Angles of Control Room walls

[Wes Lachot]

Nathan,

I agree with Bassmankr that the bath is best off the Studio. You don't want a door directly from the bath to the CR, and there really isn't room (with this small footprint) for a hallway between the CR and Studio. Putting it in the top righthand corner is the best solution, I feel. (FWIW, I was hinting around in my last few posts hoping you would figure that out for yourself).

You are correct to keep your eye on the ball as far as the RFZ goes. The angle of the CR walls will need to be sufficient if you want that to work.

-Wes

[naethoven]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

Nathan,
You don't want a door directly from the bath to the CR, ...
-Wes

Hi Wes,
Is there a reason for this, acoustically? Or are you just saying it works better for more privacy or something like that?

[Wes Lachot]

Originally Posted by naethoven

Hi Wes,
Is there a reason for this, acoustically? Or are you just saying it works better for more privacy or something like that?

Yes, for privacy. I would never put a bathroom entry door inside a control room. Bad feng shui and so on. The practical layout, physical dimensions, and acoustical considerations are all inextricably linked in a good studio design.

--Wes

[naethoven]

Here is the updated version. I feel really good about it, but PLEASE tell me what you see. The CR is 1:1.4:1.8. I decided to leave the Bath connected to the CR, but thanks for the advice. I want visibility with the booth, and to be able to use the restroom without interrupting the session. There is now a doubled door into the Bath, to give more privacy.

Bassmankr, I love the CR turned like this. Thank you!

P.S. The skinny brown doors are louver doors, vented. The blue is glass. The iso window will start at just above 4 ft high and will be angled toward the ceiling to maintain RFZ.

Thank you guys so much,
Nathan Webb

[Jaques Beraques]

Wes is sooo right!!!
Imagine a client has to take a crap, and while he sits there, the music is stopping how embarassing, especially women wont like that!
So I would strongly advice you to move the bath!

[Wes Lachot]

Well, it really isn't a bathroom until you get a toilet and sink in there. I don't see how you do that.

So I still stand by my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

-Wes

[Bassmankr]

Back to the drawing board LOL, your revision has room for a toilet but no room for a sink. Computers have a practical limit to how far away they can be (mouse/keyboard/video moniter cords) and you are probably past that, also they need some volume in their space because they produce heat so they need cool air for their fan/heatsinks to work hence sticking them in a larger HVAC space. There is an extremely narrow sightline for anyone in the Iso, musicians NEED to look at each other, it's how we play better. Any outside door is best opening into the Live room, moving equipment in and out should not be through the control room. It will keep the control room cleaner too. Just flip/rotate the plan if you want the bath in the southwest corner. If you want to experiment more with the bath it would help you to print out what I posted and cut up the spaces and bath fixtures then move them about, seems like you are not getting how much space you need to get a toilet and sink working right (basically 5' x5' if side by side or 3' x 7' if oposite for minimums with the door being in the RIGHT location). Per my drawing if one of the bandmembers needs to use the bath, recording can still go on (just without them), if the engineer needs to use the bath then everything but rehersal stops regardless. I think requiring a Bath off the control room is just going to kill the design with this tight of a space. The best I can think of is as per how I drew it. If the bath's west wall comes into the live room more you could move the bath door to the Control room's north wall. The trouble is that in that position you would have to slide past any speakers/console/desk in the north portion of the Control room just to use the bath plus good luck getting any HVAC equipment in or out, so that kills that option too. Just get over having the Bath open into the Control room and start refining the spaces/sightlines. Remember keep as MUCH volume as you can for your spaces since you have a small space which means go with a minimum wall thickness (single stud with resilant channel and double up the drywall), Doors should be single doors (solid core wood or sandwiched). A space this small will NEVER be a "MID SIZE" studio so treat it/design it for what it is and spend your construction dollars accordingly/wisely. Make it nice but remember the "Vega" principle, you can pour $100,000 into restoration/customizing of a Vega but in the end you won't have a Mercedes, it will still be a Chevy Vega LOL.

[Bassmankr]

Just took the time to read the whole thread, you don't state if this is a basement, an attatched garage or detached garage space you are converting, which is it? If you dump the bathroom from the space and use your existing house bathroom this might get you over the hump and on to actually building this thing plus you will save some money. With no bath you can take the Bath/HVAC space as I drew it and steal some more volume from there or flush mount your speakers in the north wall of the Control room utilizing that space. Additionally, the outside walls of the Bath/HVAC only needs to be regular width/construction as does the partition wall between (with the bi-fold louvered door). Basically I gave you a plan that works, stick three pieces of glass in it, adjust it for your actual square footage, make the wall widths as small as possible, adjust ceiling height for best volume/ratios, locate an egress door to the live room, and start building.

[naethoven]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I've revamped again taking them into account. Everything now is exactly to scale. I also included room needed to work around HVAC when servicing. The bathroom will work this way, and there is now a small sound lock btwn it and the CR.

Bassman, this is in a detached 2 car garage. Thanks for taking time to read the whole thread!

