i started a thread a year+ ago about a new studio build and it looks like it may happen this summer. however, before i get going with specifics, i'd like to hear what is generally preferred (before treatment).

oh, and i should point out i'd like to build it to be a LEDE style room and will roughly be 12 feet across by 20 feet deep. (3 of those 20 feet may be taken up by closets in the back)

i realize there's the stick above that talks about this issue, and the basic question was answered by Ethan saying there's no huge advantage to splayed walls. however, you see countless small rooms designed this way so i'd think there's got to be some reason for it?



A: a rectangular room with a 12' ceiling

B: a rectangular room with a ceiling that slopes from 12 in back to 9 in front

C: a splayed wall room, as often seen sort of shaped like this: http://lipinskisound.com/download/Li...round_room.pdf

D: sawtooth type of wall. gypsum with rockwool filled sawteeth.


i need to nail down the shape of the room first, before i move forward.

thanks!
taylor

+1.

Andre

maybe i answered my own question by answering my own question

what about the ceiling slope? 12' all the way down, or sloped? or even sawtoothed walls?

td,

The reason you see a lot of splayed walls is because people copy what they 'see'.

If you are designing your own studio, you should study as much as you can and read as many books on the subject as possible. There is a recommended reading list here somewhere and I have one on my publications page. Also on my pubs page, there are some good articles and Excel calculators to help you with your project. - Or hire a professional to design it for you.

Post your design and we will comment. ok?

If this is going to be a commercial studio, you really need to think about proper isolation.... too much and you'll go bankrupt before you start... to little and you'll be bankrupt within a year.

Good luck with your project... You can't design a studio by forum but we look forward to seeing your design ideas and will be happy to help where we can and comment.

Cheers,
John

thanks, john. but surely there must be a reason so many studios have this similar shape. some advantage.

i just finished the Rod Gervais book, and have another, rather daunting, book on studio design.

i posted the design last year, and you were quite helpful with many comments. the thread is here: new studio: window behind speakers

(the first posted floor plan there is very old. post #14 is also out of date as it was re-drawn again to be a rectangle. i don't want to post another drawing until the architects and i sit down once more to touch it up)

that drawing, while somewhat still accurate, has changed. but many of the concepts still remain the same. location, etc.

it is for personal use only. (ie: not recording bands) and it outside my house in a very rural area. we're building the entire structure. exterior and all. there is little need for blocking sound coming in or out as there is no one out here to bother, no noise from neighbors to bother me. one concern WILL be the roof to make sure it's not too noisy inside when it rains.

the budget is going to be VERY tight, much of it taken up by 3 big ticket items: the general framing and building, the heat + electricity (may need to be a new line in from the street. no more room on house breaker), and the engineering of floating the building over the side of a hill. which, given our property, is the only place for it, but also very very convenient as it will be accessed right off the back deck of the house. oh, and a 4th expensive item: architect and permitting fees.

thank you. during the previous thread it all seemed to come to the conclusion that the room will be designed quite simply, ie: a rectangle, and the acoustics handled via attached treatments.

i just want to know if there's moves we can make in the construction (splayed walls, sawtooth walls, etc) that will potentially reduce the need for added treatment.

i still haven't heard a definitive answer on the ceiling (pitched or not) and, as i stated earlier, i'm interested in the LEDE concept. i'm after a room that's accurate in the monitoring position, because mastering is the source of income. but also it will be used as a writing studio for me so behind the desk chair and "sweet spot" will be equipment racks and some synths. which is why i'm interested in the LEDE concept for the back of the room.

everyone's help here in the past was greatly appreciated and i look forward to showing some new drawings when i've got them.

thanks!
- taylor

+1


OP:

The inner shell (assuming control room) can be made using splayed walls but often for a reason not related to flutter echo or modal distribution but in order to redirect the early energy away from the sweet spot avoiding the use of absorption (above approx. the Schroeder frequency), especially if LEDE/RFZ design. The isolating structure is often made rectangular because it is a lot easier to build and there’s no real benefit acoustically compared to complex shapes (room modes does not go away just because the room isn’t rectangular, it only redistributes them in terms of frequency and pressure zones and this makes it harder to predict and treat later on in the process. The exception might be if you for some reason cannot add treatment to the basic structure. Then there might be some benefits of splaying walls to begin with but finding the optimum dimensions in terms of modal distribution will require BEM or FEM models.

thanks for the info, jens.

so.. by "isolating structure" do you mean the exterior? mine will be a single room small building. no "room within room"... no second room, no adjacent room.

an exterior building with one room inside.

the outside shell will be rectangular and standard framing construction. insulated for winter, etc.

i AM interested in a LEDE approach, so by your statements below some sort of wall splaying is beneficial in this case?

