Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules
Posted: Sun, 2021-Mar-07, 06:10
Hi!
A few folk here would have seen me quite active under another user name @ Vi-Control.
I'm choosing (for now) to be a tiny bit anonymous (if you really want to figure it out you will...) - we may end up discussing things here that I'd rather the "market" not know about just yet. But hey, I also advocate to put as much knowledge out to the world as possible, so...
Our little post pro studios are needing to expand. We're unable to do the work we are getting under the one roof - so we are looking at building a new facility.
Nothing terribly ground breaking. 2 mid-field (non film) mix rooms - one up to 9.1.4 and the other 7.1 - and one with voice recording. These are not the subject of this post.
We want to put in 5 other rooms. 2 for sound post editing. 2 small composition suites and a 5th post edit suite that can also be a voicing suite. So its 6 rooms really - the 6th being a space for 2 or 3 voices to be recorded in.
Now, the dollars and cents of the post world mean that edit suites don't make any money at all. They're pretty much loss leaders a lot of the time (in long form at least) for the rest of the facility. So many places offer - lets just call it - very average rooms to work in and listen in. Some are concrete boxes.
Being in an area with very expensive real estate, we can't go over the top with size. Indeed, the smaller. the rooms the better.
We do have an opportunity to build in a brand new warehouse that will house other creative audio based peeps - which could actually be amazing (having more people around usually is good for the creative folk who are working their butts off making sound for your fav netflix shows)
I enjoy thinking through problems. I think I often over think things. I've been lucky to be involved with the build for a bunch of studios... designed some post studios for others. I've seen so many mistakes - and know I'll be making more this time round. But the stakes are higher. There's more money on the table - more to loose - and a business partner to consider - as well as just the general health of our fun small creative audio business.
For a number of years I've had sketches for some inside out rooms bouncing around the place. Thinking specifically for very small rooms. And I think I might have come up with something thats kinda interesting to the community. But also, maybe not.
I'd like to potentially walk through the process of designing out one of these 6 rooms - all the while thinking about the replication of them / ease and cost of building / and what they'll be doing.
The warehouse space will have natural light. And for editors, this is a big deal. We want to have edit rooms with windows that can let some of that light in. And from all the studios I've worked on, this is the biggest issue for me.
The warehouse is being built - so we CAN possibly (at our cost) specify windows for the wall that will be above what would normally put in.
Think of a wall of windows - 11.5m wide, and 4m high. It wont be the full 4m (we have 4m ceilings!) but the windows may well cover 3m of that.
Outside, there is a road - but not heavily trafficked. The worst sound issue is aircraft. Not much of an issue at the moment with covid slowing down movements by a huge amount, but they will be back in a year or two!
Now, these are EDIT suites mostly. So - isolation is *not* what is required for many recording studios. I will be aiming though for 45dB of isolation for each of them. Especially for the voice booth - where I might make modifications to the modular concept to increase the isolation.
In order to let in as much natural light as possible, I'm thinking of having the entire front of all the edit suites as glass. Going for a very dead room design, but with live front/floor. So I'm guessing the weakest points of the build will be the glass.
Leaf one will be the commercial glass of the building. IF we can get 12mm, I will be over the moon. Then, look at the possibility of 14mm laminated glass for the edit suites. Now, given all the other leaves will likely be made of 2 layers of 18mm 800kgm3 (EDIT : 15kgm2) material, and if we mount the windows right (thats the big if!) then the windows *should* give us that magic 45dB number. The math would indicate better than that - but who knows with these things. I'd love to hear comments about that.
An area of knowledge I'm VERY vague on is with calculating the resonant freq of MAM wall systems where the air gap varies.
Indeed - my overall concept could be flawed at this point - but follow me.
