Tracking Room Floors: Wood or Carpet?

[spicyitaliano]

Hmm, I'll bet you're thinking wood. Me too, but I'm not confident enough to say it. Hey folks, I've got a new studio coming up soon, and I wanted to ask for your suggestion concerning the floor.

The studio has three main tracking rooms. One large one, an attached room that opens up into the large one (no wall/door, its just a knocked out wall), and one medium-sized booth.

The large tracking room is a large symetric hexagon with 13 ft walls around. The actual size is about 20x20, and the total sq. footage is about 408 ft. But again, this is a hexagonally shaped room. In the center of the room is a fireplace that goes all the way to the top at about 5'7"x3'. The ceiling in the center of the room is about 12 feet, and it slopes down to about 8 ft high all around. Right now its all carpet in there.

So the question is what approach should I take with the flooring? Leave the carpet? Install laminate wood floors? Install read wood floors? It the room big enough to benefit from wood floors? Would additional diffusion be good to offset a reflective wood floor?

Thanks everyone.

[sharward]

First of all, you'll want to trim the extra "whiteness" from that image so that its overall width is less than 700 pixels. John's getting very serious about that rule of late.

I've seen Steve recommend wood or wood-like (i.e., laminate) floors with a couple of area rugs more than once here -- the theory being, you can adjust the characteristics of the room simply by removing the rugs or rolling them up partially.

--Keith

[spicyitaliano]

Sorry, I'm new to Macs and I dont have any editing software for graphics. I had a friend of mine do it.

So you would recommend wood floors versus carpet for a room of this size?

I would assume that diffusion within the main room would be key to preventing any direct reflections along all the walls. I've been drawing out a few designs using wood slats along the walls. But I was interested in some input from this forum. Does it make more sense to build something, say like the wall units on the main John Sayers site, the slot resonators? All the way around the room -- that could become quite expensive. Would you recommend something else?

[knightfly]

A hexagon is getting dangerously close to a circle, which is a nightmare for acoustics in general - you may need to use quite a bit of absorption to control "focusing" of sound from several surfaces. Probably the easiest "non-math" way to handle that room is with several movable gobo's - some with reflective backs and some with simple absorption material.

With equal length sides, what you normally would have is FOUR sets of parallel walls instead of only three - the sloped ceiling cuts that back to three sets, so flutter will need to be fixed. The movable panels can help there too.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what would be needed; I'd invest in a copy of ETF except you're on a MAC If you have (or can get) a copy of Virtual PC, ETF should run fine (or maybe there's something similar for Mac - don't know... Steve

[spicyitaliano]

The studio's owner recently installed the carpet before he called me. He spent a ton of money on it, and he's not willing to take it up. He's determined to record a band or two and see how it is first. But regardless, carpet is here to stay for a while. What would you say?

[knightfly]

I'd say good luck; it's a well-known fact (although apparently not well ENOUGH ) that carpet has VERY uneven absorption - almost nothing at low frequency, and a LOT at high, a bit in the middle. This makes things VERY difficult to balance out; generally requires some sort of resonant lower frequency devise such as a helmholtz or panel trap setup to compensate.

Otherwise you'll get a pretty muddy, lifeless sound out of the room, unless the entire rest of the room is left hard; in that case, with that room shape you'd likely have some really quirky "hot spots" - all in all, I'd say if you get decent recordings in that room I want you to engineer my next album... Steve

[spicyitaliano]

Alright, here it comes. The cat is out of the bag. The owner called me about a month ago and asked me to design his new studio. Now he is not an audio engineer, but a government business man, for lack of better words. He doesn't know much about the studio environment. But regardless, I came in to the building the first day and the first thing I saw was the carpet, folloed by his equipment selection, and the faulty radio shack wiring throughout the place. I very cautiously I asked him how far he wanted to take the studio and what he wanted to accomplish. He said he wanted the best studio on the gulf coast. So I didn't know where to start. How did I tell him that we had to change everything about the studio. And beyond that, I only began to tell you about the things he has spent loads of money on that actually hurt the sound quality of his rooms.

