Recorded through and processed via the rolling rack at AILV in studio B. All recorded live
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
AUD 210: Acoustics Studio Design Layout and write- up
This project is all about designing a medium sized recording
studio given predetermined dimensions of an existing space. It is a great opportunity to be able to dive
in and build a studio from the ground up.
With that in mind I set out to design it for something that I would use,
or create for myself. Because of my love
of recording bands my studio was built as a music studio. The real problem with a recording studio of
this size is that it must be versatile enough to mix a wide variety of musical
styles given one live room, a vocal booth, and a drum isolation booth. At least it is my goal to be able to record a
multitude of sounds in this place, from funk to jazz, rock, and punk. I wanted
my design to be somewhat unique given the space, and also give somewhere for
the band members to unwind in between takes.
This studio is going to be perfect for a home away from home type of
recording situation, and hopefully for a somewhat affordable price as well. It was with the versatility in mind that I
designed my room with a somewhat slightly lively reverberation time, which can
be tailored to the proper amount with a good deal of adjustable acoustics
thrown into the mix in order to give each band the perfect touch for each
recording. While this task seems daunting
I managed to find a balance while working on the studio. My goals were to achieve well-balanced rooms
across the board, with the drum room starting out more dead than the rest of
the rooms. My ultimate goal was to
design something that if I were given the money right now I would actually
build it. If success is determined by
meeting your goals, then it is safe to say that I was quite successful with my
design.
In the
current section I will discuss different problems I encountered while designing
my acoustic spaces, first in broad terms, then later on specific problems with
each room. Of course, the first problem
I encountered was finding a floor plan that I enjoyed to look at and also have
the dimensions I wanted, or should I say needed, for each of my rooms. Once that minor yet difficult obstacle was
overcome I was able to focus on finding my modes, coefficients, and RT60 of
each room. This was the point in the project in which things got very
interesting at most times, and definitely overwhelming at other times. It was
easy enough to determine the room modes of my room using the easy to approach
and repeat closed pipe resonance equation.
This was done for each room up to 300 Hz, then I listed in ascending
order and thus the modal spacing was found.
Each room has some distinct modal characteristics, with most of the
rooms keeping even between the Bonelo model, where a range of 20 Hz is
acceptable, and the Gilford method in which a 5% range is permissible. I will
speak more of the modes of each room in my analysis later on. I found adjusting the ceiling height was most
beneficial to adjusting my rooms sizes, and once I found a good ceiling
dimension I kept It constant in most rooms of the studio, with the exception of
the vocal isolation booth, which I wanted to have a bit smaller of a ceiling,
so that the room could be adapted to record dead vocals or live vocals if the
recording is to sound a bit livelier. The ceiling in the other two recording
and control room have the same height. I
centered my machine room double walled off and contained in between the two
isolation rooms. My studio features high
definition monitors in each room for communication and cameras, which capture
the session and also serve as the devices to have this communication take
place. This helped to reduce reflections
later on, and is more futuristic as well.
Sound locks are built between the hallway into the studio proper, and a
second one between the hallways and the control room. A double walled system is used throughout the
studio, painted concrete blocks with space in between and 75 millimeters of
fiberglass to reduce sound transmission between rooms. A fully floating floor system for the entire
studio section helps decouple it, making a perfect room within a room. Locating the HVAC system off of the building
on a structure which was floated as well helped immediately acoustically shield
the building from some of its terrible structureborne noise problems. Furthermore, on the subject of HVAC, using a
series of in duct baffles and whisper soft systems, and absorptive materials
inside and around the ducts to prevent break-in and break-out noises.
I thought I
would have a problem using up all of the space in the studio but I feel as
though I did a good job using it up properly.
My total absorptions for each room untreated were as bad as any
untreated room were. After estimating the total absorption I wanted for my
desired RT60 of .66 seconds I was able to go about treating my room, and with
the knowledge of the modal buildups and resonances in my rooms, it was easy
enough to picture what I needed to do. In
my vocal isolation booth because of the nature of Vocals either needing to be
completely dead, or with a little reverb and liveliness I went with a lot of
adjustable acoustics in that room.
Adjustable thick velour curtains run along two walls, and can be moved
to reveal abfusers behind them. On one wall there is a swinging adjustable
acoustic panel as well for further adjustable acoustic treatment. There is carpet on the floors as well for
added absorption, and a portable vocal stand, which can help reduce the sound
of the room in a microphone quite well.
