I have an oppertnity to build a home studio (control room) from scratch. Height is 2.7m and the amount of info out there is incredible. Where to bloody start! Great vid.
You start with a good mindset. The key is to create a neutral space. This way your work has its best chance at translating. The way to create a neutral space is to use the room so it exerts minimal influence. You do that through positioning and filling the room deliberately with specific items. You want left-right symmetry and your speakers in an equilateral triangle. It's ok to be centered a few mm to the left or right. Windows don't matter and you can treat them like walls. Front-to-back, you want to be around 38% the length of the room. You do not want your room wider than it is long. Empty your room and measure that distance. Next, perform a 'talk test'. Simply talk around 38% and find where your voice sounds most natural. Mark these areas with tape. From there, bring in your most essential equipment. Perform acoustic measurements. Find the most neutral point and make that your listening position. After that, add absorption. Aim for a minimum of 15-20% surface area coverage of 4-8" rigid insulation or 1-2' fluffy. You need absorption at first-reflection points (create a Reflection Free Zone) and corners. You can also treat entire surfaces. FRK (paper) facing can go on any panel except RFZ). Your target is +-10dB SPL and 20dB decay within 150ms above 63Hz or better. Once you've achieved that, you can bring in other items into the room. The last thing is make sure your room isn't a 1:1:1 cube or 1:2:2 square. That'll make your acoustics worse, to say the least. Good luck.
Excellent video and great information. I am relocating my control room in my home to the second floor to gain much more space. The new room is unfinished with no walls/studs installed yet nor any drywall installed yet. In the room you can see the exposed roof joist and insulation. Basically, I have a clean slate to work from and hoping that will be an advantage. The room is in the shape of an A frame structure. The ceiling is 9.5 feet high at the peak (where the left roof joist meet the right roof joist at the center roof beam) and the room dimensions are 24' long by 13' wide (roof joist running in the 13' direction). Keep in mind that on the 24' wall, at the extreme right and extreme left is where the roof joist meet the floor joist, and this space is not usable, except perhaps to make that small triangular shaped area into a bass trap. I am trying to find out the best way to maximize the non parallel A frame space and take advantage of the angled 9.5 ft peaked ceiling. I would like to build the control room in a hexagonal shape if possible (as seen in many control rooms) and take advantage of a clean slate to work from with just bare ceiling joist and no walls currently installed. I hope this situation can be beneficial for construction. Any advice is surely welcome. Thanks very much for your time. Philip
Corners are corners. Bass traps should never be small. If you go to Ethan Winer's Audio Expert Forum, you'll see how some have treated peaked ceilings. Either fill the corners with fluffy insulation or use rigid panels to straddle them. You also need to create a Reflection-Free Zone to minimize first reflections.
@@Hexspa I will check out the forum. Thanks. I really probably should not have used the word "small" regarding bass traps. I was speaking more relative to the overall room size it's a small area. To clarify more accurately, those triangular shaped areas where I could potentially make a bass trap would be roughly 4' deep by 3' high. They're just not usable, except maybe for storage space. If I were to line those triangular areas with insulation or Rock Wool, (or open to suggestions) do you think they would be effective as a bass trap? I was going to already hang a cloud type panel over the mixing position, do think hanging panels near the intersecting roof joist or a fluff insulation would be more effective, generally speaking, as I realize you have not seen the room first hand. Note: it's a pretty steep roof and the angle is more then 90 degrees where the roof joist meet, so it's not really a true corner at 90. Not sure if that helps or not for my intended use for a control room. Thanks again for your reply and input. Appreciated. Philip
@@uptownphotography You can post pics on the forum. Until then, a corner is a corner; 45deg, 90deg or any variant. Basically, the boundaries are your enemy. You use insulation to dampen their influence; remove the walls, so to speak. Corners are just the convergence of two or more boundaries - hence a pressure build up. Insulation acts on velocity and not pressure. So why treat corners where bass SPL is high? Because the room's dimensions govern which frequency, via wavelength, has a modal resonance. In other words, whatever wavelength relates to the room's dimension will 'fit' and have pressure and velocity zones. Pressure is at the boundary and velocity is 1/4 wavelength in. Frictional absorbers, like insulation, act on that velocity. Since we typically can't put friction 1/4 distance into a room, we compromise by placing it near a boundary, sometimes with a gap. The best you can do with frictional absorbers is an 8" rigid panel gapped 1x with fluffy insulation behind it - though this is rarely necessary. Rigid panels are generally used to save space. Long story short, if you can give up 2' of depth or want to save money then use fluffy. Rigid panels are sometimes not available. If you prefer rigid panels, try to make them up to 8" thick but no thicker. Straddle corners with them. Like I said, the real issue is the reflective boundary. To minimize that, place frictional absorbers in front of the boundaries. Straddling corners is just an efficient approach. Aim for a minimum of 15-20% surface area coverage.