BTW the closet for the computer and mic storage will be divided into top and bottom halves. The top will be open only to the CR through the door. The bottom will be open to both CR and HVAC room with a separate door in order to keep it cool. I fixed the line of sight from the iso to the live (good call), and made the bath large enough to be comfy (tiny pedestal sink). FYI the door on the bottom rt of the CR leads out.

Can anyone tell me if the power supply for the console will produce noise? I am planning for a Trident Series 80.

Thank you,
Nathan

[naethoven]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

So I still stand by my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

-Wes

It's worth a lot, and I value it very much. Thank you for being here.

[Wes Lachot]

Your design doesn't leave any room for back wall treatment.

-Wes

[naethoven]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

Your design doesn't leave any room for back wall treatment.

-Wes

Namely diffusion? I plan to hang a few QRDs in the center of the wall and trap the corners above the bath door height. Is there something else I need? What about my design takes up the room for back wall treatment?

(The only thing I can think of is the door to the closet, but with only the above treatment the door will work.)

[Wes Lachot]

Originally Posted by naethoven

Namely diffusion? I plan to hang a few QRDs in the center of the wall and trap the corners above the bath door height. Is there something else I need? What about my design takes up the room for back wall treatment?

(The only thing I can think of is the door to the closet, but with only the above treatment the door will work.)

The placement of the bath door leaves you no room for rear wall bass trapping. The rear corners are one of the most important places for trapping a control room, so it's not the best place for a door.

The small size of this proposed control room creates a need for good, solid bass trapping, especially in the front to back dimension.

-Wes

[naethoven]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

The placement of the bath door leaves you no room for rear wall bass trapping. The rear corners are one of the most important places for trapping a control room, so it's not the best place for a door.

The small size of this proposed control room creates a need for good, solid bass trapping, especially in the front to back dimension.

-Wes

Improved a little...bigger bath, better computer placement, no closet door on rear wall of CR. Bath door is still an issue, maybe I could hang a trap on the door??

[Bassmankr]

With your revision the bathroom still won't work. You need to get a tape measure out and figure how things work in the real world and not on paper. A toilet is basically 2 feet wide by 2 1/2 feet long, at a MINIMUM from the centerline of the toilet you need 1 1/2 feet of space on each side (a 3 foot wide space JUST for the toilet). A small pedestal sink (smallest footprint) is 1 1/2 feet by 1 1/2 feet and you need a 3 square foot open area in front of it to use it. I gave you minimum bath sizes in a prior post, 5 x 5 if fixtures are together on one wall, 3 x 7 if fixtures are on oposite walls (like what I drew). As for the Iso, you are not looking at the practical side still, as in where someone in the iso would ACTUALLY be standing. You have to put a mic in front of them and that takes up space so the person would be standing in the back 1/3 of the Iso you drew. From that point half of the Live room is NOT visable. A sightline means being able to see ALL the other musos. Again if you want the Bath in the southwest corner and the Iso in the northeast corner, flip/rotate/mirror my plan, the work has already been done for you. Regarding doors and their locations, Wes is right! See how on my drawing none of the doors are right in a corner, that is so you can have acoustic treatments in those corners and still have full door swings. Regarding wall sizes, in a 24 x 24 space the best working arrangements you are going to get out of it are two 12 x 16 spaces for the Live and Control rooms. Anything smaller than that is just not worth it and you would be better off with a one room studio. EVERY inch counts in a small space so you have to make smart choices and the differences in sound attenuation that you would get from a thicker wall construction are NOT worth the floor square footage/volume of your working spaces that you would have to give up. So single stud, resilent channel construction is basically the ONLY smart choice for your space. It will work that way, give Dave Dalton a call if you have doubts. Lastly, while I can see you enjoy runing the numbers and trying out options I can tell practical building design is not your forte. It's great you are trying and learning but if you want to get this thing built soon as your posts suggests, try teaming up with a buddy who has those abilities. Construction mistakes are VERY expensive and someone with experience will end up saving you money. My last word on the bathroom LOL. You are building a home studio, as such musicians coming to use it know that they will have to use the house's existing bathrooms and it's not a big deal to them. You may not want them in your home using the bathroom and that's up to you but when you get the estimate of what it will cost to run water and sewer to the detached garage plus the concrete cutting of the existing slab to place all of that then it will dawn on you that for the cost it isn't worth it, walk into the house to use the bathroom and save the money. It's probably time to think of the practical side of things, normally with any construction it's about defining available space and budget FIRST. Then comes a prioritized wish list and design begins based on that. This thread has started from the opposite direction and shows why that process is important as you are not that much closer to your goal then when you started. Space, Budget, Priority list, then design accordingly. Frankly I'd just take my plan, eliminate the bathroom and just make that space one larger HVAC/Mechanical/Computers/Storage room. Add three pieces of glass, an outside door into the Live room, and minimize wall thicknesses. This will give you your true dimensions to work with and from that you can figure best ceiling heights. Then you would have what is needed to build out your garage. Good luck on your adventure!

[johndykstra]

What about building out a small addition to house the mechanicals and the bathroom?

