I'd snuggle the back of the kit up to the bar, putting room mic's over the top of the room with the double doors... with the kit facing the double doors. Move the mic's to taste... compress and viola'!! Drum kit!!

ChrisH, post: 406391 wrote: I figured I'd put the drums in the corner by the glass doors, which is right under the peak of the ceiling height.
Is it worth trying?

It's always worth trying. the problem with corners is that this is the place where panel vibrations converge creating a build up. In order to build a soffit mounted baffle you start with a corner...that is where the frequencies are going to be. So I think you can try the corner but you are going to be disappointed add to this a glass barrier that is very reflective, no telling what is going to go on in your search for a good place for drums.

Max recommends around the bar, I would to if only for the barrier free area.

Thank you for your input Max, I'll try that.

Space: I'm confused on what you mean by a "soffit baffle"?
Same with the "barrier free area"? Do you mean close walls?

ChrisH, post: 406396 wrote: Thank you for your input Max, I'll try that.

Space: I'm confused on what you mean by a "soffit baffle"?
Same with the "barrier free area"? Do you mean close walls?

Yea, I knew that was gonna add some confusion, my bad. A hard barrier is the same as a hard boundary and that is typically a wall. It can be glass, or block or sheetrock, ect...as long as it has some mass properties.

So a corner has at least three hard boundaries, two walls and the floor. In a typical small bed room you have to consider the ceiling. You have a vaulted so that helps but the facts of build up in corners is real. So you may find that this corner is going to trap a lot of low end frequency and make it difficult to get good seperation.

A barrier free area suggests that there are no hard boundaries to deal with saving the floor and it is always good form to place rugs underneath the whole drum kit to reduce reflections from that surface. Cymbals included.

Does that help?

Space, post: 406398 wrote: Yea, I knew that was gonna add some confusion, my bad. A hard barrier is the same as a hard boundary and that is typically a wall. It can be glass, or block or sheetrock, ect...as long as it has some mass properties.

So a corner has at least three hard boundaries, two walls and the floor. In a typical small bed room you have to consider the ceiling. You have a vaulted so that helps but the facts of build up in corners is real. So you may find that this corner is going to trap a lot of low end frequency and make it difficult to get good seperation.

A barrier free area suggests that there are no hard boundaries to deal with saving the floor and it is always good form to place rugs underneath the whole drum kit to reduce reflections from that surface. Cymbals included.

Does that help?

No worries, that helps allot.
so you're saying to keep the drums as far as possible from walls?
I do have a mobile bass trap for corners I could bring up stairs.

I am saying with an explanation of why NOT to place the drums in a corner. Hard boundaries/walls are not the issue it is that corner you wanted to use, IT is the issue.

Space, post: 406401 wrote: I am saying with an explanation of why NOT to place the drums in a corner. Hard boundaries/walls are not the issue it is that corner you wanted to use, IT is the issue.

Okay, gotcha. Would putting them by the bar still be a better spot than in that corner with a 8ft tall, by two 2 ft wide, 4 inch thick, rockwool bass trap?

i'd put them at the angle of pic 3, in front of the bar, not facing any wall directly square. at least i'd start there anyway. this will have a lot of angles for the sound to travel through before they go back into your mics. i'd probably tape a blanket to the bar top to grab some of those fast closeby reflections, keeping your kick and snare less phasey. and i dunno what's behind the single door, but i'd try putting a mic facing a wall in that room to grab some ambience. or somewhere else 30 feet away facing the wall a couple inches out.

ska needs that tight kick/snare, but a little real ambience can go a long way. also a mic 3-5ft away in between snare/kick height, can add a nice 'fullness' to the kit, and a lil room. might be just what you need for a little rom in a tight kit.

ChrisH, post: 406402 wrote: Okay, gotcha. Would putting them by the bar still be a better spot than in that corner with a 8ft tall, by two 2 ft wide, 4 inch thick, rockwool bass trap?

In my opinion... yes.

Not to be prickish... but they're called ROOM MIC's.... You put them in the room to pick up the sound of the kit where?... In the room!

It really does depend on the sound you're looking for, as to how close, or far away the mic's are... So, you'll need to monitor them and see what you get. Personally, I'd go for height and distance to get a fairly even overall room sound.

If you want a tighter drum sound, then bring them in closer and tighter until you get what you want.

Space, post: 406398 wrote:
A barrier free area suggests that there are no hard boundaries to deal with saving the floor and it is always good form to place rugs underneath the whole drum kit to reduce reflections from that surface. Cymbals included.

Couple questions..

1. Is there a rule of thumb for how far the closest barriers/walls need to be from the drums in order to be a barrier free area?

2. Where would you guys would place the drums and recording desk in my current "studio"?
Heres the dimensions
http://s295.photobucket.com/user/ch-holt/media/SCAN0007-1.jpg.html?sort=3&o=48

3. If I end up recording upstairs in that living room, what should I do for monitoring? DT 770's? or Mixcubes?

4. My other option for the drums would be to record them in the unfinished basement shown in my video below.
That way I'd still be able to monitor in a treated room with my setup, and run the cables under the door, but how would the unfinished basement be for tracking drums in comparison to my small one room studio?

2. probably like 7 or 8 ft from the bottom right corner facing into the rest of the room. the desk probably just in front of where that left wall turns into the large section, facing the right wall. just a starting point. if you do the recording down there, mak sure you have some blankets to put around the kit and probably over the kick/mic. i'd personally way rather try that living room, it's got a lot of different angles, and surface materials.

3. watever one you know better, but i'd prefer something that was more 'full range' lke the dt770's. the mixcubes are designed to show you what your mix will sound like on a crappy elevator, or resturant/retail store speaker. i wouldn't trust them to have the accuacy necessary for tracking (like clicks/pops/noises) or 'getting sounds' where small adjustments can make big differnces. stranger things have happened.

