My attempt at a CAD studio design

E

Eric Best

New member
Ok guys I've been studying this for about a year now, read numerous books, studied John's site and now have my basement space.

This is my attempt to draw my idea for my studio. The control room design is an adaptation of the Tom Hidley non-environment room. This variation is adapted from a book by Philip Newell. The hanger and resonator system in the walls should absorb down to about 45hz. Everything lower should pass back into the space where the furnace and water heater and pumps are.

The hangers in the wall are made of particle board with 2" of rockwool on either side. I can supply details of the entire wall consruction if anyone wants it. The blue is burlap covering the hangers. The ceiling is 8' 9" tall and will have hangers made of roofing felt with rockwool on either side angled toward the front of the room. The resulting ceiling height will go from 7'6" in the front to 6'4" in the back. The front wall and floor are going to be wood.

I couldn't figure out how to put doors and windows in correctly in the program so I just made them green walls.

I haven't decided what to do with the big room yet. The way it is there probably will be some nasty modal problems, and I haven't decided how to deal with the jog caused by the stairway.

The scale on the drawing is each square = 2ft.

Any ideas, suggestions and criticisms are welcome and encouraged.


Thanks

Eric
 

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Eric,

Looks pretty nice to me. Consider using sliding glass doors or putting a set of windows in the wall between your control and live rooms.

Alex
 
Speak softly...that's illegal in most areas (or so I was told when trying to purchase a simple split system from local dealers).

It depends on what type of system you're looking for. There's some information on the SAE site with basics. The kernel there is that HVAC systems get EXPENSIVE in a hurry. Most affordable are standard window or exterior mount units that can be purchased for around $400 for up near 15K BTUs -- that's pretty good cooling for your buck. An installed split or conventional system (with the compressor/heat exchanger located outside) will run you up to $3,000 when it's all done.

From your drawing I can't tell how many exterior walls you've got (maybe none if it's in a basement?). The simplest idea may be to install one large mult-room rated unit in one of your rooms (either the live room or control room) and install ducts with in-line fans to blow the air around to all of the areas (including getting fresh air in and exhaust air out.

For my situation, I've got about a 400 sq. ft. live room (no control room :( ) that I put a 14.8k BTU window unit in through a wall exposed to the outside. This unit can drag some fresh air in, so to keep the circulation moving, I'm installing a 6-in in-line duct fan across the room and routing insulated duct back out to an adjacent penetration for exhaust. To maintain isolation, I'll enclose both the exterior of the AC unit as well as the duct in a box constructed of MDF with a couple of 90 deg. bends before the final outlet.

Interestingly enough, when the AC unit is running the sound leakage isn't too bad--we've been rehearsing in the room a bit and I haven't yet had time to build my box or install the exhaust system.

Run a search on the site and you can probably find some other ideas. Executivos I know has a system similar to mine with some sort of fancy contraption for letting in fresh air. Todzilla I think has a system with a room type AC unit in an entry chamber with supply and exhaust ducting in and out of his live room. I noticed in a recent post that Longsoughtfor has a link to some pictures of his ongoing studio construction--one is great view of an isolation box he is constructing to eliminate sound transmission through the duct between rooms. In an older post John provided a schematic detail for building a box for a room-type unit. I've seen a similar detail for isolating surface-mounted inlet and outlet ducts.

Here's a link to a post with some of the above information:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=47197&highlight=Executivos

Alex
 
Thanks Alex. This is in a basement, so I wanted to see if I could tap into my home heating and cooling system. I have a friend (parent of a couple of kids that I have been coaching for years) who is a heating and cooling contractor, but I need to educate myself so I know what is possible and how to build this into my room and so I can talk to him intelligently about it.

I've made adjustments to my room design based on sliding doors for the wall between the main room and the control room. Which one do you guys think would be better?
 

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why divide it up at all...

why not take advantage of the room volume you have. for the cost of the partitions and doors, you can treat the room very well and have a great sounding room. if you do partition, make sure no room is less than 1500cuft.

remember, rooms have no support for lower frequencies based on the the room's longest dimension.
 
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Sonnix, I think I'm ok on volume, My tracking room is 2704 cu. ft. and my control rooms "effective" volume is 2016 cu. ft. Each box on the drawing represents 2 ft.

I like the idea of a bigger room and toyed with the idea, but I really like to hear what a mic sounds like over my monitors before I record it. I've done it in enough rooms and found it a PITA. If I'm after really big room sounds, I have a church sanctuary (might not be appropriate for all the music I record :) ) that I can use.

The only thing I haven't checked yet is the room modes for the recording room.

Thanks

Eric
 
Ok Eric, are you trying one of those newspaper "see if you can tell the difference" tricks or are my links just bad--I can't tell the difference between the two ;) .

Anyway, looks ok to me. You may want to check the dimensions for the doors--I think standard sliding glass doors are around 72-in wide once framed in.

Hooking into your existing HVAC ducts is probably a good way to go. In this case you'll just need good isolation to avoid sending your tunes throughout the house. In this case definitely checkout the boxes that Kevin's building over at Long Sought For studios. His post is still up where you can link to some recent photographs.

Alex
 
Do you think that I could also use two exterior doors that have a glass upper half instead of sliding doors? I dont have the space to really put in anything larger than 48"

Eric
 
Keep in mind, if you're tying into existing home HVAC, that noise is related to about the 4th or 5th POWER of air velocity. If you can, maybe do an expansion chamber (larger duct size) with baffles/bends/ absorption, finally coming into the studio with carefully chosen grilles (aerodynamics of grilles differ) - the idea is to enlarge the ducts and slow down the velocity (5th power for air noise)

Just in case there weren't enough flies already in the ointment... :=) Steve
 
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