Live Room Construction Guide

Table of Contents 1 Preparation .................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Existing HVAC ....................................................................................... 3 1.2 Existing Plumbing .................................................................................. 3 1.3 Existing Electric ..................................................................................... 3 1.4 Existing Windows.................................................................................. 4 1.5 Existing Doors ....................................................................................... 4 1.6 Existing Walls ........................................................................................ 4 1.7 Existing Floor......................................................................................... 5 1.8 General .................................................................................................. 5 2 Layout ......................................................................................................... 5 2.1 HVAC..................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Live Room ............................................................................................. 6 3 Overhead Insulation .................................................................................... 6 4 New HVAC System ..................................................................................... 6 5 Overhead HVAC Duct.................................................................................. 6 6 Wall Framing ............................................................................................... 7 6.1 Live Room ............................................................................................. 9 7 Electric ........................................................................................................ 9 7.1 Live Room ........................................................................................... 10 8 Other Wiring.............................................................................................. 11 8.1 Live Room ........................................................................................... 11 9 Wall Insulation ........................................................................................... 11 10 Ceiling Framing ....................................................................................... 12 11 HVAC Silencers ...................................................................................... 12 11.1 Live Room ........................................................................................ 12 12 Insulation ................................................................................................ 12 13 Drywall ................................................................................................... 13 14 Doors & Windows .................................................................................. 13 14.1 Live Room ........................................................................................ 14 15 Acoustic Treatments .............................................................................. 14 15.1 Live Room ........................................................................................ 16 16 Wiring Termination ................................................................................. 17 17 Paint & Stain ........................................................................................... 18 18 Flooring ................................................................................................... 18 19 Trim ........................................................................................................ 18 20 Equipment .............................................................................................. 19

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Live Room Construction Guide 21 22 23 Acoustic Measurements ........................................................................ 19 THEORY ................................................................................................. 20 Calculations ............................................................................................ 22

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Live Room Construction Guide Get plenty of non-hardening silicone caulk. 1 Preparation The preparation steps ensure the proposed space has been correctly configured to ensure that maintenance or emergency access to infrastructure components is retained, potential impact or infrasonic noise, and vibration sources are reduced, and potential isolation reduction points are treated. Additional steps include clean up and finishes that would be difficult or messy to perform later. IMPORTANT: All work should be done in accordance with building codes, community by-laws, and common sense. When in doubt, have a licensed expert review and/or assist in the alterations and construction. Ensure all work is done under building permits as necessary to avoid fines and potential insurance coverage loss. 1.1 Existing HVAC Mechanical equipment (such as HVAC blowers, laundry machines, pumps, dehumidifiers, etc) should have isolation mounts installed to decouple them from the existing floor, walls, or framing. Silencer techniques such as damping or filtering should be used to reduced encasement noises or noise generated by air movement (such as an HVAC room air supply through a wall or door), if the noises are potentially intrusive in the studio space. Existing duct work should have proper isolation mounts and decoupling segments added to reduce noise transfer. Duct board or liner should be used to shield ducts which could pick up or transfer sound between the studio and other spaces. 1.2 Existing Plumbing Existing plumbing that may require access to valves, meters, building penetration, clean outs, etc should be re-routed where possible to ensure that new construction does not impede maintenance or emergency access. Pipes should be properly suspended on isolating hangers to reduce structure borne noise and vibration. Plumbing without air absorbers should be corrected to avoid banging in the supply pipes. Drain pipes should have damping material wrapped on them to reduce ringing or general noise levels. 1.3 Existing Electric Existing electrical boxes, access panels, lighting, outlets, and safety devices should be re-routed or removed in preparation for the new construction. In the

