation for the walls, doors, windows, etc., can give you fantastic isolation. But it has to be done right!

Any chance you can get the relevant part of the plans, and post them here? There might be other issues that someone notices, or suggestions for simple changes that could be made.

But the new layout is MUCH better than the first one, and you are definitely on the right track now.



- Stuart -

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

Thanks again, for your prompt response, Stuart!



I'll begin working on this right away.. I'll see if I can't get a vocal booth on the inside of one angled side, and a bathroom on the other, with the living-room entrance in the middle. Hmm....



I can't wrap my head around what you mean when you say "if you bring the rear of the control across to the right". If the bathroom is moved to the other side of the CR, then people would have to go through the bathroom to access the LR at all. Doesn't seem right. I'm sure I'm just not understanding ya.



Note taken, good call. Thanks for the reality check.

I think what I may end up doing, is just dividing the LR into two rooms (as you suggest), make sure they're not multiples of each other, and the divider won't be parallel to other walls. I catch myself wondering, though, if it wouldn't just be better to leave the LR as big as it is..? I'd lose the ability to track multiple artists simultaneously, but if leaving the whole room in tact would sound far superior than two smaller rooms, it might be worth it.



Again, thank you. Lovin' the reality checks. This means my rooms are gonna be a bit smaller than I anticpated, but in the end, if it means better sound, it'll be worth it.



Hmmm... So... Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I build a completely isolated and independent LR "room within a room" on all four walls and ceiling, sound from an otherwise un-treated CR will still make it into the LR? That doesn't make sense to me. Isolation in the CR as its own entity isn't as important to me as isolation as its own entity is in the LR. While I'm mixing, I can handle water running through the walls. While someone is tracking in the LR, that would be unacceptable. I can mix on my own time, while everyone is asleep. I don't have that luxury when working with clients tracking audio.



I can guarantee I won't take anything as offensive in this thread while you are giving me of your time, experience, and wisdom for no other purpose than to help me. Thank you for doing so. On the other hand, you're quite right. I have so SO much to learn, it's sometimes overwhelming, and I think "ah.... that'll do, even though I have no idea what I'm talking about". I'm going to buy those two books you mentioned tomorrow, and get reading, so I can educate myself properly, and not have to do things that will "do". I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.



Yes! I've got the plans, but they're out-of-date left-to-right. I fear it will just confuse people. As soon as I get the corrected plans, I'll post them. Thank you for the kudos, Stuart! It's good to hear that some of the ideas I have are actually making headway... I'll probably post another rendition of a sketchup tonight... Gonna start working on implementing some of your ideas now.

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

OK, let me try to explain: If you take your empty shell basement, and build a stud frame on the lower section of floor (where the 10 foot ceiling is), then put ceiling joists across the top of that, and put a couple of layers of drywall all over that frame, sealing carefully, etc.... then you have a well isolated live room. You have created a proper "fully decoupled two-leaf MSM system", in technical jargon.

Let's break that down:

"Fully decoupled" means that no part of your new structure touches any part of the house (except the floor, of course, but that's a massive concrete slab sitting directly on planet earth, so that is also doing a good job of isolating).

"Two-leaf" means that you have an "outer leaf" (the existing walls of the basement and the ceiling above), and you have an "inner-leaf" (the new walls and ceiling that you just built). A "leaf" just means a continuous, massive surface that encloses something. Your inner leaf in this case would be the "two layers of drywall on the stud frame". But those two layers MUST go on the SAME side of the studs, ie, one layer right on top of the other layer. If you put one layer on each side of the studs, then you would have a three-leaf system, which is bad (not intuitive, but we'll get to that in a minute). So you have two-leaves around your live room: One is the original concrete walls / ceiling, and the other is the "double-drywall-on-one-side-of-the-studs" that actually encloses the room.

"MSM System" means "Mass-Spring-Mass", which refers to the principle of physics on which this isolation works. This is a bit harder to explain, but it is the key to why you get isolation. If you hang a weight from a spring, and give it a nudge, it will bounce up and down for a looooong time, at a fixed rate that does not change. It doesn't matter how hard or how gently you pull down on that weight before releasing it, the rate of the bounce will ALWAYS be the same, at "X bounces per minute". It is a tuned system that is resonating at its natural resonant frequency. If you wanted to make it bounce faster or slower, then you would have to make the weight heavier or lighter, or you would have to change the spring for another one that has different resilience. There's no other way you can make it bounce differently, because the mass and the spring act together to "tune" the system to a specific frequency. This is the basis of the "Mass-Spring-Mass" principle.

