Studio in a commercial block design suggestions

Hi, I have a ~45sqm space in on the 5th floor of a commercial office block that I would like to turn into a recording studio. It is located in Sydney, Australia. My budget is approximately $20,000.00 USD/AUD. I have attached a sketch-up diagram showing the empty space. It has a concrete wall on one side, concrete floor, and the remainder of the sides are gyprock dividing other suites in the building. The roof is the standard floating 'acoustic tile' you see in commercial buildings which has little in the way of acoustic properties! Ventilation is a individually controlled but centralised air conditioning system. I have done a number of floor plans but I'm not sure I'm really happy with them as I have a number of challenges I do not know how to solve in the best manner. Most designs have been around creating two separate rooms one for live and the other for control. With the use of movable panels in the live room to save from building a separate vocal booth. I don't necessarily want to post the designs as I'd rather 'open it up to the floor' for out-of-the-box suggestions. My requirements are as follows: - Live room for recording vocals and instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars (and drums as desirable if the room is big enough) - Attenuate produced sound sufficiently to not disturb neighbours. The design can also work on assumptions such as only certain instruments during non-business hours, etc - Control room for stereo mixing - Some sound attenuation from road noise which comes through the windows which are not double glazed. My challenges are as follows: - Windows: I am not sure how to incorporate the windows into the control room without feeling claustrophobic. It appears to me I either run with a room-in-a-room concept and place either perspex or glass windows in the room or abandon the room-in-a-room concept altogether. - Ventilation: If I pass the building ventilation into the live or control rooms, I am going to loose all of the sound attenuation of the rooms! I was thinking of passing the ventilation into the control room only as it won't be as loud as a Marshall stack on 11 but then I question why having a room-in-a-room at all. Hopefully some suggestions from experienced builders can lead me in the right direction in terms of an overall design and then I can start worrying about how many layers of gyprock to use or if I should use 4kg or 8kg wavebar! Thanks.

There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to assure getting as many responses as possible. The announcement leads to this post. Actually, several people, who are experts on this forum, will not reply in any way if you do not do what is written the post.

AVare wrote:

There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to assure getting as many responses as possible. The announcement leads to this post. Actually, several people, who the experts on this forum, will not reply in any way if you do not do what is written the post.

Yes, and I read it before I posted, because I included in my post: 1. Location 2. Budget 3. Room details (construction, dimensions and diagram) 4. How loud I am (indicated drums, marshall stacks on 11) 5. How sensitive my neighbours are (very sensitive in business hours, not sensitive outside) I've searched and read the posts on the forum. I am interested in input from people who've actually built and designed studios in commercial areas to see how they resolved ventilation problems and other issues. I am interested if people think the ~20sqm is large enough to record drums at all. This is why, as part of my rather than putting forward some crap solution I've come up with, I've asked for suggestions so I can get it right before I start spending more time on design. If you would be kind enough to point out where you think I've missed points from your FAQ, please do. I was under the impression I already did so. Thanks.

Two things that can help in our anal community...resize the pix width to 700 and please update your location. These things matter to us, the non-experts, for reason you will understand as you move forward.

IBW wrote:

Yes, and I read it before I posted,... If you would be kind enough to point out where you think I've missed points

xSpace wrote two of them. Quoting from the announcement

Nothing says "I didn't bother to read or follow these instructions" like leaving your profile location blank!

The bolding is in the announcement.

I've resized my image and updated my location as requested. Hopefully, you might be able to offer me some initial advice now?