4. the biggest differnce i can imagine is how the kick develops, snare definition, and cymbal harsness. you may find in the smaller room the kick is either boomy, or sounds like your hitting a piece of paper. the snare will probably be okay in a tame small room, and if you let the snare ring a bit, it can sound really nice in a tight room. watch out for nasty cymbals in an untreated concrete room. couple blankets could help alot.

Thank You.
So I ended up recording the drums in my big living room, and wow drums sound so much better in that big untreated room than my small treated studio room that its crazy and I never want to record drums in a room that isn't either large or acoustically designed.

Here's what it looked like.. (Notice the room mics up on the loft and the iso boot that I never knew I had. haha)
I also got called to engineer a record at a local pro studio with a great professionally designed live room and control room and now I realize rooms are pretty much everything.
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bingo!

Ain't it amazing what room volume does??

I wasn't kiddin' about putting those mic's up there, was I??

MadMax, post: 406566 wrote: bingo!

Ain't it amazing what room volume does??

I wasn't kiddin' about putting those mic's up there, was I??

So amazing! This past week was life changing for me.. I've been trying to get truly pro drum sounds out of my small shity little room for so long, with the naive mindset that with enough room treatment my room could have the acoustic properties of a large room but a wall is a wall and a small room with treatment is still a small room with treatment. It's not to say that I didn't get drum sounds out of that crapy little room that could pass as professional sounding cause i did but my room made me work allot harder for it and the end result still isnt or will ever be as good as starting in the right place. I don't regret working so hard for 10 years in my little studio because I really forced me to learn my craft with mic placement, mic choice, ect... However now I'm at a crossroads cause I have all these top notch mics, pres, converters in a room that doesn't justify having such nice equipment, i can't afford to build a pro studio, so I feel like I should sale all my gear and focus on being a musician. Help!

so maybe the smaller room with treatment can be your mix room and use the "natural" rooms and "iso booth" as-is going forward? SAF obtained of course. :)

gullfo, post: 406581 wrote: so maybe the smaller room with treatment can be your mix room and use the "natural" rooms and "iso booth" as-is going forward? SAF obtained of course. :)

I've thought about that but that smaller treated room isn't symmetrical

what you have to do is convince your family, that a new living room/kitchen down in the basement would be waaay better for them than, what they have upstairs....

good to hear ya had an 'aha' moment about the integrity of a room. some people never get it. i only figured it out a couple years ago. wouldn't be surprised if your raw tracks sound almost as good/better than your older final tracks. I'd personally love to hear what the drums in the pic sounded like!

fortunately, in a rock setting, drums are the most common thing your gonna need a sweet room for (as far as tracking goes). w/ gtrs, bass, and vocals, electric keys, you can get away w/ smaller deader rooms, and still get good results.

you could just keep using your upstarts for a while if you could. book some drum session time at a local studio w/ a nice room. you could probably get a good discount if you booked down time, and brought your own stuff, they could just have an intern/assistant, make sure nothing bad happened. There are plenty of nightclubs/bars in cities that don't get used except for weekends, who might take some money if you wanted to book some time there, (i had an arrangement in the works w/ a club before i found the studio i use). churches might let use the space for free, VFWs, even function halls.

your particular living room in the pic has a decent amount of stuff going for it as far as cubic footage, and angles and stuff, but i'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find something that was mutually beneficial for you and a room owner. maybe clean up the club, or volunteer some time for some tracking time once in a while. the barter system is good.

you could also send drums out of a set of speakers into the big room/mics and catch some of the natural acoustics, obviously not quite the same as the kit itself interacting, but at least its a real reverb. The initial area you had in your basement was a decent size, it should be a big improvent over your current small room, are you thinking of not doing the basment build anymore? a decent room and an echo chamber down there and you should be rocking pretty good man. it's easily to get bummed. but now you know whats possible, first shot in a living room, you probably have a better idea of what your looking for out of a studio room. also, exile on main street, and the famous when the levy breaks, drums were done in houses, (well mansions), by creative people. It'd be kinda crappy to hear "yeah, i quit recording cuz i got the best drum sound i ever got last week". lol. it's obviously up to you, but i'd try to be positive about it, and take the experience to help you in the future, instead of dwelling on what you don't have.

P.s Don't be shy w/ those audio posts!!!!

kmetal, post: 406597 wrote: what you have to do is convince your family, that a new living room/kitchen down in the basement would be waaay better for them than, what they have upstairs....

good to hear ya had an 'aha' moment about the integrity of a room. some people never get it. i only figured it out a couple years ago. wouldn't be surprised if your raw tracks sound almost as good/better than your older final tracks. I'd personally love to hear what the drums in the pic sounded like!

fortunately, in a rock setting, drums are the most common thing your gonna need a sweet room for (as far as tracking goes). w/ gtrs, bass, and vocals, electric keys, you can get away w/ smaller deader rooms, and still get good results.

you could just keep using your upstarts for a while if you could. book some drum session time at a local studio w/ a nice room. you could probably get a good discount if you booked down time, and brought your own stuff, they could just have an intern/assistant, make sure nothing bad happened. There are plenty of nightclubs/bars in cities that don't get used except for weekends, who might take some money if you wanted to book some time there, (i had an arrangement in the works w/ a club before i found the studio i use). churches might let use the space for free, VFWs, even function halls.

your particular living room in the pic has a decent amount of stuff going for it as far as cubic footage, and angles and stuff, but i'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find something that was mutually beneficial for you and a room owner. maybe clean up the club, or volunteer some time for some tracking time once in a while. the barter system is good.

you could also send drums out of a set of speakers into the big room/mics and catch some of the natural acoustics, obviously not quite the same as the kit itself interacting, but at least its a real reverb. The initial area you had in your basement was a decent size, it should be a big improvent over your current small room, are you thinking of not doing the basment build anymore? a decent room and an echo chamber down there and you should be rocking pretty good man. it's easily to get bummed. but now you know whats possible, first shot in a living room, you probably have a better idea of what your looking for out of a studio room. also, exile on main street, and the famous when the levy breaks, drums were done in houses, (well mansions), by creative people. It'd be kinda crappy to hear "yeah, i quit recording cuz i got the best drum sound i ever got last week". lol. it's obviously up to you, but i'd try to be positive about it, and take the experience to help you in the future, instead of dwelling on what you don't have.

