Manifold Recording - Studio Construction Thread

[PDC]

Originally Posted by Clueless

The symmetry is a feature of the space, not a bug. Non-parallel walls have the feature that they make room modes much more difficult to calculate and predict, but they don't change the laws of physics: all rooms have modes. Because of the scale of the tracking room (31 x 44 (average of 36 and 52) x 24), all the fundamental modes fall below A0 (the lowest note on the piano). Thus, while we have not eliminated room modes, we have pushed them well below the typical levels you'd find in smaller (20x30x14) tracking rooms that need to compromise other acoustical properties to make up the difference.

I am not addressing the walls. I am addressing the corners, which become horns, focusing their reflections in a beam. That would be my concern.

[Clueless]

Originally Posted by PDC

I am not addressing the walls. I am addressing the corners, which become horns, focusing their reflections in a beam. That would be my concern.

Well, you makes your choices and you takes your chances. A square corner has the property that if you beam directly into one wall at 45 degrees, it reflects to the adjacent wall and beams right back to you. Any angle less than or equal to 90 degrees has such a property. Many studios try to avoid this problem by using 5 or 6 walls (or more). With 120 degree angles, you will see that if you line up to talk down the axis, the first 60 degree reflection will cast the sound parallel to the adjacent wall, hitting the third wall straight-on. This will then reflect back to the original reflection point and back to you. Now, if the surfaces are diffusive, you get 1 diffusion if you talk straight into a flat wall, you get two diffusions if you talk into a 90 degree or less angle, and you get 3 or more diffusions if you have more than 90 degree angles.

If you build your walls smooth enough that they don't diffuse sound, you can get the effect they prize so highly in mosques, where a whisper on one side of the dome can be clearly heard at the opposite side as it creeps along the nearly infinite number of nearly 180 degree angles. But we're building in lots of diffusion, so three diffusions per observable echo should yield pretty nicely spread out sound. At least much better than 90 degree corners, no?

[Clueless]

Originally Posted by PDC

I am not addressing the walls. I am addressing the corners, which become horns, focusing their reflections in a beam. That would be my concern.

I thought about your question some more, and I have another answer. If you consider the waves of sound coming from a point then yes, there is a kind of focal point any time you have walls coming together. Even when walls angles are not equal, there's a focal point (it just may be in a strange location). In the case of my tracking room, if you stand right where the end of the piano is on the floorplan and beam your sound north the east corner, you will get roughly equal reflections coming back from four walls, providing an apparent amplification effect. But there are three things to remember about that:

1. There are ten 12' RPG reversable BAD panels providing diffusion or absorption and another two 6' panels on the side walls
2. You can choose to point your sound in the opposite direction
3. You don't have to put your mic in that one location

On the plus side, if you consider the reflections you get from the opposite corner (where the sound has to travel down the length of the room to get there), then you get the multiple reflection diffusion effect I described in my previous post. And the advantage of the symmetry is that you can a much more even, predictable response from the room, meaning that you have an easier time moving microphones for the convenience of musicians without the room getting all funny on you.

[Grumblefoot]

Bump

Any new news?

[Clueless]

Originally Posted by Grumblefoot

Bump

Any new news?

Well, since mid-May we've been at a stand-still while redrawing the electrical pages. The story is that the initial plans we got from the electrical engineer were not exactly what we'd asked for (we gave him the answers to the test, so how he screwed it up, I don't know). But we decided to move to permit and then fix the mess later in the process. Well, we didn't quite catch it in time, so by the time we got around to it, things came to a full stop.

The full stop then turned into a delay because, as stated elsewhere, we're trying to be really green in our construction and operation. LED lighting was rumoured to have made several advances since then, so we sent a guy out to the Las Vegas light show in early June, and another guy to another show in late June. The results that came back were consistent: there was nothing new in the LED world that fit with our architecture and aesthetic, so we're sticking with halogens.

We've engaged a new electrical engineer, and we have a meeting scheduled for the end of the month to finalize some new plans. It typically takes a week or so to get new plans approved by the county inspectors, so I expect we'll resume progress by mid August.

The next major milestone (which has remained the next major milestone since mid-May) has been to pour the slab. Hopefully that will be done in August, and then the walls might start coming up in September.

Frustrating!

[Keldog]

Damn, I feel for ya man. This is a huge project but someday you'll be able to come back here...after it's all done and making money....and look thru this thread...and see all the work you guys went thru...and be able to say...


never again...

Lookin forward to your progress man.
Good Luck!

Peace...........Kel

[peat]

i hope it all works out as smoothly as possible for you

it looks like you are doing a fantastic thing here
for the community
environment
and musicians and engineers
and us to ogle at on the internet

best of luck

[andrebrito]

This is a very interesting project indeed. May I ask you what is the target RT60 in the room ? Did they use any acoustical modeling on that large room ?