Taylor, budgets are generally tight in the world at large at the moment.
This might be a good time to consider cost vs benefit.
I strongly suspect you have assumed acousticians cost a lot of money.
You might be pleasantly surprised.

DD

yes, granted that the splayed walls/reflectors are large in size with respect to the wavelengths of the lower specular region within your room. broadband absorption at locations incident of high-gain early arriving indirect specular energy will remove precious specular sonic energy from the room. splayed walls redirect the early reflections away from the listening position towards the rear wall where they can be diffused and reintroduced to the listening position, terminating the ISD-gap with a high gain (no lower than -12dB from direct signal), laterally arriving, exponentially decaying diffused sound-field to induce haas trigger. the lateral arrival as well as the requirement for maintaining so much energy in the diffused return is why 1D QRD or PRD reflection phase grating diffusers are utilizing vs that of 2D (with the wells oriented vertically such that spatial energy is dispersed horizontally to the side-walls for lateral return to listening position). the 2D will, by nature, have a larger absorption coefficient due to edge diffraction and 1/4 wave resonances between the wells, and will also disperse (read: waste) precious energy to the ceiling/floor.

your thinking is 100% correct i have assumed such!

i would love to know what such a service would cost and how their work would integrate into that of the architects designing the builder and the builders building it.

Excellent summary!

taylor, try asking! There are many levels of involvement possible.
From remote email/ Skype advice to full architectural to code plans.
You would probably be amazed how many of your ideas and options will clarify during a few emails or an hour on Skype.
Contact me via my site if you wish. There is no charge for an initial chat.
Given our locations I will most likely recommend a friend on your continent.
DD

thanks, dan

yes... no harm in asking and i agree finding someone on this continent.

the problem with forums, despite the wealth of excellent advice, is there's often not one answer.. so getting multiple points of great advice gets very overwhelming.

i'll try to find an acoustic designer on the east coast here in the new york area.

but of course, i'll continue to post here as i enjoy the back and forth.

I agree with most of the above.

For a small room like what you are proposing, I personally would not angle the ceiling or the walls -- IF doing so means you are reducing the volume of the room.

There can be benefits to angling surfaces (as shown in the above post by localhost127), but there is a lot to keep track of and you must know what you are doing. And, reducing the volume of the room is likely going to hurt you more than any net benefit from the angles, even if they are implemented correctly.

That said, try hiring an acoustician.... perhaps they will be able to guide you toward the results you seek.

I've just spent 3 hours browsing Sayer's forum and further threads here on GS and I've realized what I like about these Sayer's-style splayed control rooms is that the treatments look built-in. they look like part of the walls.

it's a cleaner more attractive look to me than simply plopping some bass traps on the walls.

these rooms also only seem to eat up real estate in the area around the front of the desk and monitors... an area you're not really using or standing in anyway. so I'm not sure "losing space" is a concern.

I am, however, getting WAY too overwhelmed and obsessed about this room shape. being a visual artist as well as a musician, aesthetics are VERY important to me. sound comes first, yes, but a beautiful looking space is also a necessity.

Splaying sidewalls will have a benefit in preserving more energy and it will be a lot easier to get a high termination of the ISD-gap (Haas kicker). You will get a room that's much more lively. But I guess it depends on the size of the room if it's worth doing or not.

taylor, you might be intrigued to hear that some people use HARD clouds.
This is similar to the side splay in that it bounces reflections away from the listener to the back of the room. There is can be absorbed or diffused and later returned to the listener.
Some even used non diffuse reflective kickers back there.

Before committing to such designs commonly seen in text books, I again recommend consultation.
I am informed by busy friends that few if any new builds use those older designs. Things have moved on.


DD

The reason for splaying walls in general is to reduce flutter echo and reduce room modes. However the effects are more pronouce as you move up the audio spectrum - i.e. where room modes are less of a problem anyway - the sub 200Hz effects of splaying walls is minimal.

Splaying walls in a specific way - but not as shown in the Lipinski room picture - can be to create a reflection-free zone at the monitoring position. This can preserve some life in the room without all the phase cancellation and image-smearing stuff that normally occurs. But you can, of course, create a reflection-free zone using absorbers at the mirror points.

Obviously producing anything other than rectangular incurs building costs.

Do not overlook the aesthetic value of your room - you have to work in there, and your clients will also definitely be influenced by how it looks.

