Recording Studio on 2nd floor of building

Hello all, I have been perusing this board for quite a while and am happy to finally have a reason to contribute (even though it is more in the form of asking for help, rather than supplying it!) The small film company I work for has decided to build a small recording studio in our office building. We need this studio to function as a 5.1 mixing room, vocal recording booth, foley studio, music production, as well as a location for shooting green screen shots for our films. We are currently in the very beginning phases of planning. How loud we will be: Most of the time in the control room levels will be low to moderate for mixing speech, music, and SFX in 5.1 for our films (80dB?). For the occasional music recording sessions (which hopefully will become more frequent) monitoring volumes may be pushed above 100dB. The tracking room will be used mainly for VO's, Foley, and film shoots so levels will be fairly low. The room must be suited, however, for the occasional "rock/pop" session (drumset/guitar amp). Which may push 130db or so. Neighbors are completely quiet. The only outside noise is light traffic (mainly through the block windows). This overlooks an alleyway so the only time sound can be heard is when a large truck goes by a nearby main street. Location: The room is on 2nd story a 5 story office building located in South Philadelphia. Our producer owns the entire building so "permanent" construction is no problem. Even though it is located on the second floor, there are no upstairs neighbors (this office is on the outside corner and sticks out from the building... there is open air above us). Downstairs neighbor is a the stock room of a video store. Next-door neighbor is an occupied office and there are no other neighbors. The Room: please see attached image (not to scale). The floor and ceiling are concrete. Outside wall is concrete block (with block glass windows). The 28' wall is brick with a single frame (wood studs w/ drywall) on both sides (other side of that wall is an unoccupied storage room). The owner believes the 31 ft. wall is single frame staggered stud with drywall and the hallway wall is just single frame with drywall. There are two concrete supports in the "middle" of the room (about 1 sq. foot each) that kind of hinder a lot of good options for design. The ceiling over the top part of the picture is about 14' high and the ceiling over the bottom half of the picture is about 20' high. The object in the top left corner is a column of blocks that goes up to the ceiling. Budget: Our producer would like to keep the cost from $5,000 to under $10,000. He is also in the real estate/construction business so he has his own construction crew which cuts out the middle man. Questions: - I need help with the general layout of the control room and the tracking room. The columns are giving me the most problems. I want to make sure I have adequate space in the control room for 5.1 mixing and have enough room for guests/clients. But I also don't want to skimp on the space in the tracking room. The hope is to use this for music production and green screen filming as well so I'd like to have as much room as possible. (green screen will be a curtain on a track) - For rooms this size should I be concerned with proper room ratios or should I try to maximize my space the best I can and deal with the acoustics? - What should I do with the ceiling heights? I know I will need to put a lid over the control room. How expensive is it to hang the ceiling? What options do I have. For the tracking room should we leave ceiling as-is over the tracking room? If we don't do a ceiling there would there be too much transfer of sound to our next door neighbors? It would just be our new wall connected to the concrete ceiling we both share... - Is building both rooms on the same slab of concrete going to be acceptable for isolation between them? How will isolation through concrete be between us and our downstairs neighbors? (even though it is just the stock room of a store, we'd still like to be courteous.) Is there anything else we can do to isolate? I read that floating floors on a non-ground floor is not a good idea. - In my rough design how much of a problem is that column in the control room. Besides being an eye-sore, is that asymmetry a problem for the stereo or 5.1 field? Would making a false column on the other side be a solution - perhaps mounting the surround speakers on them? Any other possible solutions? - What incredibly dangerous pitfalls do I not realize I have? I'm sure there are about 100. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this (and hopefully responding). This is my first post so I apologize if it does not make sense or does not include the right info. Thanks again. -Matt[/u]

what about neighbors across the street? 130db is pretty loud... i'd say start with some measurements to determine how much isolation you need. hearing protection will definitely be needed when working more than 30 seconds with sounds levels like that... the windows will need a lot of isolation. you could put the CR between the two posts (7.5') section facing towards the bottom of the drawing. this way you can have the big live space on the left, an iso booth on the right, and plenty of space for a vox booth in from of the CR and a hall. floating a concrete floor will require input from a licensed structural engineer to determine if the structure can handle it.

