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Author Topic: Designing Studio - Help!  (Read 2179 times)

.:*Robot Boy*:.

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Designing Studio - Help!
« on: July 23, 2004, 02:00:51 AM »

Hi,
I'm a first year Audio Engineering student and I've just been given an assignment and I had hoped you'd be able to help me out.

Basically what I've got to do is design a project studio, I don't really have any restrictions so it can be as big or as small as I want.

I'm reading a book called "How To Build A Small Budget Recording Studio From Scratch" by F. Alton Everest and I've decided to base my studio on one of the designs in there. The main room is rectangular (except for a 5th wall which cuts across one of the 90 degree corners [Thus making two larger angles]). It's dimensions are: 16'-1" (W) x 23' 2" (L) x 9' 5" (H) which gives it a volume of 3,410 cubic feet. There is a "speech studio" which is a five-sided room measuring 11'-10" (W) x 14'-9" (L) x 9'-5" (H) giving it a volume of 1,432 cubic feet. The third and final room is the control room which measures 11'-10" (W) x 14'-9" (L) x 9'-5" (H) which is equal to 1,550 cubic feet. I also what to add two or three isolation booths to this design so that I could devote the main room to getting a big, roomy drum sound.

Basically I'm trying to create a studio that would suit a typical rock band. I want the main room to have quite a live, spacious kind of sound-I'm thinking of that Stones/Beatles kind of sound. I'm no expert, but I assume that the 'live' sound is derived from a longer-than-average RT60 time (About 700ms in the mids?). I'll also need to have quite a low Cutoff Frequency that can cope well with the low fundamental frequencies of Bass, Drums etc. However, according to Everest's book, an increase in RT60 would raise the Cutoff Frequency, this can be counteracted by increasing the volume of the room, but if you increase the volume of the room, you increase the RT60...now I can see why acoustics is such an art.

What I derive from all this is that an equilibrium must be sought. Let's say I make the RT60 about 650ms across all frequencies (for simplicity's sake) and extend the height of the ceiling to 11' (am I right in assuming that by NOT making it a multiple of the length and width I'm reducing the risk of having obvious room modes?), my Cutoff Frequency will now be about 252 Hz. Is this suitable for a typical rock studio?

Now, at this stage I have an RT60 of 650ms across all frequencies. If I wanted to leave the RT60 in the mids unchanged, would I have to use a material that has a lot of absorbency in the low frequencies and another material with a lot of absorbency in the high frequencies in order to flatten them out and create a peak in the mids (on a graph of Time in seconds [x-axis] versus Frequency in Hertz [y-axis]). What I don't understand is how to decide WHERE to place the absorbent material.

Right, that's all the complicated stuff over-and-done-with, my other questions are a lot more straightforward:

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Re: Designing Studio - Help!
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2004, 12:53:28 PM »

Been here?


http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php



Enjoy your quest.


Peace,
Dennis
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Toby M

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Re: Designing Studio - Help!
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2004, 03:40:42 PM »

Phil Newell has written some great books about this, not massive amounts of maths, and some real world stories as well. I never thought books containing so much about acoustics could be so amusing to read. Worth to check out. /Good luck. /Toby
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