Laptoppop Studio update is up!

[laptoppop]

Thanks to John Sayers, the latest update on my studio under construction is up on his site:

http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainpage/MP-laptoppop.htm

I'm in the home stretch, and hope to be making music again soon. Of course, I'll be working on trim and polish pieces for months....

Thanks John!
-lee-

[MikeA]

I'm curious though; What type of music do you do? I would have thought that the angled ceiling would have been beneficial to you.

[laptoppop]

I record lots of different kinds of music for other folks. Mostly "lighter" stuff - rock, country, bluegrass, folk, brass ensemble -- with a good bit of school choirs and bands and jazz bands thrown into the mix.

I decided to use the triangular area in the ceiling for better deep bass trapping by using bass hangers as opposed to lighter trapping. Its possible lighter trapping would have been fine - I'm a beginner in terms of studio design. John looked it over before I started and seemed to think the plan was OK. Even though I've got the absorbers and the bass hangers up there, I still imagine that I get the advantage of having the non-parallel floor and ceiling.

For mixing, I'm driving the sound into the "tall" end of the room.

-lee-

[Meshuggah]

looks great!

I'm probably way off here, but wont a room like that, in its' current state, give you a lot of high end? (seems like lows and mids are taken care of)

I'm probably terribly wrong tho...

[laptoppop]

I haven't run any tests yet, but its sounding quite good in there.

Remember, my entire ceiling has 4" rigid fiberglass, and I have two 6'x8' panels of 4" fiberglass in the front and back of the room - lots of full bandwidth (including highs) absorbtion. The faces on all the slots are angled (hard to see in the pictures) - so it gives the equivalent of splaying the entire wall in a lot less space. That way, I can have highs in the room without having echos. From what I understand, you really don't want a room to be TOO dead, or else it is not comfortable to be in for long periods of time, and the sound isn't as good as you would want. I'm a rank beginner, but that's my understanding of it.

If it turns out to be too bright, I can always throw a rug down on the floor - high frequencies are the easiest to control, its the bass and mids that are a pain to deal with. I could perhaps even hang tapestries over the resonators. So far though, I really like the sound I'm getting.

-lee-

[Michael Jones]

Very cool!
Looks like you've put in a lot of effort. Things are really taking shape in there.

This weekend is a bust for me on construction. I'm sitting in a hotel room in Detroit, MI as I type this.
Interesting architecture here (The Westin Hotel), its right at the airport, in fact the tarmac is right outside of our window, but you can not even hear the planes. The rooms are touted as being "sound proof" so of course I'm really checking out the construction, at least what I can see of it. Lots of de-coupling from what I can see. Some interesting acoustic treatments on the inside of the lobby too. I'll post some pics later this week. But... cool stuff in here.

Next weekend will see a lot progress in my studio, I hope.

What you've done looks great!
I wish I were that far along.

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Lookin great there Lee. Bet theres some slap echos right now. Ha! But I know it's going to sound great when you get it done. I'm just laying my plan out right now for my temporary studio Be a year before I can start on the final one. Keep us posted. Isn't it amazing what we go through for a dream huh!
fitZ

[John Sayers]

Lookin great there Lee. Bet theres some slap echos right now.

bet there's not

cheers
john

[laptoppop]

Sorry, Rick - John wins this one.

There were HEAVY echos in there when all I had was the blank room. I had added caulked 3/4" plywood and a layer of sheet rock to the walls, so they had a ton of mass - great for stopping sound in/out, but echoes all over the place inside.

The echos were greatly reduced as I put the sound treatment inside the room.

There *were* some last echos in there when I had the heavy solid door right across from the blank heavy wall. Once I put in the "diffusor" (bookcase), that took care of the last of the echos. I'll still add 703 to the door facing, but its pretty darn good in there now.

The key is that the slats in the slot absorbers are angled. To be fair, its hard to see that in these pictures, but each slat is canted at about 7 degrees - about 14 degrees total effective splaying for the walls. I don't have the exact figures here, but each slat goes from about 3" deep up to about 6.75" deep over the 2' span.

Last night I hooked up enough stuff to actually play music in the room. I am VERY VERY happy - my monitors have never sounded so good.

I want to say thanks again to all you guys -- I could never have done this without your help and knowledge. This place, and John's forums ROCK!

-lee-

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Hello Lee, I THOUGHT it was a blank room !!! What am I missing? I saw a plywood paneled room with nothing in it and a plan. Clue me in.. if I missed something EXCUUUUUUUUUSE me. Just tryin to be funny. As usual, I make an ass of myself.
fitZ

[laptoppop]

Oh yah, at that stage it WAS echo city in there. On the left side, there are two buttons for update 1 and update 2 -- you're just looking at the initial posting.

And, no, you didn't make an ass out of yourself -- in the grand scheme of things I don't think this one counts at all!

-lee-

[gatorhaus]

lee,

Now that I saw the pics of the studio, you really rock, looks great, I espcially love the flooring. very nice.

larry