And... this should probably be in the Design Forum. Firstly, "fifth floor" rings some alarm bells. Check with a structural engineer as to how much that floor can handle. The designs here have an emphasis on added mass. That ceiling height is not ideal. Allowing for an "inner ceiling", your ears and monitors will likely be half way between floor and ceiling, requiring less than ideal work-arounds. Bigger is better for control rooms. That space might fit a control room and iso-booth, with the option of recording in the control room when required. Air-con and ventilation are 2 different animals. Your rooms must be air-tight to work, so you'll need added oxygen, for breathing (ventilation). Secondly, muso's can get a bit "warm" playing through Marshalls at 11 (air-con). All up, is that space really suitable? Take your time. About a year. Read. Discuss. Get planning permission. Look at spending twice that amount, not including gear. Take your time! I'm no expert, but that's my 2c, Geoff

weight could be a problem, and is might even be possible that the site isn't suitable for other reasons like neighbors - both listening to you and you to them... vibrations.. etc. here's an idea on layout though

Gotta hand it to you Glenn, that's another amazing idea/design. you amaze me every time.

SquarePants wrote:

And... this should probably be in the Design Forum.

I wondered about that, but the design forum seemed to be more focused on things like "where do I put my monitors" rather than "what do I build this thing out of". It's a quasi-grey-area post. I'm sure the moderators will move the post if it's best placed in the other forum.

Firstly, "fifth floor" rings some alarm bells. Check with a structural engineer as to how much that floor can handle. The designs here have an emphasis on added mass.

I've had this checked out and I got the OK for the rating of the concrete sub-floor.

That ceiling height is not ideal. Allowing for an "inner ceiling", your ears and monitors will likely be half way between floor and ceiling, requiring less than ideal work-arounds.

I was concerned about that also if I am putting in a floating floor and ceiling that the room height would become problematic from both an acoustic and claustrophobia perspective! What is the issue regarding this? Reflections from the ceiling and floor arriving at the same time? Would this not be case anyway due to the different reflection co-efficient of the surfaces. What are your suggested workarounds?

Air-con and ventilation are 2 different animals.

Understood, but they also work hand-in-hand! Pushing air through the rooms from the air-con is what I intend to do (as the aircon would be on all the time when not specifically recording). I've spent a year already reading Newell, Cooper and Gallagher's books (which created as many questions as they gave answers) so it's time for me to get moving :) Thank you for your response.

gullfo wrote:

here's an idea on layout though

Thank you very much for your excellent layout suggestion. I had come up with something similar but with the desk facing the door, rather than the wall. Your way is going to be a space saver and also less likely to upset neighbours. Do you think it would be possible to use the space between the rear of the control room (where you placed the lounge) and the external wall as storage? The space is tight, and I need a place to store guitars :) Finally, I noticed there's no doorway shown between control and live rooms. Is there some suggestion of using sliding doors or is the door shadow just not drawn? Thank you again for your time and design.

lbw wrote:

I've had this checked out and I got the OK for the rating of the concrete sub-floor.

Not meaning to me a smartazz here but I have to ask this - Seeing as you have no idea as of today what you are going to construct and thus how much it weighs - or where those loads impact - how could you possibly have gotten a structural engineers blessing on the concrete handling your loads? He/She must have given you some maximum load capacities to work within at the very least. Rod

I've had this checked out and I got the OK for the rating of the concrete sub-floor.

What Rod said. Actually, read all of his posts on this site, and his book :wink:

What is the issue regarding this? Reflections from the ceiling and floor arriving at the same time? Would this not be case anyway due to the different reflection co-efficient of the surfaces. What are your suggested workarounds?

Search "null" on this site. Mixes will sound "bass-light" and it's suggested monitor life is shortened. Workarounds (not ideal, as said): Sit higher or lower than is natural; have your monitors too low (they might face into the back of your desk and LCD's); or high and angled downward (so the top of your head is facing the monitors, especially when looking down at the desk.)

Pushing air through the rooms from the air-con is what I intend to do

Include HVAC in the design process. Extra fan units etc. may be required, and have to be put somewhere, and isolated, too. I don't mean to sound discouraging. I'm just "chipping away" at a maybe similar build in a commercial space with maybe similar "issues". & do the science (or likely pay someone to do it) on that floor! Geoff

rod gervais wrote:

lbw wrote:

I've had this checked out and I got the OK for the rating of the concrete sub-floor.

Seeing as you have no idea as of today what you are going to construct and ...

