Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

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brendan_w
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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#1

Postby brendan_w » 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.

Screen Shot 2021-03-07 at 7.40.51 pm.png




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!)



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endorka
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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#2

Postby endorka » Sun, 2021-Mar-07, 12:14

This is awesome! That wall of windows, wow :yahoo:

I'm sure others will offer comments on the technicalities.

One thing I can offer from experience mixing in a formerly fairly acoustically dead room is to be careful of what happens with high frequencies. I noticed that as I increased the deadness of the room, high frequencies in my mixes become under represented in normal rooms. The effect was predictable and I was able to compensate with a high shelf boost when mastering.

Over time it really cheesed me off, and I did a bit of looking. Dan Dan from GS had noticed the same, and I was reassured I wasn't going daft. Turns out it is a fairly common phenomenon, and can be compensated by reducing high frequencies in your monitoring chain to match the B&K curve. After doing this high frequencies in mixes translate to other rooms properly again.

Apologies if you are already aware of this.

Cheers!
Jennifer



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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#3

Postby brendan_w » Sun, 2021-Mar-07, 19:54

Oh that is interesting. I've done a lot of reading into essentially non-environment rooms (with live front and floor) - but they've all been for music, and much BIGGER than this. Oh - and they've been soffit mounted ATC's.... we will not be soffit mounting the edit rooms. They need to be more flexible than that for space. (Throw in a small neumann 5.1 rig when needed etc etc)

I haven't spoken to anyone who has expressed what you have @endorka - but I have read it, and this has totally reminded me that it is something that I will definitely have to look into. We are going to have the mix rooms designed - but I've yet to find anyone who wants to do anything other than the very standard TV mix room. I'd like to try something much closer to FTB and not soffit mounted (I can't see a way to design a soffit mounted dolby atmos rig! Never say never of course)



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endorka
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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#4

Postby endorka » Mon, 2021-Mar-08, 11:31

It's fascinating for sure, some people report not perceiving it at all. I noticed not just on my mixes, but good reference mixes sounded far too bright to my ears when played back on the monitors too.

The best theory I have is in normal rooms, reflections from surfaces mix with the direct sound from the monitors and overall reduce the high frequencies arriving at your ear. As you get more and more anechoic, the reflections reduce and you are left with predominantly direct sound, with HF not reduced much by reflections.

My Genelec 8030s have a HF tilt switch providing a high shelf cut. Perhaps for this very reason?

Cheers,
Jennifer



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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#5

Postby brendan_w » Mon, 2021-Mar-15, 08:35

To continue on with this (I'm guessing it will be a little slow over the next 2 weeks - things are a tiny busy!)

What I'm trying to achieve is essentially decent enough separation with good acoustics - but in quite small spaces.
And utilising construction methods that mean one can make a number of repeated "modules" and stick/screw them together on top of the floor (which looks like will be able to be simply floated)

There's lots of figures to jiggle. Knowing the rooms are acoustically tiny - and also the type of acoustic treatment we will be using, I'm not *that* concerned about amazing room ratios. I'm still going to do my best, but if it means less wastage of materials etc, I'll be going with that over the ratios (which tend to be slightly over-stated to my mind - for another time...)

I'm looking at using mdf or osb 18mm sheets that are 2400x1200 or 3600x900
But also looking at all the options. The densities are similar.

Here's one sketch of a plan that creates a room around 3.6 x 2.3 x 3m (high). I've gone with the height being the second dimension to give a decent amount of space for bass trapping.
L&R walls get 300mm treatment (still doing math - but maybe 32kg/m3 polyester), rear gets 600mm (less dense) and roof gets 600mm (less dense again.)

External skin ends up being double skinned, and the final layer is offset 60mm to mean seams don't run on top of each other.

The "braces" are all 3 x 18mm - the middle one will be exposed (so potentially plywood for looks) and the timber on either side (mdf) will have fabric over it. Its a neat, easy way to make the fabric coverings look excellent.

The entire studios are fairly easy to cost up - and also calculate weight for floor loading. I'll look at door and window construction once I work out the final specs for the walls / their res freq etc.

The design I have today is just a little *too* thin - leaving only approx 1650mm space L to R inside the rooms. I'm hoping for 1800mm - but this is using 2400mm sheets for the roof modules to their maximum. I wanted to "build it out" just to feel what it would be like. One bonus is that 4 of these rooms would fit across the warehouse - each with window views - in the 11500mm space we have to play with.

They might be ok for straight post editing - but composing rooms I'd be uncomfortable with. I currently am in a room that is 2400mm wide - and it has 300mm panels on the L&R (at the front of the room) and that feels tights. This would feel much smaller since the acoustic treatment covers 100% of the walls.

As for the treatment - I'm REALLY interested in the BBC white paper describing the construction of their acoustic panels for TV studios (1994 from memory) - where they used between 14 and 50% coverage steel (zintec) plates to increase the low end absorption of the broadband traps. I've not quite got my head around this yet - and they are only using 150mm deep absorbers (as opposed to my 300mm versions... )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/rdreport_1994_12

Everything is still up for grabs / I'm still exploring.

But I do think the big picture concept could work ok.