Another example: Have you ever pushed a child on a swing? Notice that the swing only ever goes at one rate, no matter how hard or soft you push? For each child, the swing will always complete full cycles in exactly the same time period: "X per minute". To make it go faster or slower, you have to put in a lighter or heavier child, or change the length of the ropes. This too is an "MSM" system. So is a grandfather-clock pendulum, which is why pendulums used to be used for timekeeping: they always swing at the same rate. Now, what would happen if you tried to force that swing with the child to go at a DIFFERENT rate? Let's say that you want it to go 20% faster: how do you do that (not changing the child or the ropes)? Answer: you cannot do it easily, since the mass and the spring (rope/gravity) are resisting all changes to the resonance of that system. You would have to physically force the swing through the entire cycle, using all your strength at each point to make it go at a different speed. You'd have to put a huge amount of effort into doing that, but as soon as you release it, it will immediately go back to swinging at its natural rate, effortlessly.

OK, your wall does the exact same thing. The two leaves are the two masses, and the air in between is the spring. We don't normally think or air as being "springy", but for sound waves it sure is! So the wall is a tuned MSM system. It will resonate at only one natural frequency, and will resist all other frequencies. There is one frequency where it will vibrate and resonate and sing like crazy, directly and effortlessly passing all the energy from one side to the other. So what good is that to you? Well, if you tune it so low that it can only resonate at a frequency BELOW the threshold of human hearing, then it will naturally resist passing all other frequencies that you CAN hear! We have a word for that: isolation. So if you tune your walls such that the resonant frequency is below 20 Hz, then it will isolate across the entire spectrum. The way you "tune" the walls is the same way you "tune" the kid in the swing: either you change the mass of the kid, or the length of the rope. Either you change the mass on each leaf of your wall, or the distance between them. More mass = lower frequency. More gap = lower frequency. So you simply select the amount of mass and the size of the air gap such that the resonant frequency is lower than the lowest frequency you want to isolate. Simple!

OK, so now back to the example above: You have created such a system for your live room by adding a SINGLE leaf all around it, to the other SINGLE leaf, which is the basement itself. That means the the live room is nicely isolation, and you can set up your control room.

So now you just set up your control room on the other part of the floor (the raised section, with 8 foot ceiling), and here you don't build any walls, because you don't care about isolation: You just hang all of your acoustic treatment directly on the basement walls and on the outside of the live-room leaf that is facing your control room. Great! You are set to go, right? Well, ummmm... no, not exactly! You have set up your control room in the air gap between the leaves of the live room!!!! So you are NOT isolated form the live room! You are actually inside the MSM system, as if you had suddenly decided to hang half way down the rope of the swing: so you are now swinging along with the kid!!!! There is no isolation at all like that. everything you do in the CR will be audible in the LR, and vice versa.

That's what I was saying above: if you do not also set up the control room as another MSM system, then you have no isolation: what you do in the CR will be heard in the LR. The sound of water running in the ceiling above the CR will be audible in the LR. If you cough, sneeze or whatever, that too will be audible. There can be no sound sources in the air gap, since the air gap is NOT outside of the isolation system.

So, that's my rather long and convoluted way of saying that you need to build the CR in exactly the same way as the LR: A single stud frame, not touching either the basement or the LR, with joists across the top for its own ceiling, also not touching anything else, and two layers of drywall on just one side of that frame. Now you have two "fully decoupled two-leaf MSM systems". Each room is fully isolated from the other, and also from the rest of the house.

That's how you isolate studios!

OK, so this is where most people think: "Well, if a one-leaf wall by itself is bad, and a 2-leaf wall is good, then a 3-leaf wall must be fantastic!" Wrong. Not intuitive, but a 3-leaf wall is actually WORSE than a 2-leaf wall, all other factors being equal. In other words, if instead of putting those two layers of drywall on top of each on the same side of the studs, you decided to put one layer on each side, well that wall would not isolate very well at all in the low frequencies. Same mass, same total air gap (just split in two), same total wall thickness, but worse isolation. Sounds wrong, but it works like this: if you change anything in that wall, then you re-tune it to a different frequency. Remember that I said that the way you tune a wall is with the size of the air gap and the mass? Well, now you have TWO air gaps, and they are both much smaller than the original big one, so the resonant frequency of each is much higher. And you have also split the mass, so the mass on each of these two leaves is now much lower, so the resonant frequency went up again! It turns out that your wall is now tuned to resonate well within the audible spectrum, and therefore does a lousy job of isolating low frequency sounds. Things like kick drums, snares, toms, bass guitars, keyboards, and anything else that plays low notes, will simply not be isolated. In fact, mathematically a 3-leaf wall has two additional resonant frequencies, called "F+" and "F-", both of which are much higher than the F0 frequency for the equivalent 2-leaf wall.

There are equations for figuring all this stuff out, but as a general rule you need two layers of 5/8" drywall on each side of an 8" gap to get full coverage of the entire spectrum. Or you can go down to a 6" gap with 3 layers on each side, or a 4" gap with 4 layers, but never less than 4". In reality, most studios will works just fine at a 4" gap with two layers on each side, giving imperfect but still reasonable isolation. Because there's another factor that I left out until now: damping.