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Live Room Construction Guide wall outlet boxes which will be retained should be covered with putty pads (inside the wall) to seal them air tight. Conduits which cross room boundaries should be split and re-connected with a soft decoupling connector. Lighting boxes should be sealed where air leakage represents a path where isolation would be reduced. Ensure wiring is in good and operating condition and is wired to code. Ensure the wiring will not vibrate by adding additional wire fasteners as needed. 1.4 Existing Windows Remove live room windows and resize openings to fit new glass block windows. Ensure the windows seal correctly. Ensure any egress windows are fully functional. Seal any gaps around the windows to ensure they are air tight. 1.5 Existing Doors Remove live room doors and resize openings to accommodate new doors. Close off existing block wall door between live room and office. Ensure the remaining doors seal correctly. Ensure the doors are fully functional. Seal any gaps around the doors to ensure they are air tight. If replacing the doors, ensure the framing for the new doors is in good shape. If enhancing the doors, add additional wall studs on each side to ensure good structure support for the added weight. 1.6 Existing Walls Existing walls should have any interior GWB (if framed) removed to avoid a third leaf condition or in preparation for enhancement. Block and concrete walls should be inspected to ensure structural soundness, sealed, and prepared as needed to support the new construction. For block walls, ensure they are sealed and in good shape. Ensure any framing is properly attached and does not vibrate or shake. Seal (with caulk) any attached framed walls to ensure they are air tight. Identify locations for the isolation mounts (angle brackets attached to the existing walls) to ensure they are structurally sound enough to stabilize the new walls. Seal any and all air gaps between rooms and floors. Ensure any fire stops or other safety assemblies are restored or installed as required by building codes.

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Live Room Construction Guide 1.7 Existing Floor

If you are planning on using acid wash, stains, and sealant to finish a concrete floor, then ensure the floor is reasonable level and smooth, cracks are filled and sealed, old paint and glue are removed and the floor is clean. For this type of treatment, it can get messy so doing the staining is best done before other work. http://www.concretenetwork.com/staining-concrete/ has a decent set of articles on staining concrete floors. Remember its concrete it will take a lot of abuse so just protect it from scratching during construction and youll be fine. Moisture control is important so ensure the floor actually stays dry by laying a plastic sheet on it overnight to see if any moisture collects. If it does collect moisture you will need to fix that before proceeding. 1.8 General In general, the goal of the preparation phase is to move items out of the way in order to preserve maintenance access, isolate and seal the surrounding walls, ceiling, and floor, and correct noise sources from mechanical equipment. If you can see light, or air can get through it, then its not sealed. 2 Layout So now youre ready to begin. The first step is to take painters tape and layout the floor plan of the new live room, paying attention to spaces between walls, door and window openings, and treatment placement. The goal is to ensure the design drawings are mainly correct and that the layout actually works for you. This is very inexpensive to do (although it does take a few hours) and can eliminate a lot of rework later (when it is expensive) by getting a feel for the new space and how it will work for you. You want to use a wide tape (2) for the walls and treatment frames. Use thin tape (1/2) (preferable another color also) to layout overhead objects such as vents, treatments, lights, and other divisions. 2.1 HVAC Run thin tape to layout the approximate location of the new duct soffit in the room. Layout HVAC to all rooms to ensure proper duct bends are incorporated.

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Live Room Construction Guide 2.2 Live Room

The live room has a new entry door which replaces the existing door. Ensure the location where the new walls will change height is correct in relation to the overhead ducting. This room has a number of broadband composite absorbers spaced around the room. Mark the location of the overhead vents, treatments (absorbers), and lights using the thinner tape. Run a thin tape line to mark out the path for the audio and network wire conduit. 3 Overhead Insulation Once the layout is complete, we ready to add insulation into the overhead roof space. Ensure the overhead trusses / joists have minimally R30 insulation in available spaces between trusses. Do not pack the insulation tightly. It is more effective to have the air space than to cram the space full of insulation. 4 New HVAC System NOTE: Installation of the new HVAC system should be in accordance with professional advice from a licensed HVAC engineer, the manufacturers recommendations, and all applicable building and safety codes. The new HVAC system should be isolated from the roof through the use of isolation chassis, Kinetics (or equiv) pads, or other commonly used isolation mounts to decouple the new unit from the floor, walls, and other structures. Pipes, ducts, wiring, exhaust vents, etc should all be decoupled as necessary to prevent conduction of vibration to the building structure or the duct system. The HVAC unit and ducting should be configured for the lowest possible air velocity (preferably 200FPM, but up to 350FPM is acceptable) for approximately 800-1000CFM air flow. The new HVAC unit should have cooling, fresh air exchange, pressure relief, etc in accordance with the latent and live loads for the locale, as well as provide correct system pressure, velocity, and dehumidification. 5 Overhead HVAC Duct Install the main HVAC ductwork. The ducts are quite large and would be difficult to install after the ceiling is put in place, and to ensure the trusses/joists clear the new duct work, installing it first enables adjustments to be made to the inner wall and ceiling assemblies. The duct should be superduct (duct board or lined duct, or equiv.) to ensure that sound transfer within the duct is minimal.

