studio construction questions

[Professor Bill]

Inspired by the “Let's see your guitar rooms” thread, I'd like to ask if anyone here has experience or advice for new construction of a music room/studio.

I'm fortunate to be renovating a house and building a new detached garage. I'll have an office/workspace/music room in the new building. I have the opportunity to build it however I want. I've read opinions about avoiding parallel wall and sloping the ceiling to address standing waves, but I'm wondering if anyone here has experience and can speak to the value of building with this way v. doing acoustic treatments in a rectangular room.

In the space I'll also have rugs, furniture, bookcases, &c., so I can at least reduce some or most reflective surfaces. And I want it to feel and sound like a room, not a sterile studio. It will also be a home office, space for gear, &c., as well as a space for playing at moderate volume (drums on the quiet side, acoustic instruments, smaller amps) , vocals, and possibly recording, but I don't need it to be an ideal space for mixing or mastering. My ears aren't good enough for that.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or resources I could consult. Thanks, OSG!

[marqueemoon]

There’s a drummer/engineer here in Seattle that has a very comprehensive blog about his garage studio build. It’s one of the better resources I’ve seen on this kind of thing.

This thread has some good info on room modes.

If I ever have an opportunity to build something I would take acoustic considerations more seriously, but it’s a pretty deep rabbit hole. Eric Valentine has some eye opening videos on the subject. My takeaway is yes this is super important, but diminishing returns kick in in a major way.

If I had a construction project level budget I’d likely hold a little back for a monitoring system with room correction after hopefully heading off or mitigating the worst of the problems.

My favorite things about my own modest basement setup are boring workflow stuff and storage. Those would be really important considerations for me if building something.

[marqueemoon]

Double post!

[Dok]

If you're not trying to optimize this specifically for mixing/mastering, that makes things relatively easy. What about soundproofing? If you don't need it, you're good with dual-pane windows and regular pink fluffy insulation, otherwise remember that doors and windows = sound leakage. If you do want to try some mixing, a big thing is that a standard 8 foot ceiling is the worst height due the floor-ceiling null right at 48" (ear level when sitting at a desk). So try to do 9-foot ceilings, or even a vaulted ceiling, which would also mean you don't need to sweat trying to get non-parallel walls quite as much. And even then I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze as long your walls aren't bare and you can afford, say 25% coverage with acoustic panels on the walls. The big thing is you just don't want a square box - rectangular is much better cuz of those room nodes.

You have plans for ventilation yet?

[Professor Bill]

Thanks, Marqueemoon and Dok!

That all makes sense and I want to avoid chasing diminishing returns. I can certainly get a 9 foot+ ceiling, and likely it can be sloped. I really don't see mixing being a thing (I don't have the ears for it) and I can do rough mixes with headphones. I would plan to take/send things elsewhere for real mixes and mastering. And this will be a multi-use space: a home office as well as a music room. The lot that this will sit on is pretty large, with neighbors some distance away. Sound proofing (green glue?) and perhaps triple-paned windows might be needed, as it's not going be a windowless box.

Dok, it's interesting to hear your perspective that a rectangle with high ceilings and some acoustic treatments might be fine. The current plan shows +/- 12 x 25 feet. I had planned to cluster the home office area in one end and music in the other. I'm really just trying to end up with a nice space that sounds decent, but nothing too elaborate. This will be used mostly for writing, rehearsing, and *maybe* some simple tracking. There are professional studios in the area, if the need arises, and I think dumping too much into this space might not be the best choice.

In terms of ventilation, we are planning on using mini-splits for the house and had planned on having one in this space. It won't be a heavily used space, and usually just me, so I'm hoping this is adequate. But I'd be curious what your experiences are.

I appreciate your thoughts!

[øøøøøøø]

Inspired by the “Let's see your guitar rooms” thread, I'd like to ask if anyone here has experience or advice for new construction of a music room/studio.

I'm fortunate to be renovating a house and building a new detached garage. I'll have an office/workspace/music room in the new building. I have the opportunity to build it however I want. I've read opinions about avoiding parallel wall and sloping the ceiling to address standing waves, but I'm wondering if anyone here has experience and can speak to the value of building with this way v. doing acoustic treatments in a rectangular room.

In the space I'll also have rugs, furniture, bookcases, &c., so I can at least reduce some or most reflective surfaces. And I want it to feel and sound like a room, not a sterile studio. It will also be a home office, space for gear, &c., as well as a space for playing at moderate volume (drums on the quiet side, acoustic instruments, smaller amps) , vocals, and possibly recording, but I don't need it to be an ideal space for mixing or mastering. My ears aren't good enough for that.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or resources I could consult. Thanks, OSG!

I’ve built five (commercial) studios and am starting on a 6th; this one in a detached garage.

