Designing shape of room

[avare]

Originally Posted by BrenJWC

I'm in the planning stages of building a small production studio under my house. I've attached a photo of the space I'm working with. I'm thinking I'll probably work within the confines of the concrete posts - there's another two in line with where I stood to take the photo. The area is about 19 square metres (62 ft) and just over 2 metres high (6.5 ft). So pretty small. I want to probably divide it up into 2/3 of the space for a control room and 1/3 for a tracking booth.

My question is how I should go about designing the shape of the room. Since I'm free to do what ever I want in that regard and don't have to be stuck with parallel walls, how do I work out the best way to set it up before I even have to consider internal treatment. I'm reading my way through the wealth of info out there on all things acoustic, but haven't found anything that deals with this yet.

Any help is much appreciated. Cheers!

Have fun with your studio build.

1. Study and master my signature line.
2. Get Rod's book.
3. Get, install and learn Sketchup. It is free.

There is a wealth of information in the Reference sticky at the top of the forum. Have a look at my post with lots of free stuff.

Answering your question about room shape, rectangular is fine. Other shapes can be used, but there is no acoustic reason for them.

You did one of the great things right already. You included your geographic location in your profile.

Andre

[gouge]

hi brenjwc,

i guess the first thing needed is to understand your ceiling height. what effects this is how muclh isolation you need to upstairs. the higher the ceiling the better when you are starting off with a lower ceiling space.

so do you need a high level of isolation which would require a ceiling cavity or is it not important. from there you calculate your ceiling height and apply ideal room ratios to get a ball park idea of length versus width.

back to the ceiling. if isolation is not a major problem then i would take the underside of the floorboars as your ceiling height and fill the gap between the underside of the joists and the usderside of the flooring with absorption.

if you need isolation then you will have to build a suspended ceiling under your existing floor joists and then provide full absorption. if doing this means a ceiling height that becomes unworkable then you need to evaluate your build.

if you can figure out which ceiling option you want and then provide an actual height i can help by suggesting some typical room ratios taken form john brandts site.

unfortunately, even with room ratios you will still need acoustic treatment.