Soundman2020 - Studio Design Forum

Hi everyone
hello, Stuart,
I am Mohamad makhour from Lebanon and I am happy to be here for the first time after finding the way to this forum after I got tired of other sites.
Other sites are strange math equations to create a mixing and mastering room and not understand something.
My story began after the economic crisis that struck my country and then the explosion of the port and the Covid crisis, as I was renting an isolated office and it was damaged after the explosion and lost everything and I could no longer pay the rent or repair what was damaged as the cost became very high, now I plan to build my own room for mixing and mastering, I almost have all the necessary wood and rockwool insulation I brought from my previous studio after it was damaged and I also have the room in my basement.
The basement room is a single room under the sunroom. I reach it through a stairway to a terrace, and then there is a single door to enter.
This room or basement has walls of reinforced concrete on all sides with a thickness of 25 cm for each wall, and three of these walls have infinite thicknesses as they are under the basis of the building, or it can be said that it is under the ground and the ceiling is made of concrete, with iron pillars i put rockwool between them.
I do not need isolation since I live in a mountainous area, with no trains, planes, or cars.
My room sizes:
Length: 685cm
Width: 358cm
Height: 280.
Concrete floor is not tiled yet , I may lose a few centimeters in height after tiling.
The room definitely needs ventilation, and the room sizes do not match the golden ratio or the Bolt area, I plan to make its length about 5 meters to match minimum room modes and the remaining space in the back I put the UPS with the batteries and a closet for cables, but I will not do anything before I take your opinion and discuss stage by stage to reach A mastering and mixing room that make me to accomplish my professional work.
I put a drawing of the room.
excuse me, I am doing my best to draw it and also my English is not perfect.

Hi there Mohamad, and Welcome to the forum!

I am happy to be here for the first time after finding the way to this forum after I got tired of other sites.
Other sites are strange math equations to create a mixing and mastering room and not understand something.

The math certainly can be very confusing, and doesn't really help to design a studio for people who don't like math. That's why I try to keep the explanations simple here on the forum, with as little math as possible.... and sometimes, a lot of words instead! Some of my posts get to be quite long...

Sometimes mathematical people tend to forget that all those convoluted equations are just a way of describing how the real world actually works, but it an also be described in words and pictures! Everyone understands words and pictures, but not everyone wants to understand the math.

I was renting an isolated office and it was damaged after the explosion and lost everything

Wow! I'm so sorry to hear that! I saw many videos of that explosion, and it was huge. Immense destruction. I've also seen photos of the extensive damage to many, many buildings. So much destruction, so many dead, and so many injured. Just shocking.

It must also have been devastating for you to lose your studio and your livelihood in an instant like that. I can't even imagine what that would be like.

Fortunately you have another room that you can use, and it is a decent size, with a ceiling that is not too low: that can be a pretty good room for mixing/mastering. Nice!

walls of reinforced concrete on all sides with a thickness of 25 cm for each wall, and three of these walls have infinite thicknesses as they are under the basis of the building, or it can be said that it is under the ground and the ceiling is made of concrete,

That's excellent! You will have extremely good isolation like that, except perhaps to the sunroom above you, but your isolation from the outside world will be really, really good.

My room sizes:
Length: 685cm
Width: 358cm
Height: 280.

That's nearly 25 m2 (about 260 ft2) floor area, and 69 m3 (2,400 ft3) room volume, so that is larger than the minimum recommended area (20m2), and with decent air volume. With proper layout and treatment, that room can definitely be a great mixing AND mastering room. Mastering rooms need to be bigger and more accurate than ordinary mixing rooms, but you have the size and volume to achieve that. You are in a good position here.

Concrete floor is not tiled yet , I may lose a few centimeters in height after tiling.

Tiling is great for a studio floor, but you can keep a little more headroom by just using laminate flooring or vinyl flooring. Good laminate flooring on an acoustic underlay only takes up about 13mm thickness, and makes for a good studio floor. Vinyl flooring can even be a bit less than that. In both cases, there are some very nice finishes available today that look really nice. You just need to have a very level, flat, smooth surface for both of those: for tiles, it isn't so necessary since you will put down a bed of tile adhesive that can help compensate for minor unevenness. All three options are good. One other one is to polish the concrete, if it is in good condition, and perhaps stain it. That can also look very nice. All of those are good acoustically too.

The room definitely needs ventilation,

Where would be the best place to bring in the ventilation ducts? I imagine that they will have to come down through the ceiling, from the sunroom, since the four walls are all underground. Maybe you could mark on your diagram the possible places where the ventilation ducts could come through? Also, how thick is that concrete ceiling? You will need two ducts: one for bringing in fresh air, and the other for exhausting the stale air. You will need to calculate the sizes of those ducts (sorry! That involves a bit of math.... ).

