Hello Mudman..
Welcome to Recording.org.

I have my difficulties to visualize what you plan ( language barrier, probably...)
From what I guess what it might look like, .. aren't you wasting any space in corners?..
Unless you are going to use them as absorbers or traps...
I'd appreciate a little sketch...
TY

Hi Big K! Vielen dank for the reply! You might be right, I may be wasting space. I'm not sure if angling the walls is all that necessary.

Here's a sketch of what I have in mind. http://www.pizola.com/Studio.pdf Sorry I wrote the wall measurements upside down. The wall on the left is 6 feet long and the one on the right is 9 feet.

Thanks again!

"First of all, is angling the walls really necessary in a studio of this size"

Who said it was a requirement? Where did you get this information to "design" your room with a "V" shape? Space is three dimensional...you gave width and length but height is unlimited?

Please fill in your location in your profile...

Space, post: 364291 wrote: "First of all, is angling the walls really necessary in a studio of this size"

Who said it was a requirement? Where did you get this information to "design" your room with a "V" shape? Space is three dimensional...you gave width and length but height is unlimited?

Please fill in your location in your profile...

Thanks for the reply Space! Nobody said it was a requirement. It's my understanding that square and/or rectangular rooms are no nos in a studio so I reasoned that this was a way to avoid those while using the space I have. The ceiling is 8' 1" high.

I'm in Florida. Will go change my profile...didn't know it was required, sorry! :)

Thanks again!

I don't think it is a requirement, but it is nice to know to which corner of the planet we are talking to. Same with age...at least for some of us old farts.
Rectangular rooms are no problem, if you have enough squaremeter and hight for thick insulation and absorbers. It is especially the hard surfaces like windowpanes that cause the most annoying reflections.
Those hard surfaces must be mounted in an angle, mostly tilted to the bottom. They musn't face another hs in an right angle. That gets you nasty refelctions.
Walls can be fixed up with a combi of acoustic tiles, reflectors, absorbers and resonators... This is science with a lot variables. Check out how much a room layout costs if it is made by a acoustic company.
That would be worth a few hundred. This layout gives you a good plan and safes money you might have spent on wrong materials.

Thanks Big K! So there's no real advantage to angling those walls? As you can see from the sketch, there will be two interior windows facing the main recording area and one interior window in the drum booth. These walls will be 6" thick and the glass will be angled in at the bottom. There are two exterior windows on the left wall though. One in the drum booth and one in the main room. These are pre-existing so I can't angle them.

This might be going too far, but you could put an angled thin and clear plexi glass pane infront of them. Those can be removable, too,..why not?
A thick curtain will help for some frequencies, too, but not ideal. Basically you try to avoid parallel walls, yes, but you can treat them with a layer of 20 cm isolation stuffing and cover that with a wooden paneling, room hight, in the color of your choice. Leave about 2 cm inbetween the boards. The isolation material underneath will serve you better as...absorber (?) Well, we call it Schlitzplattenschwinger.. there is no translation available for me, atm..lol..
You can give the wall a slight wave form, as well. I did that in one of my studio rooms and it looks and sounds great.

That's a good idea to put up another pane on those exterior windows. Then I could angle them too. Plus even put some curtains in front I guess. For that matter I don't suppose I really need light from those windows...I could just insulate and cover them...

It sounds like angling the walls is worth the loss of space in return for not having at least two of them be parallel. I can just put Schlitzplattenschwinger on the other two like you say! :) Is it advisable to entirely cover the walls and ceiling with egg crate? I had intended to put up 2 or 3 sound absorbing panels and baffles in the corners. Also, when angling the walls, is there a rule of thumb as to what the degree of angle should be?

Nope, this depends on the room shape and size, but I guess any angle is better than none.
Egg crates is nonsense. It is a myth that is around for ages...Just like using styrofoam for acoustic isolation..
The material is too thin and it is, at best, absorbing some of the higher frequencies, but not worth the effort.
The main portion of sound will be reflected, anyhow, from the wall or ceiling underneath.
To absorb sound preassure waves you need material that converts those waves into heat ( or rather warmth..lol).
This is not really noticeable, of course. The power of the sound waves is too small for that.
To reasonably absorb low frequencies you need a thickness of material from lambda/4 onwards. ...LOL
That is ,at 60 Hz, about 125 cm. So, there are always some trade-offs to make. Absorbers and baffles will do fine.
Reflectors and resonators, too. It is google time..... It is not complicated to build some of the boxes yourself..

