The acoustical problems of a T-shaped room - your thoughts, please

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ob

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I have converted a garage apartment into a project studio. It has two rooms; one was the old bathroom, and I will use it as an iso booth or control room, depending on what I am doing. I plan on using the large room for tracking and mixing. It has a T-shape, which, if I have posted the pictures properly, can be seen below.

The large room has two different ceiling heights; the arms of the T are 7 feet, and the center is 9 feet, with the slope from the 7 foot to the 9 foot height being around 40 degrees.

The shape of the room and the ceiling gives me all sorts or angles and corners which I assume is going to give me trouble. Any thoughts on how to treat this beast?
 

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This is a cutaway view from the east which shows the two ceiling heights
 

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The biggest challenge is going to be bass trapping. Low frequencies tend to build up in corners, and this room has 8 of them, compared to 4 of course, for a square room.

The varying ceiling heights are an added plus. I don't see why you couldn't make a perfectly usable recording space out of this room, but like I said, the biggest hurdle is going to be bass trapping.
Challenging, but certianly doable.

Can you post any pictures of this room?
 
Yes. I am goin to be painting this week, which means that I will have to get all the stuff out of there, which should allow me to take some pcitures.
 
It sounds as if the room is going through a re-construction. Why leave the closets? Why not isolate them to one big closet and divvy up the remaining space? That will get rid of the 'T' configuration and allow you to design with a better brush...
 
I didn't remove the closets because I wasn't sure what impact, if any, it would have on the roof. Where the two flat roofs are, the roof joists above that are cut off and sit on a double 2 x 10 plate which ties into the roof joists on either side of the flat roof. The roof joist at that point was tied into a number of studs that form the walls of the closet. There are number of studs, more than what might be expected to frame the wall, and it appears that they may be serving as jacks and have some structural component to them. I had two contractors look at it to see if they thought they were load bearing and they said "Beats me". Based on that, and the fact that the roof is slate, I decide to play it safe and leave the closets in place, lest I end up with several tons of slate on my head. Besides, I need the storage space.
 
You could pull the dry wall off of the closet interior walls, leave the studs and turn them into big bass traps. Slap a few inches of rigid fiberglass on the inside and put some cloth on the outside.

I would use the big room as the control room and the small room for a vocal/drum booth if you can fit a kit in there. You will be spending 90% of your time in the control room with a few other people so it better be comfortable. For the guitar overdubs you can put an amp in the booth and have the guitarist in the control room.
 
TexRoadkill said:
You could pull the dry wall off of the closet interior walls, leave the studs and turn them into big bass traps. Slap a few inches of rigid fiberglass on the inside and put some cloth on the outside.

I would use the big room as the control room and the small room for a vocal/drum booth if you can fit a kit in there. You will be spending 90% of your time in the control room with a few other people so it better be comfortable. For the guitar overdubs you can put an amp in the booth and have the guitarist in the control room.
Click to expand...

Closets as bass traps - that's a great idea. I may try that if I discover that I am having continuing problems.

As for the primarily using the big room, that's the plan. The small room is going to be inert (no heat or A/C) so it's not a place I want to spend long periods of time in.

Thanks for all the good advice.
 
Michael Jones said:
The biggest challenge is going to be bass trapping. Low frequencies tend to build up in corners, and this room has 8 of them, compared to 4 of course, for a square room.

The varying ceiling heights are an added plus. I don't see why you couldn't make a perfectly usable recording space out of this room, but like I said, the biggest hurdle is going to be bass trapping.
Challenging, but certianly doable.

Can you post any pictures of this room?
Click to expand...

Balancing the bass and everything else together is moist challenging but well worth the effort. Most folks who build rooms design it to meet the standardized criteria and then start putting equipment in. That throws your room into a tizzy. Nice big reflective desk, big old "producers desk" with 6 rows of 16 space racks and other square boxes causing early reflections. My best advice is to keep racks to the sides and make the back wall a nice hemholtz. Treat the corners and the ceiling as required. I like smaller more intimate settings myself so I drag as much gear as I can to my finger tips.
Tex is right about the control room being the big room. More people tend to congregate there and small ones get hot and sweaty when loaded to capacity.

SoMm
 
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