What do you think about this plan!!

[Mr.HOLMES]

Hi all,

so in the past I had not a bad sounding room but far away from what I had in my mind.
What do you think about this suggestion and calculation of a trained acoustical engineer???
So here is how far I could follow him with my basis knowledge.
Its a Live Ende Dead End (LEDE) principal.
In my back there is a big bookcase which is a little diffuse.

The dead End is constructed out of this:

And 80 mm bastotect acoustic foam.

Behind this is some kind of Rockwool which is together working as flow resistance together with the insulating board.

Please keep in your mind: English is not my first language.
And technical English by far is more difficult for me.

Maybe I have some wrong technical vocabulary used which you hopefully can replace while you read it.

THX to every opinion to this plan.....
Holmes.......

[avare]

Welcome to Gearslutz! Do not worry about your english language skills. Many people have spent all their lives in english speaking countries and can not speak or write it.

In order to try and help with the language part I will refer to documents that you should be able to get for free in german off the internet. They are "EBU Tech. 3276 second edition Listening conditions for the assessment of sound programme material: monophonic and two–channel stereophonic" and "SSF – 01.1- E-2002 Listening Conditions and Reproduction Arrangements For Multichannel Stereophony." I will try and use references to those documents so that you can read the german language text to understand what I writing better. You will have to do some searching on their websites for the german language texts, but to start here are links to the english language ones:

EBU Tech 3276
SSF 01.1 E2002

The LEDE design has become obsolete. What is almost exclusively used is controlling early reflections. EBU section 2.2 and SSF 2.2.1 table 1 go into this more. SSF actually refers to EBU document.

I see no treatment of first reflection points on the side walls. What is the plan for the ceiling?

Trying to keep first reflections within spec when the room is narrow is almost impossible with diffusion. Symmetry around the speakers is very important. Looking at the room layout, have you considered putting the speakers on the wall where the bookcase is right now? This gives greater symmetry around the speakers, where it is most important.

I do not understand why the Audioline panel covers. It is a great product but not for this application. The reverb time pic 3 shows as a dashed line a standard. The current standard accepted is shown in fig 1 EBU 2.3, and SSR references the EBU. The calculated values are barely in there at high frequencies, and it starts to rise at lows. You will need more low end absorption. I suggest for your room that you use 100 mm or better yet 150 mm absorbent material. At that thickness Basotect should work. I will write another post after researching Basotect more. What are called "bass traps" here are needed.

The reverb time limits in Pic 3 are based upon a nominal time of 0.25 s, which is in EBU is based on a 100 m^3 room. Your room is much smaller. EBU 2.3 shows an equation for adjusting the reverb time by the volume of the room.

Please keep asking questions. Writing is cheap. Building something and rebuilding it is expensive.

Andre

[Mr.HOLMES]

Hi Andre,

so you think this design is totally crap?
I do not get what you think about it....you more have to write in terms for non trained acoustic engineers....

I try to trust this guy but when he came up with LEDE I was thinking myself.
Because this I could do myself with tons of Rockwool behind the speakers as broadband absorption.

On the left room side we have 3 nested plies of big wool curtains.
On the right we have some absorption.
When you put the three curtains back in the room corner you get bass absorption.

Do you think this whole idea is obsolete???
If it is obsolete I can not trust this acoustic engineer anymore.

[avare]

I did some research on Basotect. It is a form melamine made by BASF. It's biggest advantage is fire resistance. As a sound absorber it is relatively poor. Using mineral wool from Isover, Rockwool (Roxul), etc. would be cheaper and more effective.

Andre

[avare]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

Hi Andre,

so you think this design is totally crap?
I do not get what you think about it....you more have to write in terms for non trained acoustic engineers....

I try to trust this guy but when he came up with LEDE I was thinking myself.
Because this I could do myself with tons of Rockwool behind the speakers as broadband absorption.

On the left room side we have 3 nested plies of big wool curtains.
On the right we have some absorption.
When you put the three curtains back in the room corner you get bass absorption.

Do you think this whole idea is obsolete???
If it is obsolete I can not trust this acoustic engineer anymore.

I do not it is totally crap. I do not know what you discussed with the person. I do not know how close the drawings you showed are to the final design.

I did not know until this post that I quoting about the plies of nested curtains or what you mean by "some absorption." I do not know if your pic 3 includes the curtains or not.

I am reading incomplete information.

Andre

[Mr.HOLMES]

Yes,

this all information I got up to this point.
He told me this would be the first step to take.

I just would like to understand what is wrong with LEDE????

Maybe I have the LUCK that someone who is trained too can overlook the example and tell me more.....

I am not sure if this is the right way for a good sounding room.

If there is someone out in the net reading this and can do some comments which I can use arguing with the developer please share it with me....

Mr.Holmes...

[avare]

Comment to designer:

"Use EBU T3276 as the design guideline."

LEDE will disappear because the criteria can not be met with that small a room with LEDE.

If you want more of the same, but only in english, try this:

design requirements for small rooms

Andre

[Mr.HOLMES]

Hi Andre,

in your paper I found this:

Non-environments
Non-environments are acoustically (almost) dead spaces designed for control rooms. The philosophy grew out of work by Hidley at the end of the 1970s, but the strongest current advocate of this design is Phil Newell. This summary has been taken partly from Newell’s book.

