Author Topic: Small production/Practice room anyone? (Read 508 times)

jazzyvee · « **on:** July 15, 2013, 11:13:50 PM »

I'm considering building a small practice room at the bottom of my garden that I can also use for personal music production. I've had the plans drawn up by an architect for the main structure which will have an internal size, before sound proofing of 5m x 4m and 3.77m to the apex of the roof. Part of the roof space will be used as storage for cases and possibly guitars subject to it being secure enough.

Any advice you can share about how to layout the internals, sound control/proofing etc would be great. Also keeping the room at a constant temperature and above the dew point all year round is important for the electronic equipment and the instruments.
What should the internal temperature be?
What about silent air conditioning?
If you have done this, did having a dedicated practice room become beneficial or did it make practice sessions become a chore?

Security is also a prime consideration as I would like to make is safe enough to keep at least some of my instruments in there so that I don't have to keep coming back and forth to the house to change instruments in the middle of a recording session.

I know you have experience to share so I'm all ears. :-)

Jazzyvee

5a_quilt_top · « **Reply #1 on:** July 16, 2013, 08:53:54 AM »

If you're storing wooden instruments in there for any length of time, the humidity should be in the high 30's - low 40's. 40-41% is ideal.

Get a digital gauge and measure it. If it is consistently below 38% (in Arizona it is usually well below that), do like I did and get a humidifier, if it is consistently above 45%, get a dehumidifier.

Your instruments will thank you.

JuancarlinBass · « **Reply #2 on:** July 16, 2013, 10:22:00 AM »

Just my humble two cents: There are some things you would like to consider if you intend to use this space for production work. If possible, try having non-parallel walls (ie. not a completely square room), and a slant ceiling. This will help you with the acoustics greatly. If possible (also) and if there is some kind of neighbouring house, is a good idea to build a double wall, maybe 20 centimeters apart, and fill the void with sand (or not, opinions may vary on this) to further isolate acoustics. Also, most experts agree on building L shaped air conditioning ducts (with insulating material on the inner corners) to make it noiseless (I'm having a hard time myself with this, building my own studio). Double walling also helps with double dooring, which would let you put more locks in the way, regarding security (also, a double wall would also make harder breaking in, I guess you can put some kind of fence or additional security between walls... on a neighboring wall I did a 25cms double wall filled with sand, and a stone covering on the inside. Soundproofing and safety helped here I guess). Whenever possible, a separate control room is really helpful (even if it is a small one I guess) compared to a hot space studio (as the one I have in my apartment, no control room and a pain to record drums, for an instance). Some Alembicians here are REAL experts on the matter and can help you even better than me, tho.

tbrannon · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2013, 11:08:02 AM »

Jazzy,

I'm no expert, but I suspect if you were to post a copy of the basic layout you've already had done by the architect, there would be a number of people who would have opinions on what they'd change and how they'd change it.

that_sustain · « **Reply #4 on:** July 16, 2013, 12:22:22 PM »

You could always have Alembic come to your location to wire the whole building.

Seriously though..it's where you hang the microphones that matters most.

keith_h · « **Reply #5 on:** July 16, 2013, 06:20:50 PM »

Another thing to keep in mind is sound leaves and enters a building through gaps. Even small cracks around a door can let a lot of sound out so ensuring good seals is important. Double sheet rocking will help too.

Given the size you are dealing with this might not be feasible but you should also think about whether you want a live wall or not.

Keith

cozmik_cowboy · « **Reply #6 on:** July 16, 2013, 07:44:50 PM »

Make sure you include a toilet - not a bathroom, just a toilet; old-school reverb

Peter

jzstephan · « **Reply #7 on:** July 16, 2013, 08:40:43 PM »

For diffusion and sound proofing, cover the walls with Twinkies.

jacko · « **Reply #8 on:** July 17, 2013, 04:28:52 AM »

I'm pretty certain they don't sell twinkies over this side of the pond John. I'd recommend using swiss rolls.

graeme

5a_quilt_top · « **Reply #9 on:** July 17, 2013, 08:27:01 AM »