P.s Don't be shy w/ those audio posts!!!!

If only it was possible to convince my family to let me make the living room my tracking room, not going to happen though.

You are correct, these raw new tracks recording in my living room sound way better than the old final tracks in the small treated room, Night and Day.

Heres a clip of the drums http://themidaslab.bandcamp.com/track/drum-sampler-sonsapapa

I will definitely track drums in a pro studio from now on, when the budget supports it.

I'm still going to build the new basement studio :] Leave the pro studio idea with the pro studios.

Thank you, sir.. Realistically I could never give up on recording but this past week was the first time I thought of it, due to fully realizing the
major importance of acoustics, it was very daunting.

Concerning my new basement studio:
The approach is to stay close to optimal dimensions, and to make as many walls non-paralell as possible for both the live room and control room.
Very excited to have something decent and a nice home studio :]
Looking to get my live room to have the acoustic vibe of the live room at Pink Duck Studios (shown at 1:50), the dimensions don't look too far off from what I have to work with, so thats a practical expectation, right?
Can anyone say for sure if the panels in ceiling are fiberglass absorption panels or regular "acoustic" panels? Or any other helpful observations to sort of mimic this room shown?

Here's my plan, with keeping optimal dimensions in mind and non parallel walls. http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm150/ch-holt/NewStudioLayout.jpg
I realize that I made another diagram instead of a sketchup but I honestly dont have time to learn sketchup, nor the time to build something with it (14 hr work days).
What do you think? Any input would be appreciated..

glad to hear your still planning on the home studio. The drums tracks sound nice on these shoddy laptop speakers, good work man, nice to hear you not overblowing your levels, and leaving headroom. first chance i get i'll listen on some nice phones or speakers, my setup is all boxed up right now, and my phones are loaned out.

i personally couldn't tell really how big homme's studio was but it looked very achievable in a basement setup, and just me guessing, but i think you could achieve something similar. his ceilings didn't look really that high, maybe 3-4 feet above the door. it's impossible to tell how the ceiling was constructed as far as whether the walls just go up to the buildings ceiling, and the drop ceiling is below that, or if each room has it's own set of ceiling joists, resting on each rooms walls. w/ people living above ceiling is definitely a concern.

as far as i could tell, those ceiling tiles looked like typical grid tiles to me. not even the 'acoustic' grid tiles which are the same material, but have a very bumpy texture, but that's speculation cuz i couldn't really see all that clearly.

usually anytime i've seen fiberglass absorbtion panels they are covered in fabric, so that's what i'm guessing off of. i have seen grid tiles that are basically made of thin fiberglass like a 1/2 inch, and covered w/ a thin white plyable plastic, but i don't think your talking about those, and i would tend to think that the typical use of them would be for thermal reasons over acoustical reasons. like if an office had high ceilings above a drop ceiling, it could help keep the hot/cold in/out, instead of putting rolls of insulation on the grid, then the typical tiles.

i'm not an acoustical expert by any means, but the layout looked pretty cool on the tracking part, i just wonder what that does to the control room in terms of size.

I would definitely go with B... well that is just me...
It'd be easier to control everything and your own equipment wouldn't get in the way..
Just my opinion though

Hello everyone, I'm back on after much researching and reading Rod's book from front to back multiple times and studying chapters in the Master Handbook of Acoustics, fantastic books!
I wish I would have read them a long time ago before posting this thread, to avoid the highly uneducated questions I asked in previously in this thread, my apologies.

The only questions I have now are as fallows..

1. I understand the basic concept of a RFZ design control room but I don't understand how to design the geometry for one.
The MHOA book touches on the subject but doesn't go into detail on how correctly angle the walls and ceiling to create a RFZ.
Where do I learn this?

2. The space I have available to build in for my "live room" is 9ft ceiling X 24ft long X 19 ft wide
Golden ratio gets the closest to taking full advantage of the cubic footage at 9 X 23.56 X 14.56 at 3087 CBFT.
This creates more even/uniform spaced LF modes (67, 62, 61, 47, 45, 38, 23)

If I were to take up the full cubic footage available (9X24X19) my LF modes change to (62, 59, 55, 47, 37, 29, 23)
and my CBFT goes from 3087 to 4104 gaining 1017 cubic feet.
So my question is do I compromise 1017 cubic footage for better LF modes?
Or do I compromise LF modes for a room with bigger cubic footage?

BZZZZZZZT!

Sorry, wrong answer...

I'll give you an A for effort, and a C for execution of the exercise.

If you fart in a room, you've actually added potentially instantaneous rapidly expanding air turbulance that can distort the perfect balance of sinusoidal reverberant decay.

Look, in a tracking room, does your room suk? Yes or no is the correct answer.

In a tracking room, I can make it a standard practice that I only need 20 watts of bass amp and I drive everyone out of the room, or I can make a piano cry, or whatever my limitations are in regards to what will be captured in the room.

If you're doing voice overs for a soup commercial, it's not the same if you're recording a 12 piece keltic stone cold metal ensemble with 6 percussionists. Know your client. What is gonna come walking through the door?

Golden Ratios are an inexact artform that is not open for debate. There's a little thing called a wallet that by nature determines the reality.

Are you sure you wanna give up 7.5" of wall space? Or loose 11" of ceiling height here, to gain 3" over there?

Every tracking room will have it's own character... or at least in my opinion, it should. Why else would you make a live recording space?

If you luck into a golden ratio as you design your room... bully for you!... otherwise, understand every precious square inch you have and figure out what you need to do to optimize it's character.

Golden Ratios belongs in the hall of fame of shit people learn and latch onto the wrong side of. It's a GUIDELINE... The ideal that only comes in purpose built facilities. After that, you're on your own to discover where the actual frequency response is, throughout the room.

