Studio Journal 7-24-2015
Hello everyone!
I’ve passed insulation inspection! Sheetrock is going up next Monday! A layer of 5/8” with a layer if 1/4” green glued on top.
Then comes the hardwood floor. With the help of Lou Clark I’ve decided to go with Oak. I read up on this a lot, and the science says “a hard floor is a hard floor”. In other words, a cement floor sounds the same laminate flooring sounds the same as a hard wood floor. All this “wood sounds better” talk, or instruments are made of wood, and they sound great, that’s why studios are made of wood, isn’t really true. Hard floor surfaces sound like hard floor surfaces, and it’s important to how we hear to get that floor reflection. A floor with broadband absorption would sound very weird (along with being very strange/difficult to walk on)
Ok, so why wood? Because its malleable. We can easily shape and build it into anything. Also, there is some core human instinct that loves hardwood. When I go into a room and its all wood, I feel so warm and happy!
So there you have it. I’m going to put lots of wood all over the place because it makes me feel happy!
So once the sheetrock is up, we have to put the wood floor in the room and let is acclimate to the humidity for a few weeks before we nail it down. Otherwise it will warp and do bad things.
While that’s going on I’ll do the final electrical/mechanical/baseboard heat.
I have a new set of outside doors that opens out, and we’re putting the existing double doors that open in on the inside of the room. There’s another door to go on the inside leading to the house, and another window too. Final inspections and… Done with the isolation part of the job!
Phew! There went 7 months of my life. Now we can finally get to the fun stuff!!!
Turns out the room dimensions worked out pretty well. Once the sheetrock is in, the dimensions will be (approximately) Length: 23.5 ft (in the back), 17.5 ft (in the front), Width: 18.67 ft, Height: 7.3 ft.
Ideally we want the frequencies that resonate due to the room dimensions to be as spread out as possible so there aren’t a lot of resonate frequencies that add up or cancel out with themselves. That’s why a cube is the worst room possible for a recording studio. Check out my dimensions at http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm All green and yellow!! Then try typing in 10 x 10 x 10. Ugly!
Along the way I made a few controversial decisions.
One controversial decision is that I ended up putting the pucks down and floating the floor. The research shows I may have wasted money. But I don’t regret giving it a shot. I did it completely by the books, Installed by professionals who have building permits.
Another controversial decision is I decided to build an A-Frame shape on either side of the I-beam. The angles are at about 10 degrees to prevent flutter echoes between the ceiling and the floor. This was mostly because I decided to hide the beam in the middle of the room with the angle, the angled ceiling goes the whole length of the room in the center to hide the beam, but ceiling on the side walls that make the A-frame only goes back 8 feet, which leaves space for the AC, nook and the doorways.
I was planning to put absorption in the front of the room on the ceiling. And build custom diffusors for the back of the room on the ceiling.
I was hoping to use the dreaded concave shape combined with skyline diffusors to get a “focused diffuse field” (I just made that term up) that might be good for recording classical instruments. This is where you guys chime in and tell me I’m crazy.
I’m very excited to finally begin thinking about the inner room treatments, Originally I was going to put a lot of absorption in, then I wanted to make a hybrid surface, now I’m thinking have low profile diffusors like the ones on http://arqen.com/sound-diffusers/
Then put them on hinges in front of absorption so I can open and close them to change the room from totally live to totally dead.
Lou is going to help me out here. After looking at the studios he designed with beautiful movable diffusors…. I’m sold! Check out Little River Sounds: http://www.sonic-space.com/river/river_g.html Amazing!
So long for now. Happy waveforms and good night.