You will also need an air conditioner, and you have two options here: 1) a ductless mini-split mounted on the wall inside the room, or 2) a ducted mini-split mounted outside of the room, perhaps in the sunroom itself, if there is space for that. The advantage of that #2 option, is that it is much quieter: Even though ductless mini-split units are quiet these days, you will still hear them in a very quiet room, such as yours, and that might be annoying if you are trying to concentrate on a complicated mastering issue. For example, if you are working on a very soft, "breathy" vocal track, the sound of that mini-split fan and air movement might distract you or confuse you. It's not usually a problem for most situations, but for a precision mastering studio it could be an issue. A ducted mini-split outside if the room is totally silent: you won't hear it at all, if the system is well designed. There's some ore information about studio ventilation here: why your studio needs proper HVAC. and even more here: Studio HVAC: All about mini-split systems, HRV's and ERV's.

the room sizes do not match the golden ratio or the Bolt area, I plan to make its length about 5 meters to match minimum room modes

To be honest, I would suggest not doing that: It would make the room 1.85m shorter, reducing the area to just 17.9 m2, and the room volume would come down to 50m3. That area is now SMALLER than the minimum recommended floor area for a critical listening room (20m2), and you lose nearly 30% of your room volume (about 28%, to be more accurate). Yes, you will get a better ratio, but that isn't really the biggest or most important factor to take into account. I'm not sure if you have seen this article that I wrote about that: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=557 You might find that useful.

The largest size that gets you a ratio within the bolt area, is Length=6.15 m, Width=3.58 m, Height=2.56 m, and that reduces your floor area to 22m2, volume to 56m3... But the Bonello graph then is actually less smooth than for the original size! And there is still an issue with one of the three fundamental ratios: the room is too long for the height and width. You have to get the length down to 5.81 before you can meet that criteria, which reduces the area to 20m2, and the volume to 53m3. Acceptable, on the borderline, but the Bonello graph is still not any smoother than for the original full size room. The only way to get good numbers all around, is by making the room 4m wide! But that's not possible, of course.

The other issue here, is that if you cut off 1m from the back of the room, you also cut off the doorway! So you would then have to access the room through the UPS battery storage area, through a door in the middle of the rear wall. That adds extra doors, and makes access tot the studio a bit harder, plus it puts a door in a location where it would b better to have treatment.

So, here's what I would suggest: Keep the room the full size, flush mount your speakers in "soffits" in the front corners of the room, then build a "closet! in between the soffits for your UPS batteries and other storage. If necessary, you could even make the soffits deeper than the need to be acoustically to gain more storage space. That also means your door remains on the side, 1m from the rear wall, which gives you plenty of space for the rear wall treatment, which is critical to good room performance.

The issue with "room ratios" is this: For a small room, ALL of the ratios are "bad", in the sense that you just don't have enough modes in the low end! The ONLY way to solve that, is to make the room very large... and of course, that isn't possible for the vast majority of home studios, and even most professional high-end studios. So, you will ALWAYS have modal issues on ANY small room: the only question is, will they just be "bad" or will they be "terrible"? And in either case, the solution is just to treat them! Any small room is going to need a lot of treatment, but the smaller it is, the more treatment it needs. So, keep it as big as possible, and use all the space you can spare for treatment.

It's that simple.

But a lot of people misunderstand the importance of room ratios, because you see so much about them, all over the internet. In reality, there are not that important! Yes, if your room happens to have a good ratio, then that's nice. Only if you have a terrible ratio, such as a perfect cube, only then does it make sense to see if you can improve that by moving walls of the ceiling... For most home studios, where the room already exists and is a fixed size, there's no need to try to chase after a "perfect" ratio... because there is no such thing!

So that would be my recommendation for your room: keep it full size, flush-mount your speakers (which is ALWAYS a good idea, in any studio!), then build your storage space into the soffits. If you need still more storage space, it would be possible to incorporate something into the rear wall as well.

excuse me, I am doing my best to draw it and also my English is not perfect.

The drawing is fine, and your English is great!


- Stuart -

Thank you Stuart,

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the postWhere would be the best place to bring in the ventilation ducts? I imagine that they will have to come down through the ceiling, from the sunroom, since the four walls are all underground. Maybe you could mark on your diagram the possible places where the ventilation ducts could come through? Also, how thick is that concrete ceiling? You will need two ducts: one for bringing in fresh air, and the other for exhausting the stale air.

only three of the walls are underground and the wall with the door in front also has a roofed terrace with tiles, so for an HVAC system I have no problem, so the ducts will be in the wall in which the door is.

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the post You will also need an air conditioner, and you have two options here: 1) a ductless mini-split mounted on the wall inside the room, or 2) a ducted mini-split mounted outside of the room, perhaps in the sunroom itself, if there is space for that. The advantage of that #2 option, is that it is much quieter: Even though ductless mini-split units are quiet these days, you will still hear them in a very quiet room, such as yours, and that might be annoying if you are trying to concentrate on a complicated mastering issue

I have 2 ACs : 9000 BTU & 12000 BTU very low noise.