As stated previously:

i'm not sure if i mentioned it (could have been another thread) but the purpose of this room is dual... the desk and monitor area will be used for mastering. however, i do write music as well, so the back of the room will have synths and guitars. i don't want a lively room at the listening point. i want RFZ and accuracy.. the back of the room can be more lively (hence my desire for something like LEDE)

Lively and RFZ/accurate are not two opposing things. A room can be very lively with much energy and still accurate. Splayings walls will help you attain a RFZ. You redirect the energy (away from where you're mixing and to the back of the room) instead of absorbing it. Both absorbing and redirecting takes care of early reflections, but the latter will retain more energy and leave the room less dead which is a positive thing.

But in your case, where your room is rather small, it will probably better to use absorption to create a RFZ.
The rear of ther room should be diffuse for LEDE.

liveliness is determined by the gain of the first significant reflection with respect to the direct signal. this will be the 'termination' of the ISD-gap if you are adhering to the RFZ acoustical model.

Taylor, just to amplify my previous comment about things moving on.
Front-To-Back Acoustic Technique

The LEDE is a whole system. Part of the remit is to deliver delayed diffuse bloom to the listener. The diffusors involved may not be great if you are close to them in the back of the room.

I and others, like Space Arrays, and Space Couplers, used to deliver a benign liveliness at close range. Couplers fronting a large back wall absorber should enhance LF absorption by a significant amount. Similarly Arrays back there have an absorptive bonus. A grid of these things back there should provide plenty of affordable clean liveliness back there. They can also be used overhead to prevent ceiling floor flutter.

DD

yes, the wooden arrays are very beautiful looking (if expensive)... i was also thinking perhaps GIK QRD diffusers due to their more affordable nature.

the back of the room will have closets and a couch...

the front will have my Sterling Plan E desk and sound anchor stands with Focal Twin6 monitors (my next studio purchase after the build is likely for free-standing full range monitors, perhaps Dunlavy)

the trick will be the middle/back of the room. i have a sterling modular 2-bay slanted rack with synths, a couple eventides and some premaps in it i also have 4 keyboards. i'd like these to face forward so when i'm back there playing i'm facing the speakers ... as opposed to the keyboards along the wall with only one ear facing the speakers when i'm playing/designing.

this is getting too detailed for now, until i show a drawing... but, my point was there will be 3 "areas" in this small room:

1.front: mastering desk (taking up 38% of the room, which is a big chunk)

2. middle: equipment rack, synths

3. rear: closets, couch

i'm also trying to get a few windows in the room, even ones behind the speakers on the front wall, for natural light and to look out into the forest. i am thinking narrow floor-to-ceiling windows so treatment could be around them and they hopefully won't be problematic.

again, sorry, these details don't need to be discussed yet until drawings surface!

taylor, you can read the links and consider for yourself my reasons why I am suggesting that LEDE may be inappropriate here.

Public debate between myself and Jens has proved impossible and he bizarrely refuses to discuss our differences in private.

It is not mandatory to stick to just one design philosophy. Certainly for a multi function multi zone room like yours, I suggest it is appropriate to pick and choose.

There are other sources of the Array type of thing. Primacoustic and the very affordable Hofa and of course DIY. A randomised array of slats fronting your absorption is another practical and great looking way of livening things up. You will see plenty of that in Rod Gevais' work.

Given your particular set of requirements and specific details, e.g. Dunlavy
I think it best to finish here with two words.

Jeff Hedback HdAcoustics Home

DD

I wonder what psycoacoustic studies have rendered LEDE obsolete? Or what researches have led to believe there's something more accurate? Probably nothing, but there also those who misundertand the concept or see profit in making something new.

Take notice that he never explains why he doesn't see the point in Haas kicker and LEDE. "The ISD-gap adds confusion". That's hillarious! If one is to invalidate decades of psycoacoustic studies, you should at least think you have something objective to point to.

yes, i'm not fixed on any type of "style".. or whatever the trendy type of room of the day is.... nor do i want to start any battles between you and jens!

my room will have specific needs and i'll use whatever type of design is required to best meet those needs.. be it RFZ, LEDE, REED, SCHMEED, i don't care.

i'll contact jeff. thanks for the tip!

You are welcome taylor, he's a fine bass player too....

bwo, I have no crows to pluck with LEDE. I do however believe that progress is possible and actually happens. LEDE is around a while. I would be disappointed to think that it has not been improved on.

The he referred to is not alone, even in the linked thread there are significant others.
And of course Newell has a few ideas on Studio design too.

But how about the Topic, may I ask, given the mulitfunctions of the OP's room. And the shying away from the cost of diffusion. Does anyone really see LEDE as a potential runner here?

DD

i would like NOT to shy away from the cost of diffusion. a few GIK QRD confusers, perhaps on the back wall, are well within the budget.

the thing is, i already own 17 GIK bass traps.. so there is a reason here to use these same traps in the new room. corner traps, RFZ treatment, ceiling cloud.

i likely would not need to buy any more traps.. just diffusion.