Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2003-04-05 04:44
Having worked in, set up, and designed various successful radio studios, I have also worked in and with some studios that were awful. Here are a few suggestions:
1) Do use movable draperies if it's at all practical, so that the room can have adjustable liveness. The draperies should be of material that will interrupt the flow of sound waves, not necessarily stop the movement. This is because to reverberate, sound will have to pass through the draperies twice. Wool is a great material (although costly), and some synthetics will do the job. Plastic sheeting is out (no shower curtains). If it's needed, sound isolation of the room can be done inside the walls, so the room need not be dead. A live room can be just as isolated as one that's totally dead, if it's done properly.
2) If your rooms will be sound-isolated (a great idea), remember that you are trying to isolate the room from the outside, but an even bigger problem might be isolating the outside from the room. For example, if the room is located next to a larger room in which a band is rehearsing, the poor individual trying to practice might have a room so dead he can't hear himself well, yet be able to hear the band. VERY distracting. At the same time, he may be making insufficient noise for the band to hear him at all. On the other hand, enough isolation can become costly, perhaps involving a dead area between the band room and the practice room that is unused for anything but small storage. Remember also that air ducts can transport sound very well.
3) Deaden the ceiling. Hung sound- absorbing material does quite well enough. Celotex is one brand name. The kind with the holes in it will absorb better.
4) If the room is live at all, do not make it a cube. It should not even have any two dimensions the same. You do not want reflections between surfaces in more than one dimension to have the same period, even if those reflections are attenuated.
5) Sound absorbing materials can be cheap or expensive., At the low end, egg flats rubber-cemented to almost any surface will usually work well enough, while acoustic plaster is pretty much the other end of the cost spectrum. .
6) Check the current edition of the National Association of Broadcasters Engineering Handbook. It will probably have some excellent suggestions that will be useful, especially those regarding small rooms. (Announce booths can be much smaller than you would want.) Talk to the engineering department at a nearby radio or TV station. They might have a copy. (If the station has no engineering department, they probably won't have the book, either.)
Good luck on the design efforts.
Regards,
John
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
