Splitting a room into control and live rooms without building walls

[eljefe711]

Hello everyone, I have a fairly large rectangle room that I want to convert into an amateur studio. It's a 9x4m (29.5x13ft) room (8.5ft height if that's important) that I want to split into a control room and live room section.

Since this is a temporary space I won't be using for the rest of my life, I don't want to make any pricey permanent modifications to the existing room, so I'm wondering if there is a way to split the room using any other methods.

An idea I had in mind was to make my own DIY acoustic panels that would be portable (they would extend to the floor and have their own wheels) and position a few of them next to each other in a way so that they create a wall of sorts. However, I have no idea if that would actually be beneficial for the acoustic treatment of either the control or the live room (especially if said panels don't extend all the way to the ceiling and instead their height is, say, 8ft).

If I were to go this route, how would the treatment of the both the control and live room work? I had in mind that I had to place bass traps and panels in both rooms, treating the "wall" made out of my portable panels as just a normal wall.

A few other things that are bugging me a bit is how much should treatment should I use, since both the floor and ceiling are concrete and the walls are brick; as well as how much space should I use for the live room opposed to the control room (but I guess that isn't that much of a problem if I use my portable panels; I can just change their positions until I find the perfect one).

I'm also aware of the "open air studio" concept where the control room and live room are not separated at all - but the acoustic treatment of that room is even more confusing to me. If I place my monitors at around 1/2 of the room, wouldn't there be too much space behind the them?
Also, wouldn't that force me to track everything using headphones since both the microphones and the monitors don't have any isolation between them?

I'm open to discussing any of the mentioned ideas, and you're more than welcome to suggest anything that I didn't think of! I'm a newbie to all things music production and I'm happy to hear anything from anyone more experienced than me!

[ef37a]

IMHO much depends on exactly what sort of recording work you intend to do?
My understanding is that the isolated control room idea was to allow those in the control room to move and talk fairly freely without borking the recording or broadcast (which is probably where the idea came from?)
If you have your local folk band in to make a demo you can surely keep quiet for a few minutes while the bearded weirdies do their stuff? I also assume you are using a computer so no clanking old tape decks to contend with?

In any case, unless the room divider is floor to ceiling, massive and totally airtight you will never get decent isolation in my view. Yes, by all means make a few 'gobos' on wheels to sit around a drummer or a 100W amp rig but you are never going to isolate those from the control room without spending £1000s.

Twenty nine feet is a nice long room to have, why spoil it? You want the monitors BTW about 1/3thd the way from one end wall. Mic/speaker feedback? Yes so make an interlock system...how's your soldering?

I'll shut up now and let the proper folks talk!

Dave.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I have a fairly large rectangle room that I want to convert into an amateur studio. It's a 9x4m (29.5x13ft) room (8.5ft height if that's important) that I want to split into a control room and live room section.

That's a nice size room.

I guess the fundamental question to ask is, Why do you want to split it, and what do you expect to be able to do if you have split rooms?

An idea I had in mind was to make my own DIY acoustic panels that would be portable (they would extend to the floor and have their own wheels) and position a few of them next to each other in a way so that they create a wall of sorts.

Sound will always find a way through any gaps — such as over, under or between the panels. You'll get a little reduction in level, but not much. A few decibels at most.

If you're not willing or able to build a proper heavy wall with heavy airlock door (and window) — even a temporary and ultimately removable wall — then there's really no point in even thinking about dividing the room because the acoustic separation between spaces will be negligible.

Instead, I'd enjoy the space as it is, treat it acoustically to provide dead areas and live areas for monitoring and recording, set your recording gear up along one wall, and use the rest of the space for recording. Building some moveable acoustic screens will be useful for helping to adjust the acoustics to suit what you're doing, and would probably also help to make the mixing area section a little better acoustically.

Yes, you'd need to track while wearing headphones, but that's not really a big hardship.

[James Perrett]

Is this for your own use or are you going to be engineering recordings for other artists?

If you aren't going to be a recording engineer for other artists then there is little point going for separate rooms.

[Sam Spoons]

Same advice here as everybody else, use and enjoy the space you have. The only thing you won't be able to do is listen to the artist on your monitors while tracking and since you're can't build two room in room structures you are not going to get enough isolation to do so anyway.

And I'll echo Hugh's question, 'why?'.

[Drew Stephenson]

+5 to the above.

That's a big enough space to have an effective live end and dead end (LEDE) approach so personally I'd take that route.

[eljefe711]

Thank you everyone for detailed answers, ideas and asking your own questions!

As for the why, I had (a very wrong) idea that I would need to treat the control space and live space differently in order to get the best recording and the most accurate sound out of my monitors while mixing.

I will mostly be recording other people, but it's not an imperative to have a separate area where everyone can move and talk freely while the recording is happening, which is the main purpose of having separate rooms if I understood correctly. It makes me very happy to know I won't be needing to spend any money or make up any shenanigans in order to split a room without an actual wall for better sound.