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Live Room Construction Guide Ducting should be mounted from the overhead floor joists using isolation mounts to ensure the duct does not contribute to structure borne noise transfer. NOTE: this assumes the structure is capable of support the duct. Openings in the duct can be cut after the inner ceiling joists are in place to ensure proper placement of openings and silencers. Corners in the duct should use turning vanes to ensure smooth air flow. Pressure relief, dampers, and other duct equipment should be installed at this time. Devices requiring maintenance or replacement should be installed in the HVAC closet of at the opening points as the studio construction will not permit future access. The return duct will terminate into the living space outside the studio in order to facilitate return for the rest of the basement. This return is approximately over the existing wall door. 6 Wall Framing Wall framing is all 2x6 (or better) construction with studs 24 o.c. and a single bottom plate, and two top plates. Blocking is used between studs to ensure rigidity as the walls are load bearing (supporting the 3 new drywall layers as well as acoustic treatments, etc).

Example of inner ceiling supported on truss framing.

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Live Room Construction Guide All trusses/joists will have 1/8 felt tape on their face to help decouple drywall from the framing. Felt tape is adhesive or stapled 24 o.c.

Example of inner wall on floor and floating floor. All walls rest on 1/4-3/8 Neoprene rubber (or Sorbethane, Sylomer, or equiv) to decouple the walls from the floor. The top plates of the walls have a layer of rubber as well to decouple the ceiling joists from the wall. All inner walls are stabilized with isolation clips (such as Mason Industries WIC or Pac-International isolation mounts). There should be a clip used every 8, or minimally 2 per wall. Check with the manufacturer instructions. This includes the wall-to-wall mounting between the live and control rooms. Mounting can be stud-to-stud, or in the case of block wall, use an L angle bracket attached to the block or concrete wall to provide attachment for clip.

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Live Room Construction Guide Example of Mason Industries isolation mount WIC installed between existing block walls and new stud walls. Doors and windows use 2x10 headers. Doors have 3 studs on each side to ensure support for extra heavy doors. Effectively all wall framing is standard construction except that the door and window framing is stronger than typical. All stud wall assemblies are designed to be isolation walls and will support multiple layers of drywall, insulation, and be sealed airtight. 6.1 Live Room The live room wall framing has two (2) different levels one level for the HVAC soffit enclosure to block the sound transfer to the existing HVAC duct, and a taller level for the section above the new HVAC ducting.

Example of soffit for HVAC duct 7 Electric Electrical wiring is important to ensure easy access to power, with clean grounds and placement conducive to room usage. A new sub panel should be installed. 50 amp or better such as D-Square. All wiring will be 3 conductors #12 AWG Romex or BX with an additional ground wire run for star grounding at the sub panel and new ground stake.

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Live Room Construction Guide Star ground should terminate in a separate (small) panel to ensure single ground point before being attached to main panel and earth ground (not technical ground). Outlets and wall penetrations should be staggered to avoid direct paths between openings. All penetrations (outlet, switch, and other boxes) should be encased with putty pads to ensure airtight seal.

Example of star ground arrangement. 7.1 Live Room The live room as 3 wall switches placed just inside each entry door. Each switch controls a set of track lights to enable a change in the lighting level without using dimmers. On each side of the live room door are quad power outlets. On the long walls is quad power outlets. Overhead are track lights to avoid significant penetration in the ceiling drywall.