I do a LOT of drum recording... and my clients are happy as hell, most of the time. If they don't listen to my advise, that's their problem. Not mine.

My room is fortunate to have one of the best sounding Hammond/Leslie combinations that sounds like all that a big brown swirly box can deliver. The room accentuates that from the position of the Leslie within the room. The baby grand sounds the way she does, because of the environment in which she sits. Bass guitar amps sound great when they're stuck in the back wall wedge that creates a nice area for the amp to bloom into the room.

So, take that golden ratio stuff with tracking rooms and give it a golden shower. Go for sonic character, you'll be glad you did.

Next thing to do is define with much accuracy what it is you are doing with this space.

"I am recording music" will not help me.

What type, what hours, what are the expectations of isolation. But if isolation is not a question then never-mind.

Still, more cubic volume overall is the way to go but understanding what your frequency issues are you can still keep the room usable. Basically you could chop up that room to a cube, but knowing the ways out of and around the acoustic issues is where you benefit.

So the easy answer is, yes keep all the room volume. The more detailed answer would go to the question "what is it you expect from this room overall?"

A reflection free zone is pretty well spelled out. A typical setup will have walls canted/angled at 6 degrees, total of 12+/- degrees for both walls to either the left or right of the listening position. The ceiling does not have to be modified, you could use an overhead cloud to achieve the effect.

You can change the geometry of the room but we are now talking isolation and I am almost certain you are not moving in that direction. This would be a room-in-room (mass-air-mass) assembly.

Max & Space, thank you!

Thanks for making me realize I was being too critical on room ratios for my tracking room.
So basically just make it as big as possible, avoid making it a cube, use different types of treatment and different materials with different acoustic properties on each wall?

Okay, let me fill you in.
Allot has changed, and I've changed my mind on isolation..
Same place I'll be building at, however I'll be doing two "room within room" rooms, one control room and one tracking room. I'll be making them air tight, and using two layers of 5/8 gypsum on each wall, maybe not all the walls of the control room though?
The room I was addressing on fallowing ratios will be the tracking room, in that room ill
be recording small and large acoustic drum kits, electric guitar amps, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, vocals, small 3-5 piece live jazz ensembles.

Expectations:

Control Room: As flat as possible frequency response for the 8x12x17 ft room.

Tracking Room: Sound good for drums, I'm not expecting it to sound like one of blackbirds tracking rooms but just as good as a 9X19x23 room can sound.

Im im not expecting world class acoustics..

Im working on a scetchup of the layout

i sit about as high as the dirt floor on the totem pole of acoustics, but i'm thinking about this. with regard to isolation, usually there is a 'shell' layer, and an, uh, 'finish'? layer. the shell is usually a heavy duty surround, in some sort of a rectangular form. so you maximize the area w/ a big massive rectangular thing, and the fill in the rest w/ the inner workings which could commonly consist of rigid fiberglass, fabric, wood, stones, and glass. that's where your basic ratio type things interact w/ your final results. i think. but recording rooms and mix rooms differ after the shell stage. i think a shell's job is to define physical boundaries, and iso values, and provide the 'canvas' of what is to be done.

so, now it's leafs. to me, the shell would be the entire area you have. so that would be reinforcing the structure that is going to house these individual rooms. so if it's a basement, your shell is the foundation walls, floor, and basement ceiling. the weakpoint is the basement ceiling. pretty good strong point is the basement floor. so lets just say no mass, or fancy floating, digging, is gonna happen to your basement floor. (which i'll guess is a concrete slab 6" thick?) that is what your maximum TL value is likely to be, w/ your foundation walls a close second, except the whole house likely flanks (touches) to the walls, so they'll probably move (vibrate, transmit sound) a bit more than the slab floor.

so for some sort of imaginary ideal shell (to build your w/in rooms in) you have the equivalent of your foundation floor all around you. again this is far from any sort of plan.

w/ in this very quiet area, you now define each room. a concrete floor in this case is great, and unless your gonna go thru some rock star level stuff, you could probably build your new walls/ceiling for each of your two new rooms on that and be fine. (all things permitting)

so its just a matter of iso between the rooms, and i always (in brain) consider ceilings just another wall.. so you've got this shell that mimics your thickest concrete foundation up down left right.

this is when you determine the outline of your rooms, which i guess would be a wood framed couple rooms. so you plan those, add all the drywall, screws, electrical outlets/conduit, ventilation, cooling, silicone,doors/seals. i've seen people spend like a hundred bucks on silicone cualking for a single window, don't be dismayed, 500 bucks for caulking is not close to un-reasonable.

this is totally where the relationship between the innner/outer shells, and 'treatment' 'finish work' comes into an acoustical puzzle i have yet to have a formula to. physics doesn't have a 'pleasing' variable. so w/ you r control room, math and planning and hopefully some luck, w/ get ya accurate, but there is more to the art than i know. w/ recording rooms, luck and basic principals will help. but if you saw anything from those frequency distribution charts in the handbook, recording rooms are far from flat.

i dunno beyond the basics how to make a 'good' recording room. my most successful drum room is pretty small but adheres to basics, non parelell walls, selective use of absorbtion/reflection materials, and an adjacent hallway that contributes to the sound of the 'room'. it was certainly a case of 'eh should be ok' 'hopefully', and it is. if it were my room
i'd still be adding certain things to mellow it out, but not my choice, and the small-is drum room goes boom. after working on the drum tuning/room channel eq/micing, i've found some decent stuff, but i want big and smooth, and i have failed to make it smooth enough yet.

but the basics of iso, were not compromised. a massive shell, two leaf construction. the weak point for is the doors lack of added mass. it is consistently able to record rock bands live, w/ excellent iso making the recording. since the mics aren't picking it up, it's not a recording problem for the engineers. (love the 441 for scratch vocs. great directionality/rejection)

all this talk, and what about your climate control. i've seen dude's dripping sweat outa the booth. uncomfortable clients are not happy clients.

you need to heat and cool this place. effectively (for sound) and efficiently (for rent). i've learned from others personally on this. i'd straight up use a mackie 8 bus if it meant i could have adequte climate control for me, and the people. this, in itself is such an integral part. it starts to determine construction details, budget re-evals, design considerations. there are many ways, but if you ignore basic comfort, your never gonna get away from basic discomfort. as a drummer especially, you must know this.

just some total brainstorming for me man, it's cool to see some thought being tossed around.