I knew those things had to be good for something...

dadabass2001 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 17, 2013, 09:01:11 AM »

Well, they're good for about three minutes on the local news in Chicago anyway

Soon the soundbooth was filling with flies... a Zappa misqoute

briant · « **Reply #11 on:** July 17, 2013, 11:01:23 AM »

If this is just for personal practice and recording you likely aren?t going to need to get too crazy with sound proofing. Unless you practice at skull crushing levels of course. Simply doing a double course of drywall (off set the seams, caulk all seams on the first course before starting the second course) and use a spray foam insulation to fill all gaps in door/window frames is going to help keep noise down outside. Anything more than this which is going to make a significant difference (especially for bass) is going to decrease your usable footprint in your room a fairly large amount. Like floating a room inside a room, using double doors, etc?

mario_farufyno · « **Reply #12 on:** July 18, 2013, 08:33:20 AM »

Jazzy, you have a nice room, with good inner proportions. If ceiling was even lower (near 3.20m) you would get a very flat room on lows. I will not bother you with technical and phisics explanations, but the idea is not having close or even harmonic relationship between wall measurements.

Despite 3.77m being too close to 4.00m, the reinforcements will probably not bothers you (this is a major issue in control rooms, not on practice rooms where you can always move to a better listening spot if lows sounds too boomy on a particular placement). One way to minimize eventual problems you can place low absporption at the corners. It is probably a good idea to do that, anyway...

mario_farufyno · « **Reply #13 on:** July 18, 2013, 08:49:01 AM »

There are Corner Traps you can easely buy on internet, but you can make those yourself if you want to keep costs lows. It is very simple:

Just do a wood frame where you can place a rockwool piece in it (just because rockwool are easier to handle than glassfiber). In Brazil high density rockwool are sold in 0.60m x 1.20m and that is a good size to make your Bass Trap. You just need to make a frame large and deep enough to contain it, then you'll want to cover it with some fabric to avoid direct contact with the itching wool. Prefer using a light fabric and try to wrap the frame tight (just for a better look).

If you place those right on the wall, it will absorb high frequencies and it is usefull to control reflections/cancelations, but it is better to care the lows first. To affect the lows, you just need to have a air gap behind it. So if you want to do a Broad Band Trap you just have to move it away from the wall.

mario_farufyno · « **Reply #14 on:** July 18, 2013, 09:16:54 AM »

As lows tend to concentrate near surfaces (walls) and corners are joining walls, you can expect a sound coupling and low build up ear corners. If you place those absorbers I described above aslant across the corner, they will improve your rooms low response a lot.

You should calculate witch exact frequencies are problematics, but even without calculations just placing some corner traps helps tame lows down. You can use the corners at the ceiling first, because it doesn't matters where you absorb sounds in a room (since sound travels very fast) and because that way you doesn't reduce available space at the floor. If you find you need more, just make some more frames and use side corners, not ideal but efficient enough.

After adjusting room's lower response, you can check if mids or reverberation is causing troubles. Using those frames close to walls turn them in high absorbers, so you can placed them on ceiling to control flutter echoes caused by parallel walls (ceiling/floor). A carpet on floor can help on that, too.

Be carefull to not overuse high absorption because it can make your room sound too dead (or boomy, if there is not enough low absorption). You doesn't need to cover all the wall, just portions. As the idea is to avoid flutter echoes, you can alternate absorption with reflections on facing parallel walls (asbortion panels looking right to reflective surface on oposite wall, as alternated stripes).

You should do this little by little, to avoid excessive deadening on reverberation. But you can improve reaverbaration using sound diffusers on some portions, they help to spread sound on time and space. Again, you can buy them on internet, look for QRDs (quadratic residue diffusers), but any irregular surfaces will diffuse sounds, though.

A ordinary diffuser is using book shelfs to broke sound waves, since books have several different sizes and never got aligned. But, if I can suggest something, begin treating lows first and just add high absorption at need/taste (they are important to open and give air to your room's tone). Remember, the basic absorber is the same, so it is easy to change its behaviour at the assembling by trial and error. Use your ears and good luck...