Add to this all computers in an external space, connected via single optical thunderbolt cables, all audio over AVB or Dante, HVAC intake/outlets can be built into the roof modules - and possibly the air space around 4 of the rooms can be cooled/heated as one air space - it feels like an interesting concept to me.

Would love to hear more thoughts!

Screen Shot 2021-03-15 at 10.12.03 pm.png

Screen Shot 2021-03-15 at 10.13.22 pm.png



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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#6

Postby garethmetcalf » Mon, 2021-Mar-15, 19:45

Hi
Your modular concept is a clever one and makes sense for scale and keeping costs down.

However I’m worried about the size of these rooms and how they’ll feel and sound. There will be several really obvious room modes with such narrow rooms that I’d have thought even with trapping will be problematic when working on music. They might also sound incredibly dead but hopefully the window will detract from that.

I think it would be worth spending a few hundred £ to make one of these rooms up as a test before doing anything else, as you might conclude from that that you need to revise the design, maybe having less rooms that are each bigger, for example?

Cheers
Gareth



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#7

Postby brendan_w » Mon, 2021-Mar-15, 20:44

They are primarily sound edit rooms - although I'd love to make them sound as good as practical/possible within constraints.
I have been composing in a room approx this size (much lower / worse ceiling, similar width, slightly longer) for about 8 years after having a wonderful room, and I've managed to adapt! Not ideal, but also not that bad. Many sound edit suites at sound post production studios are half this size! The economies are just not there to have larger spaces. But we are stretching things as far as they can go. These are 25m3 spaces at the moment. 50m3 would be much better!!!

I'm certainly going to look at the possibility of two of the rooms (the multi-use ones where they might be used for composition) being larger.

I don't mind the deadness. I've worked in a Northwood room and loved it - and there the only reflections are floor and front (with tiny diffussors that are just there for "being in the space" and not for the music. But these are not northwood rooms. Ha! His concepts wouldn't work at this size as far as I know - I'd love to talk about it with him one day. (Thomas is designing some wonderful studios / spaces for an awesome music studio I know... I can't wait to have stuff mixed in his rooms!). Anyway, I digress.

The question of how much one can deaden the reflections / control the 50-200htz band in a room like this is incredibly interesting and important. Thus using at least 600mm of traps on the entire ceiling and back wall (well, back corners!).

Exactly how the traps are constructed to be most efficient and cost effective is for further discussion (thus looking at the BBC white papers). I am not against using secondary materials (aka steel sheets) where necessary - though I'm still not sure its appropriate for this style room.

The idea of building up a test room isn't actually that silly. I kind of like that. We are 9 months off having the space ready to build in - but I might be able to find a space where I can build the test studio (even if we don't stick the modules together as tightly as we will in the space - so they can be taken apart / reconstructed later. The floating floor wouldn't be re-usable, but that is not actually that big of a deal with a room this size re waste. You've certainly got me thinking.



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#8

Postby brendan_w » Mon, 2021-Mar-15, 20:47

And regarding having less rooms - the number of rooms is what are required for the expected utilisation of the mix rooms. For Post Production, there is a tonne of editing done prior to mix - and the bigger the projects, the more editing percentage of the project (to a point!). So, say a 23 min animation is budgeted at 52 hours (very tight and about the lowest possible amount for an ok job) you are only looking at 12-16 hours of mix maximum. 23 hours of mix (1 hour per minute) is ideal, and closer to what you'd do for drama - though there you'd have perhaps 2 - 4 hours edit time per minute.



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#9

Postby endorka » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 04:06

garethmetcalf wrote:Source of the post I think it would be worth spending a few hundred £ to make one of these rooms up as a test before doing anything else, as you might conclude from that that you need to revise the design, maybe having less rooms that are each bigger, for example?


Nice one, I was thinking exactly this too. It would be interesting to see the effect of different thicknesses of absorption at the sides.

Cheers,
Jennifer



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#10

Postby brendan_w » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 09:30

Just starting to do a proper design for one of the rooms - being exact, defining materials etc.
Just the subfloor costs $550 AUD (framing, yellow tongue and insulation) - the room's won't be super cheap. I'm thinking (I could be completely off the mark here) that building one room will be about $8k AUD for materials. Maybe more. This is for a single skin only.
So what - 3k GBP or so. But I have put word out to others here to see if anyone would like one built as a test and they can keep at cost afterwards. It could be an excellent idea. I've come up with a way of making the whole thing a little wider (still not wasting materials / keeping it fairly simple) and will do it with only 200mm treatment on the L & R sides - using the interior treatment of the BBC TV studio absorbers (150mm, and having 50mm extra for some fun things along the way...)
This will leave 300mm air gap between each room if we go for 4 along the window wall. Not great for the resonant freq of the walls - I was hoping for perhaps 600mm. It might be enough though. Math to do, math to do.

Screen Shot 2021-03-16 at 10.59.28 pm.png

Screen Shot 2021-03-16 at 11.00.21 pm.png



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#11

Postby SoWhat » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 09:38

I agree with Jennifer, I think Gareth is correct. Given the scope of your plan, a "test run" is certainly worthwhile. If it works, you've got one module done, and if it doesn't, you'll be able to sort out the issues (hopefully).

