John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Your place looks great. (Hope it sounds great, too!)

Just curious what type of schedule you kept? (How many hours per day, how many days per week, how much help you had, that kind of thing.) You got a lot done in a few months!

SB

PS -- yeah, your monitors look a little wide for your mix position. Remember, you essentially want to form an equilateral triangle with the monitors and your head at its corners. When you get it right, you'll hear things centered in your mix to magically appear to be coming from your front wall.

Here's a possibly confusing way to find good places for both your head and your speakers -

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=18059

with your splayed walls, it will be less definite but should still work if you use the actual room dimensions at the speaker location when deciding where to locate the speakers; then, use actual room dimensions at your head when deciding that position -

I'm just now getting into ETF software, I got the entire package with calibrated mic and extra plugins; I've already noticed that things don't always remain predictable (sorta suspected that ) - but ideally, using something like ETF to check flatness of each speaker at the mix position would be a more guaranteed way of getting things balanced out modally, especially in a splayed room...

I'd start with your speaker's woofer centers about 26" from each side wall (this would put distance from your head to each speaker at 68" for an equilateral triangle), and pull them forward enough to put the dome in the center of the woofer at 33-34" away from the front wall - there should be nulls at 21", 27", and 42" from the front wall (assuming your front-back distance is still 14 feet) so positioning relative to front wall will probably be pretty picky. those three harmonics are at 161 hZ, 121 hZ, and 81 hZ, so if you have a way to monitor at the mix position with any kind of spectrum analyzer plugin, those would be the frequencies to try and balance out by moving the speakers forward or back; again, there's only 6" difference between two of the nulls, so it will be tricky.

These measurements (woofer centers at 26" from sides, and 33-34" from front) would put your head at about 91-92" from the front wall for an equilateral triangle - this isn't cast in stone or anything, just a good place to start. You don't want your head centered front to back; there's another null there, at 40 hZ; getting stuck there would make you think your woofers were blown ; keep in mind that moving anything as little as an inch or two will change the results; you may not hear them as such, but I sure can SEE them using ETF in an ordinary (crappy) room - in fact, results change VERY noticeably at lower frequencies I was testing depending on where I was standing at the time - anybody wanna rent me for a bass trap ?

Then, there's the vertical dimension - about 6" away from dead center for the woofer would be a good starting point on that.

Most of what I'm doing to get this info can be found at the above link, BTW... Steve

Thanks Steve, as always your help is much appreciated. I will work on trying to adjust the monitor placement.

SB - I hired a contractor to work on this. He worked on and off pretty much every weekday, some days 8 hours a day others 2 to 3 hours a day. It took him almost 3 months to finish. According to our contract he was suppose to finish in 20 working days

Wow, only 3 times as long as estimated - the man is quick

Seriously, no one knows how long this type (accurate and tight and non-parallel) construction will take until they've DONE it, and it's ALWAYS longer than you thought/hoped it would be... Steve

Looks so awesome Shaz! Congratulations!

How did you ever mount your corner trap/panels?? I think I see little feet on them?

I made frames for OC703 about 3/4" less than the height of the ceiling, then used rubber door stops underneath the frames to secure the frame between the floor and the ceiling. The two legs you see are the door stops I bought from home depot for $0.99. Works great, no screws through the walls

ahhaa! very nice trick. Your doorstops inspired me to find a great to mount my corner traps. When I'm done I'll post pics

Thanks!

Hello all,

I just wanted to post a link to my studio's web site. Look under studio and then pictures for recent photos.

Thanks again for all your help!!

Shaz

http://www.studioion.com

Those photos are, as an old boss of mine used to say, "slicker than snot on a doorknob!"

Congratulations -- you can and must be very proud.

Very nice Web site too, by the way!

I hope you don't mind me asking... but
could you give us a ballpark figure on
how much your studio cost you to build?


Looks killer!

Shaz - congrats man the Studio looks great.

I am following a real similar path - have a contractor frame and drywall the walls and ceiling / install the SG doors etc, and then I will take care of treating the rooms and finishing (may even do the floor myself).

So I'm wondering that being as you had a contractor in to do work with you on this too, if there is any advice you can offer me in hindsight?

Any thing you wish you'd told him?
Any things he messed up?
How you handled supervising his work.
Did you have him take care of materials etc?
Would you mind sharing how much you were paying him to give me a an idea if the guy I'm meeting with is reasonable or not.
Did you have any particular metrics in the contract that you were measuring him against? i.e. Quality of work metrcis, time metrics.

Many Thanks in advance. It's great to see the progression into a fully operation studio (that looks great I might add); and it's truly inspiring!

All the best for 2006,

Andy

These are great questions, Andy.

You may actually want to make a separate thread for them! It could be known as "the 'If you had a contractor build for you, what would you do different next time?' thread."

Hey Shaz

That's one fine looking studio you're building. Congrats on the design and work!

Got 3 questions for you...

1.) How does your studio sound? (You satisfied with the highs-lows, your traps etc?)

2.) How did you mount your ceiling clouds and tracklights to your ceiling?

3.) What type of cloth did you use for your traps and where did you get it?