Tracking rooms are not specifically defined by ratios.
You do consider room volume, however.

What you do in a control room and what you do in a tracking room are different and for good reason.
A control room is defined from a balanced approached. No matter how it is done the human head and our ears must be part of the goal you lean towards.

You are developing a room that takes the sound it receives and finely tunes it so that the human ear(s) can hear clearly and make decisions based on this clarity.

A tracking room is different. You will find many things, like non-parallel walls, non flat ceilings and the attention required to make certain that the reverb time of either room is different. A control room would have a shorter reverb time and a tracking room the longer of the two. At no time do you want to design rooms with the same times in respect to room reverb, especially tracking rooms and the control room that monitors it.

If you develop isolated rooms and then you treat the rooms then you can get close to what your goal is. As long as you take every detail into account BEFORE you build not WHILE you do it.

"I'll be making them air tight, and using two layers of 5/8 gypsum on each wall, maybe not all the walls of the control room though?"

Again, where ever your walls have the least amount of mass this will be the weak link. It will be essentially an acoustic hole in the wall that allows more sound in/out. So if you choose to use 2 layers on walls, then you do so on ALL the walls or you are not going to get what you predict because the basic premise of mass/air/mass would be modified with a reduction in TL/Isolation/bang-4-the-buck/happiness.

Okay, got it! Thank you guys

Couple more questions on my control room design..

To acquire a RFZ design control room the only shaping needed is angling the left and right walls 6 degrees? I'm confused, in the MHOA (pg363) is shows an example of a rfz control room and there's multiple angles, they were also able to calculate where the rfz would be, how'd they do that?
Also, it shows the monitors soffit mounted, which is required to obtain a true rfz design, where you're not relying in absorption to create the rfz, right?
I'm trying to rap my brain around designing a rfz control room with my three way Adam A77X's soffit mounted..

ChrisH, post: 408238 wrote: Okay, got it! Thank you guys

Couple more questions on my control room design..

To acquire a RFZ design control room the only shaping needed is angling the left and right walls 6 degrees? I'm confused, in the MHOA (pg363) is shows an example of a rfz control room and there's multiple angles, they were also able to calculate where the rfz would be, how'd they do that?

Geometry, math and a coupla' pots of hot coffee.

Also, it shows the monitors soffit mounted, which is required to obtain a true rfz design, where you're not relying in absorption to create the rfz, right?
I'm trying to rap my brain around designing a rfz control room with my three way Adam A77X's soffit mounted..

Yes, and No...

OK... so you want an RFZ... and how big is this zone supposed to be?

Why do you want an RFZ? Have you been in one for any length of time?

Do you have a budget?

If so, you just shot it to hell and back.... cause if you screw up and don't catch a flanking path until the end?!? Dood... Go for it if you've got big brass ones... an RFZ was WAY more than my wallet and nerves could stand to endure.

They're pretty rooms to be in. They're great rooms to work in once you get oriented. But the extra cuts, moulding and framing translates to a buttload of sawdust if I'm doing the cutting... otherwise, figure $3.00/board cut. With probably over 600 cuts... that's $9k just for the labor to cut the wood... plus the wood... and then fit and finish.

Call me cheap, but what I have is MORE than adequate for +/-1.5db from 40-800Hz... and it's a natural sound room that no one feels uncomfortable listening anywhere but the extreme corners of the room. Prolly cost 30% less than an RFZ, half as long to finish... and I reduced my risk of screwing up the room. It's not that you can't do it... you can... Just be damned careful doing it. In this day and age, if you can afford to piss away as much (and more) as I did... and feel comfortable about tossing that much do$h down a hole... The God love ya!... and I wanna see the pix!!

If you've got mad carpenter skills, you'll do OK. Otherwise, you better learn how to check and test all the assemblies from the ground up. Cause there's one thing that will screw you up.. and that's a flanking pathway. Regardless of what type of room, it's use, etc... You wouldn't purposely put a 3" PVC pipe from the middle of the tracking room, through the middle of a wall and have the other end right in the sweet spot. The nasty reality is that you can very easily end up with flanking paths that will transmit sound energy as if it were in a pipe... maybe not 3"... but certainly a 1"-1.5" pipe.

Seriously... establish how much money can you afford to bleed... then multiply that by 3... There's what it's gonna cost you. Have A Nice Day thumb

Alright, so an RFZ design is out of the question, I definitely can't afford it.
Basically I'm going to semi-pro route, since I don't have a pro amount of space, or pro budget, and after all it is just a home studio, now matter what.
For the control room I'm just going to do a LEDE type design with rfz created by absorption, and QRD diffusers on the back wall.
Its going to be two rectangular "room within rooms", I may not even do a window looking into the live room, since my budget is so tight.

happen to be around a remodel project on a LEDE room (which is professional, and had quite a few platinum and gold records mixed there), and it seems pretty involved, design wise. i'm not trying to discourage you or anything, it just seems like LEDE is pretty elaborate.

to give a quick idea of this place, it's about 9.5 tall 22ft wide, and 19ft long, and has no parallel walls on the interior 'finish side', except the 8ft front where the window is, and the same 8ft or rear wall, which is eventually going to be a QRD.. and a sloped ceiling. the front half is completely dead, the rear half (ceiling and all) consists of slat resonators. and behind the rear is 2, 4ft deep bass traps on either side, tuned to different frequencies.

since the room is really too small for actual diffusion, i tend to call it radiation, or reflection pattern. so essentially the relationship between the angles of the the live side, the bass absorption due to the spaces between the slats, and the bass trapping are all working together to help create the frequency response. the amount of reflective/absorptive are working together to create a neutral sense of reverb time, at the sweet spot.

