We created a design-module you can use for drawing your studio-rooms and planning the acoustic installations based on our Instant-Acoustic®-modules.

Or you just draw the room and send in the plan to our office, and we will do the planning for you.

To use the design-module requires that You have the MS-Word program installed on your computer.

By now the design-module is only available for IBM-PC not for Mac’s.

Simply download the design-module from our „download“- site.

GENERAL INFORMATION:

Activating macro-function:

For running the design-module on your PC, make sure that the macro-function on your MS-Word is enabled.

This will be interrogated automatically by your system when starting the design-module.

Office 2000 users:

With security-procedure set to „high-level“, the interrogation will not be done automatically.

Select (extras/macros/security) the security option „average“.

ATTENTION:

If the menu-bar of the design-module will not appear on the screen of your computer after starting the design-module activate it under „view/menu-bars/design-module“.

Take care that in the „view“-menu “layout“ is selected as „whole page“.

PROPER PLANNING:

1st step:

Take a measure-tape and measure length, width, height and the positions of windows and doors in your room.

2nd step:

start „designe.doc“ and click on the „room“-button of the design-module-menu-bar.

Enter length, width and height of your room in the dialogue-box, as well as the type of floor (choose “floor carpet” if the floor is covered with a carpet, choose “floor plane” if the floor is

a wooden floor or made from tiles or pvc or any other plane, reflective surface).

After you entered the data to the dialogue-box the floor-plan of your room will appear on the upper left corner of the worksheet.

Now you can place your room on the worksheet wherever you like by simply clicking with the left mouse-button on the border of the room, hold the left mouse button and drag the room to the desired position .

As long as the room is selected (highlighted) you can as well move the room with the cursor-buttons of your computer-keyboard.

[REMARK:

The worksheet is only available in the scale of 1:50.

The worksheet is limited to approx. 9 meter by 14 meter.]

On the worksheet you will also find rulers, adapted to the scale (1:50) of the worksheet. You can use these rulers for measurements during your planning.

Just drag and drop them as you like.

3rd step:

ADDING ENTITIES :

Now you can add windows and doors to the room:

Click on the „entity“-button in the menu-bar. Chose the chart „furniture“ where

window, door, chair, console, sofa and speaker are located.

Click on the entity you would like to insert into the room.

The entity will appear on the upper left corner of the worksheet.

POSITIONING OF ENTITIES:

Click on the entity of your choice with the left mouse-button, hold the left mouse-button and drag the entity to the desired position.

[Remark:

Selected (highlighted) entities can be positioned by holding the ctrl-button while

you move them with the cursor-keys of your keyboard.

SCALING ENTITIES

You can scale windows, doors, console, chair, sofa and speaker.

Select the chosen entity by clicking on it with the left mouse-button.

Then drag them with the mouse to the desired size or click on the „select“-button in the menu-bar.

A dialogue-box will appear on your screen showing a list of all the entities the drawing contains, select the module which properties you would like to change.

Now you can enter the desired dimensions to the dialogue-box.

[ATTENTION: you might also scale Instant-AcousticsÒ modules, this will have no effect on the reverb time-calculations. Also the rulers might be scaled

but this does not make any sense.

ROTATING ENTITIES

[ATTENTION: Entities shall be scaled BEFORE they are rotated.]

Select the chosen entity like described above.

Then click on the „rotate“-button in the menu-bar. Now you can rotate the

Entity by clicking with the left mouse-button on one of the corners of the module or click on the „select“-button in the menu-bar.

A dialogue-box will appear on your screen showing a list of all the entities the drawing contains, select the module which properties you would like to change.

Now you can enter the desired angle of rotation to the dialogue-box.

(positive values=rotation clockwise, negative values=rotation counter-clockwise)

Click on the „OK“-button.

HOW TO FLIP / MIRROR ENTITIES:

For example: if you would like to flip an entity from the left to the right, click on the entity to select it. Then click with the left mouse-button on one of the handles located on the left side of the entity and drag it beyond the right border of the entity. This works the same in all the other directions.

[ATTENTION: by flipping over entities they might get deformed (re-scaled in

only one dimension. This does not effect the results of reverb time-calculation.]

COLOUR OF ENTITIES:

You can fill all entities with the colours of the word-colour-table at will.

You can even create your own entities by using the word-graphic-editor.

(Such entities will be ignored by the design-module for reverb time calculation)

Select the chosen entity like described above.

Click the right mouse-button and select „edit graphic“.

By then the entity will be uploaded to the word-graphic-editor, as long as you selected „word as graphic editor“ in the „option“-menu of your word-program.

