new studio: recording/control room size

[fretless]

hi!

my girlfriend and i will soon be moving together from our flats into a house. there´s another building on the lot which has been used as a workshop until now - i plan to build my studio in there.

the total dimensions of this brickwall building is appr. 4 by 12 metres and about 3,5 metres high. the ceiling is in bad condition and definitely needs to be rebuilt, but that´s another story ... i plan to create room within room structures and divide the place into two parts - a recording and a control room. considering that the recording room will have drums permanently set up how would you suggest to size the rooms? 50/50 so that they´re appr. 4 by 6 metres each? i know that for acoustical reasons the width of the control room should be smaller than its depth (back to front), but are 4 by 6 to 3,5 workable proportions? do you think a room of 4 by 6 metres (with the appropriate acoustic measures taken) would make a good sounding drum recording room? are 4 metres width for a control room enough?

tell me your thoughts! does anybody have a studio with similar dimensions? what would you recommend? i appreciate everyone´s advice!

btw: the music to be recorded there will be pop/rock/funk and also a little jazz/blues i guess ;-)

thanks for your input!

fretless

p.s.: another question concerning the ceiling: since i have to rebuild it anyway should i try to angle it in some way? maybe just minimally, a few degrees? ... i´m thinking of the control room and acoustics ... or is this a silly idea? should i be saving all this for acoustic treatment in the end.

p.p.s.: if someone wants to know: 1 metre equals 3,28 feet; 1 foot equals 0,3048 metres

[John Sayers]

I would tend to go for the 6m long control room, preferably 7m long.

yes I would angle the ceiling at 12 degrees which is possible with 3.5m height.

There's a few layout ideas I did recently for someone with a similar setup you could look at. It's a pdf file and is 600K

http://www.locall.aunz.com/~johnsay/Stuff/Plan_1.pdf

cheers
john

[fretless]

hey, nice drawings there! fit almost perfectly! ;-)

thank you john!

just to check if i got it right here´s what i calculated:
a control room 7 metres long would then have its ceiling at its front (in front of the mixing console) at 2 metres rising at 12 degrees up to 3,5 metres at the back, right? ... that´s why you said it´s possible with the given height!!?

another question that bugs me:
are those sliding glass doors you´re drawing there between rooms? if yes, is this some self-made solution? if again yes, do you know where to find some schematics? how do you keep them airtight between each other and on ceiling & floor ends? i bet this glass door thing isn´t a cheap solution, is it? ;-)

thanks again for sharing your wisdom! i love this bbs!

fretless

[John Sayers]

I'd run the ceiling up at 12 degrees from the front to the middle of the room and then back down at 12 degrees. The high spot is in the middle of the room.

You can use either glass doors or separate windows and doors. The later is cheaper but the glass doors give great communication and feeling of space. Check with your local supplier, some companies now construct acoustic sliding doors. Here in OZ they quote 33db STC per door.

cheers
john

[Eric Best]

John,
I've looked through many of your designs and I've done some reading about acoustics and I'd like to know how you decide the angles to use in your designs, and how to figure out the room modes using those designs.

I'd like to see the math if it is available, or the source to find some more information about. I've read the F. Alton Everest books and have found very little about angled walls except that you can really screw up a room if you don't know what your are doing. I would like to learn what I'm doing.

Could you refer me anywhere, or am I getting to uptight about not knowing exactly what is going on in non rectangular rooms?

Thanks,
Eric

[John Sayers]

Yeah - most acoustics theory is based around rectangular rooms, and so is the maths.

All I can say Eric is that I work from experience.....you know, you put a 6 degrees angled ceiling up and it pings with standing waves, so you build 12 dfegrees next time ands it doesn't.

I suspect being an engineer for 30 years helps in understanding what you want to hear at the mixing position and what a studio should sound like.

cheers
john