Now, the LEDE approach with the monitors at 1/3rd of the room implies a setup similar to the drawing I made below:
https://imgur.com/a/qKy0ymK

Of course, this is a crude drawing without any acoustic treatment, but still, feel free to make any suggestions regarding that or my placement of anything already visible in the picture

[Sam Spoons]

You will need advice from someone better informed than me but I would put the monitors a couple of feet from the back wall, at most, my gut feeling is that the acoustic benefits of that positioning are going to be small compared to the compromised use of space when recording/tracking. The issues would be with bass resonances and if you could build a deep trap on the back wall that should take care of the long axis resonant frequency at least down to the low end of your monitors.

But, the desk and monitors are easy to move so experimenting to see if the positioning makes a worthwhile difference should not be a problem. Let your ears be the judge.

[ef37a]

You will need advice from someone better informed than me but I would put the monitors a couple of feet from the back wall, at most, my gut feeling is that the acoustic benefits of that positioning are going to be small compared to the compromised use of space when recording/tracking. The issues would be with bass resonances and if you could build a deep trap on the back wall that should take care of the long axis resonant frequency at least down to the low end of your monitors.

But, the desk and monitors are easy to move so experimenting to see if the positioning makes a worthwhile difference should not be a problem. Let your ears be the judge.

Hi Sam. I might have given the OP a bum steer? Upon reflection it might be HE that need to be 1/3thrd into the room and from the rough scale of his plan that gives him another mtr room space?

But as you say "we are not worthy" Especially me!

Dave.

[Sam Spoons]

Apparently the optimum listening position, where there are fewest room nodes, is 42% from one end of the room so your ⅓ for the monitors may simply be another 'rule of thumb' based on that. But, as I said, I suspect the benefits over a position closer to the wall may be less than the benefits of the extra usable space in the room.

[Drew Stephenson]

Rule one of home studio construction: everything is compromise!

[ef37a]

Rule one of home studio construction: everything is compromise!

Indeed! I would suggest funds and brains would be better employed on acoustic treatment of the space as is? Also, sound ingress and egress needs to be considered. Not a lot you can do in terms of actual sound proofing unless you have tens of bags but you can check for airtightness, maybe block up or extra glaze windows? Heavier doors, maybe double them up?

Dave.

[Music Wolf]

Apparently the optimum listening position, where there are fewest room nodes, is 42% from one end of the room

I always thought that it was 38%. Splitting hairs really, the difference equates to 6" in my little room.

[Sam Spoons]

Could be, my memory is imperfect, and as you say 6" ain't gonna make a practical difference.

[Wonks]

Could be, my memory is imperfect, and as you say 6" ain't gonna make a practical difference.

Snigger!

[Martin Walker]

Apparently the optimum listening position, where there are fewest room nodes, is 42% from one end of the room

I always thought that it was 38%. Splitting hairs really, the difference equates to 6" in my little room.

Yes, this 'rule' is generally linked with acclaimed studio designer Wes Lachot, who suggests that 38% from the front wall was a good starting point to place your listening position, to avoid the worst of room mode problems.

[Sam Spoons]

Could be, my memory is imperfect, and as you say 6" ain't gonna make a practical difference.

Snigger!

Well, you are a wabbit so I expect that kind of thing from you...

[Adam Inglis]

Mike Stavrou, in the early parts of his book "Mixing With Your Mind" talks about the sound we hear from our monitors being about "80 percent room, 20 percent speaker".
There is a technique he suggests (that I actually executed many years ago when renovating my studio) that involves an 'assistant' ("Can I have a volunteer? Anyone from the audience?") holding a loudspeaker that is fed a mono mix of music that you (the listener/studio designer) knows well, while they (the assistant) walk from the back wall towards your favoured listening position. You, the listener, will identify a distance where the sound simply "locks" in a musically enhancing way (not necessarily louder) - he calls it "full bloom". I had a patient assistant and I must admit I thought the theory proven.. Keep a piece of chalk handy to mark the ceiling or the floor: that's where you put your speaker.
Now... where to put the other one? ... well ... you get the idea...

[Wonks]

In that book Mike does have a few weird ideas that go against the general consensus (and physics). Plus you also need to know what the music sounds like in a well treated room on accurate speakers, which most of us mere mortals don't have access to.

Plus sounding 'good' doesn't necessarily mean sounding 'the most accurate', and the exercise could easily result in poor stereo imaging unless you constrained the back and forth movements along roughly equilateral triangle lines out from your listening position. And it ignores the practical considerations about where it's possible to position the speakers.

I'm not saying don't do it, but be aware that it's not a 100% scientific method and you need to use some common sense. And don't do it until you've fitted your acoustic treatment, as that could drastically alter the results. But also some of your acoustic panels fitted at the 'mirror points' need to refer to the speaker positions. So don't make those panels too small!

[Adam Inglis]

Agreed, Mike's not terribly scientific, but many of his techniques seem to get good results when I try them.
I seem to recall he suggested to do this BEFORE you put anything else in the room... any treatment, or diffusion resulting from gear/furniture, should really just be moving the room response in a beneficial direction (excepting of course huge areas of computer screen real estate).
Keep in mind you need to use music that you know really well, on a fairly broad range speaker, but as he says, it doesn't need to be the actual monitor speakers that will eventually be used.