Vaulted ceiling in basement room-to cover or not to cover?

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 4:41 am

I've been away for a while whilst the rest of the house here in the Paris region (built in 1893 from burrstone) was being renovated but at last the final room to do is my live/recording room.

It's about 7m by 4m.

The ceiling consists of steel beams 2.4m high and 600mm apart with cement vaulted between them to a point 50mm higher (2.45m).

My question is, as far as acoustics goes, should I leave the ceiling as is or am I going to get weird echoes/reflections?

The alternative is a double layer of plasterboard on metal rails.

Music played is rock/hard rock.

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 7:20 am

Hmmmm... looks interesting and challenging!

I'm looking forward to seeing what other types of answers you'll get. In the meantime, here's my .02 worth...

Those little vaults are going to focus sound at the radius point of each of the arcs. I would suspect that they will indeed cause some strange acoustical issues with certain frequencies and flutter type echos/reflections.

I would consider doing a pseudo classic room treatment of hard floors and soft ceilings.

By doing a soft ceiling, you might be able to use the existing principle in the picture... (The hangers I see in the middle and the left side)

Maybe create a frame system and suspend it with that type of anchoring system? That way your ceiling would not be in full contact with the walls. Then fill the frame with mineral wool.

This does cause some serious engineering think through on how to secure the ceiling to the walls and keep them decoupled. But, the mass of those floors sure is tempting to want to capitalize on to minimize the amount of space you would loose in a conventional room within a room design.

Otherwise, you are going to loose a lot of room height to ceiling joist systems. (I've learned how important ceiling height can be... so to me, even 10cm is precious!

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 8:18 am

MadMax wrote:

Hmmmm... looks interesting and challenging!

I'm looking forward to seeing what other types of answers you'll get. In the meantime, here's my .02 worth...

Those little vaults are going to focus sound at the radius point of each of the arcs. I would suspect that they will indeed cause some strange acoustical issues with certain frequencies and flutter type echos/reflections.

I would consider doing a pseudo classic room treatment of hard floors and soft ceilings.

By doing a soft ceiling, you might be able to use the existing principle in the picture... (The hangers I see in the middle and the left side)

Maybe create a frame system and suspend it with that type of anchoring system? That way your ceiling would not be in full contact with the walls. Then fill the frame with mineral wool.

This does cause some serious engineering think through on how to secure the ceiling to the walls and keep them decoupled. But, the mass of those floors sure is tempting to want to capitalize on to minimize the amount of space you would loose in a conventional room within a room design.

Otherwise, you are going to loose a lot of room height to ceiling joist systems. (I've learned how important ceiling height can be... so to me, even 10cm is precious!

Hello again Max and nice looking studio build!

I'm also very concerned about losing height. I feel quite lucky to have nearly 2 1/2 m height in a basement room. This is exactly the reason for wanting to avoid putting up a false ceiling. If I had to though there wouldn't be any problems fixing it up.

What you spoke of above sounds like a sort of cloud system for avoiding flutter etc This would be a lot easier to do as well!

I'm going to hang around and se what folk have to say about the acoustics of the vaulted part.

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:38 am

Driller wrote:

should I leave the ceiling as is or am I going to get weird echoes/reflections?

Curves are a problem, but these curves are slight. A flat ceiling is not much better, and what you really need is absorption anyway. Once that's done the shape above won't matter.

--Ethan

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:03 pm

Ethan Winer wrote:

Driller wrote:

should I leave the ceiling as is or am I going to get weird echoes/reflections?

Curves are a problem, but these curves are slight. A flat ceiling is not much better, and what you really need is absorption anyway. Once that's done the shape above won't matter.

--Ethan

Ah hello Ethan, it's been a while, how's that moggy of yours? Thanks for the guidance. I was going to put up a cloud type thingy as in the sticky at the top of the forum page. The floor has some old but solid tiles on it so I thought I would keep that as per your acoustics FAQ. Any thoughts on my question re having water heated radiators in the live room?

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:25 am

I can't imagine radiators are a problem unless they rattle etc. With acoustics, what matters most are the big things.

--Ethan

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 1:05 pm

Ethan Winer wrote:

I can't imagine radiators are a problem unless they rattle etc. With acoustics, what matters most are the big things.

--Ethan

This is great news! I have two of these radiators left over from the house installand it would be a shame for them to go to waste.

BTW I've been visiting the Realtraps site and watching the videos. I've got to say you've got a very impressive structure there (you must be very proud of it) It certainly gives one confidence in your products. I can't wait to get to that stage.

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