i didn't design the room, or really look too much into the design criteria just because this particular task was to basically stick w/ what was there as far as design, just reface it for the modern era (studio was finished in '82).

so while the bass trapping/slat spacing is probably pretty straight-forward, my questions remain in how to effectively scatter the sound. to me it seems like your using phase cancellation, and comb filtering to balance the room response. which to me seems really really delicate. but even behind the slats, there is stuff going on in the cavity itself to aid the tuning, mainly the relationship between reflection/absorption.

heres a couple pics of the old place (the new remodel looks much better thanks to an excellent luthier who helped with the new slat situation.

i really suggest that you contact someone like rod gervais, or dan zellman (who designed this particular studio) on something like this, because i just don't know that it's easy, nor cheap (the new slats consisted of 300 1x'sx8's) so at roughly $10 a pop, thats 3 grand, just for the surface material. never-mind the time/saw blades it took to do the custom beveling/ripping on each one. if you figure 1,000 sqf of rigid fiberglass, which is roughly whats in the back section thats about $12-1500, another 500 for fabric. that's a 5k back section alone, never-mind the framing, and drywall. another 100 on nails/screws/stain thats looking more like 7k easy, for the back wall! and that does not include paying anyone to install the stuff...

the window, which you may omit, 2k for glass, another grand, give or take for the rest of the components, caulking, was at least 100 bucks. again just materials.

again man, not trying to discourage you, i don't help out on these places cuz i have the money to build my own, i just happen to be minimally capable to make things look finished professionally (albiet pretty slowly sometimes).

i mean why not just plan something basic, and more predictable. like some super chunk bass traps, a ceiling cloud over the mix spot, some panels on the sides at the mirror points, a few more on the front wall, and a combo of diffuser/absorption on the rear?

if i wasn't making a dream studio (going all out/never recouping the initial cost) then thats what i'd do personally, fwiw. again keep it simple man. these grandiose elaborate expensive designs weren't really thought up for basements and questionable level carpentry, or for material cost/efficiency.

besides acoustics, you've got some seriously problematic things. mainly heating/cooling, and electirical. the best designed room/equipment is only gonna make a pesky buzz more audible. and this stuff ain't cheap either. you could luck out and just a couple new fuses / wire runs do the trick. or, you might not. figure your electrical along w/ your framing phase at least. or, since electrical is arguabliy more important, maybe frame w/in your electrical plan.

so if it's not apparent, your budget (then x3) and your time (x5) will determine really as much as the physical constraints, what, and how your room will be made.

then you have operating costs. it was roughly 1,800 bucks for three months of pro level cooling, which means it was cold and very quiet, to the point were you could not hear it much if at all, when the air was running.

i'd look into the best way to incorporate two of those ductless mini split systems. i like em cuz they have a tiny penetration into the wall, and they do heat and ac. i honestly haven't incorporated them into a studio yet, but if i were making my project studio, i'd be trying to figure out how to incorporate them. and i'm gonna be looking into it heavily for this upcoming summer, for one of the studios i'm at.

so i'm sure you've been weighing these designs to figure out your ballpark budget, it's time to start defining how much really could be available. stupid things end up costng money, like a desk, and light fixtures, floor covering, and chairs for people, a mini fridge, all this crap that isn't 'studio' until all the sudden you need it. and what i've found is those things aren't put into the budget initally cuz people get so hung up on the cost of entry for materials. then they forget about conduit, and nails, and caulking at 6 bucks a tube for silicone, it adds the f up.

if i were gonna throw a number at you for what i think might be feasible for you based only on this, and you intenet to not make something bogus, i'd say 50-65k. which is about 2x a 25k type basic build. but who knows.

one if the things i keep meaning to do (which i actually started a year or 2 ago) was figure a general per sqf studio cost spreadsheet. which i basically started breaking every element commonly used in basic studio construction down on a sqf basis and adding it up. but i think in general your looking at between 20-95 per sqf on the extremes, and between 30-50 in the general. one day, i'll actually have a cool calculater spreadsheet thing, when i get motivated to do so, and or have the time. but i did enough to count those as realistic-ish.

oh right audio wire runs. i recently used mogami snakes of various incarnations, and bulk canare. i don't solder well, so somebody better than i did the connections, but damn, that adds to your footage. access points, patch bays. it gets busy real fast. i'd allocate 24ch to main room, and disperse the rest to all the adjacent areas.

Attached files

Kmetal, thank you!

All these elaborate designs are way way way out of my budget.
With my space I think I'd be best to just build one large combination tracking/mixing room (5565 Cubic feet).
It makes sense to me to go that route considering If I split the space up I would either end up with a small 1500 cubic ft control room and a 3300 cubic ft tracking room or vice versa, either way I'd be making a sonic sacrifice that way. Or maybe I should just save my pennys, build a large rectangle for a control room and track at a pro studio? That'd be pain though.. Man I'm in a pickle

ChrisH, post: 408307 wrote: Kmetal, thank you!

All these elaborate designs are way way way out of my budget.
With my space I think I'd be best to just build one large combination tracking/mixing room (5565 Cubic feet).
It makes sense to me to go that route considering If I split the space up I would either end up with a small 1500 cubic ft control room and a 3300 cubic ft tracking room or vice versa, either way I'd be making a sonic sacrifice that way. Or maybe I should just save my pennys, build a large rectangle for a control room and track at a pro studio? That'd be pain though.. Man I'm in a pickle

Not being a complete goober here... I was really serious when I mentioned your budget... as in... What IS your budget?

The amount of cash you have is best spent on the greatest bang for the buck you can get.

My budget is $10,000

Not to grill you... but make you seriously aware of it all... I'm not kidding... it WILL take 3x your budget, if you don't account for every single screw, nail, foort of wire, outlet, staple, tube of glue, etc...

So, if $10k is your "drop dead" budget, as in, your spouse will kill you if you spend over $10k, then make your "working" budget $3000.

Ar $3000, my guess is you're saying to yourself... "Now what do I do?"

