Very Low Ceiling

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jgourd

jgourd

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I have 250 year old house. I really need to make a permanent place to do my mixdowns. I really want to use a section of the basement by framing it in and building a nice mixdown control room.

The problem is that the ceiling is very low because when the house was built, there was no plumbing or heating. All that stuff was added later and it is hard to stand up in a lot of places in my basement.

I personally do not have a problem with this, but I am wondering if there might an accoustic issue with a room that is only 6 feet high?
 
Maybe! Likely?

As the ceiling and floor usually make up the largest parrallel surfaces of a room, it can be one of the biggest influences to how it will sound but not the only one.

I can imagine ways it could be made to work. Not great by any means but still workable. Having said that how big is the room going to be (hopefully bigger than my walk in closet)?

If I were doing this I would start with the dimesions of the room 1st. There are calculators on the web that will start you with some of the room modes. I would look at this data and see what it reveals. I have worked in some control rooms that are not much bigger than a large closet so it can be made to work within limits. If you design the space with enough acoustic treatment you may be able to limit much of the effects of a small space using nearfields. You'll have to figure a way to work around the likely bass issues in your mixes but not impossible.

There are a number of books on building home studio's that have a wealth of information and data. As you are likely to spend some money on building this it would likely be worth your time to do a bit of reading.

So, how much space are we talking about here?

Sorry if this wasn't much help. I know you came here looking for expert advice and you got stuck with this lame reply.

Just running off at the keyboard.

Don Goguen
 
I am guessing that I have around 15' x 20' with a 5.5' ceiling.
 
Is it me or is this room getting shorter?

So how do you feel about Asian style furnishings ie. sitting on the floor? By the way my wife is Korean so I do this all the time at family gatherings.

Well, I'm no audio consultant nor do I play one on the web but I do have some experience and knowledge. This seems like a perfect opportunity to really just stick my foot in my mouth. Something I just can't seem to resist some days but this post is just itching to get some kind of answer.

This post really opens up a whole bunch of questions. Many you've probably already asked yourself but there are many more questions within your post without enough information to really answer them. Here are a couple.

Beyond space what other things will we have to deal with? You asked about a room for mixdown but do you need to record in it?

Are there noise sources that will need to be dealt with. Furnace, occupants above.......?

How quiet does it have to be from the rest of the house? Like is there a newborn in the house that sleeps all hours of the day?

Have you decided on a budget figure? Can you do most of the work yourself or will you hire?

Of course none of these get to the original question will the height work?

At 5 1/2 feet it would have to be the shortest control room I've ever heard of. This isn't for Santa's media shop?

I just don't know. 15 x 20 is a good size room volume wise but your chopping more than 25% of the height of a normal room. If you can deaden one end sufficiently but keep a fair amount of late rear reflections to keep the room sounding normal I can't see why not. It will take some work treating it. You will likely see some height related nodes. At 5 1/2 to 6 feet they should be reletively high enough in freq. to be able to acousticly treat. As long as your looking to get mix position sounding decent. The whole room?

I know I'm missing something in this equation so if someone wants to chime in here.

Don (can't speak with my mouth full) Goguen
 
I figured I would do all the work myself. No babies, no occupants. I record mobile so the most I would be doing is overdubs occasionally.

One thing I could do if I really wanted to do it right, is get a jack hammer and dig out the floor about three feet.
 
The room sounds like a long, tall hallway on it's side. I realize that this is a very typical older New England basement... my brother in law dug his out (by hand) to get it so you could stand up straight...

Did you lose a foot because of a celing? Are there beams, joists and columns at all?

How does it sound now? Put a stereo at one end and estimate...

Also, aside from the acoustics, I think it has been said here before, you want a place where you are comfortable. Even for just mixing, you will need to move around somewhat and personally, I'd go nuts in a space that low...

Kevin.
 
I am having second thoughts. Right now it look like cleaning a corner of my office is going to be the way to go.
 
jgourd..... I'd get some of the rigid fibreglass. This is not your average houshold fibreglass but the semi-rigid type. The difference is that the rigid type aborbs sound down to 500Hz and then tapers off whereas the normal only goes down to 1Khz and then starts to fall off. It comes in 1" and 2" over here in OZ but you might get a 3" or even a 4" in your country. Sjoko would know,I think he made a post about it so I'd do a search.

You can't do anything with the lower frequencies but the fibreglass will wipe out the rest so the ceiling will have no effect. I cover it with plastic as i don't want the small fibres in the air and it creates a lot of dust in the gear. Just get your standard black garden plastic, it's cheap. If you like you can then put a nice cloth over the top.

I'd cover the whole ceiling with it, your room will sound a lot lot better.

Yo! go Japanese as Folkcafe suggested :)

Cheers
John
 
John,

Will that work OK if it hard against the underfloor? I was planning on making some panels for my walls out of it and have been weighing up the pros and cons of mounting it a few inches off the walls in frames. Any suggestions?

ChrisO :cool:
 
yeah ausrock - maybe angle the frames to vary the distance off the wall?? :)

cheers
John
 
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