Mainly mixing multitrack recordings private studio

#1

Hi all,

So I finally made it, moving house and 99% in order, my girlfriend happy, IT"S TIME TO BUILD MY FINAL STUDIO !!!!!

I have been waiting for this about 15 years, with the last 1,5 year in a temporary room under the roof of our previous (farm)house. It gave me time to think, collect my gear (started 8 years ago), build and changed the furniture of my mixing desk till it's current state I am really happy with.

The studio will be a private one, not for bands or musicians recording. I have about 4000 multitrack studio recordings, downloaded from all over the world and from live recordings of fairly known pro artists during my live as a front of house engineer, which I want to mix in my own time, at my own pace, being retired it will be one of my prime hobbies.

SO, the studio is purely mixing and a moderate level of mastering. But never for some one else but me, so how the end result of a mix translates to the real world is not of my main interest.

My Goals:

- Have a pleasant sounding room, where I can spend some 4 hours a day comfortably
- Have a sound that reveals a fair amount of detail to get a proper sounding mix
- Give me a place where a can test my self-designed / -build studio speakers if needed
- Listening levels mainly 80 - 85 dB at most (with an accessional blast just for fun)
- Sound proof enough not to bother the neighbors. I did a test with around 85dB showing VERY limited sound outside (impression that this is the roof).
- Build mostly by myself (I have good woodworking skills)
- Looking for 80 / 20 % approach, not the worlds best studio, not spending large amounts of money.

What is the room:

- It is a rather small room, but fits the purpose
- Dimensions: 316 cm wide, 361 cm deep, 258 cm high. I know this is called small room, but that's what I have to live with.
- Concreet floor with vinyl topping
- Brick walls (double brick with isolation in-between for warmth isolation)
- Gypsum ceiling which I think is just one layer (it goes doing doing when I knock on it... :shock:

..... HELLPPP)
- 2 doors, one internal very massive, 1 to the outside fairly solid but which thermopane glas.

Mixing position:

- Part of the first challenge, I have a mixing desk that is 235 cm wide and 90 cm deep.
- It looks like I will be sitting somewhere at 140cm from the front wall (facing the short wall of 316 cm)

Speaker position:
- I want to start with a normal 2 channel approach, but evolve to a 5.1 setup in future
- I would love to have soffit mounting my Tannoy system 8 (or) Genelec 1030A - to be decided (to safe room space this is the best option)
- I have used the rules of soundman for soffit mounting which could work, the speaker position is within all conditions as described by him and it supports the listening position. I know I have to measure and find the best listening position, but it looks like minimal room for choosing as I will sit behind the mixing desk only. So everything needs to be made fit for purpose from this listening position.

I will add a first sketch in 2D, as I get completely lost in 3D drawing like Sketchup (If that's the right title of the software...) :oops:

So, we have lift off....

Suggestions, have a studio that (almost) matches mine, please feel free to suggest and comment. ALWAYS appreciated.

kind regards,

Frans Wessels

#2

you can start with 2D in Sketchup - it's what i do. then after you have that, i make it into a template. from there i draw in walls, door openings, window openings etc. set views in each or from different corners in a room.

so if you have decent isolation already - i'd look to add some additional mass to your ceiling/roof and if that gets you there, leave it. :-)

the soffit mounting bits can be tricky. and if you're contemplating using it as a test bed for your own designs, then you'd want a way to "plug in" a matching speaker enclosure to fit the "primary enclosure" -- say something that is bigger than you're likely to use, then a small framed/box/panel "insert" to fit the 1030s but them later that d'appolito array with 10" drivers :-)

#3

gullfo wrote:Source of the post you can start with 2D in Sketchup - it's what i do. then after you have that, i make it into a template. from there i draw in walls, door openings, window openings etc. set views in each or from different corners in a room.

so if you have decent isolation already - i'd look to add some additional mass to your ceiling/roof and if that gets you there, leave it.

the soffit mounting bits can be tricky. and if you're contemplating using it as a test bed for your own designs, then you'd want a way to "plug in" a matching speaker enclosure to fit the "primary enclosure" -- say something that is bigger than you're likely to use, then a small framed/box/panel "insert" to fit the 1030s but them later that d'appolito array with 10" drivers

Hi Glenn,

About Soffit mounting. Never done it, but the rules that Stuart wrote are clear by itself and the 1030's seem to be suitable for soffit mounting. I am working on a construction to have a very solid Soffit and, as you suggest a kind of bracing panels in a bigger box (filled with rock wool to the max). It seems that also the size of the front panel of the soffit is part of the trick, Stuart played out some rules to make that work.