You price lumber, gypsum, nails, caulk, 703, R13, R19, R30, Prehung Solid Core Metal Doors, and a Mitsubishi Mini-Split that will heat/cool 6000 Cu ft. Stick all that in a spreadsheet.

Get yourself a copy of TurboCad or Sketchup and get so meticulous in your drawings that you can count the number of studs, joists and cripples you'll need. Then, as you finish off a wall, put the counts of material in the spreadsheet and when you hit your limit... you now have a plan of action.

Next, contact contractors for the work you cannot do yourself and get pricing... but generally, don't go with the cheapest bit. Enter these figures into your spreadsheet.

At some point, you'll account for everything you can think of, and you'll know how much this whole thing is gonna cost... So, then contact whatever department in your municipality handles permits, and pull your permits and have it all inspected as you build. (Probably the single most important tip, next to your design.)

As far as your design... If you're going to go "one room studio", which is a perfectly fine way to work with >4000 cu ft, (IMHO), rather than splaying wall vertically, you really only need eliminate parallel walls.. and you can do that with angles less than 3 degrees.

Generally, simpler is easier, and cheaper and that usually yields a better build.

MadMax, post: 408337 wrote:
As far as your design... If you're going to go "one room studio", which is a perfectly fine way to work with >4000 cu ft, (IMHO), rather than splaying wall vertically, you really only need eliminate parallel walls.. and you can do that with angles less than 3 degrees.

I was under the understanding that you had to angle one wall 12 degrees or both walls 6 degrees?

Who sez?

Last I checked, I had the freedom to do just about anything I wanted to with my own property... After that, I think I'm pretty much capable of some of my own logical thinking.

Look... it's pretty simple math....

PARALLEL WALLS CREATE STANDING WAVE PATTERNS WE CALL FLUTTER ECHO.

If they aren't parallel... guess what?!?!?

Take any angle and extend it... How long do you have to extend a wall at 45 degrees to move it 2 feet?
How long can you extend a wall at 1.5 degrees to move it 2 feet?
What about 4 feet?

Now think about how much square footage you give up when you move walls?

Don't get me wrong... you can use parallel walls... You just have a bit more work to do to treat the surfaces and make it look decent.... if aesthetics matter that much to you.... and yes, there are plenty of pleasing rooms that are made with parallel walls. You just need to make the decision of whether you can/want/need to take advantage of any particular design element in such a way that the dollar investment is clearly worth the expense.

IOW... you wanna make sure you're getting some bang for your buck.

Every stick of wood, every nail and screw costs something.Every design element has a cost associated with it. Whether it be a corner, a bass trap, a section of wall, an air vent, window or door - in that the more elements or complexity of the design, the more it's going to cost per sq ft of floor space. Your budget is there to fund those costs.

So, you take an angle of 6 degrees and apply that angle across 20 feet... Sure looks like it chews up a lot of space to me... but doesn't leave me with anything leftover that's none too usable, either.

All you really need is a 1-3 degree angle difference to prevent flutter... or you can use (oddly enough) 1-3" of rigid insulation/mineral wool panels on parallel walls to achieve the same thing.

MadMax, post: 408379 wrote: Who sez?

Last I checked, I had the freedom to do just about anything I wanted to with my own property... After that, I think I'm pretty much capable of some of my own logical thinking.

Look... it's pretty simple math....

PARALLEL WALLS CREATE STANDING WAVE PATTERNS WE CALL FLUTTER ECHO.

If they aren't parallel... guess what?!?!?

Take any angle and extend it... How long do you have to extend a wall at 45 degrees to move it 2 feet?
How long can you extend a wall at 1.5 degrees to move it 2 feet?
What about 4 feet?

Now think about how much square footage you give up when you move walls?

Don't get me wrong... you can use parallel walls... You just have a bit more work to do to treat the surfaces and make it look decent.... if aesthetics matter that much to you.... and yes, there are plenty of pleasing rooms that are made with parallel walls. You just need to make the decision of whether you can/want/need to take advantage of any particular design element in such a way that the dollar investment is clearly worth the expense.

IOW... you wanna make sure you're getting some bang for your buck.

Every stick of wood, every nail and screw costs something.Every design element has a cost associated with it. Whether it be a corner, a bass trap, a section of wall, an air vent, window or door - in that the more elements or complexity of the design, the more it's going to cost per sq ft of floor space. Your budget is there to fund those costs.

So, you take an angle of 6 degrees and apply that angle across 20 feet... Sure looks like it chews up a lot of space to me... but doesn't leave me with anything leftover that's none too usable, either.

All you really need is a 1-3 degree angle difference to prevent flutter... or you can use (oddly enough) 1-3" of rigid insulation/mineral wool panels on parallel walls to achieve the same thing.

Well... Awesome! I didn't know that, I gave up on non parelell walls after reading that the degree on the angle needed to be 12 degree minimum and that did eat up wayyyyy too much space but now that I know that minimum angles will do the trick, I'd much rather angle the walls than using absorption or diffusion. I think drums need a big bright room to be recorded in, so if there's too much absorption you get a dull sounding room.

ChrisH, post: 408374 wrote: I was under the understanding that you had to angle one wall 12 degrees or both walls 6 degrees?

Prolly the mainest thing is that you have so much acoustical related build information in your head at this point but no education. As a matter of pure truth there is not one thing that can be said that cannot be altered in some other fashion to achieve the same goal.

This is most often refered to as "compromise" but can go under several names depending on who it is that is saying the thing.

Someone mentioned up-topic that he would have to test the room and then start from there. That is one way but not a "go to" when we consider the room. A bedroom in this case.

You could give the dimensions of the room and explain what is in it at the moment and at least 3 more here outside of myself can explain to you where you are in the frequency spectrum, what the trouble spots are going to be and what you would need to do in order to overcome these issue.

In the "Master Handbook of Acoustics" the Author uses "5%" as a method of canting/angling walls to add modest diffusion, remove flutter echo while not removing modal issues at least pushing the frequency issues down. So there is yet another determination of what can be down in respect to wall angles, although we consider the Author, Mr. Everest, as the expert.