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Live Room Construction Guide 8 Other Wiring

Other wiring includes audio cabling (snakes, discrete cables), coaxial cable (television and video), network cables (CAT6E), fiber optic cables, USB and Firewire (IEEE1394), video monitor or keyboard extensions, speaker wires, and wiring for smoke and CO detectors, safety and monitoring equipment, etc. Audio cables (snake cables) should be run through conduit if future expansion is planned. Audio cables must be separated from electrical and other wiring by 2 or more and should not run in parallel (crossing at right-angles is OK). When running conduit, a cable pull line should be run to ensure new cables can be pulled through. Quality cabling is important for sound quality. Using digital wire snakes is preferable for audio because of its lower capacitance. Conduit for audio cables should be mounted on the wall and run just below the soffits to mask it and avoid penetrations. Any penetration of the drywall will need to be sealed thoroughly. Conduit should have sections which decouple the conduit between rooms to ensure that noise and vibration is minimized. Conduit above the rooms should be suspended with isolation mounts. Speaker wire should be in conduit and fully separate from audio cables. All audio and other cable terminate to panels in each room. Good quality termination (XLR, TS, TRS, RJ-45, etc) should be used. 8.1 Live Room The live room audio panels should be located in a position convenient to allow cables to be connected from anywhere in the room while minimizing cables that lay across the floor. 9 Wall Insulation The wall insulation can be installed after (or before) the wiring is completed (depending on how the electrician prefers to work) but by installing the insulation after, the wiring is easier to inspect and clean up (drill scraps etc), and there will be less disruption to the insulation. R19 insulation should be used all round. FSK or unfaced insulation batts can be used. The important point is to ensure the insulation will be in contact with the drywall layers.

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Live Room Construction Guide 10 Ceiling Framing

The ceiling framing is based on roof trusses in accordance with building code. this may be 24 or 48 o.c. and strong enough to support 20lb/ft2 dead weight 5x 5/8 drywall layers plus ceiling treatments etc. All joists will have 1/8 felt tape on their face to help decouple drywall from the framing. Felt tape is adhesive or stapled 24 o.c. 11 HVAC Silencers It is important to the isolation of the space that the HVAC penetration into the rooms is indirect to prevent sound transfer, is decoupled, to avoid structure borne vibration and noise, and preserve most of the duct area to ensure low velocity air flow. NOTE: if you cannot achieve complete silence, then opt for balanced HVAC noise (i.e. a good quality noise rather than inconsistent or rumbling etc noise). Commercial products are recommended when possible. It is also possible to build silencers using MDF (for mass), duct liner (for insulation), and building them to fit in-between the new ceiling joists so they can be properly sealed. The silencer is attached to the underside of the main ducts, or in the case of the returns in the live room, in a smaller duct to preserve the flow from the living space. If using commercial silencer tubes, remember the penetration into the room must be encased in a mass enclosure to preserve isolation. All registers should be diffusive and quiet. When choosing between diffusive or quiet, choose quiet. 11.1 Live Room The live room has 6 supply and 6 return vents on each of the respective duct soffits. The soffits turn 90 degrees toward the middle and then 90 degrees up to the main ducts overhead. The connection between main ducts and soffit ducts is flexible duct to avoid structure transfer of sound. 12 Insulation With the duct, framing, wiring, and silencers in place, its time to put in the insulation. R30 is used all around for the ceiling. R19 is used in the walls. There should be air space. Air space is good Insulation can be FSK or un-faced insulation batts. Insulation should be installed to ensure it will firmly contact the inner drywall.

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Live Room Construction Guide 13 Drywall