On Sketchup, I know it is a handy tool to know it all fits, but I have tried it before and ended up with an abstract piece of art instead of a simpel room with a door, let alone soffit constructions, cloud absorbers and acoustic hangers. That took me 4 hours of frustration and start all over again. I use Microsoft Powerpoint to create a sketch and measure the real situation, works till now.
Maybe if there would be a model I could work with, that could be an option. Your 2D suggestion could be a road in between. I will give that a go.

regards,

Frans

#4

The test version of my mixing desk. Meanwhile it has been painted, now waiting for the acoustic treatment to finish.

#5

The first sketch of the studio layout.
- Big rear wall trap with acoustic hangers 250 cm high at complete rear wall (361 cm)
- Soffit speaker mount (Genelec 1030A & 7005C sub)
- Broadband absorber at center of front wall (12cm Fiberglass & 12 cm air gap)
- 2x acoustic hangers in both corners of front wall
- Big Cloud (hard back?) 15 cm Fiberglass

#6

Version 2 of the layout.

As I am still thinking of mixing in 5.1 Surround sound, I decided to prepare the studio for 5.1 speaker setup. So adding a center speaker and the 2 surrounds LS & RS.

side note,

I found a way to mix 5.1 on my analog mixing desk, which is an in-line 8 sub group 48 channel mixing desk. It is combined with a Mac studio running a DAW (Presonus Studio One) which feeds each track to the analog mixer using DA convertors. As I can use sends in the DAW for each track of my multitrack studio recordings I can send a sound of each track to each (or any / all) of the 5.1 channels. You can also do Volume automation on these sends for each track so each sound on each track can be volume automated in time in the song (or other recording). It may sound complicated, but I will lay it all down in a drawing later on in this topic. Each sub-group of the mixer also has a volume fader, it's own direct out, an insert for effects / EQ where you can also select where to send this sub-group output to e.g. the main mix or other output. It's a kind of a matrix set-up, 1 in, multi out (from 1 to x). So it is fairly easy to do 5.1 analog mixing with automation on a computer, giving control on each sound over all 6 channels of the 5.1 surround sound. I am reading how to create a 5.1 surround file, first I will start with all six channels send back into the DAW and record there, giving me all the separate 5.1 channels of the surround mix. That should be used to produce the surround mix file.

Back to the topic, the loudspeaker choice is Genelec 1030A (5 speakers, of which I already own 2 in the process of buying another set, leaving 1 last 1030A to find) and the 7050C sub (1 sub to start with) which supports 5.1 surround sound cabling (and supports additional subs to be connected). The 7050C sub will be used in 2 ways, first it will handle the low end of Left & Right, second it will be the LFE separate channel that can be daisy chained to additional subs.

The attached pdf shows the changes, mainly a Soffit construction to support LS & RS at 150 degrees as the standard specifies. Maybe pure luck, but the room really fits this 5.1 setup where the LS & RS sit at the rear wall just in front of the rear wall acoustic hangers wall.

All speakers are in Soffit setup, the Genelec seem to fit that purpose as well, I use them in stereo currently and really like to work with them. They are not as difficult as e.g. the Yamaha NS 10, which I also have 2, but they are mainly chosen in studios because all professionals mixer know them well, when a mix sounds good on them it will sound good on most commercial speakers (translate well from studio to CD, streaming services etc.) but that is NOT my goal. I want a studio where I can mix without the hassle of getting used to poor speakers that are used a lot for a different reason. The Genelec's sound nice with little effort so I can spend more time on getting a good mix.

Attached the new layout with 5.1 surround setup.

#7

The first version of Soffit mounting the monitors. I have used soundman2020 flush mounting rules and Genelecs paper on soffit mounting. Added a bit of my flavor to that as I have a bit of a different use of my studio.

Soundman2020 (Stuart) rules:

1) The speakers should not go in the corner, nor on the line that divides the corner. In other words, if your walls intersect at 90 °, then draw a line out from each corner at 45°, and stay away from that: don't put your speaker exactly on that line, since it implies that you'll be getting the same artifacts from the side walls as from the front wall. Put your speakers either outside or inside of those lines. More commonly you'll want your speakers "inside" those lines (more towards the center line of the room).