I’ll tell you what *I* am going to be doing, addressing some of your questions directly first.

I've read opinions about avoiding parallel wall and sloping the ceiling to address standing waves

Don’t do this. At least, don’t do it without a plan.

The biggest real disadvantage to parallel walls: specular reflections (flutter echo). This is a very, very easy problem to treat.

But the advantages to a rectangle are multiple. The big one: it’s very easily to calculate the mode distribution and visualize the pressure zones, which makes the hard problems infinitely easier to target and treat than some random shape.

Less-important perhaps but still relevant: rectangles are also way easier and cheaper to build (ever try to bend drywall or OSB sheathing around a ceiling with barrel roll twists? I can confirm that it’s not fun!)

If I were building a DIY space on a budget with little advance knowledge, I’d start with the AMROC room mode calculator and choose a good workable set of rectangular dimensions (good mode distribution) and start there.

Nonrectangular rooms can sound great if done well, but splayed walls and canted ceilings are NOT an automatic pathway to a good sounding room—with one exception

If your focus is mixing and you’re trying to build a great control room, there’s merit to starting with a rectangle and then building out the front of the room with a RFZ (Google “RFZ room”), which is a series of angled walls designed to direct first reflections away from mix position.

And I want it to feel and sound like a room, not a sterile studio. It will also be a home office, space for gear, &c., as well as a space for playing at moderate volume (drums on the quiet side, acoustic instruments, smaller amps) , vocals, and possibly recording, but I don't need it to be an ideal space for mixing or mastering. My ears aren't good enough for that.

With your stated goals I would focus more on construction than design—in other words, reducing transmission to the outside world (and vice-versa) as opposed to optimizing the performance inside the room.

Make sure your structure can support a lot of mass (a visit from a structural engineer is in order—not as scary as it sounds) and then build very rigid walls with rockwool behind. 2x heavy drywall everywhere is standard, stagger your seams. Any windows should have double panes, as this will be a weak point for transmission. Likewise for the door—solid core, the heavier the better, drop seal, and a very tight fit. That is assuming you don’t want to budget for a good acoustic door or a sound lock with 2x doors.

I’ll also add: if you only want to build it once, consider putting in a little extra effort and optimizing it better in terms of acoustic performance. You will *never* regret this.

For my upcoming buildout in my new house, I’ve got plans from a good consultant/designer. I’m going to have a structural engineer visit soon.

If building a bunch of studios from the plans of a couple of different designers has taught me anything, it’s the difference between someone who knows what they’re doing and DIY. Even though those experiences (and asking a bunch of questions) has taught me a lot, it’s foremost caused me to value the people who actually do the math to design great rooms (and get results)

Good luck!!

[øøøøøøø]

(Addendum since I just read your last post):

1) “triple paned windows”, if those are a thing(?) are not what you want. It’s a fascinating physics puzzle, but a triple-leaf system generally performs worse than a two-leaf system due to the resonances inside being moved upward. It feels counterintuitive but for the same size footprint, two leaves almost always perform better than three (a “leaf” is just a hard surface like a wall or window. Google “Triple leaf effect” for more info)

2) mini split is the way; it’s the right solution for your needs

PS: the triple leaf situation described above is a classic example of why it can pay to hire an experienced consultant if you can budget for it. There are so many situations in acoustical physics where the intuitive/obvious thing is actually wrong!

[Professor Bill]

Super helpful. Thanks, øøøøøøø.

[Dok]

And you're on the right path with the green glue idea BUT if you're going to go to the trouble, you absolutely need to do it right, and to do it right you need to be kind of insane. All potential leaks must be sealed - like Brad said (and I'm mostly just repeating him here) that means things like overlapping your drywall seams between layers, caulking all of your outlet boxes and light fixtures with acoustic caulk, having double solid-core doors, etc. Airtight! And that's when you have to start thinking extra hard about air exchange. You mentioned that there's some distance to the neighbors and you're on a large lot. If that's the case you might not need to go to all that trouble, although I certainly understand the desire, and if you're going to do it the time is definitely in the construction phase. But it just might not be necessary. Remember that your biggest sources of sound leakage, both in and out, are going to be your windows and doors, so you can also think about things like skylights as other ways of getting natural light in that aren't a portal of sound into/out of your studio onto the neighbors or the street. You know, strategery.

[Professor Bill]

Oh, that's helpful

I do need to figure out whether it's really necessary to try to soundproof aggressively. I think we've decided that next time we're at the new house I'll bring a snare drum and bang on it as loud as I can while my wife walks the property line to see how the sound travels.

[øøøøøøø]

One thing you don’t likely want to do is aggressively soundproof only some parts and then cut corners on others.

You can go to the trouble and expense to build an STC 58 wall, but if you have a couple of STC 36 windows in it, you have an STC 36 wall!