Back to the kid in the swing. If you really want to interfere with the resonance of that swing, then you could do something to add some drag on the system. For example, set it up underwater, at the bottom of a swimming pool! Now you have drastically increase the damping factor, and it just won't swing very well at all! (I mean "damping" not in the sense of "wetness" here, but in the sense of drag, viscosity). The resonant frequency is still the same: same kid, same rope, same gravity. But now the swing hardly moves, because the motion is damped by the viscosity of the water.

Well, you can't fill your walls with water, but you CAN fill them with fiberglass insulation! It turns out that plain old fiberglass or mineral wool insulation does a great job of "damping" the resonance of the wall, this making it isolate even better. In fact, acoustically, the gap now seems bigger to the sound waves, so you get a double effect from the fluffy stuff: It makes the sound waves take a path through the wall that is an average of about 1.4 times the actual distance, which lowers the resonant frequency even more. Good stuff!

There's also other things you can do, a bit more exotic, if you have the budget: you can even put something in between the two layers of drywall to damp them as well. There is product called "Green Glue" (which actually isn't glue at all) that you can spread on the drywall as you put it up, and that is a "visco-elastic polymer" that never hardens, and stays flexible forever. It does something called "constrained layer damping", which is a fancy way of saying it damps the two layers of drywall themselves, thus increasing isolation a bit more for low frequencies. You might not need that, and it isn't cheap, but it's nice to know that you have the option, and useful to understand how it works.

OK, so the whole MSM thing is actually a bit more complex than that, but that simple explanation above should help you get your head around a complicated principle of physics. That's the principle on which proper acoustic isolation is based, and is the absolute best way to isolate a room at low cost.

Hope that helps a bit!

Dammit, but that is GOOD! Can I steal your phrase for my signature? It just expresses so darn well my own sentiments, and one of the biggest issues I see on the forum!

- Stuart -

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

Yes... Yes it does.. Thank you! It actually confirmed a few suspicions I had with double vs triple leaf systems.

I have a new mock-up. Pretty drastic changes, but I think this might be the direction you were nudging me. Let me know if any huge problems present themselves. One such problem is visibility... I'm thinking the entrance to the LR could be a sliding glass door(s)..? Would that work? ... and then, would there be a problem placing a window in the angled wall? (as well as the one behind it)

Thanks again for your help.


Sure thing. You've definitely earned it...

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

New design with a few changes... I thought the wall opposite the LR would be better suited for the external entrance than where it was before, so I changed that - and I think that's all.

Ideally, I'd like the door to the LR to be a sliding glass door. Then visibility into the LR from the CR listening position would be pretty good.

Thoughts?

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

I'd keep the rear of the room flat, not angled like that. The angles will create some rather unusual reflections.

How about pushing the entire control room back several feet, and moving both the vocal booth and bathroom to the FRONT of the CR? You can have a kind of "sound lock" up front, with doors leading in from the living room, bathroom, vocal booth and CR. You could also make better use of the otherwise wasted space in the angles on each side of the CR front: use those for a closets in the bathroom, and as part of the vocal booth with direct sight lines.

Also, all of your doors need to be double (two doors, back to back). For each doorway, you have have one door in the inner leaf, one in the outer.

Looks good to me! Gives you straight path across the room for load-in / loud out.

You could do that if you have the budget. It gives you great visibility, for sure, but sliding acoustic doors are not cheap. Upwards of a grand apiece. If you have the money, then it's a great option: John does that all the time in his designs, and they look awesome. But you can't just use the ordinary sliding doors that you can pick up at Home Depot: those won't work for what you want. No seals, light weight frames, thin, light window glass, etc. Proper acoustic sliding doors use thick laminate glass, heavy wooden frames, and multiple seals. That's what makes then so expensive!

You could build your doors yourself, as ordinary hinged doors (not sliding), and you can put glass in them if you want. MUCH cheaper!

- Stuart -

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

Thanks for your reply Stuart. It's gettin' close to the time when the builders are going to want the design to be "frozen", so I hope to get your reply on this next iteration soon. So far, your responses have been amazing.

I took your good advice, and came up with these... Are we getting closer?

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com

Much better! I think you are on the right track now.

I sent you a PM with some ideas on how you might be able to do the front. That might help refine the design a bit.


- Stuart -

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

Thank you so much for your help, Stuart. After receiving the final dimensions from the builder, I think I've got something workable. I've attached the jpegs, as well as the sketchup file itself, so anyone can dig deeper, if they wish. (edit - I couldn't get the skp file to attach as it is too big... If anyone is interested in getting the sketchup file, let me know and I'll get ya a link)

They're digging the foundation for the home on Monday.

The listening position is at one of the angles of an equilateral triangle (each side turned out to be 7'6" long), and it's 38% of the way back from the front of the room.

Thanks for any and all comments and suggestions...

_________________
--Jason
http://www.advancedbudgetstudios.com