[Bassmankr]

Hopefully as I re-read my last post I don't come off as a ball-buster or dream crusher but I'm a practical get-r-done guy and trying to steer you in the right direction. A house addition will give more flexability as he would not be locked into the garage's dimensions but then he would have the cost of the shell and slab. Utilities would be cheaper since you are cutting the distance of runs and if he could use the existing house HVAC, better yet. However just the slab cost alone would be more than the new HVAC for an existing garage buildout. Interior buildouts should be a wash for costs if he keeps to about the same square footage. Maybe a quick call to a local contractor to find out a rough cost on the shell and slab based on the square footage would help. You just don't want the contractor wasting time preparing bids that will likely not result in work for them. It's tough enough out there to make a living. They should be able to quote a square footage number range for your area on a quick call. With a garage buildout you can maintain a low profile (good for alot of reasons), a house addition, not so much (re-assesment of taxes).

[mentat]

Have you settled on a layout, naethoven?

[rufus13]

In the dusty recesses of the brain, I seem to recall a study or profile by the BBC, or an opinion by Everest, or some decent reference to cost vs. performance of rooms where a bigger rectangular-floor room always outperformed a more complex (non-90-degree walls) but smaller volume built to the same price-point.

The main thing I remember is that building cubic allows so much savings that the extra volume plus appropriate treatment works out pretty well, and on/under budget.

It is amazing how much less wasted space, time, and materials happen on a job when cuts are all 90 degrees.

A great thing about a recession/depression is that money can go a long way.

A bad thing about a recession/depression is that money is hard to come by.

Cheers.

[Bassmankr]

Regardless of whether a wall is at 90 degrees or at an angle the wall is constructed the same. The difference is at wall junctions and it's not a big deal. Wasted space is a concern mostly with narrow angle corners (less than 90 degrees) but with these type of studios those corners are going to be filled with room treatment so that becomes a non-issue. Designing around what you are going to put into a space and where people need to walk is critical in any design. If a door or walkway path is in the wrong place that is the biggest creator of wasted space. The main complication with non parallel/perpendicular walls is where the wall meets the ceiling and whether to extend that wall completely to the roof for better sound isolation and the answer to that depends on framing/loads of the ceiling/joists.

[AwwDeOhh]

Originally Posted by naethoven

Improved a little...bigger bath, better computer placement, no closet door on rear wall of CR. Bath door is still an issue, maybe I could hang a trap on the door??

Why not just make a door off the live room? (remove the corner door from the CR).

This should free up your rear CR for trapping, and allow access to the washroom via live room. You, as the engineer will have to go thru another door to get there, but people in the live room won't have to come thru the CR.

*just a suggestion, i'm no acoustic expert, but maybe something to consider

[claend]

Awesome, tones of knowledge to digest here.

Thanks all.

Carlos

[psykostx]

Think satanic patterns if you want good sound...

[Pinki Tuscaderro]

Actually you probably do not want exact right angles because bass will build up in the corners and the refelections will distort your mids and highs.

I am no expert though, by any means, and am in the process of building my own studio too, but from what I understand you want symmetry in your monitors and controls and asymmetry in your walls and ceiling. Good luck.

[johndykstra]

Sorry.

That would be incorrect

[Chris_Nicks]

any news from nathans studio plans?

[Nauris]

Great to read this thread!

[AmberJN]

I wonder if the baby came before he could get going on it.

[GeorgeG]

I need some help understanding the control room RFZ issue. As I understand it the point is to have blank wall area in the range of locations that make up the span of first reflections (that have less than 20ms delay time delta vs. direct sound) via ray trace analysis so that you can absorb/attenuate those reflections to levels low enough to maintain clarity, using panels on those wall locations. Glass must be kept out of those zones or you are faced with placing panels in front of those highly reflective surfaces. Hence the advice to move the glass south or eliminate it in this design on the west wall.

The problem is that on the John Sayer site, his central control room design has sliding glass doors in those critical areas on both sides. What am I missing here? Does it have anything to do with soffit mounted monitors?

Variplans

Thanks,

George

[gouge]

i asked a similar question a while back and got some very well defined answers from the enlightened ones on the forum. i think first it's wise to take a step back and get a more complete answer on RFZ. from that point of view my personal opinion is i wouldn't follow the layouts on the sayer site as being final outcomes but more "concepts". there is quite a bit of detail missing from them especially in the form of not enough acoustic treatment shown. especially when it comes to frequencies below 250hz

here is the link, hope it helps.
eigenmodes calculator

Originally Posted by GeorgeG

I need some help understanding the control room RFZ issue. As I understand it the point is to have blank wall area in the range of locations that make up the span of first reflections (that have less than 20ms delay time delta vs. direct sound) via ray trace analysis so that you can absorb/attenuate those reflections to levels low enough to maintain clarity, using panels on those wall locations. Glass must be kept out of those zones or you are faced with placing panels in front of those highly reflective surfaces. Hence the advice to move the glass south or eliminate it in this design on the west wall.

The problem is that on the John Sayer site, his central control room design has sliding glass doors in those critical areas on both sides. What am I missing here? Does it have anything to do with soffit mounted monitors?

Variplans

Thanks,

George