All the best,

Paul



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#12

Postby Starlight » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 09:57

orkheomai wrote:Source of the post... building one room will be about $8k AUD for materials. So what - 3k GBP or so.
Nearer £4,500 at today's exchange rate.

What is on my mind is not a technical suggestion, just a caution: if you ease up and spend an extra week or month planning and making sure you are completely sure of the maths, the dimensions, the gaps, the materials, the resonant frequencies, the absorption, the costs and so on, then you will have lost a week or a month but that will be all. If you rush into a quick decision and do one sample room and it doesn't work out, you could risk messing up $8k AUD's worth of time and materials. If you rush into doing the whole studio then the cost of a significant mistake could eat up be a serious chunk of your budget.

I hope we can, collectively, help you avoid avoidable mistakes and find the best path that will give you an affordable studio that performs as well as can be hoped for.



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#13

Postby endorka » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 11:42

orkheomai wrote:Source of the post This will leave 300mm air gap between each room if we go for 4 along the window wall. Not great for the resonant freq of the walls - I was hoping for perhaps 600mm. It might be enough though. Math to do, math to do.


Does this really matter though, given the 300mm gap is also part of a much larger volume of air? Presumably for the 300mm gap to act properly like a 300mm gap in the way I think you are imagining, it would have to be a sealed chamber?

Cheers,
Jennifer



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Small Sound Post *Edit* Rooms - And Designing with Modules

#14

Postby brendan_w » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 21:34

endorka wrote:Source of the post
orkheomai wrote:Source of the post This will leave 300mm air gap between each room if we go for 4 along the window wall. Not great for the resonant freq of the walls - I was hoping for perhaps 600mm. It might be enough though. Math to do, math to do.


Does this really matter though, given the 300mm gap is also part of a much larger volume of air? Presumably for the 300mm gap to act properly like a 300mm gap in the way I think you are imagining, it would have to be a sealed chamber?

Cheers,
Jennifer

I would *love* to know the answer to this. Yes, we will have the luxury of much more air in the airgap space above the rooms. I've done a fair bit of searching around, but cannot find any info on what to expect in this scenario. One would think that the gap will act larger than 300mm given the expanse of air in the space, but I really don't know. I'd be interested in hearing anyone's opinions on this - and also any ideas on who in the industry I might be able to talk to about this.

For now in early design stages, I'll work out the WORST dimension and use that for calculations, knowing things can only get better from there.

Starlight wrote:Source of the post Nearer £4,500 at today's exchange rate.

What is on my mind is not a technical suggestion, just a caution: if you ease up and spend an extra week or month planning and making sure you are completely sure of the maths, the dimensions, the gaps, the materials, the resonant frequencies, the absorption, the costs and so on, then you will have lost a week or a month but that will be all. If you rush into a quick decision and do one sample room and it doesn't work out, you could risk messing up $8k AUD's worth of time and materials. If you rush into doing the whole studio then the cost of a significant mistake could eat up be a serious chunk of your budget.

I hope we can, collectively, help you avoid avoidable mistakes and find the best path that will give you an affordable studio that performs as well as can be hoped for.


Yes - sorry, you are right. I had originally thought $5k AUD then did more math, and didn't correct the UK amount.

I'm not in any particular hurry for the design - nor on potentially building a prototype. The building these are going into is currently in for approvals to the authorities, and it will be a while before the outside walls / floor is built. 9+ months I would think.

I'm designing this stuff on the side while juggling managing our current smaller facility / doing my own composition commissions, so will be doing things on the run when I can. I enjoy it - I get to look at old uni textbooks, and read a tonne of people's experiences online - and hopefully we might even come up with something in the end that others can replicate / be a useful pool of knowledge.

So I'm definitely in ease up mode - happy to figure things out over the next 3 months even before making decisions on prototype etc. We still have our studios here working, and I'm moving *out* of my composition space to allow more post for the time being (and into another studio 500m away) to ease up the stresses of being too "full" at our current location.

I hope to share all the math I do here (so others can double check / see my thought processes) and we can be as thoughtful and interesting as possible to others.



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#15

Postby brendan_w » Tue, 2021-Mar-16, 21:40

While I'm thinking about floors. Is there a formula for calculating the performance differences of a floor sitting on 90mm framing rather than 70mm framing? And will the spacing of the frame make as much difference as in walls? I'm modelling everything using 800mm wide flooring, so 400mm centers for the frame - making sure all seams fall on top of the frame. I could have sworn I've read something on here in one of the reference posts about this - but I certainly can't find it today.

There'll be insulation between all the framing - but held up off the bottom floor slab.

I am being very careful in sketchup to model everything using component meta-data, so I can generate reports on how much of various materials I'm using. So, I can know I've used 55m of framing, 7 sheets of flooring and 2 packs of insulation for this floor so far. I'm transferring this info into an online spreadsheet - and will make it publically viewable at a point when it makes sense. All the suppliers will be australian, but I will try put as much data about chosen materials in here as possible, so others wanting to replicate can do so using local equivalents if necessary.




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