The drywall is the isolation mass. It is multiple layers of 5/8 drywall. The trusses support 3 layers and then the isolation clips and hat channel attached to the trusses through the drywall then support 2x drywall layers. Stagger the corners of the wall drywall. Leave about 1/4 of space to allow for sealing components. Add backing rod and caulk to seal between edges. Repeat per layer. Stagger each layer to ensure seams do not line up. Seal each layer with spackling mud. Perform finishing steps on last layer only. It is important to have the layers staggered to ensure the walls and ceiling remain as decoupled as possible while sealing airtight and not leaving gaps where the mass would be significantly reduce (thus losing isolation value). The drywall mud can be smoothed by using a damp fine scrubber brush (with a handle) and a bucket of water. This speeds up smoothing out the mud by feather and significantly reduces dust. The entry between the live room and other rooms need to have the gap (which should have the rigid insulation in place) covered with cloth or jamb extensions. This traps any insulation particles and keeps the rooms from contacting each other. The room side of the entry is trimmed with wood as desired. 14 Doors & Windows Doors and windows are holes in the isolation that has so far been built. To reduce the impact of doors and windows on the isolation, the doors and windows must have approximate the same mass as the walls, and be fully sealed to ensure no air passes through. All doors will be solid core, or if the door has glass, the glass will be heavy, double-glazed with a minimum of 1/2 between panes. Doors with glass should be set back to back with other glass doors to ensure effective isolation. NOTE: professional grade acoustic isolation doors with windows are available from companies like Overly. The door should have seals which ensure a positive seal when closed. This can be achieved by layering the seals, using magnetic or spring loaded seals, and cam hinges to raise and lower the door onto the seals. Windows should be exterior grade (or acoustic isolation grade even better) and be doubled-glazed with a minimum of 1/2 between panes. All glass should be the laminated type.

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Live Room Construction Guide Solid core doors (assuming theyre commercial or residential type) should be enhanced with the addition of lead sheet (if possible) and 3/4-1 MDF to increase the mass. Door frames should be sealed tightly to the wall frame to ensure no air can pass through in the event of gaps in the trim or drywall edges. 14.1 Live Room The live room has three doors. The main entry door is a solid core door. The side entry door into the office room can be a window or solid core door. The center door (facing the hallway) is a solid core door. These doors should be very heavy to ensure minimum sound transmission. 15 Acoustic Treatments The acoustic treatments are the second key component in the live room assembly process. Isolation blocks sound, acoustic treatment controls the sound to create a balance in the frequency response and to control time domain related artifacts (reflections, echoes, etc). The treatments consist of broadband composite absorbers which act upon the pressure of the sound wave to attenuate a given set of frequencies. Typically, these absorbers work on 50hz and up, with high frequencies often being absorbed in excessive of low frequencies (care must be taken to balance the amount of high frequency absorption in contrast to low frequency absorption).

Example of a broadband composite absorber.

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Live Room Construction Guide There are Schroeder diffusers which are based on mathematical principles to create diffusion through phase attenuation. These devices can be quite effective and often very cool looking. Quadratic Residue Diffusers (QRD), Skyline, and other types are available. RPG is an excellent source of these types of products.

Example of the QRD porous absorber ceiling treatment. Finally, the room itself has acoustical properties based on its size, dimensional ratios, materials, etc. By defining a good set of room ratios, building materials, and construction techniques, its possible to have a decent sounding room before any additional treatments are added. NOTE: when constructing acoustic treatments with frames that will be covered with cloth, its a good idea to paint the frames the same (or close) color as the cloth to hide the frame as much as possible. NOTE: all cloth should be flame retardant or treated with flame retardant. The porous absorbers are constructed of 2x2 frames to enable maximum exposure of the 4 rigid insulation. A gobo can be used to provide bass absorption and reduce reflections off the instruments and provide a bit of isolation. The gobos are a 2x6 frame with 4 rigid insulation covered with cloth. A top plate is added and stained to match other wood in the room. The back of the

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Live Room Construction Guide gobo has a 3/4-1 MDF panel which acts as a membrane panel for very low frequencies. NOTE: a gobo tends to be very heavy. You can use a wide trim plate underneath, or angled support brackets, to support the gobo. Using furniture sliders on the bottom of the gobo can make moving it easy but the bottom of the gobo should have 3/8 Neoprene rubber or carpet pad to enable it to seal to the floor.

Example of the gobo. The upper short walls are a deep porous absorber with a layer of heavy rigid fiberglass and then filled with pink insulation. This will provide significant bass absorption as well as high frequency absorption. 15.1 Live Room The live room primarily uses QRD-porous diffuser/absorbers on the ceiling and broadband composite absorbers spaced evenly around the room. The live room has absorption soffits on the top of each short wall. Additional absorbers can be added if needed to trim the room response.