Cool, I'll get to Googling! I'd heard that too about egg crate. That's why I was going with the baffles etc. Thanks very much for the help Big K! Next, I'm off to compare software and make a list of the equipment I'll need! lol!

You're welcome...

Cya

"Also, when angling the walls, is there a rule of thumb as to what the degree of angle should be?"

In the book "Master handbook of Acoustics", F. Alton Everest states that 1 foot in 10 feet was an acceptable amount to use when constructing walls out of square. John Sayers ([[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.johnlsay…"]John Sayers Productions[/]="http://www.johnlsay…"]John Sayers Productions[/]) states that 12 degrees total is ideal, meaning either one wall gets knocked out of square 12 degrees or a total of two opposing walls are knocked out of square 6 degrees individually.

The advantages to knocking your walls out of square in a symmetrical room is you eliminate at least one pair of parallel walls, so you reduce the ability for flutter. It will also make the sound room some what diffuse. The disadvantage is the rooms modal response is more difficult to predict.

Rectangular rooms are highly sought after for sound uses...the holy grail being one already built that was designed using Loudan or Sepmeyers' preferred ratio's.

If you do not at the least own Master handbook of Acoustics, F. Alton Everest you will always be asking the same kinds of questions with no valid answers in your head. Rod's book for the construction side, Home Recording Studio: Build it like the pro's, is highly recommended.

Thank you Space, I'll see about getting those books.

Thanks also for pointing me to Sepmeyer's ratios! As luck would have it, right now my building is pretty darn close to the Type C ratio (H=C W=1.60C L=2.33C) and if I build the control room and vocal booth as planned it'll be darn close to Type A (H=C W=1.14C L=1.39C)! This of course raises the question again of whether I should angle any walls or not if a rectangular room with the above ratios is preferred...

Space, I also appreciated the video on your website about plugging windows. Very helpful!

It does not raise the question but puts it to bed. A typical rectangle can have the modal response figured with simple math. When the walls are splayed then the equation (speed of sound=1130/2= one half wave length) / room measurement=problem frequency...is modified and no longer is available with simple math.

What you should do is quit trying to re-invent the wheel and show us some kind of floor plan as to what you are thinking of doing...this is only the start of a long, long walk.

Space, post: 364411 wrote: It does not raise the question but puts it to bed. A typical rectangle can have the modal response figured with simple math. When the walls are splayed then the equation (speed of sound=1130/2= one half wave length) / room measurement=problem frequency...is modified and no longer is available with simple math.

If a rectangular room is ideal, and I've now read where some say it is, why do so many studios have non parallel walls? Why do so many engineers recommend non parallel walls?

Space, post: 364411 wrote: What you should do is quit trying to re-invent the wheel and show us some kind of floor plan as to what you are thinking of doing...this is only the start of a long, long walk.

Well, I'm not so much trying to reinvent the wheel as I'm trying to learn what size and type the wheel should be. I supplied a floor plan in [[url=http://[/URL]="http://recording.or…"]post #3[/]="http://recording.or…"]post #3[/] above. It is to scale and the edges of the paper represent the inside of the outer walls.

"Why do so many engineers recommend non parallel walls?"

You name them first (so many engineers) and I will give the answer in the next few days as to which room they were referring. A control room is one thing and a tracking room is another, they are each treated differently as to what floor plan they might require.

And we already covered non-parallel walls to reduce flutter and add some diffusion...but that requires a good design...not something you can google:)

Again...you need books...you need to stand on the shoulders of giants...

btw...that is hardly a floor plan. I live in the construction trade and detail is the word of the day. I can say this...vibration accumulates in the corners, at the panel ends, so corners in rooms, especially small rooms and we have to assume you are in one of those, are always a point of focus.

I have to think that you are getting information from another source and plugging it into our conversation. But you can trust me in that what I am saying...is above reproach and is supported by a multitude of acoustically technical experts.

If you want to move farther then the books are in your future, if you want to test what is real in the world of acoustical design, then there are people here that can help you, but I would refrain from borrowing myths and supporting them as though they might have legs to stand on:)

First of all, I think I see where the misunderstanding has been. I've been referring to the live room, not the control room. I guess we're all on the same page that the live room should indeed have angled walls?

