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| The size of the over-all space is ideal for a project-studio, song-writing suite, radio, multi-media or education-studio. |
In the
building where we set up the facility there were two rectangular offices
available side by side. One of the ideas the building’s owner had was to use them
as a live room and a control room. The idea was good enough but the long
rectangular rooms would not have provided nice acoustics. Instead I chose to
knock down the wall and opened up the space for two reasons: (1) to get more space
around our ears when mixing, (2) and to easier accommodate a whole class for
bigger projects. The separate entrance doors from the hallway to the offices
proved to be sound-doors with -35 dB SPL even damping. We kept them and thus
had separate entrances to the live and control rooms, but having to go through
the hall outside.
After
knocking down the wall we built a small live room for vocal-recording, acoustic
guitars and the likes. It was constructed to be big enough to stand inside with
a long scale bass guitar and still have some space between the walls. We were also
looking at the idea of bringing in a vocal booth on wheels, but we didn’t have
enough clearing under the roof. Another idea was to dampen down a corner of the
room and use a screen around the microphones, but this obviously wouldn’t have
been as effective as a separate room—albeit, it could be a good idea for a
small project studio.
In the roof
above the doors we had an incredibly noisy ventilation channel. To cope with
the ventilation we created a small air-gap, used a thick layer of Rockwool and two
layers of plaster. It was very effective in containing the noise. Since we
didn’t have the space or the budget to build a room-within-the-room we
insulated all the walls and covered them with plaster. The plaster that covered
most of the surfaces is a perforated type. The perforations with the insulation
behind helps do dampen the sound (quite similar to a Helmholtz resonator) while the plaster it self creates some reflections. This is exactly
what I wanted as the room gets a nice natural sound with hardly any echoes or
notable reverberation, but it doesn’t sound totally dry either. The perforated
plasterboard is more costly than regular plasterboard and it had to be ordered
from Denmark. But the extra cost was about the same as the extra soundproofing
would have been if we were to build the walls from regular plasterboard. The sidewalls
in the main studio were set up conically prevent any standing waves. They were
closer together at the front than at the back, but visually it could hardly be
seen. With clever design and really skilled carpenters (cred to them!) we ended
up having very few parallel surfaces in the entire facility. The floors were
covered with carpet tiles (on top of the existing concrete) and at the front of
the studio I chose a wood floor, both to throw in some acoustic irregularity
and for easier use of office chairs. Additional damping-foam was fitted only
where our ears told us we needed it, which turned out to be an impressively
modest sum total of 5 bass traps in the live room. The live-room walls were covered
with 40 mm. tiles for suspended ceilings. We glued these on and they were
acoustically very effective (and affordable). They dampen reflections but not
fully as much as regular sound foam.
The doors
in the original offices damped sound relatively flat at -35dB SPL. Our
carpenters did three things to improve them. (1) They tightened up the locks,
(2) they put in new draft-excluders and (3) they covered the inside of the door
with 40 mm. tiles for suspended ceilings. The latter dampens the reflections back
into the room from the door, but it did in fact help a little on the overall
exclusion of sound from the hallway as well.
In front of
the workstation there were two large windows. It is off course a nice thing to
get proper sunlight into the space, but I was sceptic to the prospect of having
large studio monitors that close to the windows. My concern was mostly that the
glass could start resonating at the low frequencies and give a false impression
of bass levels in a mix. Subsequently I spent a lot of consideration whether to
get monitors with front or rear bass-ports. Initially I wanted them at the
front to avoid the windows, but after several rounds of good research and
consultancy from the speaker distributor we ended up with a pair of speakers with
rear bass-ports. The distributors monitor expert meant that since bass
frequencies are not really directional, front or rear ports wouldn’t make a
difference. As much as I generally agree on this I have experienced that bass
ports can create “wind” quite far from the speaker cabinet at loud volumes.
However, round bass ports create a sphere of air-pressure while long flat bass
ports and other odd shapes spread the air-pressure out better. Since we were
looking at Eve Audio’s SC 207 (flat rear ports) I was convinced enough to give
it a try. Either way, the distributor said I could return the speakers if I
wasn’t happy, a great offer that sealed the deal. After mounting and tuning the
speakers I was more than happy with the outcome. The big windows turned out not
to be a problem at all. (I have written more about the SC 207 and other Eve speakers at two other posts.)
