Single room Basement studio build in Cape Town SA

Marz Studio Build – Cape Town 2008 I am mainly a guitarist interested in recording side of music with a smattering of piano training in my younger days. I recently built a house with a fairly large basement room 7.5m x 3.6m x 2.4m but without a Studio in mind. This space is made of 220mm solid cement bricks with a further 300mm solid rock face in the front and earth on the back side of room (Built into the mountain), a 100 mm re-enforced concrete floor on grade and a 300mm concrete beam and block ceiling. Fortunately I had made some allowance for air in and out ( 2 x 110mm pipes each).

Unfortunately we had 2 concrete foundation extensions above floor level as the rear foundations step up to the back, 1 at each end of the room. Shown in Green in plan below. This forced the studio to be shorter than the full 7.5m length of the room. This space was used to create a small Vocal booth on the entrance end to Left of the door above. The width and height also dictated that the final Combined Studio (Control and tracking room in one) should be in ratio 1: 1.5: 2.39 as per one of the better ratios from research. Final internal dimensions are 2.27m x 3.39m x 5.4m. The 1st plan below shows the entire basement space and adjacent room to the right – currently a water storage room, but possible future Drum room. The entrance is from the Left side Yellow doorway, into an entrance lobby / Machine room / AC room with Vocal booth the right and then through a Rod Gervais “Super Door” into the Studio proper. At the back of the studio is a small space which is potential storage before entering into the current Water room. In the 1st diagram below at the top we have 2 small spaces that are not full height, but potential Isolated Guitar and Bass Cab chambers, made in 220mm Cement brick. Purple is for Air supply in via Silencer boxes. Below that is a picture of just the real Studio part of the plan: We came up with the following plan showing entire basement space:

The Aim is to have a well Isolated room for practicing and recording in. Plan is to build essentially a room within a room design in timber frame using 2 x 4’s or 32mm x 110mm planed and CCA pressure treated Pine timbers set inside the concrete room. The front wall which will interface from Studio to Machine room and Vocal booth will be a double 2 x 4 timber wall to add isolation to the Booth. Due to lack of available room height, I decided to use Steel Angle Iron 50 x 50 x 10mm for the Ceiling beams to maximize room height. Walls and ceiling were filled with OC 703 Rigid Fiberglass sheets 100mm thick (2 Layers of 50mm sheets). Walls and ceiling were covered with 2 x layers of 13mm Gypsum boards staggered and each joint filled with backer rod (Caulk saver) and Flexible caulk. (Could not easily source Acoustic sealant, and use a product called Flexothane which has 25% elasticity - I recently had to undo some after 2 months and it was still flexible and soft) Doors would be single “Super Doors” with rubber seals and a single Frame passing through both walls – as per Rod Gervais’ suggestions. Frame is heavy duty 330mm x 50mm Pine fastened with compressed Fiberglass between Frame and wall framing. To start off, we made the bottom floor rails with CCA Pressure treated pine, fastened on top of plastic DPM on top of wet leveling cement with Hammer nails into concrete floor. The frames were made up inside the room and installed on the bottom floor rails with a 110mm wide strip of 10mm Neoprene rubber all the way around. This may not have been the best thing to do - Many argue to use just the correct amount of rubber to allow for proper M-S-M spring action to occur. The method I used is recommended in several places in Studio design literature. Below is series of relevant stages in the build: Picutre of the start of the Bottom floor railing installed on concrete floor at Vocal booth end of room: My mate Craig with the drill and reliable crew Doc and Henry making frames: Picture of completed framing looking to end of Studio and into Water room: Picture of completed framing looking to vocal booth and entrance and showing a mess of wiring: Wiring was run in conduits on concrete floor to be covered with 70mm layer of cement screed. Plan is for Mixing desk to be built on Concrete columns containing wiring and independent of final wood layers of the floor to reduce desk resonances: Picture of ceiling framing, showing use of Steel Angle Iron beams, isolated from Concrete ceiling and also showing wooden battens for fastening plasterboard onto:

More pictures of the build in progress: Picture of Long wall with Guitar Cab Isolation chamber entrance, 2 x air outlets and some wiring: Picture of crew and I installing OC 703 Fiberglass in the ceiling – not easy: Picture showing installed OC 703 fiberglass in the walls and ceiling and the start of wooden board flooring - 1 Layer of 21mm Shutterboard well hammer-nailed to Cement screed, to be followed by 9mm layer of plywood heavily screwed to Shutterboard and final 6mm layer of Laminated wooden flooring glued to 9mm plywood: Picture looking to entrance and showing 1st layer of floor still being installed and in corners one can see the outline of the floor plan for the Monitor Soffit framing: Picture of plasterboard 1st layer going up – note use of 2 x T-frames to hold Plasterboard to ceiling before fastening. As the ceiling framing was only 50mm thick + 25mm Airgap, we used 1 layer of 50mm OC 703 fiberglass and a second layer of 30mm Mineral wool: Picture showing use of Metacaulk Putty pads on electrical boxes in wall. Set Boxes just below the 2nd layer of plasterboard and sealed off with Putty pads all around the box and onto the plasterboard, before putting final layer of plasterboard on top:

Still more pictures of the build in progress: Picture of completed 2nd layer of plasterboard, jointed and sanded with pile of door framing material lying on floor: Picture of Air Inlet through double wall to Machine room and rubber connection – To be lined with OC Sonic liner 25mm thickness and Silencer box fitted on both sides: Picture of framing at main door, looking to Vocal booth and entrance: Picture looking into Vocal booth after 2nd layer of plasterboard: Picture looking through the Window of Vocal booth into Studio: Picture of Monitor Soffit mount system, showing independent Brick column to support Monitors and 32mm MDF Baffle mounted on frame:

And still more photos of build progress: Picture of rear Bass traps – these are large babies – hopefully they do the job: Picture of both front Monitor Soffit systems – still to be cut out for Monitors: Another picture of Monitor brick on concrete isolated stand without the baffles: Picture of Desk Concrete block columns with wiring inside – to be filled with concrete and steel thread bar to connect the desk (Wiring separated – Mics / Headphone / Speaker / Digital / Electrical supply): Picture of “Super Door” with 19mm glass fitted loosely (Door is 42mm Solid Core door with 18mm plywood fastened) There will be a second piece of 13mm glass on the outside (Did not feel the need for Lead layer as Isolation is good and saved some money):

As of 15 September, we put the Drum kit in with Guitar and Bass Cabs and closed the two entrance doors and not much can be heard on the floor above. It was extremely loud inside this space!!! This is without fine-tuning the rubber sealing systems on the doors, or fitting the Silencer boxes on Air Supply systems or even finishing the plasterboard on outside of wall interfacing Studio to Machine room. I guess starting with a solid concrete shell helped tremendously with the Isolation. Now it can only get better! I have spent a small fortune on this studio build (Don’t know exactly, but close to $12000), but aim to have a lot of fun and hopefully make some cool recordings. I don’t plan to sell the house – its taken me 12 years to build and is in a fantastic part of South Africa in the Deep South of Cape Town, close to the Atlantic ocean on the way to Cape Point. We have a separate flat and workshop on the property as well. If I could do it all again : I would have made the room much taller – IE closer to 3m in height, made more volume allowance for Air supply and planned to use the current Water Room as a Live / Drum room. Otherwise I am happy with how it has turned out thus far. Still need to finalize…… The Monitor mounting system and soffits (KRK Rokit 8s) / Finish off all the wiring terminations / Make the Desk / Properly install the windows in the frames / Fine tune the Door Rubber sealing systems / Add more mass to the Vocal booth door / Treatments – Wall panel absorbers and Clouds / Lighting systems / Electrical hook up to Independent Switch Board in Machine room / Sort out Air Supply ducts with Sonic Liner / Find a High power portable AC (13000 BTU) / Finish off the Entrance Way \ Machine room / Make a set of Bass trapping Seats for Guitar \ Bass \ Producer to trap on Floor wall interface at sides and back of the room. Many thanks to all the people at John Slayers / SOS Forums / StudioTips / RecordingOrg who have shared their knowledge and lessons learnt so freely: Rod Gervais - Great, informative and accessible book! John Sayers - For hosting all the information and sharing the general concepts Paul Woodlock - An insane studio build of note! James Doublehelix - For being candid about mistakes and inspirational attention to detail and form MadMax - For attention to detail and wanting to get it right AaronW Artifact - I copied the independent brick Monitor stands idea! Ruffriddims - Inspiration from next door in Botswana Ro - For keeping everybody else on track and in check! Crew at Studiotips - For being completely off the wall and with very technical discussions All the other crazy fantastic people making beautiful and inspiring studios around the world and sharing this info on the worldwideweb. I am currently away from South Africa and will continue in late OCT and will post more pics when there is some more to share!

Hai Marz, great build! Did you poor concrete on that floor? (where the pix @ ?) Those speakerstands are sure a great idea!

Thanx Ro! Yup, we poured a 70mm cement screed on top of the 100mm concrete and hid the conduits in this screed. I took the many peoples advice on the various Studio fora (?) and decided against the initial idea of a sand filled timber deck on pucks and opted for solid concrete / cement floor. From what I have found so far, this was good advice and there is no need for an expenisive floated floor in a basement studio. I was also limited by existing room height. The screed was isolated from the timber wall framing with a 10mm x 80mm deep foam strip all around the round, just visible as a white strip below the bottom rails in pictures below. Here is 2 pictures of the completed screeding, prior to installing 21mm Shutterboard:

An update from last work done in OCT, before leaving the country again. (I am a shift worker in North Africa) Started on making Wall Boxes for the Studio wiring: I bought a bunch of pre-punched Wall Plates online (Thomann in UK) and cut them up to suit. Then cleaned up the cut pieces and painted them to suit. Made the Wall boxes to suit the plates out of 22mm Meranti (Philippine Mahogany) Then mounted the boxes on the wall and started making the connections to Neutrik connectors - what a mission! I had to leave Cape Town before finishing the wiring, so still plenty to do when I return Mid December. See several photos below:

A couple more pics of the Wall Boxes in Progress: Thats it for now. Home in a week before the silly season starts, which may delay things a bit! Marius

It is looking beautiful! Thanks for sharing the build with us. Andre