Hey Glenn, Thanks for getting back to my questions so quickly. Is 130 dB accurate for a loud acoustic drumset - perhaps I am a little off with that estimate? I'd like the room to be able to handle isolation of drums from the neighbors. The original outside wall is painted concrete block. In front of that existing wall I would like to put the staggered stud wall. Would this not be enough isolation to handle a drumset? If not, what would be the next step be in better isolating this wall? I did contemplate putting the CR in the middle of the room between the two posts but I am nervous that this may limit the usable space available. With the wall thicknesses, the control room would only be about 7' x 10' - not sure if this would be large enough for surround monitoring with room for producer/clients. And the two tracking rooms on either side also may not be as big as they could be if they were together. However, I may not be seeing or thinking about this right... Also, I just found out that the concrete floor we would be building on has already been floated when the building was transformed from a meat factory into an office building in the early 80's. Apparently it is floated on cork with concrete on top... not sure how this compares to other methods of floating floors, but its better than nothing (I hope). Thanks again for the ideas!

maybe if you have access to the building you can bring in a large PA or other system and make some sound level measurements? bass and drums or sine wave and a sound level meter - inside and out, upper and lower floors, out on the street etc. to determine what level of isolation you need. on the floated floor - it may have been enough for machine equipment vibration and or impact noise. check with a metal and rubber mallet to determine transfer through the floor to other parts of the room as well as the building structure and the downstairs area.

Awesome... I will definitely try out these tests this weekend when no one is around. Thanks.

I unfortunately did not have a chance to run any tests this weekend. I am hoping to give it a go again this weekend or perhaps some night this week. In the meantime, I have been messing around with sketchup. I am still quite inexperience with it but it at least allowed me to get a much better feel for the actual layout of the rooms and amount of lumber (metal studs?) needed. Please take a look and if anyone could let me know what they think I would greatly appreciate it. I included both an areal view and the 3D model itself. I am still struggling with whether I would like to go with the staggered studs method throughout all the walls or go for the double wall system with a gap in between (I understand they are relatively the same as far as STC is concerned?). It was easier to design in sketchup with two seperate walls so I went with that for now. Any advice on which method may be easier and/or cheaper to build? I am also worried my iso booth may be too small. I will probably try to make it a bit larger. I still am unclear on how my ceilings will work. I built the walls in the control room to a height of 12 ft., tracking room 14 ft. and the iso to 10ft. I know I will need a lid over the control room and iso room, however, would it be beneficial/cheaper for me to build the tracking room walls all the way up to the existing concrete ceiling and sealing it somehow? Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. As for the floor... I know that "floating" a floor with a system of new concrete and a new subfloor, etc... requires a lot of red tape, however, I have seen some others on this board "float" their floor with a system of rubber pads, insulation and a few layers of plywood/gypsum. Does this also require a structural engineer? I am hoping I can do something similar in the tracking room to better isolate from the downstairs and next door neighbors (I realize a test of the current STC may deem this unnecessary). Also, please let me know what dangerous pitfalls I am overlooking... I'm sure there are plenty!! Thanks again! **Note** for some reason it says the sketchup file is too big to attach... If you would like to see it please PM and I can email it to you**

the pillar in the control room might be problem

Also, for the amount of isolation you may need you should forget about staggered stud walls, and study the difference between STC (worthless for music) and individual TL (Transmission Loss) values at various (specifically LOW) frequencies. I second the need for a structural engineer, one who can get the building's design specs from local authorities and understand them - to isolate drums, you'll need a full floated room-in-room with fairly heavy materials, double framed walls, suspended or separate inner ceiling, tight double doors, the works. BTW, an acoustic drum set may range from 90-130 dB depending on who's playing them and how. Typical is probably 110 dB at lower frequencies, which are the hardest to isolate. The GOOD news is, human hearing needs about 55 dB to hear ANYTHING at 50-60 hZ, so your TL at those frequencies from inside to "irritable neighbor" would need to be around 55-65 dB, which (at that frequency) is difficult but not impossible. As to your producer's "own construction crew" - be VERY careful here - 99.9% of so-called construction "pro's" don't know their butt from a fur-lined gopher hole about sound isolation, even tho they THINK they do. I know - I was one of them 25 years ago, and still have the "soundproof" room in my barn to prove it - the one I can play acoustic piano in and my wife, in the house 100 feet away, can tell me what song I'm playing :cry: Said room is now only a storage area, so not much sound leaks out :roll: Again, find yourself a structural engineer, you're gonna need to know how much weight your space can handle... Steve