got kicked out of studio, please help review solution?

[goldensolmusic]

This forum has been an incredible value, any response or thoughts on this room would be appreciated more than you can imagine. I am trying to make the best out of a tough situation. I have included a diagram of the room bellow.

The Situation:
Due to partner disputes, had to leave the professional recording facility and now need to try and convert a back room in a downtown apt. to a small DAW/VO station to keep work flowing.

The problems:
Room is small, with an awkward shape, 1 large window and a neighbor that sleeps bellow the room.

The solution: (hopefully)
*Float a new floor on pucks with as 4-5 inches of high density 703 between the neighbor and I. To hopefully limit low end vibration and absorb most of mid/hi freq.
*Isolate smaller part of room with floor to ceiling panels to eliminate reflections in that zone.
*Position mix station so that part of the room somewhat behaves like rectangle.
*Use hardwood floors and rigid fiberglass btw ceiling beams (full coverage)

Questions:

**Is floating a floor (leaving a small gap around outside edges btw the wall and floor) a waste of time or will this significantly reduce noise to a lower neighbor and isolate low end vibration?
**Is this room just too small and awkward to use for projects when a good listening environment is required?
**Should the ceiling be lowered with panels to have a better ceiling/length ratio?
**Can anything be done about the window other than sealing it up?

If nothing else thank you all for a wealth of knowledge in the forum!

 

[DDev]

Welcome to the board. It can be a lot of fun learning all this stuff, but like any educational process it can take time, too.

I'll jump in on a couple of items I do know a little bit about and let someone else tackle the other things. The basic room layout is okay but you really need to close up that space between the mix position and the booth. You need symmetry about the mix position for stereo accuracy.

The slant in the ceiling is good and can be used to your advantage, so I would recommend trying to keep it.

As far as the window goes, you can construct a covering for it that will become an acoustically useful feature. You will probably need some kind of treatment on the side walls to cut out reflections since those walls are parallel, so something like slat absorbers might be useful (see the Recording Manual at www.johnlsayers.com for more reference material).

Darryl.....

 

[chuk31]

that sucks man. Yeah, watch out for the parallel walls, like he said. Depending on the size of the room, i've seen some wall mounted deflectors that work pretty well on scattering annoying reflections, but in a small space i think you're better off just absorbing as much as you can. I've never really heard of floating a floor, but its a cool idea, maybe somebody else can tell you whether it'll work or not.