John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I'm not at the design stage yet, but hoping for some discussion to guide my research a little.

Do people ever build very dead rooms, and then treat them with a selection of harder surfaced reflectors and diffusors to liven the space?

I live in a cold climate (Yukon), and have an opportunity to build a studio in a poorly insulated, and unheated warehouse space. So my idea is to build fully enclosed, well insulated, and electrically heated space inside this warehouse. Kind of like building outdoors, but in a place where there was never any wind, precipitation, or critters. Walls could be 2x6 or 2x8 studs filled with fluffy insulation (r30ish). I could drywall the exterior, and leave the interior un-paneled, closing the insulation off, instead, with dacron and porous fabric. So the only hard surfaces in the studio would be the floor, the exposed edges of the studs/framing, and my synth/rack gear.

I understand that I'd loose rvalue by not paneling the interior, but maybe that's ok if I'm doing six or eight inches of fiberglass.

Size-wise, I was thinking something like 9'x15''x21" (based on 1:1.6:2.33 ratio using my max ceiling height).

Space would be multi use: composing, mixing, mastering, recording, in that order. I'm an electronics/synth guy, so it will have loads of gear in it, keyboards, tall rackstands, a couple small consoles, etc. I work at standing stations, so everything is pretty raised up.

Acoustic isolation is not really a concern since it's in a remote location.

Anyways, just looking for any input. There must be good reasons why most builds seem to start from a reflective space and then treat it with dampeners/absorbers, rather than the other way around. Maybe it's climate driven?

Thanks,
Colin

Hi, well that is a unusual post. Every Control Room I have ever been in sounded dead. There is research to suggest that 200mS is a good compromise between removing the room tone, and human comfort, particularly if working long hours/days. This is allowed rise to 400mS at LF.
I reckon this would be still be called 'dead'. The 'deadness' never bothers me, but it has a deadly side effect. The lack of room tone delivers the signal from the speaker directly and perfectly to the ear. But this is completely out of whack with normal listening spaces by about 1dB per octave, or say a 6dB tilt from LF to HF. Horribly bright and impossible to translate.
But Eq solves this entirely. So by all means make your room as you suggest. Although I will say that the late great boggy's rooms had two feet of fibre.
If you find it too dead for your liking, or want an area where instruments sound more natural, add wood or plaster stripes. Alternate a live stripe with an opposing dead stripe to prevent flutter. You could also angle the panels as john and Stuart often do here.

Thanks for the reply, DD.

DanDan wrote:Hi, well that is a unusual post.

Not sure why, but god seems to have blessed or cursed me with a knack for asking questions in unusual ways, or maybe just for asking silly questions.

DanDan wrote:Every Control Room I have ever been in sounded dead.

I'm guess at a serious disadvantage for having never been in a pro studio!

I've come across a good thread on the subject of "deadness" on GS:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio- ... ering.html
DD, your contributions there really expand on what you are saying here, thanks.

In the case of using 24" of fiber, as you have suggested was done in the Boggy "MyRoom", could a small dead space still benefit from angled walls and ceiling? I'm talking about angles in the actual framing - where the fiberglass is. Or are you suggesting to worry about the angles only when it comes time to add wood/plaster strips?

Cheers,
Colin

Colin, it depends on what you mean by dead.
For me dead means a room with a low reverb that is flat across all frequencies.
Rooms that are covered entirely with heavy insulation are dead as there are no highs left in the room whereas take this room.

https://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Rose_Lane.html

It has a low reverb time but is the flattest room ever measured by the Dynaudio Engineers when they installed their top range MX3 speakers.
They switched the room compensation software off and told my client to run the speakers as designed.

cheers
john

John Sayers wrote:Colin, it depends on what you mean by dead.
For me dead means a room with a low reverb that is flat across all frequencies.

Thanks John, that sounds like a good definition.

Interesting, that Rose Lane studio looks much more reflective than I imagined would be wanted. What a difference from the home studio plugged with bass traps and clouds.

C

I'm talking about angles in the actual framing - where the fiberglass is. Or are you suggesting to worry about the angles only when it comes time to add wood/plaster strips?

I am suggesting angling the reflective elements. Same as John is doing with his lovely looking woodwork.
But if you don't have the skills and resources for that level of build, simple strips of ply can be angled. Reverb Test Rooms and Chambers often just hang hardboard and let it bend.
The Motown studio had strongly angled horizontal stripes of alternating ply and absorptive tiles to deliver acoustic feedback to the performers.

A vocalist in my very absorbed vox room commented, wow it's very airy sounding here.
Worth pondering IMO.

Outdoors we have flat spectrum no room tone. How does that sound? Well, sparkling clear to be honest.
Although Drums sound horribly thin.

Similarly in a highly absorbing room, every source, from speakers to violin, will sound unnaturally bright compared to normal rooms with their 400- 500mS decay rising to much longer at LF.
Certainly adding lively reflective surfaces strategically gapped and angled will deliver early reflections which can welcome when talking and with normal human noise making. The bounce can help drums and other resonant instruments. But the long and usually dull room tone of the real world is still absent.
I firmly believe in the use of Target Curves to simulate our audience listening conditions. Indeed adding reverb to side and rear speakers is a real thing too. Good listening headphones are not flat. In fact my HD 650s sound remarkable tonally close to my Monitors with are B&C curved. Nobody listens to music on the Laboratory Flat Audiometric Headphones.