For such operations you should get acquainted to the advanced features of your MS-word by reading the help-files.

4th step:

EQUIPPING THE ROOM:

Click on the „entities“-button located on the menu-bar.

Choose the chart where you will find the desired entity.

(door, window, chair, console, speaker, sofa you will find on the chart called

„furniture“, all the other charts include the Instant-AcousticsÒ modules by name.

Proceed like described in step 3.

HOW TO PLACE ACOUSTIC MODULES:

CONSOLE / LISTENING POSITION:

Console, respective listening position, shall be placed in a way that you will achieve the same distance to left-handed and right-handed walls.

As well the distance from the listening position to the wall in the back of the listening position shall be as long as possible (the ideal case would be 3 meters from the listening position to the wall in the back of the listening position).

Verify the distances with the rulers!!

SPEAKER POSITIONING:

The speakers shall be placed like: the distance between the speakers is the same than the distance from the speakers to the listening position.

INSTANT-ACOUSTICSÒ-MODULES:

SYMMETRY OF THE ROOM

The acoustic-tools shall be placed in a way that, viewed from the listening position

on the left handed wall and on the right handed wall the same acoustic-tools are placed opposite to each other.

This is important that the room will offer symmetry in the acoustic sense!

WHERE TO APPLY CERTAIN ACOUSTIC TOOLS:

TOPSORBER:

The ceiling panel shall be placed, of course below the ceiling of the room. Especially recommended between the speakers and the listening position, regarding the floor-plan.

MINISORBER:

Our smallest and most versatile elements can be placed along the walls, as well they can be placed on the ceiling.

Also with these modules it is important to cover the space between the speakers and the listening position, regarding the floor-plan.

BASITRAP:

Basitraps can be mounted along the walls but also be used to set up studio front walls

where speakers can be „flush-mounted”.

TUBESORBER:

Tubesorbers can be placed in the corners of the room to reduce low frequency room modes.

Placing TUBESORBERS along a wall at suitable intervals, you can achieve the right ratio of absorption to reflection in your room for any application, especially in recording situations.

QUATERTRAP:

These modules are especially designed for installation in the corners of a room to absorb low-frequency-room modes.

DIFFUSORBER:

They are installed wherever you need absorption of low frequencies as well as diffuse reflection of high frequencies. For example you can use them in the rear

end of your control-room along the sidewalls.

MIDFUSOR:

MIDFUSORS provide diffuse reflection of sound-energy. They are highly recommended on the rear wall of your control-room, as well as in the „live-end“ of your recording-studio.

SAVING YOUR WORK TO HARDDRIVE:

Naturally you can save your plans to the hard-drive of your computer like any other Word-document. Best the plans are stored in the same directory where the design-module is located.

PRINTING YOUR PLAN:

You simply can plot your plan with the standard printer of your system like any other Word-document.

REVERBTIME CALCULATION:

The reverb time calculation is done automatically by the design-module.

Just click on the „result“ button on the menu bar of the design-module and a window will appear on the screen of your computer where you will find:

The frequency-bands in the first row, the reverb times of the empty room according to the frequencies in the second row, and the third row will show you the current reverb times after adding a new module.

[ATTENTION: if you would like to proceed with adding / removing entities to the drawing you will have to close the window showing the results first. You can open the window again by clicking on the result-button in the menu-bar

whenever you want.]

SUITABLE REVERBTIMES:

Target is to make all the reverb times as similar as possible over the whole frequency-range. And the reverb times shall not exceed 0.4 sec.

Naturally low-frequency (63Hz to 250Hz) reverb times will be quite longer then the reverb times of higher frequencies.

A satisfying result (for example) may be:

65 Hz. 125Hz 250 HZ 500 Hz 1kHz 2kHz 4kHz 8kHz

0.5sec 0.45sec 0.4sec 0.3sec. 0.3sec. 0.3sec 0.3sec. 0.3sec.

YOU FINISHED PLANNING:

When you are done with the work on planning your room and you are satisfied with the result, simply click on the „plan@sel.at“ -button on the lower right side of the worksheet, and the plan will be automatically sent to our office. [ATTENTION: this works only if you are using Microsoft-outlook as your standard mail-client. If you are using a different mail-client please save

The plan to your computers hard-drive and send it as attachment to plan@sel.at.]

We then will check the plan for accuracy and do some corrections if needed. After this we will make you a special price for the whole package, and send the adapted plan with the estimate of pricing to your e-mail-address.

BUT:

If You do not like to do the planning yourself, then simply draw the room as described under steps 1 to 3 and send in the plan, and we’ll go all the way for you.