I'm thinking of having the rooms all sharing one giant air-lock. So the warehouse becomes skin 1 (yes, we will seal it well, but it'll have concrete walls/floors and windows on one side!). And then there's a single built wall which has a single door entry into areas you can walk thru to get to all 6 of the rooms. Now, isolation from noise of someone walking won't be great - but also, people don't move around facilities that much - at least not to edit rooms. Mix rooms on the other hand... but thats a different story.
This really quick sketchup shows my thinking.
How this all also relates to HVAC / fresh air is also another consideration. Do I just aircondition the "airlock" and have air in/out of each studio, and then just vent the airlock separately with an in/out (which could also be the aircon) - or do each room individually?
Anyway - to the nitty gritty unknown to me...
In a large airlock space such as this, how does one calculate the resonant frequency? Is it all kind of just "averaged out"? Should I take the minimum distance (which will be the air gap between the edit room and the smaller voice booth) as our baseline?
I think there we will be able to have a 400mm gap. Most of the other gaps will be 800mm+
Once i have that knowledge, I can get to the room design concept a little more - but I'm proposing completely inside out rooms. You see the skin on the outside, and the inside has bracing that becomes the room treatment.
I'm looking at building with "modules" - smaller parts that can be built in bulk and then just stuck together. We can float the rooms - ceiling height is no problem - we have 4000mm. The entire ceiling of each room can be 600-900mm bass traps (saves floor space - which is at a premium!)
Now - no room that could end up being in 2.4m x 3m x 3.6m (just very very rough figures) is going to be great - but they are just for single people working in, with occasionally one other person coming in to visit / talk / listen. Listening will be stereo (although we kinda would love to put a small 5.1 system in one of the rooms) - at 79dB measured at listening position with 20dB headroom (thats mix levels, but most editors like working MUCH below that.)
I realise this post is a little hap-hazard. I think there's just a few too many questions at the moment to focus things right - BUT - we can get to other bits (especially designing a room that is inside out - and small) later - once I understand the MAM implications of the space - and also if the isolation of the windows is viable. I've got some fairly developed thoughts around the rooms - but I'd love to push and pull things and change in response to folk here (and after being told I'm a little bit crazy!)
A few folk here would have seen me quite active under another user name @ Vi-Control.
I'm choosing (for now) to be a tiny bit anonymous (if you really want to figure it out you will...) - we may end up discussing things here that I'd rather the "market" not know about just yet. But hey, I also advocate to put as much knowledge out to the world as possible, so...
Our little post pro studios are needing to expand. We're unable to do the work we are getting under the one roof - so we are looking at building a new facility.
Nothing terribly ground breaking. 2 mid-field (non film) mix rooms - one up to 9.1.4 and the other 7.1 - and one with voice recording. These are not the subject of this post.
We want to put in 5 other rooms. 2 for sound post editing. 2 small composition suites and a 5th post edit suite that can also be a voicing suite. So its 6 rooms really - the 6th being a space for 2 or 3 voices to be recorded in.
Now, the dollars and cents of the post world mean that edit suites don't make any money at all. They're pretty much loss leaders a lot of the time (in long form at least) for the rest of the facility. So many places offer - lets just call it - very average rooms to work in and listen in. Some are concrete boxes.
Being in an area with very expensive real estate, we can't go over the top with size. Indeed, the smaller. the rooms the better.
We do have an opportunity to build in a brand new warehouse that will house other creative audio based peeps - which could actually be amazing (having more people around usually is good for the creative folk who are working their butts off making sound for your fav netflix shows)
I enjoy thinking through problems. I think I often over think things. I've been lucky to be involved with the build for a bunch of studios... designed some post studios for others. I've seen so many mistakes - and know I'll be making more this time round. But the stakes are higher. There's more money on the table - more to loose - and a business partner to consider - as well as just the general health of our fun small creative audio business.
For a number of years I've had sketches for some inside out rooms bouncing around the place. Thinking specifically for very small rooms. And I think I might have come up with something thats kinda interesting to the community. But also, maybe not.
