new Studio design layout - seeking feedback

[asone]

I'm an architect designing a recording studio for two friends of mine who are professional musicians. I'm posting here for all of us to get some feedback for our design. At some point we might be interested in paying for some acoustic consulting - especially for room treatments. Currently they are recording in the basement of a house with room characteristics about as bad as can be - so just having something relatively decent will be a huge improvement. This is NOT a professional, commercial studio that will be used 24/7, but rather a private studio to be used by only a select group of bands. Mostly electronic and indie pop music and the Live room will probably not see hours on end of extremely loud bands. However, there will be some times when it gets loud in there (mostly guitar, bass, drums, electronic stuff, vocals, some piano). I have read some of Rod Gervais's book and the musicians know a decent amount about sound - but none of us know enough about studio design.

The studio is located in an old brick warehouse building. It is on the top floor and in the future might have tenants, but currently does not. There are some residential apartments on the other side of the building about 20' away that we do need to be aware of. The budget for the project probably will only pay for the basic enclosing walls right now. However, adding additional isolation to the floor and ceiling could come at a later date (especially as other tenants begin to move in), as well as sound treatments - bass traps, diffusers, etc.

The construction materials will be 3 5/8" metal stud walls with 5/8" layers of drywall. The Live room will have a double stud isolation wall with 2 layers of 5/8" drywall (separated by Green Glue), sound batt insulation and separate bottom and top plates. The Control room will have a single wall with 5/8" drywall, with a RC-1 channel on one side - except where it shares walls with the Live room. The exterior 12" thick brick walls will be left as they are. The existing wood floor, wood truss, and wood ceiling will be left as it is. Huge wood trusses (8-12" thick members) and 3"x6" joists (really purlins) make up the ceiling structure and are exposed. The ceiling height starts at 12' at the exterior wall and rises to about 18'. The doors will all be solid core wood doors treated in some way to make "super" doors - examples of which I have found on this Forum (many thanks!). There are windows that will have some removable panels to cover them up during recording and mixing.

The emphasis is on getting the Control room to sound accurate and to sacrifice (to some degree) the characteristics of the Live room. Due to rent cost and space constraints it might be difficult to get both rooms to one of the recommended room ratios. Also, please note that this is pretty close to what we will have, but the dimensions and ratios shown in the linked images are not 100% finished. They will all adjust slightly (+/- a few inches), but we wanted to get some feedback first and see where to take things.

Our concerns are as follows:

1. We tried to get a good layout, have non-parallel walls, and get good room ratios, but if anyone has any comments regarding that please comment. There might be a chance to expand the Live room width and achieve a better ratio, but we aren't sure if we can afford to do so (more s.f. = more $ rent).

2. We will do a more through investigation into room treatments, but if anyone has ideas regarding treatments that might effect the basic layout please comment. I say this mostly because the budget only supports getting the basic walls up right now and room treatments will have to come later.

3. Currently, partially due to budget, we are NOT treating the existing wood floor and ceiling. However, as Rod points out in his book, what is the point of having super isolated walls if all the sounds transmits through the floor & ceiling. This is something we would love feedback on - more right now for noise coming IN…but as more tenants move in perhaps also for noise going out.

4. Which leads me to our next concern which is the huge wood trusses and wood joists that are inside the space and penetrate the exterior of the space since they run across the entire building, of which we are only occupying one side.
Will this be a huge problem for transmission?
Will they distort the sound - emphasis on the Control room?
I can only image having the wood ceiling exposed in the Live room (and the truss perhaps) that they might actually add something to the sound - much like the many wood paneled rooms we have seen. Our current plan it not to drop a ceiling on the underside of these joists and the trusses will always be exposed.
But do the trusses need treatment or a soffit built around them?

5. The existing brick exterior wall is left untreated and presents the same questions: Does it need treatment? Does it need to be furred out for isolation purposes? Again for the Live room it probably adds something unique to the sound - I'm assuming.

6. Lastly, there seems to be an emphasis on wood paneled walls, especially in Live rooms. We thought about cladding the Live room in wood, but currently the budget will not allow for this.
Would adding a layer of wood add to the sound quality in the Live room?
Is there a difference using plywood vs. solid sawn lumber?


Here is the link to the images, floor plans, and details: http://www.asonearchitecture.com/ind...162&Itemid=154


Thanks for reading. Sorry for the long post, given the emphasis on details I tried to include as much information as possible,

[jhbrandt]

Paul,

1. Asymmetrical tracking rooms are very versatile and desired whereas symmetry is required in a control or mixing room.

2. basic/necessary construction; room ratios are most important for the rectangular control room. Tracking rooms, which are usually asymmetrical, are normally not subjected to ideal ratio calculations.

3. Sound transmission is bi-directional. - It goes both ways the same. I noticed first off that there is only one partition for the control room & the booth in the tracking room shares the internal tracking room wall. The booth will function as a 3 leaf system in the corner, decreasing isolation to the other tenants of the facility. Flanking paths through the building structure are likely via trusses and brick wall, and testing should be conducted before construction plans are implemented.

4. See above... Reflections from the trusses would most likely be beneficial in the tracking room but can cause flanking issues in the building. The control room ceiling should be absorbent and I would recommend better isolation in the control room with a decoupled ceiling and absorption above.

5. Sonically, a brick wall can be nice for certain instruments. The windows will need additional sound proofing plus it may be necessary to reduce flanking paths by decoupling the wall.

6. Sonically, there are small differences between very cheap particle board and expensive hardwood - as most hard materials, if mounted the same way, sound similar. Surface finish and placement will affect the sound, such as panels with thick layers of hard polyurethane vs. rough saw-cut, unfinished boards with spaces between.

I would highly recommend that you do not settle on an isolation scheme until you determine your isolation requirements - and then design/build accordingly. I see you wasting a lot of money on isolation walls that don't do anything for you. --- Kind of like what they do with air conditioning here in Indonesia; if it's not cool enough they get another unit - never thinking that they should CLOSE THE DOOR! or put insulation over the thin ceiling. HAHA! - All I'm saying is that building isolation is like links in a chain... and if part of that tow-chain is hooked together with links from my wife's necklace, it's going to snap before you can turn around. - That's isolation. It's a system, and if you have a failure anywhere, you'll be throwing good money after bad to try to fix it.

Cheers,
John

[boggy]

Originally Posted by asone

..... At some point we might be interested in paying for some acoustic consulting - especially for room treatments. .........

This is a best idea, if you give a professional service to your friends.


Try to find a skilled acoustician in your neighbourhood, because a big
problem is that you possibly may not know everything what you must ask here.

People will try to help you here, of course, but only with answers to your
questions, and you must be aware that someone here may, or may not,
remember to tell you something very important, even if you didn't ask.

Good luck!

Bogic Petrovic