Is this per person or how many people can you put in the room playing music? I need space for 12 piece band up to 15 musicians in long term. So how does that affect ratios?
Hi, Kayanna. Thanks for commenting. I understand your question to be about how bodies affect the acoustic response of a room. From what I know, they absorb sound - unless they're covered in metal armor :) Acoustics seems like a broad topic and my niche, if I have one at all, is in 'small-room acoustics'. Small rooms are defined as less than 10,000ft3. If you have a dozen-or-so individuals in a space, plus equipment, then you may have dimensions which exceed that volume. In other words, any advice I give may be out of my sphere of competence. That being said, I think that those who specialize in large spaces which anticipate a significant number in the audience take both the room being empty and also being filled into account. Therefore, if you want to know the response of the room both with and without people then you'll need to take measurements in both scenarios and use that information in your treatment strategy. Hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of further assistance. Cheers.
@@kayannaottaway3381 I was thinking about your comment on the way home today. The answer is that the ratios affect the room's dimensions which, in turn, affect which frequencies will resonate. Nobody, at least that I'm aware, considers performers to be an issue when considering room modes. Like I said, people definitely affect the acoustic response of a space. What they don't do, under normal conditions, is change a room's modal response by their mere presence - holding instruments or otherwise.
Thank you so much Michael. Knowledge is power. And, I appreciate the fact that you are passing some of it on to me / us.
Happy to help, Peter. Thanks for watching!
Lovin’ your tutorials Hexspa! Very helpful. Thanks so much!
Thanks, Nebraska. Cool blues tunes.
Hexspa 🎸 thanks!
I have an oppertnity to build a home studio (control room) from scratch. Height is 2.7m and the amount of info out there is incredible. Where to bloody start! Great vid.
You start with a good mindset. The key is to create a neutral space. This way your work has its best chance at translating.
The way to create a neutral space is to use the room so it exerts minimal influence. You do that through positioning and filling the room deliberately with specific items.
You want left-right symmetry and your speakers in an equilateral triangle. It's ok to be centered a few mm to the left or right. Windows don't matter and you can treat them like walls.
Front-to-back, you want to be around 38% the length of the room. You do not want your room wider than it is long. Empty your room and measure that distance. Next, perform a 'talk test'. Simply talk around 38% and find where your voice sounds most natural. Mark these areas with tape.
From there, bring in your most essential equipment. Perform acoustic measurements. Find the most neutral point and make that your listening position. After that, add absorption.
Aim for a minimum of 15-20% surface area coverage of 4-8" rigid insulation or 1-2' fluffy. You need absorption at first-reflection points (create a Reflection Free Zone) and corners. You can also treat entire surfaces. FRK (paper) facing can go on any panel except RFZ).
Your target is +-10dB SPL and 20dB decay within 150ms above 63Hz or better. Once you've achieved that, you can bring in other items into the room.
The last thing is make sure your room isn't a 1:1:1 cube or 1:2:2 square. That'll make your acoustics worse, to say the least.
Good luck.
Excellent video and great information.
I am relocating my control room in my home to the second floor to gain much more space. The new room is unfinished with no walls/studs installed yet nor any drywall installed yet. In the room you can see the exposed roof joist and insulation. Basically, I have a clean slate to work from and hoping that will be an advantage.
The room is in the shape of an A frame structure. The ceiling is 9.5 feet high at the peak (where the left roof joist meet the right roof joist at the center roof beam) and the room dimensions are 24' long by 13' wide (roof joist running in the 13' direction). Keep in mind that on the 24' wall, at the extreme right and extreme left is where the roof joist meet the floor joist, and this space is not usable, except perhaps to make that small triangular shaped area into a bass trap.
