Studio Design Advice

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Maschined

Is it worth taking measurements with REW to get a rough idea of the best place for a listening position now

I probably wouldn't bother.

We are thinking of having low storage down one side of the wall (low enough to allow 1st reflection absorbers to be mounted above it). Will these unbalance the sound at the listening position, do we need to keep things symmetrical?

Since you're building from scratch, I'd split the storage to be half on the left and half on the right, along the center-rear parts of the side walls to avoid blocking the front and rear corners where bass traps will go.

You definitely don't want your seat halfway back in the room as shown. If you plan for about 38 percent of the way back, you'll be close to your final place. More here:

How to set up a room

I'll leave your remaining questions for others to answer.

--Ethan

The Acoustic Treatment Experts

[Maschined]

Hi Ethan,

Thank you for the response. We will most definitely look at moving the listening position around to find the best spot and the corners will all be free for the soffit traps. Most of the back wall will also be treated.

The ceiling slopes form low at the door end to high at the back end. I think we have the speakers facing the correct way although the difference in ceiling height (7ft at the door, 12ft at the rear) makes me wonder.

Thanks

James

[Maschined]

In the attached diagram it shows a raised floor section at the back of the room. This will be made from chip board and wooden batt. It is purely to give the room some visual character but I noted in another thread a while back that raised floors can have a negative effect on the acoustic of the room.

Is this correct? If anyone can share some pearls of wisdom I would be very grateful :-)

Thanks

James

[Ethan Winer]

An angled ceiling should be higher in the rear, so that part is correct.

I don't have an opinion on the riser, other than to say it should be solidly built and stuffed with insulation to avoid rattles and resonance.

--Ethan

[Maschined]

Thanks again Ethan. Unless anyone has a reason not to build the raised floor we will go ahead and stuff it with rockwool roll.

[gullfo]

depending on what your intent is for the platform (will you put the drummer on it?) then you might consider making is a massive floating platform so it effectively decouples. you could do this with rigid insulation on the floor (2" (50mm) 6lb/ft (96kg/m3)) and then a 2x4 frame (24" (600mm) oc) with plywood or OSB (chipboard) on the bottom and top and fill it with dry construction sand. this will help eliminate impact and a lot of LF noise from the kit from going into the floor (and into other mics etc). you can use this technique for bass and guitar amps etc. if you're just going to use this for a couch, then per Ethan just make sure it's fully damped to avoid resonances. leave some of the edge face open to provide some absorption.

[Maschined]

Hi Glenn,

Thank you for your input.

It will be just for a couch but that's excellent advice. If we built the entire raised floor from some kind of metal grill filled with Rockwool we would have a very large bass trap. Definitely food for thought :-)