Soundman2020 - Studio Design Forum

Hi, I've been searching the internet for weeks and finally found you guys!

I've got my "floating room" up and it's time to start with the acoustic treatment. This is the first time I'm building and also treating a studio. Since I've got the opportunity to do it "right from the beginning", I thought it would be best to check with some professionals.
(You guys )

Dimensions of the room:
Width: 320 cm
Length: 537 cm
Height: 260 cm (approx 250 cm after the swing down ceilling)

My originial idea.
Building a frontwall approximately 50 cm from the wall with 30° angles. Fill it with insulation, adding fabric and a wooden split panel with gaps. (Split panel = adding the effect of a diffusor).

On both my sidewalls from floor to roof, i was planning to have a width of 120 cm of insulation between wooden rules with tighten fabric over.

In the back, 45° angled basetraps in the corners. (aesthetically as the front) insulation, fabric and split panel.
And a large centered diffusor in the back, approximately 2 meters wide and 1 meter high.

My roof is going to be a swing down a ceiling. Thinking of a sharp angle touching my front wall upp somewhere before the middle of the room and then slowly down to the rear wall. (Don't worry, i'm not planning to break the floating construction)

My biggest fear is that i'm going to "kill my room..." What do you guys think?

Cheers!

Don't forget the ceiling.
and rethink the diffuser.

bert stoltenborg wrote:Source of the post Don't forget the ceiling.
and rethink the diffuser.

The ceiling is going to be "swing down" 60x60cm
What about the diffusor? Size? Placement?

I don't think a diffuser adds much to a room exept from a solid combfilter, but as everybody and his grandma has these things in the studio I can as well shut up

Hi there Fairfax, and WELCOME! Sorry it took soooo long to respond to your post, but I've been out of action for a while...

Anyway:

Width: 320 cm
Length: 537 cm
Height: 260 cm

That's a decent size for a room. A little on the small side, but certainly usable.

(approx 250 cm after the swing down ceilling)

I'm not sure what you mean by "swing down ceiling". Is that maybe what you call a "drop ceiling" in Swedish? If so, I would not recommend that. It won't do much for you acoustically, and lowers the room height visually.

Building a frontwall approximately 50 cm from the wall with 30° angles. Fill it with insulation, adding fabric and a wooden split panel with gaps.

It seems like you are trying to build an RFZ style room (Reflection Free Zone), with the speakers embedded in the front wall, but that isn0t really the right way to do it. What you should do is to build proper flush-mount modules for your speakers, often called "soffit mounts", but those need to be properly designed for your speakers and your room.

On both my sidewalls from floor to roof, i was planning to have a width of 120 cm of insulation between wooden rules with tighten fabric over.

In general it is not a good idea to have all the same treatment everywhere around your room, as that means that the entire room will be "tuned" for one specific acoustic response. The best plan is to use each part of the room for the correct tuning at that location. For example, the rear wall usually needs to be a very deep bass trap, the front wall is not as important but might still need some absorption, the ceiling needs a cloud above the mix position, but probably not much behind that, the side walls need treatment at the first-reflection points, etc. In other words, put the right treatment in the right place.

And a large centered diffusor in the back, approximately 2 meters wide and 1 meter high.

Your room isn't really large enough to be able to use a numeric-sequence diffusor on the rear wall: it would be a bit too close to your head, and there could be some artifacts there. For small rooms, it is generally better to have mostly absorbent rear wall, but with some added elements to return some of the high frequencies to the roof. Personally, I like a "slatted poly" shape for that, but there are other options. Once again, the idea is to tune the room by putting the correct treatment at each location.

My roof is going to be a swing down a ceiling. Thinking of a sharp angle touching my front wall upp somewhere before the middle of the room and then slowly down to the rear wall.

For best acosutic response (and to make tuning easier), the room should generally be smaller at the front, and widen out towards the back. In other words, if you want to angle your ceiling, it should be lower at the front, where the speakers are, and rise to the highest point at the back wall.

My biggest fear is that i'm going to "kill my room..." What do you guys think?

One really good way to treat your room properly, is to start out by measuring the real acoustic response of the empty, untreated room ( How to calibrate and use REW to test and tune your room acoustics ), then design treatment based on that: Start with the toughest problems, which will always be the low frequency issues below about 200 Hz, then once you have those under control, measure the response again and tackle the next problem. Do one thing at a time, and re-measure each time, to make sure you really are dealing with the problems, and also that you are not over-treating one part of the spectrum. A common mistake is to put in too much treatment that absorbs the lower mid range (around 200-300 Hz), and not enough that absorbs the really low end (below about 100 Hz). As long as you are checking continuously with REW, you should be able to treat your room well, and get good results without killing the room.

And as Bert mentioned: diffusors on the ceiling (or too close to your ears in general!) are not a good idea. He is also right about his comment that everyone seems to have them in their rooms, without even knowing WHY they have them! And in most rooms, they can make things worse, not better. Only large rooms can get real benefits from diffusors.

- Stuart -