I am trying to find out the best way to maximize the non parallel A frame space and take advantage of the angled 9.5 ft peaked ceiling. I would like to build the control room in a hexagonal shape if possible (as seen in many control rooms) and take advantage of a clean slate to work from with just bare ceiling joist and no walls currently installed. I hope this situation can be beneficial for construction. Any advice is surely welcome. Thanks very much for your time.
Philip
Corners are corners. Bass traps should never be small. If you go to Ethan Winer's Audio Expert Forum, you'll see how some have treated peaked ceilings. Either fill the corners with fluffy insulation or use rigid panels to straddle them. You also need to create a Reflection-Free Zone to minimize first reflections.
@@Hexspa I will check out the forum. Thanks.
I really probably should not have used the word "small" regarding bass traps. I was speaking more relative to the overall room size it's a small area.
To clarify more accurately, those triangular shaped areas where I could potentially make a bass trap would be roughly 4' deep by 3' high. They're just not usable, except maybe for storage space. If I were to line those triangular areas with insulation or Rock Wool, (or open to suggestions) do you think they would be effective as a bass trap?
I was going to already hang a cloud type panel over the mixing position, do think hanging panels near the intersecting roof joist or a fluff insulation would be more effective, generally speaking, as I realize you have not seen the room first hand. Note: it's a pretty steep roof and the angle is more then 90 degrees where the roof joist meet, so it's not really a true corner at 90. Not sure if that helps or not for my intended use for a control room.
Thanks again for your reply and input. Appreciated.
Philip
@@uptownphotography You can post pics on the forum. Until then, a corner is a corner; 45deg, 90deg or any variant.
Basically, the boundaries are your enemy. You use insulation to dampen their influence; remove the walls, so to speak. Corners are just the convergence of two or more boundaries - hence a pressure build up.
Insulation acts on velocity and not pressure. So why treat corners where bass SPL is high? Because the room's dimensions govern which frequency, via wavelength, has a modal resonance. In other words, whatever wavelength relates to the room's dimension will 'fit' and have pressure and velocity zones. Pressure is at the boundary and velocity is 1/4 wavelength in.
Frictional absorbers, like insulation, act on that velocity. Since we typically can't put friction 1/4 distance into a room, we compromise by placing it near a boundary, sometimes with a gap.
The best you can do with frictional absorbers is an 8" rigid panel gapped 1x with fluffy insulation behind it - though this is rarely necessary. Rigid panels are generally used to save space.
Long story short, if you can give up 2' of depth or want to save money then use fluffy. Rigid panels are sometimes not available. If you prefer rigid panels, try to make them up to 8" thick but no thicker. Straddle corners with them.
Like I said, the real issue is the reflective boundary. To minimize that, place frictional absorbers in front of the boundaries. Straddling corners is just an efficient approach.
Aim for a minimum of 15-20% surface area coverage.
@@Hexspa Thanks for the very detailed information. It is appreciated.
Phil
@@uptownphotography Thanks.
Is this per person or how many people can you put in the room playing music? I need space for 12 piece band up to 15 musicians in long term. So how does that affect ratios?
Hi, Kayanna. Thanks for commenting. I understand your question to be about how bodies affect the acoustic response of a room. From what I know, they absorb sound - unless they're covered in metal armor :)
Acoustics seems like a broad topic and my niche, if I have one at all, is in 'small-room acoustics'. Small rooms are defined as less than 10,000ft3. If you have a dozen-or-so individuals in a space, plus equipment, then you may have dimensions which exceed that volume. In other words, any advice I give may be out of my sphere of competence.
That being said, I think that those who specialize in large spaces which anticipate a significant number in the audience take both the room being empty and also being filled into account.
Therefore, if you want to know the response of the room both with and without people then you'll need to take measurements in both scenarios and use that information in your treatment strategy.
Hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of further assistance. Cheers.
Well more than people but the fact they to are playing instruments.
@@kayannaottaway3381 I was thinking about your comment on the way home today. The answer is that the ratios affect the room's dimensions which, in turn, affect which frequencies will resonate.
Nobody, at least that I'm aware, considers performers to be an issue when considering room modes. Like I said, people definitely affect the acoustic response of a space. What they don't do, under normal conditions, is change a room's modal response by their mere presence - holding instruments or otherwise.