Building wide, rather than long control rooms

[Switchcraft]

All,
I know it goes against all control design rules to set up the control room so that you are against the shorter walls, but I like the design of a wide room because I want to use the sides for production as well.
This room will be a mastering, mixing and production room. I have other places to cut drums, my main concern is a good sound large control room. Ceilings are 7'6" and the space for the control room is 28'X13' (internal). That is shown as the white wall.

Obviously, the front wall will be thick with absorption, at least 6" with 2D diffusion.
I planned on making the rear wall poly cylindrical with a thin enough wood that low freaks would flow through it and the high freqs would radiate. I would consider slotting it too. These are probably no the best set up, I am just playing around for now.

What are your thoughts on something like this? The good part about this is that your lateral nodes will show up as much. The bad part is that you have to do a lot of thick trapng on the front wall to clean it up.

I see a lot of really wide control rooms, but they are general very big and still have a lot of rear wall 2D diffusion.
Is something like that in a smaller room?

What are your thoughts on these drawings?
Again, the internal white wall line is 28'X13'
Thanks for all of your help. Sketchup is amazing. I did that in one night of downloading and playing around.

[Northward]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

All,
I know it goes against all control design rules to set up the control room so that you are against the shorter walls, but I like the design of a wide room because I want to use the sides for production as well.

There is no such rule.

What matters is what the numbers tell you and what type of design you're looking for. That will tell you which way to go.

Most of my designs end up with CR that are larger than deep. Visually (so what you see when standing in there) the rooms have a ~ 0.75:1.00 depth to width ratio on average. Actual shaped hard shell size is different though.

There are very few 'rules' in acoustics, and a lot of grey areas. Don't take everything you read for granted.

[jhbrandt]

My friend, if you face the long wall in that room and are in the optimal positions modaly speaking - about 5' from the wall in front of you --- this will put you about 8' from the wall behind you.

This will give you a time delay of 0.014159 seconds and comb filtering at: 35Hz, 106, 141, 176, 211, 247, 741, 988, 1235, 1483Hz... The time delay gap is not enough to give the operator's brain a chance to sort... This turns these into confusing 'early reflections'.

In other words, I wouldn't do it. OR you could go with ESS - Early Sound Scattering and this room could work quite nicely. But, IMHO, with an LEDE or RFZ design, this is not a good idea.

Cheers,
John

[Switchcraft]

I agree that rule was the wrong word, I suppose common practice would have been better. With that said, Do you think this ratio is a bit too extreme?
This is more 1L : 2.3W.

Do you think a helmholtz would be more appropriate on the back wall to address the specific fundamental freq that is 13'?

[Switchcraft]

JHB,
Thanks!
So your thought would be that with rooms of this type and this size, it would work much better if diffusion was used on the front wall in a early sound scattering design?
In those situation is the rear wall absorptive or is LEDE completely avoided?

My though was to make the side walls live since they are so far and the front and back very absorptive. Still LELE, but a bit opposite of common design.
I feel teh room is too thin to resituate the room the long way. I would have a very long and skinny room that I feel would not be an effective use of space.

Thank you so much for responding.

[avare]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

I agree that rule was the wrong word, I suppose common practice would have been better. With that said, Do you think this ratio is a bit too extreme?
This is more 1L : 2.3W.

The difficulty is not the ratio in and of itself, but one of the scale. For small rooms, the shorter dimension is too small for effective acoustics. John alluded to that already, but did not use those words. There are numerous professionally designed studios where the setup is along the shorter axis. In these rooms the shorter dimension is on the order of 6m (20') minimum. Happy new year!

Proportionally correct,
Andre

[ciro]

Originally Posted by avare

For small rooms, the shorter dimension is too small for effective acoustics.

It´s valid to say that even speakers with extended low response firing a -let´s say 10' dimension - will not reproduce well sub bass frequencies below ~55hz because this is a "modal" limit?

Happy new year for you and GS friends too

Ciro

[Northward]

Originally Posted by avare

The difficulty is not the ratio in and of itself, but one of the scale.

Spot on...

HNY!

[PaulP]

What will the front diffusors achieve ?

Paul P

[avare]

Originally Posted by ciro

It´s valid to say that even speakers with extended low response firing a -let´s say 10' dimension - will not reproduce well sub bass frequencies below ~55hz because this is a "modal" limit?

