Studio help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Prophecy
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Prophecy

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Hello !
Im gonna buy a studio in the back of my house.
I'll contact some sound engineers friends to help me to do that.

But i dont know anything about studios.

can you explain me what kind of woods must i use, construction, air ventilation, etc
do you have any plans??


help me please

thanks
 
I know, I just found that out myself and I just got done posting about it so hopefully it'll be back up and running in no time :D
 
That site is very cool, but there are just images.
I need information please

thanks
 
Read my thread (What's up with John Sayers site?) for the details on this site.

I don't really know of any other good studio building sites unfortunatly, but in the mean time if you have specific questions I'm sure that some of the knowledgeable people here would be glad to help you out.

-tkr
 
well my first question would be like how should the walls be constructed ?
Which materials, sizes etc
 
Well, lets start with some details from you, k? There are an awful lot of informed people here, but the more details you give (diagrams, pictures all help) the better you will be helped...

To start with :

* How much room do you have?
* What are your requirements? Ie, are you looking for a rehearsal room that you might be doing a bit of recording in? Do you want a live room + a control room? Do you need a vocal room? A piano room? Drum room?
* What is your budget? We can suggest all sorts of wonderful things, but if you can't afford to do them, we'll have to suggest more economical ways of achieving similar results
* Are you worried more about sound proofing or sound treatment? Is it a quiet area? Will your neighbours be disturbed? How worried are you about noise from outside being tracked?
* What equipment do you have now that you need to accomadate? What equipment do you plan to buy that will require space?
* How long do you expect to spend in this space? How long do you have for construction time?
 
Well, Im gonna build it in my back garden.
I have a lot of space.

Money is not the problem.

I want a live room plus a drum room, control room and also a vocal room.

I think i can make a plan, but my first complain is the materials and construction
 
Alright. So this is going to be a freestanding structure?

I guess a few principles in order. First, stopping sound requires mass. Airgaps also help. That is why you generally do a "room within a room" format if you can afford it and use double layers of soundboard and rockwool. The inside room is often also floating on rubber pads to further isolate it. You want to seperate the various rooms as much as possible with these double ways to prevent spillage (sound going into a microphone it is not intended for) while still having visibility to all rooms from the control room if possible. The control room windows are general double, the two panes should be different thickness and they should be on an angle.

If possible, rooms should not be square and, if possible, walls should be not parallel with each other (helps prevent standing waves)

That should handle soundproofing, inside out and outside in and from one room to the other. The next consideration is sound treatment. You probably want a variety of sounds in various recording rooms, from a natural reverby (live) room to a more dead vocal room. You can do things with movable panels to have flexible rooms as well (foam one side, reflective surface the other). In general, high frequencies are easier to control then lower frequencies - high freqs can be absorbed by studio foam, lower freqs need more mass. There is something called a slot resonator which someone here can probably explain to you - I can't - which also helps.

Your control room, if you are using nearfield monitors, should be designed to absorb sound behind you, so that sound from your monitors does not bounce back and hit the wrong ear or hit your ears out of phase. Basically, the idea is that you get the sound once, from the monitor and no other times.

You'll also have to think about cooling/heating systems (they need to be quiet and need not to transmit sounds inappropriately) and about lighting and electic (think about it while planning) and about studio wiring (for that, see the thread currently going on in this forum)

For basic construction, build as is suitable for your climate (a floating slab, a concrete base, or full foundations, whatever) and build a largish building using 2x6 studs, insulated with rockwool and with a double layer of soundboard. Inside that, float your floors for the inside rooms on neoprene (rubber) and build secondary 2x6 or 2x4 walls, again with soundboard and rockwool insulation.

After that, it is all details and planning :) I'm not an expert, but I read and listen well.... hopefully one of the real experts will chime in, but this ought to give a place for discussion to start from.
 
ditto Old Grover. The slots are low mid absorbers. Foam, rockwool etc absorb down to around 500Hz and then tapper off below. Most small rooms have a resonance around 250 - 350hz so low mid absorption is a good idea.

Slots are easy to make. You basically create a sealed box full of insulation which is put on the wall. You then cover the front with slats of timber which have gaps between them. The depth of the box, the width of the timber slats, the depth of the slats and the distance apart (gap) all determine the frequency of absorption. If the box depth varies the unit becomes a broadband absorber.

I have attached an excel file for working out the dimensions.

cheers
john
 

Attachments

Cool. All of a sudden, I "got" slot-resonators :) I've read that description about a billion times, but now I think I could actually build some and expect them to be useful.

COOL!


BTW, John, any word on when your site will be up in its new home?
 
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