Weird shaped studio - thoughts on sound treatment?

[SmartFusion]

Hello everyone, I've been lurking and crawling around on various sites like this one, trying to absorb what I could about studio design, but ultimately I decided my situation is a bit weird, and it would be best to just ask for help! The folks on this forum seem very knowledgeable, so here goes

I'm building a studio in the loft of my barn. We designed the structure to follow the gambrel style roof, and it's completely free standing. I sheeted the outside of the structure with OSB and 5/8 drywall, then filled the 2x6 walls with tons of insulation. Parts have more like a foot of insulation, due to the cavities provided by the gambrels. On the inside I've started with another round of 5/8 drywall, and its starting to get nice and quiet inside, apart from doors and such.

So far, I'm fairly confident in my sound proofing. The real question I have though, is how to go about finishing the surface of this room for good acoustics? Initially I was thinking of drywalling the surface, for a nice clean painted finish that I could then start treating, however when we had just a bit of drywall on the walls, I already started noticing quite an echo in certain places of the room. I think that's because of some of the angles.

Overall room size btw is approx 20 wide x 25 long, give or take a few inches, and height in the center of the ceiling is close to 11'.

After hearing the sound of the drywall, I thought maybe I'd save some money I was planning on using for drywall, and re-use a bunch of donnacona I have - I think that's also called soundboard, it's that fibrous paper-y sort of stuff. I got a load of it out of a friend's studio for free. Problem is, it's ugly as sin, and I hate the thought of covering the ceiling with it in any way that can be seen. So, I thought of covering it with some kind of cloth, and then perhaps strapping some wood over top, following the joists, to bring back the gambrel style architecture into the room, but also to provide some sound deflection and breakup.

I was sort of thinking of doing from the shoulder up in with that stuff, and the lower part of the wall in drywall.

However, then I read that you don't want too dead of a room either, and now my head is just spinning

All that, to say this - what are your thoughts on finishing roughly half the surface area of the room (excluding floor) with donnacona? Any thoughts or experience on covering that stuff to make it more pretty? Can it be painted, and if so, how much does that affect its acoustic qualities? Has anyone dealt with angles of this nature before?

I attached a pic to give a rough idea of the angles involved.

Any thoughts / suggestions / comments would be more than appreciated - I have tons to learn about this stuff, and little time to do it!

Best regards,
Jonathan

IMG_2316.jpg

(1.57 MiB) Not downloaded yet

[bert stoltenborg]

Is the room for recording? Or is it a control room? Or both?

[SmartFusion]

It's for both...

[bert stoltenborg]

In a control room you should take care of early reflections from boundaries. You want to hear your direct sound only.
A recording space is a matter of what you want /taste.
Do you have an idea about how you would like the control room part in the room? And post a drawing or so?

[J.F.Oros]

I don't think it will make a big difference in acoustic response if you use that donnacona stuff instead of drywall. It's still a rigid, reflecting surface, just maybe a little more porous, which might just give you a little bit more absorption at high frequencies.
But don't forget that this inner layer of drywall/donnacona has the main role of soundproofing the room, while the acoustics response inside the room you will shape using various absorbing panels, basstraps, diffusers, etc., and its quite normal to get a boomy reverberant ambiance in the drywalled room before you start putting acoustical treatments on the walls, so don't panic
Also you should know that you will most likely have to install at least two layers of it, or else it will be too thin and it will resonate, absorbing and re-radiating in the room lots of unwanted frequencies.

[SmartFusion]

Well, interestingly enough, I do notice a major difference just in my voice between holding a sheet of donnacona against the wall - it cuts a lot of the reverb out.

My main goal with soundproofing was to keep outside noise outside - the studio is in a barn so I'm not concerned about leakage going out. We're also near a freeway though, so I wanted to keep that from coming in. So far so good on that front.

@Bert - I will try to post a rough sketch later on, but you've brought up an interesting point regarding the control station within the room. I had planned to have it near a wall, about 2/3 of the way from the front, though that puts it very close under a low ceiling that is going upwards - now that you mention it, I suppose that's actually quite a poor location for it.

[rkforeman]

Good day, I reads your post with great interest.

You have multiple areas requiring acoustic treatment and I would like to make you aware of Heraklith. A wood wool panel that will give you not only your required sound absorption but carries performance in fire and thermal as well. The solution can be used for your internal acoustics and also external so solving all of your problems in one go. www.heraklith.com

If you need any more information you can drop me a mail as ross.foreman@knaufinsulation.com

Hope this helps,

Best Wishes,

Ross