This is my first post on John's forum, so please be understanding!
I've been into music and production for almost 12 years and have started studying more acoustics in the last couple of years, although I'm no pro in studio building..
I've read through many fantastic threads on this forum over the years (amongst others like the John Sayers one for example!!!) and have been so fascinated by other people's studios and designs, which eventually led me to this point.
A friend of mine (whom I work with) has this huge, double garage in which we'd like to build our production/mixing room.
We mainly focus on vocal recordings and music production, with the occasional recordings of acoustic drums or amps etc.
The room will of course be used for mixing as well but because of budget, we are unable to build a full-out, critical listening environment. The point of this room is for us to produce in a common area which has decent enough listening capabilities and to basically get out of our tiny, tinny bedrooms.
The room needs to be decent enough for good vocal recordings, but without creating extra small booths and whatnot. I just prefer the sound of "bigger", well-treated rooms for vocals (or any other instrument for that matter hittt ).
Noise coming from outside or leaving the room is absolutely not an issue as the garage is situated in a private area far away from neighbouring houses, roads etc - very quiet!
The size of the room is 640cm (length) x 500cm (width) x 240cm (height). I know, very low, garage ceilings.. I also understand that it isn't an ideal room ratio, but I guess it is what it is.. :amaze:
The speakers are actually shooting down the longer side of the room, as I understand that for the size of this room it is the best way to set up the listening position.
Production-wise I would've preferred to have it shoot down the shorter side as I could've utilised the space better to set up perhaps a drum kit or percussion, synths, or for vocal recording etc - I'm open to suggestions though!
The entrance to the garage is situated on the longer side of the room, which means that it has this massive sliding door on said side. In the middle of this sliding door there is another door that opens independently from the sliding door (depicted as the small opening on the right-hand side). Basically, the large sliding door is always closed and we use the small one to enter the room. The big sliding door can't be closed up in case it needs to be re-opened..
The Sketchup mock-up was made with solid concrete walls all around, but on the right side there is actually the vertical sliding door with its independent door. We are unable to build a wall or whatnot over this sliding door, but my thought was to treat it with absorbers as for the other walls.
One of the biggest questions I have is this:
Am I going to consider the garage door (made of very thin metal and plastic/rubber pieces) as an actual wall or is stuff (lower frq) just going to pass through and not reflect back into the room as much? I mean, it is going to respond differently to the opposite concrete wall resulting in having asymmetry in my stereo imaging, thus making it more sensible to place the listening position the other way around to have symmetry in consistency between the two concrete walls?
The panels I thought of using are made of two 5cm-deep rockwool panels (70/80kg of density for each rockwool panel) stacked to create a depth of 10cm, spaced 10cm from the wall (the white and dark-grey ones). The size of the panels are 120cm x 60cm as this is the only size I found around where I live. I also plan on having corner bass traps made with the same concept but applied horizontally instead of vertically. All will be framed using wood and drilling holes in the sides to have better air flow.
I had problems designing the cloud in Sketchup but I'm going to use the same principal as used in the wall absorbers, meaning 10cm-deep traps spaced 10cm from the ceiling at reflection points.
Although I'm going to test and see what is the best position for listening, I took as a reference the 38% rule from the front wall and creating an equilateral triangle to the speakers. I'd also like to know if the 38% rule applies to the floor to ceiling height, meaning setting the speaker's tweeter at the 38% point in the vertical axis (I think I read something about it at some point, but don't remember where..cooge). Also, I gather that if the size of the room isn't too big and I'm not soffit-mounting my speakers, it is best to have them as close to the front wall as possible and trapping as much as possible both behind the speakers and around the room for phase cancellation, correct?
For the first-reflection points on the side walls, I thought of turning two of the vertical panels horizontally to have a larger listening sweet-spot - makes sense?
(In the mock-up, one is white and one is dark grey).
Although not depicted (or at least not in every corner), I'm planning on applying broadband absorbers to every corner I can, as the bottom wall-to-ceiling corners show.
I'm going to add absorption along the whole back wall (not shown in the mock-up). In general, do all panels necessarily need to be 10cm (or more) thick?
Is it best to have fewer thicker panels in strategic places or a larger number of thinner panels placed in more areas around the room?
I think I understand the placement of the immediate reflection points, but what about the rest of the room? What would be the best spots to place extra panels on the parallel walls?
The flooring will be laminate parquet with a fairly decent, thick rug at the listening position.
The speakers I plan to use are 8-inch Yamaha HS80 monitors, and planning to add a sub in the future.
I do not own any measuring equipment as of now, but I'm going to have think about investing in some at some point.
I'll post actual pictures of the space once the garage is all cleared!!!
Anxiously awaiting any response!!!