Further, my apologies for loosely using the term "floor plan". "Sketch" (hastily drawn after requested by Big K) would be a more appropriate term. As you said above, "this is only the start of a long, long walk".

You are correct in assuming that I'm in a small room, the dimensions of which are in my first post. I hope to treat the corners with baffles.

I come to the conversation with notions I've both observed and heard in years as a musician, never as an engineer. I am a complete novice in this field. Thus I also come with big ears and an open mind. My confidence in your superior knowledge has never once wavered.

I've neither intentionally borrowed or supported any myths. If what I've heard/read/observed is inaccurate I naturally expect it to be debunked. When I say I've heard or read this or that, that is exactly what it means. It does NOT mean that I necessarily support the information. As mentioned, I'm here to learn. Not to teach. Propagating myths is not on my agenda. Building a studio is.

" I guess we're all on the same page that the live room should indeed have angled walls?"

Your good...it's just a conversation looking towards a goal.

So I have to go back to what is happening with canted walls and in what room this is happening. In a control room environment you eliminate flutter but you have to do some heavier looking into the footprint to determine what, if you can determine without ray tracing, where your modal issues will be.

In a tracking room it's still the same thing, eliminate the flutter of parallel walls.

The control room you satisfy the human ear and in the tracking room you satisfy a microphone.

But there is no one thing that is better than the other. Slanted walls, parallel walls that produce any un-wanted sonic anomalies, all of these can be treated with acoustical treatments.

But to be honest, you did bring up egg crates...so that is your undoing so to speak.

Eggcrates, if you can fill them with sand and attache them to the walls, they provide some diffusion, little isolation and look weird so there are better ways to achieve this.

"My confidence in your superior knowledge has never once wavered."

Well...I have a lot of books....it's really that simple so I ride on the shoulders of giants...it's a pretty grand view...

Dang... been missing out on the fun down here...

There's a HUGE difference in cost associated with angle and/or tilted angle construction, vs conventional treatment of an existing room.

Paying carpenters, gypsum contractors and HVAC contractors to do the work, vs DIY is the real difference.

The angles involved with framing, out to the finish work, is at a minimum 2x the cost, and up to 4 times the time of a conventional squared wall/ceiling construction.

The real reason for the angles is to minimize the cost of treatment, as the angles take care of so much of the need for treatment.

Any two parallel surfaces WILL create a standing wave of (some sort).. and when under 3000-ish cu ft of volume, you are all but guaranteed to have some flutter echo (standing waves of decaying energy reflection) at at least one frequency... and often more than one frequency, up to issues that involve the fundamental frequency and all of it's harmonics... which give rise to some rooms really being naturally tuned to a note, key or chord.

The "ideal" tracking room would have no dominant frequency, key or chord - EXCEPT the frequency, key or chord that the song being played, in the room.

Obviously, this is quite difficult - to make a room good for more than one or two keys... so it's all a compromise... and angling walls and ceilings is just part of that search for the ever allusive "perfect room".

"The angles involved with framing, out to the finish work, is at a minimum 2x the cost, and up to 4 times the time of a conventional squared wall/ceiling construction."

90 degree or 20 degree...not really a big issue...but since we wind up having two walls and two individual framed ceilings that follow the same path...material increases and labor increases.

So sure the cost escalates as you already know but the dimensions of the room do not specifically dominate labor or material time...it's just that we do it X2 with much attention to decoupling.

True... the angles aren't "that big of a deal" in and of themselves... it's all the extra time involved with the cuts that take individual measurements.

e.g. My tracking room and iso booth ceilings... where there are no two ceiling joists that are the same length nor do they have the same cuts. Had it been a conventional ceiling, we would have been done in a day, tops. Instead, it took right at a week to do, including the microlam ridge beam.

Finishing the TR ceiling was a BEAST! On the shorter length side of the ceiling, I couldn't easily fit full sheets, so I was making beveled edge cuts on the OSB of 7 degrees to 52 degrees... and anything beyond a 45 degree angle takes some doing... and more time... and that equates to more money.

Are the extra outlay of time, energy and money worth it? IMHO, yeah... but I'm not your typical studio builder.

"but I'm not your typical studio builder."

No sir you are not...your the mark that many shoot for and few actually hit.