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| The workstation |
A normal
configuration for a studio this size is often a live-end-dead-end design. In a
live-end-dead-end studio it is common to have the lowest roof height and most
damping at the same end of the room as where the speakers are. The studio I
designed is the opposite of this for several reasons. For one I wanted the
work-position to be close to the windows to get the natural lighting to flow
through and we had already lowered the roof at the other end of the room due to
the ventilation channel. The other reason is that I like to have some space
around my ears when I mix and at the front of the room (read: where the
speakers are) was really the only place left where we could have it. Due to
this it was important to avoid any sharp angles at the back of the room. Where
there was a difference in roof height we made a slope between the surfaces instead of a
90-degree angle (see picture below). Still, in the perforated plasterboard with Rockwool behind
this didn’t really provide any undesired reflections. This way we kept the
acoustics of the space very natural. The ‘strawberry on top of the cake’ was a
big sofa behind the workstation. The world’s most used bass-trap! ;)
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| Odd angles and perforated plaster board. |
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| The window to the vocal booth consists of one 6mm and one 8mm glass plate set at apart at an angle. Two different thicknesses makes it more sound-proof. The same principle goes with double walls. |
If you want
artists to thrive in a studio-environment you have to think about the look and
feel of the space. Gear won’t be enough to make musicians feel at home. Light
became a huge consideration, especially as this studio also were to double as a
classroom. We had three light-sources: two big windows, two large low profile lamps
in the roof above the workstation (approx. 50*50 cm.) and LED downlights at the
back of the room and in the live room. For the electricians that worked on the
project I had four requirements for any lights installed: (1) Lamps would have
to have no acoustic noise from transformers or similar (transformers were to be
placed outside the room if there were any); (2) lamps, transformers or dimmers
would have to make no electronic interference (we skipped dimmers all
together); (3) lamps would have to be tightly closed so no rattling noises
would occur at loud bass-volumes; and (4) lamps in the tiny live-room would
have to be LEDs to not fry our singers.
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| The entrance. The door is treated with additional 40 mm tiles for suspended ceilings. Since the shadow from the sunlight fall into the entrance space we chose to liven it up with some colour. Initially we intended photo-canvases depicting the tropics on the walls and the blue against the oak details would echo the sea and sky against sand, wood and ropework—in case you're into interior design :) |
Around the workstation
I had several electric circuits installed. Two of these consisted of a series
of sockets with individual switches. This way the speakers could be shut down
separately from other equipment. This is useful to avoid damaging speakers but
it is also a pedagogical measure to teach students to avoid sending unwanted
transients to the speakers. Having all the equipment powered through two
switched circuits also makes it quick and easy to power up and down the studio.
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| Switched and separate circuits makes it easy to power up and down the studio. |
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| Interior of the vocal booth. |
Inventory list
(Since we built this studio the UR824 has arrived on the marked along with similar USB models for Focusrite et al.)
PreSonus Blue Tube DP V2 (set up with one channel for mic- and one for line-recording)
CGM Table
Monitoring:
Eve Audio SC 207
Sony Sms-1p (To provide a home stereo contrast to the SC 207s)
Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro
Monitoring:
Eve Audio SC 207
Sony Sms-1p (To provide a home stereo contrast to the SC 207s)
Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro
A selection
of microphones from AKG, Røde and Shure—covering large and small membrane condensers and dynamic microphones.
Shouts
ProLyd in
Norway has been my supplier of equipment throughout the building process (which
also included another studio and a class-room). I’d like to send a big shout to
Cristhopher Briggs and the staff there for excellent help and advice.
I’d also
like to send a shout to the guys at the contractor Primahus who actually had
built a recording studio before (what are the chances!), and a shout to Rosenborg Malerteam who provided paint, flooring, colour samples and really good
assistance with the look of the room. Both of these contractors went above and
beyond!
A shout
also goes to Audun Røstad at Ambolt Audio for letting me bounce my acoustic
design ideas off of him.
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| Sparkling wine (non-alcoholic) for the students and staff at the official opening. |
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