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the postSo, here's what I would suggest: Keep the room the full size, flush mount your speakers in "soffits" in the front corners of the room, then build a "closet! in between the soffits for your UPS batteries and other storage. If necessary, you could even make the soffits deeper than the need to be acoustically to gain more storage space

All you said was right about the length of the room, but I have several non-acoustic reasons to reduce the length of the room, firstly it feels long and as if I am in a long bus, secondly that my clients will be sitting far behind me, thirdly there is a difference in the level of the ground height from front to back (entrance) about 10 cm are low in the front, where the ceiling is 280 cm, and since the floor of the room is lower than the outside terrace, I was thinking of making a corridor 1.85 wide, which I used to the ventilation ducts and fan.

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the post and your English is great!

Sometimes I use Google Translate

I have some pictures that clarify what I mean, and sorry for the mess in the room, these are some things that remained after the studio was destroyed.

Hi there once again, Mohamad: As you probably noticed, I've been absent from the forum for quite a while, due to health issues, but I'm back again now, and trying to get up to speed again: So if you are still around, then now would be a good time to revive your thread, show us where you are at now, and let's see if we can help you get to your goal!

- Stuart -

Hello sturat...

Good to hear are you fine , i think my thread is dead
I work my control room at my skills and got some problem with huge dip around 42hz and 80 hz and 120 hz , if you are here we can complete room together
Best regards..

I'm here, Makhour! I'll take another look at your thread tomorrow, and see what we can figure out. In the meantime, please do a test with REW, like this: How to calibrate and use REW to test and tune your room acoustics and post your MDAT file here on the forum, so we can take a look at it.

- Stuart -

hello stuart
this mdat file for my room take a look at it ,


and this picture for front wall over panels 3 layers plasterboard and layer particle board

Makhour wrote:Source of the post this mdat file for my room

I don't think you did the test according to the instructions. There's only one test in the file you sent: there should be three. However, from what I can see, the room is over-treated, and too dull. The decay time is about 150 ms, which is rather short for that size room, and it is uneven: over 200 ms at 800 Hz, but barely 100 ms at 3kHz and 6 kHz, and only 60 ms at 300 Hz.. You will need to modify the treatment to return those frequency ranges. That's not so hard to do for the high end, but it will be very hard to do for 300 Hz.

Makhour wrote:Source of the post and this picture for front wall over panels 3 layers plasterboard and layer particle board

That's a little confusing! You are supposed to have your speakers mounted in the front wall baffles, but your photo does not show any holes for the speakers, and there does not seem to be enough interior framing to support them, or any place t put them! You seem to have hangers all the way from the ceiling to the floor.

Which design concept are you using for this room? It is not one of the normal ones, so I'm not clear on what you are trying to do with that treatment.


- Stuart -

Hello stuart
I make measurement with behringer ecm8000 , i see you not recommend this mic
I make measurement without hand-held spl but with sound card calibration.

I send you a direct message you can read it please ?

Best regards

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the post That's a little confusing! You are supposed to have your speakers mounted in the front wall baffles, but your photo does not show any holes for the speakers, and there does not seem to be enough interior framing to support them, or any place t put them! You seem to have hangers all the way from the ceiling to the floor

This front wall not finish , i want to cover it with stone variable depth , and for now not have big speakers to flush mounting , maybe in future cut the wall and flush mount speakers.

Makhour wrote:Source of the post I send you a direct message you can read it please ?

I did reply to that several days ago, Makhour. I'm not sure if you saw that? If you are having trouble with the forum PM system, then we can switch to my private e-mail.

- Stuart -

This front wall not finish , i want to cover it with stone variable depth , and for now not have big speakers to flush mounting

If you completely cover that front wall with stone, or any other solid surface, then the hangers behind that will not be doing anything at all. Hangers only work when they are exposed to the room in some way, over a very large area. Having them behind a solid wall is about the same as having them in a another room. They won't help at all with the acoustics in your room.

Also, you don't need big speakers to flush mount! The speakers you have right now would probably work well when flush mounted. You can have big speakers in there if you want, for sure, but it isn't necessary to do that. One of the advantages of flush mounting speakers is that it helps small speakers to perform more like to larger speakers.

- Stuart -

Sorry for the delay but i have some problem in my life , and problems in my studio in listening i need to fix my problem in studio with you

Sorry to hear about the problems, Makhour! I do hope you can resolve those. I feel for you, because I've been through some of that myself.

But it's also good to see that you are still carrying on with the studio! Let us know what you need help with.

- Stuart -

Thanks sturat
First i have shy in low , i remove the hanger from front wall , and make limp bag inside out wall , so now i have front wall and side wall and back wall inside out wall.
I move speakers to front wall touch the rockwool bass is better but also is shy , no cloud in ceiling (i have little reverb)