I'd like to potentially walk through the process of designing out one of these 6 rooms - all the while thinking about the replication of them / ease and cost of building / and what they'll be doing.
The warehouse space will have natural light. And for editors, this is a big deal. We want to have edit rooms with windows that can let some of that light in. And from all the studios I've worked on, this is the biggest issue for me.
The warehouse is being built - so we CAN possibly (at our cost) specify windows for the wall that will be above what would normally put in.
Think of a wall of windows - 11.5m wide, and 4m high. It wont be the full 4m (we have 4m ceilings!) but the windows may well cover 3m of that.
Outside, there is a road - but not heavily trafficked. The worst sound issue is aircraft. Not much of an issue at the moment with covid slowing down movements by a huge amount, but they will be back in a year or two!
Now, these are EDIT suites mostly. So - isolation is *not* what is required for many recording studios. I will be aiming though for 45dB of isolation for each of them. Especially for the voice booth - where I might make modifications to the modular concept to increase the isolation.
In order to let in as much natural light as possible, I'm thinking of having the entire front of all the edit suites as glass. Going for a very dead room design, but with live front/floor. So I'm guessing the weakest points of the build will be the glass.
Leaf one will be the commercial glass of the building. IF we can get 12mm, I will be over the moon. Then, look at the possibility of 14mm laminated glass for the edit suites. Now, given all the other leaves will likely be made of 2 layers of 18mm 800kgm3 (EDIT : 15kgm2) material, and if we mount the windows right (thats the big if!) then the windows *should* give us that magic 45dB number. The math would indicate better than that - but who knows with these things. I'd love to hear comments about that.
An area of knowledge I'm VERY vague on is with calculating the resonant freq of MAM wall systems where the air gap varies.
Indeed - my overall concept could be flawed at this point - but follow me.
I'm thinking of having the rooms all sharing one giant air-lock. So the warehouse becomes skin 1 (yes, we will seal it well, but it'll have concrete walls/floors and windows on one side!). And then there's a single built wall which has a single door entry into areas you can walk thru to get to all 6 of the rooms. Now, isolation from noise of someone walking won't be great - but also, people don't move around facilities that much - at least not to edit rooms. Mix rooms on the other hand... but thats a different story.
This really quick sketchup shows my thinking.
How this all also relates to HVAC / fresh air is also another consideration. Do I just aircondition the "airlock" and have air in/out of each studio, and then just vent the airlock separately with an in/out (which could also be the aircon) - or do each room individually?
Anyway - to the nitty gritty unknown to me...
In a large airlock space such as this, how does one calculate the resonant frequency? Is it all kind of just "averaged out"? Should I take the minimum distance (which will be the air gap between the edit room and the smaller voice booth) as our baseline?
I think there we will be able to have a 400mm gap. Most of the other gaps will be 800mm+
Once i have that knowledge, I can get to the room design concept a little more - but I'm proposing completely inside out rooms. You see the skin on the outside, and the inside has bracing that becomes the room treatment.
I'm looking at building with "modules" - smaller parts that can be built in bulk and then just stuck together. We can float the rooms - ceiling height is no problem - we have 4000mm. The entire ceiling of each room can be 600-900mm bass traps (saves floor space - which is at a premium!)
Now - no room that could end up being in 2.4m x 3m x 3.6m (just very very rough figures) is going to be great - but they are just for single people working in, with occasionally one other person coming in to visit / talk / listen. Listening will be stereo (although we kinda would love to put a small 5.1 system in one of the rooms) - at 79dB measured at listening position with 20dB headroom (thats mix levels, but most editors like working MUCH below that.)
I realise this post is a little hap-hazard. I think there's just a few too many questions at the moment to focus things right - BUT - we can get to other bits (especially designing a room that is inside out - and small) later - once I understand the MAM implications of the space - and also if the isolation of the windows is viable. I've got some fairly developed thoughts around the rooms - but I'd love to push and pull things and change in response to folk here (and after being told I'm a little bit crazy!)