Hi

I'm hoping to move house soon and will be looking to convert one of the bedrooms to a home studio (for my own use).

The room is 4.1m x 3.2m. However, the front wall (where my speakers will be) has a chimney breast, which is approx 35cm deep. I'm going to fill the alcoves either side of the breast with rockwool......in fact, I'll angle the rockwool so that it's more triangular. See below for a rough diagram.

I'm currently drawing up plans, but I'm not sure whether to still consider the room 4.1m in length, or to treat it like it is 3.75m in length to account for the chimney breast and the rockwool bass traps, especially seeing as they will take up the whole front wall. I'm especially keen to know so that I can try to work out the 38% ideal listening position.

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A couple of other points:

- The chimney breast is not actually that wide (106cm) and is definitely not central in the wall. For various reasons I would like the chimney breast to be central and the alcoves either side to be the same width. So, as you can see in the yellow section of the diagram, I plan to make the breast larger. My first thought is to get a sheet of plywood and stand it - floor to ceiling - in front of both the chimney breast and the empty space I want to cover. I will also make sides for it so that I end up with a chimney breast to my dimensions. I will then fill the hollow chimney breast with rockwool or any other stuff that would work. Does that sound like a feasible plan or might it introduce problems? Any other suggestions?

- Part of my reason for doing this is that the front wall adjoins the house next door. Now, while I'm doing all the bass trapping for acoustic treatment reasons, how effective will the traps, the additional rockwool and ply boarding, and the corner traps have in stopping some of the sound getting through to next door? I appreciate that soundproofing is something completely different, but I'm hoping that by covering the whole of the front wall I will be able to stop some of the sound escaping to the poor neighbours! For the record, I won't be using live drums or anything like that. The loudest thing going on would be me getting carried away and turning up my monitors quite loud.........especially when just using the room to enjoy listening to music or when playing guitar.

Any help would be great.

Many thanks

Max

From the perspective of modes, a room is measured to the rigid boundaries. So the chimney breast is part of it, but not any bass traps you'll add.


Any chance you can reverse the room so that stuff is in the rear? That would give you symmetry in front of the room where it matters, and then you could leave the chimney alone.


Yeah, that would be fine.


Don't hope for much.

--Ethan

A million thanks for the help!

A couple of points to reflect on your answers:

- would you consider a sheet of plywood from floor to ceiling a rigid boundary?

- I have considered reversing the set up. My main concerning is that the monitor speakers will then point toward the neighbour rather than away from them. Also, as you look at the picture, the door into the room is in the bottom right corner, and there is a door to a cupboard in the top right. There *might* be away of getting around that but I'm thinking it would be pretty difficult to arrange the monitors and everytihng else I need on the front wall with the two doors there.


One last thing, is the walk in cupboard I mentioned which is top right in the picture likely to course problems? Would the problems be better or worse if I took the door off the hinges?

Thanks again for all the help

Max

- RE: soundproofing.....from what I've read I did not think it would help much. Yet I thought it would help some, at least to dampen the sound if not to eliminate it altogether. If I sit here now with music on and hold a bit of rockwool between my ear and the speaker, it has a dramatic effect. So surely a whole wall covered floor to ceiling in thick rockwool would provide some attenuation?

It depends on thickness / mass of the plywood, and also how rigidly it's mounted. Even thick plywood will flex and vibrate if attached only on the ends with no supports or anchors in the middle. Sheet rock and MDF are denser, so those can better define a rigid boundary. But those come in thin sizes too. It's not uncommon for a room to have more than three modes, when a thick massive wall is on the other side of a thin wall. At mid and high bass frequencies the inner walls dominate, but at very low frequencies that travel through the thin walls, the outer walls receive sound and reflect.


I doubt that will make even a small difference. Bass leaves a loudspeaker in all directions, and once you have a given SPL in the room, that's what goes through the walls. I never tested this specific thing so I might be wrong, but that's how it seems to me.


You're there and I'm not. If you can post a photo of that end of the room, maybe I'll have a suggestion.


Again, seeing a photo will help a lot.


Maybe, but the "dramatic effect" you hear is likely at higher bass frequencies than the subsonic stuff that typically travels through the walls.

--Ethan