The room has high absorbing side and rear walls and ceiling. Ideally the absorption should be across the full audio bandwidth. The front wall is hard and reflective, and the loudspeakers are mounted into the front wall. The floor is also hard and reflective (although sometimes bass floor absorption is used). The figures below show a plan and sections (extracted from Newell’s book).

The idea is to replicate (near) free field conditions, to monitor the direct sound and nothing else. Any reflections in the room produce distortions to the signal, so by removing the room effect, only what is on the recording is heard. This leads the recording engineer to interpret between the dead acoustics of the non-environment, and the more reverberant conditions of a typical domestic environment. However, by removing the control room from the recording chain ensures that none of the control room artefacts (for example reverberance, modal decays, tone coloration) mask artefacts of the recording (for example bad synthetic reverberation). This reduces uncertainty in the mixing process as every detail is as clear as possible. The sonic images are very precise – some say unnatural. It also means there is more consistency between different non-environment rooms, enabling mixing to more easily take place in different control rooms.

The use of large scale absorption means that the room has to be large to begin with (and will be much smaller at the end!). A variety of means can be used to produce absorption – such as a combination of resonance and porous absorption. The designs of Newell use large absorbent louvres – see figures above. The use of a reflective floor and front wall mean that the space isn’t too unnatural for sound generated by users of the room.

The loudspeakers are flush mount in the front wall to reduce reflections from edges. By placing them on the boundary also reduces comb filtering between the loudspeaker and the front wall reflection. Loudspeaker quality becomes all important as there is no masking from the room. As the on-axis response is only being heard, this simplifies loudspeaker design. Listening to the direct sound only enables phase effects in the recording to be more audible,

Some have criticised the approach as leading to overly reverberant mixes, but this hasn’t been borne out in practise. There is a lack of spaciousness (which requires lateral reflections), but advocates of the non-environment believe that being able to hear the detail is more important than getting the sense of envelopment you might get in an “average” listening room. Especially as an “average” listening room can be headphones, a car or a lounge, so is probably a meaningless concept!

In summary, advocates of non-environments prefer certainty and detail over uncontrolled coloration and reverberance from a control room.

So is this an real option instead of making myself crazy because I cant effective control if the design is worth the money???

[avare]

So is this an real option instead of making myself crazy because I cant effective control if the design is worth the money???

From all that I know of your situation, no. The non-environment room uses absorbers on the ceiling and three walls that are up to 1.3 m thick. Can you give up that much floor space and ceiling height for absorbers?

I am surprised.

You wrote that your english is not that good, but you have already ready read at least one of the documents!

Keep the questions coming. The more you know, the better your studio will be.

Helpfully,
Andre

[Mr.HOLMES]

So my room is not ideal for mixng anyway it has 25 square meters area and a height of 3,90 meters.
In any case there is no space for a real room in room solution because I would loose minimum 25-30 cm from every wall.

Also this would bust my needs and budget too.
So what options do I have if LEDE is obsolete but there is not a lot of space left to do something.

I think it would be the best to get a good mix of absorption and difussion to get subjective a better room sound and yes; maybe mixing the most time in the near field anyway.
If I think everything back and forward this would be the best compromise for such a small room. Or make it dead as most as I can.

Also a problem is that trained acoustic people do not have the biggest interest to do such small jobs.
So he is not the fastest guy in the world....the reason is clear this is not the big money for him.

This brings me to the advisement to build a big broadband absorber 30 cm depth filled with rockwoll behind the speakers over the whole size of the wall.

It would have an analog effect but would be much cheaper.
Yes it maybe would bring down the RT 60 to much but it would be better as waiting too long for someone who is not really in it to do his job.

For me it would be better to mix in a real dry room (in some freq. areas) as to mix in room that is only ready to 60%

[avare]

So what options do I have if LEDE is obsolete but there is not a lot of space left to do something.

The Reflection Free zone design method. It will fit in your space. The criteria is specified in the documents linked in this thread.

I have started giving advice for that design for your room. You have read several documents now on control room design. Your choices include doing the design through this website, another website, or hiring a professional studio designer.

If you decide on a professional designer, there are several who post and read messages here regularly. Do not think important where they live. With the internet, it can be done over it.

Like I wrote in the last post, keep the questions coming!

Andre

[gullfo]

in some cases, it is what it is, and now its all about the trade-offs. in this case, losing 30cm per set of walls and probably the ceiling (if you take HVAC into account), then i think you're in OK shape. you should be able to get good isolation and good acoustics in such a space. you'll just have to work in a smaller space. as far as budget, its going to cost money and/or time and effort (or all three) to make it happen.

for an example, someone in Australia is looking to use all kinds of recycled materials and i find it very exciting to try to come up with a design that can use these type of low cost materials, but he is lucky because he has numerous skilled friends and family to help in the construction process. in fact, now that i think on it, a lot of clients find friends and family to help out.

in one case, a client put in an advert in the newspaper for people willing to do the work in exchange for time in the new studio and he had over 200 responses in less than 2 weeks... he had the new studio built by licensed construction pros in less than a month once he got started and basically for just the cost of materials (and the detailed design docs...)

so if having a studio is important to you, don't give up. as Andre says "keep asking questions" if you don't like the answer, ask another question - question authority. as far as designers, some of the big name designers may be willing to do smaller jobs if they find the problem interesting or they have some time between bigger projects. you might just have to ask them...

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