Hey PRFers,

I'm helping a friend of mine build a studio... and I'm going over his plans his contractor drew up and all of the walls are parallel... I know this is a general no-no in studios.

I'm not an acoustical engineer and I know there is a science to it but is there a general rule of thumb here? I mean is it ok to just angle one or two walls in each room "off-square" and how many degrees 'til it actually makes a difference? Are there any potential problems with angling a wall only a little? What about arcs and arching walls?

I'm thinking about calling Steve or Greg just to pick their brains about this for a minute...

But I'm assuming ANY shape is better than a square or rectangle room.

Thanks,

Don't know any formulas but yes Parallel Walls are Bad and square rooms are REAL bad.

TheMilford wrote:But I'm assuming ANY shape is better than a square or rectangle room.

Not necessarily true. Some great rooms are rectangular, studios 1 and 2 at Abbey road, for example.

You will save yourself a ton of headache if you just go to the library and get the Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. There's a great summary of design considerations in there. It's basically how we designed Electrical.

Thanks Steve. I will try to grab this book before the weekend.

In general do square or rectangular rooms need more treatment to break up standing waves and reflections?

I've been to electrical and looked at the drawings on the site. It there a reason you didn't go with any rectangular rooms in Studio A?

Is this more of a concern in the control room vs. the live rooms?

TheMilford wrote:In general do square or rectangular rooms need more treatment to break up standing waves and reflections?

I think it's fair to say yes, but I think you're more likely to get away with it with larger overall dimensions.

This has some good information in it and should be of some use hopefully.

It's a concern everywhere. The key is to solve problems, not create them. A single mode (standing wave) is pretty easy to break-up, and multiple smaller modes can sound nice if their energy is distributed in a flattering way. There is no single standard for acoustic design.

Don't assume a design will sound bad. Listen to it and try to improve on what you hear.

thanks again Steve. I'm ordering that book right now.

Here's the dimensions in question:
Control room 15ft deep 13ft wide
Dead room #1 6.5 deep..not sure about the width here
live room 19 by 19
vocal booth 6 deep 4 wide
dead room #2 -9 by 9

As a somewhat-related aside...

There's a small article in this month's Modern Drummer with John from Soma/Tortoise in which he talks about building his studio/using some of the people Steve used, etc., that some of you should enjoy.

Check it out.

Double the recommendation on the Everest book.

Also

there's

some

threads

You're in NYC, right? PM me if you want to see what we did in the 20 x 20 x 13 (originally) room where I was facing the same trouble. We're happy with the results.

= Justin

Edited to add the ceiling height, which I then asked for below.

What's the ceiling height in those rooms?

= Justin