No. Below the lowest mode frequency the speakers are working in the room's pressure zone. There is no room re-enforcement of the frequencies and the response is very even beacuse there are no nodes and anti-nodes.

A happy New Year to you too!

Andre

[avare]

Originally Posted by PaulP

What will the front diffusors achieve ?

A reduction in the reflection strength while maintaining the energy in the room. Strong reflections from the front wall will cause frequency response peaks and dips. Also, depending other factors (that great reminder that room acoustics are the product of a system, not individual components) they may cause smearing of the sound stage.

Andre

[PaulP]

Originally Posted by avare

A reduction in the reflection strength while maintaining the energy in the room.

Do monitors radiate so much to the rear of their enclosures that it is worthwhile diffusing ?
I thought diffusors of reasonable size only worked on higher frequencies which will mostly
be directed forward from the monitors.

Paul P

[andrebrito]

They do but mostly below 500 Hz

[andrebrito]

Happy New Year for everyone !

[ciro]

thumbsup

Originally Posted by avare

No. Below the lowest mode frequency the speakers are working in the room's pressure zone. There is no room re-enforcement of the frequencies and the response is very even beacuse there are no nodes and anti-nodes.

A happy New Year to you too!

Andre

Thanks Andre!

Ciro

[SAC]

Originally Posted by avare

No. Below the lowest mode frequency the speakers are working in the room's pressure zone. There is no room re-enforcement of the frequencies and the response is very even beacuse there are no nodes and anti-nodes.

A happy New Year to you too!

Andre

Thank you Andre!

Otherwise they just presented a spectacular argument for why a set of headphones cannot reproduce low frequencies!

[Switchcraft]

First, I want to thank everyone for their comments about the last design. Everything that you said made a lot of sense after rethinking it. So, I came up with a long throw design that I want to use. It will still be a one room, LEDE, long throw room.

I want to build it so that behind the console end is live (I already have a window) and behind the mix position dead, because it is so far. I still plan to make the live room HF reflect-ant with slotted absorbers and wood, but since it is so far back I thought it would really result in a dead sound anyway.

I designed hinged doors to close up when mixing, open up when tracking. I want to use the cuby holes as 5.1 LR speaker flush mounts.

The larger window slots I thought I could use as psuedo flush mounts for my Focal Twin Be's. It will at least create symmetry, but I have to figure out how to keep that window and that is the only was I thought would be good.

To do that, I recreated a non existent window on the front right to mirror the window on the front L.

I would imagine I could do something with the live room besides bend that wall, but it is a start.

Thanks you for all of your input.

[Switchcraft]

top view

[Switchcraft]

Anyone?

[Victor_Stoian]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

I want to build it so that behind the console end is live (I already have a window) and behind the mix position dead, because it is so far.

it's behind the console (where the speakers are) where you want the dead end to be, just so there are no (early) reflexions from the walls and ceiling.

[Switchcraft]

Hey all,
I redesigned that same space with Wes Lachot's EQ magazine geometry as a guide.
Wes Lachot Design || Studio Design and Acoustic Consulting

His room was designed for 8' so I scaled the geometry down to 7' 2" and came up with this design.

I also bumped out the front corner a bit.

There is a window in the back of the house that will land off center behind the console. I figured I would put a piece of glass or fiberglass with holes in it to span the whole top rear of the wall to maintain a mirrored L-R Design. I do not want to cover up that window and that is the only way I can see addressing that issue.
Any other ideas?

I had to angle the room to that side of the basement because there is a drainage pipe and other mechanicals that I need to access on the right side.

I added a little bit of a live room to the rear of the control room.
This wall will have electrical and mic lines for the live room.
I may try to add diffusers on that wall with holes so that you can see through to musicians on the other side. Obviously, I am not looking for any isolation

Question.
Would it make sense to build out those front corners so that I could soffit mount my Focal Twin Be's? Usually only large Main's are soffit mounted. Would it make sense to do that as well?
Thanks in advance.
ryan

[Purusha]

I just got replay from Focal company that I should not soffit mount my Twins.

The twins are not designed to be flush monted. You have to keep them on stands.
If you put them inside the wall you will damage the low mid spectrum and
endanger the cooling efficiency of the electronics.

I was just planning to build a studio this way and viola