No, I do not have 'no idea'. I have no intention of building a floating concrete floor for example as it is beyond my budget. I am not intending on putting half a ton of kiln dried sand in between my floor beams. I had a structural engineer look at the plans I got from the body corporate before I bought it over a year ago and asked if I could build a timber room structure with a floating timber floor, floating ceiling, acoustic absorbtion material (such as rockwoll) in the walls, two double sides of gyprock and 8kg wavebar and the response was more than adequate to support that. I can't remember what the exact kg/m^2 rating of the floor was but I have the report somewhere around here but I can't seem to find it. I was not going to buy it if the floor was made out of paper mache and I couldn't build a sub structure inside. Once I have a completed design, it'll need to go through the engineer and builder plus any council approval as required who can then assess the loadings of the particular design.

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions and also the great design suggestions. I've got another question I'd like some opinions on. I'm in the process of producing a specification for the design and it occurred to me it may be useful to apply some treatment to the room before the room-in-a-room construction starts. At the moment, I'm thinking of doing the following: 1. Place a sandwich of wavebar and gyprock against the existing gyprock common wall. This could also be a non-floating cavity wall filled with rockwool if people think that's a better idea than wavebar. 2. Wavebar on the floor prior to building the rooms. 3. The ceiling is made of those foam 'acoustic tiles' you seem in most commercial buildings. I was thinking of removing each tile and glueing on wavebar to the back of it. The wavebar would be slightly larger than the tile so it also overlaps over the metal frame in order to try and provide complete coverage across the ceiling. Do you guys think this is a good bang-for-buck approach in terms of sound proofing or should I just leave the existing structure as-is? Thanks!

What is wavebar and where do you get it?

lbw wrote:

http://www.soundguard.com.au/htdocs/wavebar.htm

Sticking with real mass is always a good idea rather than costly products that can be installed improperly and reduce whatever benefit they would have given to the user. It reads like mass loaded vinyl to me. Me myself and I would stick with mass. But that's just the way I roll ;)

That Wavebar stuff looks interesting, if the specs are actually true, but I'm not so sure I'd just glue layers of it to the back of typical "acoustic" tiling. In your case, you have roughly 45 square meters of ceiling, so covering all of that with even a single layer of Wavebar at 8 kg/M^2 is going to add at least 360 kg of weight to your ceiling. My guess is you'd need two or three layers to make it useful. Is it that flimsy framework REALLY designed to support the weight of 15 men hanging from it at once? Would you really want to sit under a ton and a half of that stuff, and hope that the thin aluminium framework and tiny screws can hold it? Like you, I'm in the design phase of my studio, but from devouring this site over recent weeks, I've figured out that I need some REAL mass in order to control sound going in and out, so I'm planning on having two or three layers of thick sheetrock firmly screwed or nailed into hefty 2 x 4's on my ceiling, with several inches of rockwool on top of that, and yet more layers of sheet rock firmly attached to the underside of the roof itself, between the rafters. That's probably a couple of tons of mass that I have to support, and even then I'm not sure that it is enough. I'm really skeptical that the simple frame used for typical acoustic tile installation can handle the type of mass that you need to block sound effectively. I'm not an expert on this, by any means (just learning like you), but after reading what the real experts have said on this site, I think you are being optimistic about your ceiling! Also, on your idea of floating your floor just using a timber frame: I was thinking of the same idea initially, but once again, after reading this site, I discovered that floating your floor is a really bad idea, 99% of the time. A floated floor needs to be REALLY massive to work. "Massive" as in several inches of concrete. Anything less, and you will actually probably make the situation worse than if you had not floated it! A timber frame floated floor will just create a beautiful resonant cavity under your studio, which will happily sing along with all your music, in it's own way, and in it’s own rather monotonous key… I'd suggest you read this: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8173 That's what convinced me to NOT try floating my floor. But I'm intrigued by that Wavebar stuff: The technical spec numbers are interesting, if true. What about the price? Any idea how much that costs per square meter?