2) The "38% of room depth rule" is not a rule, but it is a useful guideline for a starting point. You'll generally want to have your listening position a bit closer to the front wall than that location, but do be aware that you might be getting into problematic SBIR territory there. (You can treat that, to a certain extent).

3) Keep the mix position away from 25% and 50% of room depth, and try to stay between about 32% and 44%

4) You can angle your speakers differently than the "textbook" 30° angle: Anything in the range 25° to about 35° will work well under most circumstances.

5) Keep the speakers as far apart as possible, while not violating rules 1 and 4.

6) Keep the mix position at a good distance from the speakers, within the range of about 1m to about 5m. Further away is usually better.

7) Don't put the speakers at 25% of the room width: that's a modal null for some frequencies, and a peak for others. Try something more like 28% to 34%.

Make the front baffle of your soffit as wide and tall as you can, within reason. The width should be at least three times the diameter of your low frequency driver. In other words, if you have a speaker with an 8" woofer, then you want the soffit baffle to be at least 24" (60cm) wide. Wider is better.

9) Do not put your speaker in the middle of the soffit baffle: Offset in both directions. In other words, the distances from the acoustic center of the speaker to each edge of the baffle should be very different, by at least 20%. So, for example if your speaker axis is 30cm from one side of the baffle, it should be more than 36cm from the other side, less than 24cm from the bottom edge, and more than 44cm from the top edge. (Rough distances, for illustration only...). Larger differences are generally better.

10) Make the baffle as massively heavy as you can, and as rigid as you can.

11) Make the structure inside the soffit (the framing that holds the baffle and speaker in place) as rigid and massive as you can.

12) Mount the speaker inside an enclosure box that is either a very tight fit, in order to keep the speaker rigidly fixed in place, or mount it on suitable rubber pads, to completely decouple it from the box. Carefully choose the properties and dimensions of that rubber, to make sure the speaker is still decoupled down to at least one octave below the speaker's low cut-off frequency.

13) Take into account that active speakers need a lot of space behind them for cooling, and a path through the soffit for cooling air to flow.

14) Rear-ported speakers need special attention: Do not overload the rear port, acoustically, with an enclosure box that is too small, or un-ventilated, or un-damped.

15) Damp the hell out of the soffit interior! Fill it entirely with suitable damping if you want, except for the cooling path.

As I have my own audio engineering shop, I love to design and build Studio Monitors and Sound reenforcement systems for musicians. My studio will be a private studio, just for my mixing hobby AND testing my studio monitors. The Soffit wall should support my current choice (Genelec 1030A monitors) but also support my own builds. This means that the soffit should be flexible to a certain extend, my monitors will never be bigger than 45 x 45 x45 cm in any combination.

ADDED rules just to support my setup

16) High pass the speakers by the use of a sub-woofer. This will eliminate the biggest part of loudspeaker cabinet resonating. High Pass is around 85 - 100 Hz, so still relatively low, need to do a bit of testing.

17) Create a flexible setup of the speaker cabinet mounting in the Soffit to support various cabinet sizes in one and the same Soffit opening.

18) Remove the amplifier from the (1030A) cabinet to avoid cooling issues and mount the amp modules at the outside of the soffit for easy access and avoiding temperature issues.

the Soffit wall

the Soffit speaker mounting construction.

And an example of a damping solution with is supposed to have a natural frequency of 8 - 10 Hz !?

It contains 3 boxes:

- The other soffit box with an open front (BOX 1)
- The Inner soffit box with an open front. The is mounted to the outher soffit box and then filled with cement to create a mass construction to reduce vibration to the max. (BOX 2)
- The VERY tight fit speaker box (open front and back) which secures the Genelec 1030A monitor to hold in a fixed position. (BOX 3)
Top and left panel are screwed and glued together, Bottom and right panel are screwed and glued together. So you get 2 L shaped panels. These 2 are put around the Genelec 1030A monitor and while secured in place with clamps (VERY tight against the GEnelec 10303A) they are screwed to form one square open front open back construction with the Genelec fixed. The screws can be removed if needed to support maintenance on the Genelec.

If I want to test another monitor I only need to create a new BOX 3 with its supports and mount that into BOX 2. :yahoo:

More details will be added on dimensions.

Suggestions and remarks always welcome

kind regards, Frans

Soundman2020 - Studio Design Forum