Room ratios, I think we hit on those already, simply another stumbling block on the road to sonic Nirvana in the mind of the over-instructed. They simply do not matter as much as one thinks since it is like the glue that holds the frame together. The glue is important but the entire "picture" has to be considered or you just have a bag full of parts with no sonic experience or visual appeal.

And Max has touched on this part. If this is a do it yourself project...you have to continue to get educated in the other trades persons craft as much as you are willing to actually hands on do. But talking to those educated as said trades persons cannot go without saying. Reading about a thing and DOING the same thing can produce completely different results if you are not experienced in a multitude of crafts and have thought the design aspect of the project out to the last nail.

You would not expect to build your home without a well thought out/proven plan would you? You would want to know the final cost as near as possible in advance would you not?

This is where confidence comes from. Because you will need confidence of a clear project path, design and costs in order to make even the smallest step or you start to DOUBT, and doubt never comes to any good.

So as I see it, Max has shown the same inclination, you can produce a "ModifiedLiveEnd/ModifiedDeadEnd" which would allow you the convenience of having a mixing/control area at one end and a tracking area at the other end. If done correctly you would have wall mounted and or stand mounted hard-faced reflective and the reverse side would be soft-backed absorbing to assist in the tuning of the room given the desired use for the room at the time.

The entire room could be used as a tracking room while recording if you think out ever little thing. Like the computer box. It needs to be OUT of the mic path but NOT bound up so much that it is difficult to access or runs the potential to overheat. But fan noise has to be removed not stuck in a corner. Because as we have learned, sticking things in the corner increases the loudness of said thing by as much as 6dB.

So the limits to what can or cannot be achieved that some have presented in this thread are the limits of the one that posted. There are no limits. There is how much physical space the user has and how much money the user is willing to throw at his or her project.

Everything else is compromise. Everything.

From the choice of do I continue to educate myself or do I hire a designer? Do I install the main framing or do I sub it out? Do I use damping compound (green glue) on my ceiling/wall assembly panels or do I add another layer of mass instead and live with the not as low frequency transmission loss?

Compromise, it's not a bad word, it is another tool for your toolbag.

THIS!!!!

Space, post: 408381 wrote: Prolly the mainest thing is that you have so much acoustical related build information in your head at this point but no education. As a matter of pure truth there is not one thing that can be said that cannot be altered in some other fashion to achieve the same goal.

This is most often refered to as "compromise" but can go under several names depending on who it is that is saying the thing.

Someone mentioned up-topic that he would have to test the room and then start from there. That is one way but not a "go to" when we consider the room. A bedroom in this case.

You could give the dimensions of the room and explain what is in it at the moment and at least 3 more here outside of myself can explain to you where you are in the frequency spectrum, what the trouble spots are going to be and what you would need to do in order to overcome these issue.

In the "Master Handbook of Acoustics" the Author uses "5%" as a method of canting/angling walls to add modest diffusion, remove flutter echo while not removing modal issues at least pushing the frequency issues down. So there is yet another determination of what can be down in respect to wall angles, although we consider the Author, Mr. Everest, as the expert.

Room ratios, I think we hit on those already, simply another stumbling block on the road to sonic Nirvana in the mind of the over-instructed. They simply do not matter as much as one thinks since it is like the glue that holds the frame together. The glue is important but the entire "picture" has to be considered or you just have a bag full of parts with no sonic experience or visual appeal.

And Max has touched on this part. If this is a do it yourself project...you have to continue to get educated in the other trades persons craft as much as you are willing to actually hands on do. But talking to those educated as said trades persons cannot go without saying. Reading about a thing and DOING the same thing can produce completely different results if you are not experienced in a multitude of crafts and have thought the design aspect of the project out to the last nail.

You would not expect to build your home without a well thought out/proven plan would you? You would want to know the final cost as near as possible in advance would you not?

This is where confidence comes from. Because you will need confidence of a clear project path, design and costs in order to make even the smallest step or you start to DOUBT, and doubt never comes to any good.

So as I see it, Max has shown the same inclination, you can produce a "ModifiedLiveEnd/ModifiedDeadEnd" which would allow you the convenience of having a mixing/control area at one end and a tracking area at the other end. If done correctly you would have wall mounted and or stand mounted hard-faced reflective and the reverse side would be soft-backed absorbing to assist in the tuning of the room given the desired use for the room at the time.

The entire room could be used as a tracking room while recording if you think out ever little thing. Like the computer box. It needs to be OUT of the mic path but NOT bound up so much that it is difficult to access or runs the potential to overheat. But fan noise has to be removed not stuck in a corner. Because as we have learned, sticking things in the corner increases the loudness of said thing by as much as 6dB.

So the limits to what can or cannot be achieved that some have presented in this thread are the limits of the one that posted. There are no limits. There is how much physical space the user has and how much money the user is willing to throw at his or her project.

Everything else is compromise. Everything.

From the choice of do I continue to educate myself or do I hire a designer? Do I install the main framing or do I sub it out? Do I use damping compound (green glue) on my ceiling/wall assembly panels or do I add another layer of mass instead and live with the not as low frequency transmission loss?

Compromise, it's not a bad word, it is another tool for your toolbag.

One of the most well put opinions on opinions Brien! Well said.

The decision to open your wallet and PURPOSELY pour cash out really isn't that smart of a decision, and should only be made with the clear conscience of knowing that it's potentially going to cost you more in the long run if you cheap out, than if you actually invest real money.

But what does one call "real money" these days? 10 years ago, I was outraged that a sheet of 3/4" plywood was $9.00... So, you really do have to take inflation into account when creating your budget... 4 years ago-ish, I did 75% of the work myself and built room within a room for a tad over 105.00/sq ft.

Great information, thank you everyone.
I have decided to hire a professional to design my control room.
I've been talking to John Brandt, he's been awesome and I'm looking forward to making this happen.