Beyond that, a bass trap in the corner in the door helps to reduce
reverberation time further. The Drum
isolation room required a more dead sound as well so I aimed for a lower RT 60
value of .35 seconds. Absorption is the
key in this room. A solid, poured
concrete riser covered in carpet With drapes covering all of the walls, behind
them an array of absorbers, more diffusers are located behind where the drummer
would sit. There are bass traps in all corners in this room. A good clean drum sound is key for a great
recording. One problem I encountered was that I underestimated how much
material it would take to make that room so dead, but after some work it was
easy enough to accomplish. I wanted
consistent reverb times in most of my rooms so that the sound quality would
carry from room to room. The Control
room I decided upon was an RFZ style for my listening position, with the
distance further in the back with absorbers and diffusers in the form of
bookshelves in the room to help achieve this goal. There are bass traps in the corners behind
the bookshelves as well for further absorption power. Absorbers in front of the console prevent any
early reflections from the speakers escaping and causing a shadow, or worse,
comb filtering. Making sure the reverb
time is perfect in this room is highly important. Next treating the live room will be different
certainly depending on the band and number of instruments in a room, some bands
may choose to all record together in the live room for that classic rock
style,which is a personal favorite of my own.
However, many bands these days prefer to record separately and everything
is mixed together later on. So if that
is the case depending on the number of instruments they can be spaced and
acoustically separated somewhat using good microphone techniques and some
portable gobos and acoustic absorbing baffles.
There are drapes along the the wall where the hall way is, with
absorptive and diffusive materials located behind the curtain. On the opposite, slightly splayed wall, there
are a couple adjustable swinging hinge panels for picking the desired RT for a
project. There is a diffusive cloud
along the ceiling as well to make sure the spread of sound is even. Along the
back wall there are more absorptive and diffusive materials to help reduce the
RT in this very large room to the same level as the rest of the rooms. Besides all of that, those were most of the
issues I encountered with my designing, was how to find the balance and ability
to have my rooms be useful for so many different types of genres.
Now I shall
talk about any problems that arose for me during my treatment of my room. Resolving modal problems was vital, while
simultaneously properly tuning my room for RT 60 and the like. In my vocal Isolation booth the first buildup
happens at 30 Hz with almost an impermissible gap immediately afterwards. The spacing maintains until about 60 Hz where
theres a large gap of 30 hertz between it and the next tone. Diffusive materials behind the drapes are
capable of helping fix this imbalance in the room. Fortunately most vocalists do not sing within
this range to excite any modes in this room.
On top of that, the Schroeder frequency is 111Hz, so the modal buildups
are les noticeable, and much more even in the range beyond there. Next the drum isolation booth, which begins
somewhat shakily with a few large gaps within the early frequencies but
otherwise remaining fairly even until 118Hz, and again at 196, but again
considering the Schroeder Frequency cutoff for the room is 100 Hz so the gaps
shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m
quite proud of the spacing of that drum room actually. There are far more modes to deal with in
larger rooms such as my live and control room.
The live room has a few buildups at around 72Hz and again at 252 Hz. The
Schroeder cutoff frequency for the live room sits at 58 Hz, which is great because
that leaves a lot of headroom to deal with the smaller bass buildup problems.
With the combination of curtains, absorbers and diffusers, there shouldn’t be a
noticeable buildup. My control room is
the final room, and requires the most even frequency response of any room in
the whole studio. This is fortunate because the Schroeder frequency is at 60
Hz. Regardless there is a slight buildup
in the low 20Hz range, so a Helmholtz resonator built into the corner behind
the bookcase is specifically built to absorb such a very low frequency. Otherwise my goal of designing a good shape
for my control room worked out, because the range of modes is within the ideal
20Hz or 5% range the entire time.
Tackling the modal problems alongside my RT 60 and absorption work
helped to streamline what I needed to do, and how to fix it.
That is a
brief, but I hope detailed summary of my design process, problems, solutions,
and ideas, I hope someone reading this learns something from what I wrote or
came up with. I realized that it takes
quite a lot of work to do this on your own, especially if you aren’t shown
exactly where to start. Otherwise I
think I was successful in what I wanted to achieve, of course I have no idea
how this room would actually sound, for it doesn’t exist, but I’d like to think
in my mind that it lives up to the vast amount of work I put into it. I think one thing to realize is that you can
achieve the results that you want in acoustics, but only if you know how, and
combine different techniques from all across the audio world to create the best
possible performance possible.
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