So it's been very akward. It hasnt been easy working on this project because the whole time I'm just telling him "Sorry, we have to tear that down, sorry this has to be re-done, sorry - your design looks cool but sounds terrible..." It's been really hard working on this. And beyond that, he loves to just get stuff done. So we'll be briefly talking about a design of the room, go home, and the next morning he calls telling me he's been to lowes all morning, bought the materials, and he's ready to build it. And of course, everything he bought can't be used!

Maybe this is where I really need your input. What do you suggest?

[knightfly]

Is this person a client, a friend, a relative, some of each, or??!? And, how much Valium can you get hold of, is he paying you, and how bad do you need the money?

Regardless of ANY of your answers to the above, I personally would be seriously considering a "cards on the table" approach; if you try to appease him, the studio will suck. If he REALLY wants the best facility on the east coast, have him write you a check for $5,000,000, and tell him you'll call him when it's ready...

Somehow I think that neither end of the range is what's really gonna happen, but for your own sanity you REALLY need to have a heart-to-heart with this person. IF he's shopping at Rat Shack, and STILL says he wants the best studio on the east coast, he has NO CLUE WHATEVER.

Before you lose another minutes sleep over this, get him to give you a FIRM BUDGET and a REALISTIC GOAL (no, not the Rat Shack version of "realistic" ) - if he can't, or won't do this I would find another way to earn money if I were you. Seriously... Steve

[spicyitaliano]

Thanks Steve for the advice.

He's a family member of a past client. He's not paying me, but I'm doing this mostly for the benefits to my own resume. This issue has been a lack of no firm decision of how far he wanted to take his studio. The truth is that he didn't know the possibilities, he's not an engineer and he doesn't have any studio experience. But he is a musician, at the age of retiring, and wanted to build a studio. Beyond that, I helped to put the idea in his mind that we could potentially have the best studio in our area (between mobile and panama city). But with little respect for common studio design techniques, he has not been easy to influence an advanced design upon. For example, the carpeted live room issue is still yet to be understood by him. He feels that the carpet would sound better than a wood floor because it's not as bright. He also insists that no book and no acoustician can tell you the right way to do a room because every room is different. And while this may be true, there ARE for-sure ways to solve common problems in certain recording spaces.

To be specific, it's been hard to design the live room acoutics treatments. The room is hexagonally shaped (about 20x20) with carpet floors and drywall walls, 14 ft ceilings. The exception? There is a 6x3 fireplace going up in the middle of the room. He is set on the fact that this will provide enough diffusion for the room and offset any potential standing waves between the 3 sets of parallel walls.

Plus, he carpeted the entire building just before I got there. How should I tell him "the money you just spent is going to waste...it shouldn't be carpet for all of these reasons..."

It goes on and on, but I think you get the idea. What should I do?

[sharward]

Uh... Resign...?

[spicyitaliano]

I can't.

I've been working on this for too long. I think I'll just have to have a heart to heart with him and tell him that he needs to commit to me working for him or not.

[Pennywizz6]

You never said you couldnt do both! Id also try and remove that fireplace, its just throws off everything, especially for a 5.1 setup. And it interrupts console placment ect and the list goes on. When you say faulty radio shack wiring is that just AC wires? If thats the case i doubt it would make a huge difference, yeah its nice to have the good stuff, but if he isnt a recording engineer or anything i doubt he will care either. If theres ground loops, guess what!? They make external peices for that stuff!

Fill

[WiseMindsRecordingStudios]

I can't.

I've been working on this for too long. I think I'll just have to have a heart to heart with him and tell him that he needs to commit to me working for him or not.

While you are at it, ask him why, if he has all of the answers....is he bothering to confer with you. Sounds to me like he needs a contractor, not a consultant.

These are the type of people that have driven me from MI retail and into running my studio full time (which was a blessing in disquise). Radio Shack mentality I call it. I could go into a complete expose about how bad Radio Shack is and what the have done to people but I digress.

Good luck with your talks, I do know how frustrating it can be.

[sharward]

Andy has a great point -- if the guy supposedly knows all the answers, then why does he want you there at all?

At the very least, I think you should ask him what he wants from you. Perhaps this is all just a matter of uncommunicated expectations. If the answer to that question doesn't mesh with his actions, then call him on it.

--Keith