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Live Room Construction Guide Amplifier risers are used to isolate the bass and guitar amps from the floor of the live room. Gobos can be placed in front of the amps to reduce their volume in the room and thereby helping to prevent bleeding between micd instruments. The drum kit sits on a massive floating floor filled with sand which has significant damping and which isolates the drum kit from the floor (a significant reduction in flanking or structure borne sound). Alternatively, a decoupled drum riser or amplifier riser can be added to further reduce any transfer.

Example of drum riser. NOTE: the drum riser shown here is square. It is more likely that a 5x8 or 5x7 drum riser will be adequate and easier to place in the room. 16 Wiring Termination With the rooms constructed and the initial treatment completed, its time to put the wiring termination in place. Power outlets are attached to the wires, switches are put in, and the non-electric wiring is terminated to the appropriate panels such as network, telephone, coax, video, fiber optic, USB and Firewire, as well as the audio cables. Wire termination often requires the right tools to press fittings on the ends of cables, soldering, and testing. Testing is important to ensure proper

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Live Room Construction Guide performance of the cables as well as ensuring electrical safety. NOTE: If you dont have experience doing this, then this is one of those items where hiring someone with all the tools and experience will improve your chances of successfully having all the wires actually work when you are done. Audio cables typically will be terminated to a patch panel in each room so that you have maximum flexibility in organizing the connections to the mix desk as well as staying organized during a recording session where you might have 2030 microphones and audio inputs, as well as capturing MIDI singles or using ReWire devices between synths and rack equipment or older PCs. 17 Paint & Stain Paint the walls and ceilings. Color is important to the overall feel of the space and can help provide the right mood as well as improve visibility of television, monitors, and assist with reducing reflections in windows (dark colors tend to be less intrusive than bright ones). Also, creating a neutral level can be helpful if using video or photo editing where non-neutral colors could impact your interpretation of the colors on the screen. I prefer good quality paints like Benjamin Moore or Dutch Boy, and stain like Minwax, but let your experience guide you. Low VOC may also be important since the rooms are sealed and the vapors will be coming out of the surface for a while. Use multiple coats to ensure a good finish. Pre-staining the trim and boards can simplify life as well and then just do touch up once you put them into place. 18 Flooring When installing the flooring, be sure the flooring does not touch the walls. Leave a gap on the edges and plan to hide it with trim. Do not use carpeting unless you are trying to create a deader space in one half of the live room. Best bet is to have some 8x6 or 7x5 carpets you can roll out/up as needed. 19 Trim The trim around doors, window, and the floor should be installed to cover gaps, and in the case of non-coupled assemblies (like the floor and walls, or ceiling and walls) ensure the trim is attached to only one or the other of the assemblies and enough to hide gaps.

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Live Room Construction Guide 20 Equipment

Install the equipment and furniture. Get the electronics racked, wired, and connected to the wall panels.. Tables, lamps etc. 21 Acoustic Measurements Once the room is finished, its time to take some acoustic measurements to determine if there are any remaining adjustments to be made. Your ears can tell you a lot about the space. Does it sound good? If not, there may be some frequencies that need to be tweaked. Some may be due to the room characteristics, some may be due to the equipment needing some EQ, and some may be due to your ears hearing things differently than before. If you have enough ear training to recognize the problem frequencies, thats great! If not, then using a program like Room EQ Wizard can help to determine what the listener is hearing in terms of frequency, energy, and time. Once the measurements are made, determine if EQ will help, or if the room needs further adjustments. If something is dipping or the RT60 is too long (large bass levels on a certain frequency) then the room is the likely culprit. If something is peaking then it may be the room, equipment adjustments (stuff happens), or it may something that can be fixed using a little bit of EQ across the mains (a touch too much 250 Hz for example). Room problems will need additional treatments depending on the problem. Broadband problems need broadband treatment, single or small frequency ranges need point solutions such as a panel trap, a Helmholtz resonator (a tube type), or alterations in the absorber configuration (which is why we use screws or hidden fasteners instead of nails to hold the treatments to the walls).