[Clueless]

Wes Lachot ran the Sabine equations to determine that the room will have an RT60 that can be varied from 1 full second down to 1/2 second. The room is tunable via the 10 large (11' tall, 2' wide) diffusors/absorbers that will be fabricated from RPG FlutterFree-T material. Wes has spent many hours with the folks at RPG to really tune the room for a maximum balance of diffusion, absorption, and overall wonderfulness.

Another major acoustic element in the Music Room is the cloud: it will be fabricated with 30 panels of fabric over fiberglass and 30 panels of RPG BAD panels (custom fabricated to a rhomboidal rathern than rectangular shape). These 60 panels will fit 1680 sq ft of surface area into 780 sq ft of ceiling area. There are two tricks to this: (1) both sides of the cloud have acoustic properties, and (2) the cloud is articulated in 3 dimensions, giving us more than 14 sq ft per panel in 13 sq ft of 2-dimensional ceiling space. This articulation will provide additional diffusion of low frequencies to complement the diffusion of the BAD panels.

I can't wait to hear it!

[HananR]

this thread rules!
thanks for posting

[andrebrito]

Thanks for replying for to my questions !

If he has worked with RPG I'm almost sure modeling acoustics (CATT) has been used, to define the amount of diffusion placed, since the Sabine equation is rather limited.

[Clueless]

It was a great disappointment that half of May, June, July, and most of August passed without any serious progress, due to problems with our electrical design and more problems trying to find a team of lighting equipment suppliers who were not (1) clueless, and (2) trying to fund their kids education on one single lighting package. As I explain in the blog, we've lost four of the best months for construction due to these problems.

However, construction has begun again, and with the delivery of more than 100 pallets of blocks (out of a scheduled 247 (!)), we are on our way again. With luck that means at least weekly updates. Cheers!

[Brenton]

Wow. Those photos on your blog say it all. Bummer, good to see its on the move again.

[Clueless]

Here's a delivery that I think could have been rescheduled...



More details in my latest blog posting...

[mwagener]

It drives me nuts, people JUST DON'T THINK!

Sorry to see your path being ruined.

[Clueless]

After a summer's worth of research and discussions, I'm now evaluating an API Legacy Plus console for the studio. Part of the fun is configuring it. WIth some help from folks on the High End forum, here's the latest sketch:



More (including some truly hi-res renderings) at the blog...

[peat]

that looks absolutely amazing

beautiful choice!

[Clueless]

The lighting conduits are going in, and boy are there a lot of them!

This is just the teaser:



For all the details, see my construction photos.

[Jaques Beraques]

You got a sick construction over there!!!

[Rondel]

Originally Posted by Clueless

After a summer's worth of research and discussions, I'm now evaluating an API Legacy Plus console for the studio. Part of the fun is configuring it. WIth some help from folks on the High End forum, here's the latest sketch:



More (including some truly hi-res renderings) at the blog...

Hey I saw your blog of the console; isn't the mc-controller covered with wires from the patchbay?

impressive construction btw...

greetz

[Farout]

Very kewl console.
It looks purdy.

[Clueless]

Originally Posted by Rondel

Hey I saw your blog of the console; isn't the mc-controller covered with wires from the patchbay?

impressive construction btw...

greetz

Nope, the blue lines are leftovers from a Euphonix image I scraped off the web and applied to the image as a texture map.

[Clueless]

For those of you who love watching the daily progress of more conduit being laid (Joe the plummer--not his real name--tells me there's more than a mile now) and blocks being delivered I've got some new still photos.

For those who are just a bit impatient and want to see the finished result now, I have posted a two-and-a-half minute video clip that can play up to 1280x720 (aka 720p HD) hosted at Vimeo. You can also watch it in web resolution if you wish.

Please don't go too crazy playing it again and again--after 1000 plays I have to start paying. If you really must see it again and again, there's an option to download the file to your computer. That will save you bandwidth in the long run...

[Darius van H]

Slick video............s'gonna be a beautiful place.......................congrats!

[Emanuel23]

Originally Posted by Clueless

Nope, the blue lines are leftovers from a Euphonix image I scraped off the web and applied to the image as a texture map.

Looks stunning!

Gotto love that MC controller ;)
But, are you sure that the patch cords won't be all over it?
I mean, once you start patching, things might get kinda crowded over there...

[Clueless]

The latest construction entry is here.

But I also blog about other interesting topics, like having a chance to hang with James Taylor and talk about the future of the recording business.

Enjoy!

[JoaT]

Really OT, but you have a good taste in movies (on your walkthroughs studio tv). Open movies are the best movies. And what better to watch in a big buck studio than Big Buck Bunny?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, nevermind. It is your 3D-guys joke then.

On the subject: I only wish I could fund myself something like this someday.