Control room / studio room shape ideas....

[Radio Panic]

Control room / studio room shape ideas...(from scratch)

Here's the scenario:

What if you could build a studio from scratch, without the constraints of pre-existing rectangular structures, and with the ability to build rooms in any shape you wanted?
These are the ideas I was bouncing around:

Pentagons-- Would regular pentagons be a good room shape? They're symmetrical (for speaker placement) and have no parallel walls, and seem almost ideal...(to the amateur.)

Circles-- I honestly have no idea how this would do acoustically, but seems like an economical use of construction materials and an efficient shape. That is, until you need to add anything flat to the wals!

This is all assuming that you've got a versatile and fairly massive construction material, and a fair amount of distance from neighbors, so sound containment isn't a top priority.

I've seen a few studio plans online, i.e. John Sayers' site, and I've noticed double doors/ walls between rooms are usually set at an angle to each other. Is this necessary mainly 'cause the walls are hollow...?

Any feedback?

 

[ola]

A pentagon would probably be a good idea and if you look at the studio plans on Sayer's site, you'll see that the most of te control rooms are pentagons, although not symetrical.

A circle is actually only a parallel wall s you'd get a nasty standing wave. Circles are also expensive to build with conventional materials. You cannot bend drywall...

double windows and doors are set at an angle to avoid resonance.

/Ola

 

[Radio Panic]

Thanks, ola

Yeah, that's what I kind of suspected about circles, regarding standing waves.

 

[frederic]

A circle is actually only a parallel wall s you'd get a nasty standing wave. Circles are also expensive to build with conventional materials. You cannot bend drywall...

Actually, you can Done it myself, and I'm not a contractor with fancy equipment. However, care must of course be taken.

Method 1:

Cut the outside of the curved panel (side facing wall), 3/4 of the way through the sheet rock, 1" apart. Then curve around your form, screw/nail/blue, and there ya go. This is the more fragile way of doing it, but your only tool(s) are patience, a metal straight edge, and a sharp knife.

Method 2:

Steam it There are commercial machines for producing steam for curving sheet rock, or removing wallpaper, etc. Not a carpet steamer - too much excess water flows onto the sheet rock. Anyway, steam it slowly and you can in fact bend it. If you can build a buck to curve it around (or use an oil drum or other non-melting round item) you can bend sheetrock easily.

Hope that helps.

 

[frederic]

Re: Control room / studio room shape ideas...(from scratch)

What if you could build a studio from scratch, without the constraints of pre-existing rectangular structures, and with the ability to build rooms in any shape you wanted?
These are the ideas I was bouncing around

Any structure that doesn't have parallel walls will work fairly well, and with acoustical testing, you can overcome a few minor problems by tuning the room.

Since most of our studios are not commercial studios, and probably most of us do not have the cash to build trapazoid or slightly curved rooms, rooms with parallel walls are it.

However...

The rooms do not have to keep parallel walls. Its not that difficult to frame on the inside of an existing wall, a slightly angled wall, that has a 5 degree or 10 degree angle to it. And with the wasted space, the larger area of it at least can be used for storage.

But to answer your question, my control room would have seven sides. Picture a stop sign with one side missing and closed. Each angle would be at least slightly different from each other.

Scary. but alas, my new control room is :cough: rectangular with :cough: parallel walls.



Frederic