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Live Room Construction Guide 22 THEORY

# Real sound isolation is achieved with massive construction, an airspace and elimination of any structural connections that may transmit sound. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to properly isolate sound when building a studio in an existing residence; mainly because of the common lightweight, wood frame construction and the presence of windows (it's important to fill windows with materials comparable to the rest of the wall). For new construction, you should specify walls with a high STC. An appropriate STC for a home studio depends on the specific activities taking place within the studio. Most likely, it would require an STC of 60 or more. Although STC is a good rating for speech frequency, it does not consider the low frequency sounds. # Achieving the optimum interior acoustic environment involves protecting the live room from noise (noise within the space and noise transmitted into the space) and controlling the reflections within the space. # Assuming all transmitted noise is controlled, the primary noise concern is from the HVAC system (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning). All mechanical equipment must be controlled to a very quiet level (NC 20-25). # Note: Absorption and diffusion materials only help the interior acoustic environment and do not help with isolation. # It is important to examine the ratios of the room's dimensions in addition to the room's reverberation time and any potential problematic reflection (such as from concave, reflective surfaces or peaked/domed ceilings). Certain room dimension ratios are better suited than others for achieving a rich acoustic environment. The goal is to find ratios that allow even distribution of sound across the frequency spectrum. When this happens, tones are reinforced equally and the least amount of "coloration" occurs. Colorations largely determine the quality of sound in a smaller. These colorations, caused by room resonances (modes), can degrade the quality of music and speech, creating an unnatural and monotonous emphasis at certain frequencies. # Assuming any transmitted noise is controlled, the primary noise concern is from the HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning). All mechanical equipment should be controlled to about NC 25-35. Excessive HVAC noise is best addressed in the design phase, as it is difficult to control after construction. A system upgrade might be the only post-construction solution.

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Live Room Construction Guide # It is not necessary to cover every surface in the studio with a sound absorbing material. This would create an acoustically "dead" environment with too much bass sound. To create the optimum acoustic environment, a balance of absorption and diffusion should be considered. There are several commercially manufactured products for both absorption and diffusion.

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Live Room Construction Guide 23 Calculations

first reflection 38% 42% 62% 6.15 6.86 10.37 h 9.36 9.17 2.13 2.85 15.59 10.45 9.25 2.30 2.93 17.15 15.80 9.49 3.13 3.17 24.85 w level delay (ms) level delay (ms)

These calculations are the approximate characteristics of the design.

From Measurem ents ratio size m h 1.00 11.25 3.43 w 2.22 25.00 7.62 l 3.16 35.50 10.82 bolt ebu iec FALSE FALSE FALSE sqrt(2) 1.23 0.57 0.00 >5% TRUE even FALSE FALSE FALSE walker FALSE ok TRUE TRUE TRUE h-w l-h l-w (h) coprime TRUE TRUE FALSE 38% 4.28 9.50 13.49 42% 4.73 10.50 14.91 58% 6.53 14.50 20.59 62% 6.95 15.45 21.94

h w l

ax 1st 50.17 22.58 15.90 vol 9984 282.73 rt60 0.79 0.35

~note G1 F0 #N/A surf 3136 291.37 eyring 0.70

ax 2nd 100.34 45.15 31.80 edge 287 87.48 millington 0.78

~note G2 F1 B0 area 888 82.45 Fc 132.97 ~note C3 modes 1494

ax 3rd 150.51 67.73 47.70 perimeter 121 11.24 Fs 105.39 ~note G#2/Ab2 df 0.09

~note D3 C2 F#1/Gb1 T(ms) 11.28

ax 4th 200.68 90.31 63.60 r(ms) 251.21

~note G3 F2 B1 Dc 15.90 23.70 B 2.80 6.22 fs 99.75 ~note G2

ax 5th 250.85 112.88 79.50 mfp 12.73

~note ax 6th ~note B3 301.03 D4 A2 135.46 C3 D#2/Eb2 95.40 F#2/Gb2 Dc(2) 4.99

ft m

Fc2 110.76 ~note A2

davis 301.03 ~note D4

unsupp 15.90 ~note #N/A phidev2 4.02 1.70 6.25

diffract 200.68 ~note G3

ray 399.02 ~note G4

h-w w-l h-l

ratios 2.22 1.42 3.16

diatonic iii +IV III

phidev 0.43 0.14 1.09

lineal phideal 71.75 16.94 27.41 44.34

h w d

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