Amateur DIY Studio builders need your ADVICE!!

Hi guys, I am relieved to have stumbled onto this forum as the process of building a DIY studio was not as straightforward as I expected. I am appealing to all the experts to lend a helping hand to a bunch of music tragics who are building their own studio simply for the purpose of recording their music. This is not a business enterprise and hence, all we are interested in is developing a soundproofed space to rehearse and record our music. We started building the walls but then realised we needed to take them down as we had not fully informed ourselves on the myriad of topics relating to building a studio. Luckily, it will be very easy for us to start again as we did not go very far on the first go. I will attempt to be as detailed as possible within my limited knowledge base. I have read a lot of the forum but sometimes feel overwhelmed by the absolute wealth of information that is available. We have never built a studio before. I am hoping that by providing a detailed plan, you will appreciate that we are serious about this and will provide us with some specific direction in relation to our plan. Your feedback is invaluable. NB. The images are at the bottom! We have taken down the current construction, preserved what materials possible. Scenario: Location: Melbourne, Australia Participants: • Daniel Niedermeyer - [removed] • Darryl Ephraums – [removed] Budget: Spent 1k and am happy to spend about another 4k. An old warehouse which is being knocked down in 5 years and is being leased for a ridiculously cheap price in the meantime. The space we are leasing is on the third floor. Remember, this is not a business exercise as we are just music lovers who are willing to put some money into our passion to have a place to play and record whenever we like. Unfortunately, the floor is timber and the existing walls are just thin plaster board. The diagram 1 listed below will give you some idea regarding dimensions and the structure of the room. An important point to note is that we aren’t aiming for absolute perfection although we understand that by aiming for perfection, we might be able to reach our goal. Our main concern is the renovation going on in the room below and the people on the other side of the length-ways partition wall we are building. If someone moves in down below later for some sort of office space usage, we will be limited to playing music after hours only, if we cannot soundproof it sufficiently. The control room is a low priority for us. It will just be a room with some furniture, monitors and a hot shot computer. Our entire concern is directed at soundproofing the live room within the constraints of our budget. We are not concerned with acoustic treatment either. We are not a heavy metal/prog rock, thundering bass kind of band. We are a three piece and everything is pretty stripped back. We do not need to play ear-shatteringly loud but we still pack a punch in the vein of late 70s/early 80s punk rock. We love to hear every word of the vocals so the band fits around that. Floor of live room: As mentioned previously, the floor is just timber. Over the top of this is some sort of fake plastic tile stuck to some sort of ply sheeting which we left intact as there was no point weakening your sound proofing chances. If you peal off the tiling in other places in the warehouse, you can see daylight between the timber palings (yikes). We really NEED to make the floor as sound proof as possible. So far what we have proposed is shown below: So you have from bottom to top: • timber floor (existing) • the fake plastic tiling on ply (existing) • a sheet of mass loaded vinyl • rubber carpet underlay lining • a cross section of timber studs (or steel studsl?) in which Bradford Soundscreen rockwool batts are cut and placed into each rectangle • and then 12mm MDF on the top (a tiny air gap between the overlaying mdf and rockwool) • carpet layer or rugs (more pleasing aesthetically) to reduce impact sound harshness Alternatively, there is this stuff called SilentStep (also by the guys providing Wavebar MLV) which I have provided the link http://www.pyrotek.info/listings.php?id=1604 Walls of live room: Firstly, one of the width-walls is brick (see diagram 1) and is something we will address only after everything else is done, if necessary. Secondly, the existing length-ways wall is just thin plaster board. It will remain as the outer leaf of a double stud wall. There is no one on the other side. Thirdly, our neighbours on the other side of the length ways wall we are building are a bunch of girls doing screen printing (we leased one large room together and we are partitioning our section off for our amateur studio). They are our mates and won’t mind a bit of noise as long as it isn’t blowing their heads off. The proposed double stud wall is detailed in a diagram further below. So from left to right you would have: • 18mm mdf board (inner leaf), (not touching floor and caulked) • Possible use of resilient channels (not part of diagram solution) • Timber studs (vertically every XXm) with Bradford Soundscreen rockwool cut to fit into the rectangles in the cross section of vertical timber studs and horizontal resilient channels • Empty air gap/cavity • Timber studs (vertically every XXm and horizontally through the centre) with Bradford Soundscreen rockwool cut to fit into the rectangles in the timber stud cross section • 12mm mdf board (outer leaf) Ceiling: Rockwool in between the existing timber studs. There is no one upstairs. It is an abandoned loft. Materials: • 12mm mdf board • 18mm mdf board ($30 each) • 90mm x 30mm x 2.5m timber studs ($7each) • Resilient channels • Rubber carpet underlay and carpet (plenty of it) • Wavebar (mass loaded vinyl) ($46.79 per square lineal metre) o http://www.pyrotek.info/listings.php?id=1602 • Bradford soundscreen Rockwool batts (covers about 4.5m squared per a pack/$45) • Links for info on the rockwool (charts, stats, different levels of effectiveness etc) o http://www.bradfordinsulation.com.au/Products/Residential/Acoustic-insulation/SoundScreen-Plus-internal.aspx o http://www.ascentonline.com.au/html/products_gallery/insulation_products_gallery/csr_bradford_soundscreen_insulation.html Questions: Floor: What do you think of our soundproofing on the floor? Will you be suggesting that we use the thickest rockwool materials available? Should there be an empty air gap at all? I have not heard great things about MLV. Will we gain much by using it in our floor? Wall: Having looked at STC 63 diagram, what is the ideal configuration from left to right in your opinion? Are resilient channels effective in this construction? Should the entire double stud wall be raised on the new floor? Can one stud be on the raised floor while the 2nd stud wall be on the existing timber floor? We are trying to find the best combination of isolating sound from beneath the floor and on the other side of the wall? When the rockwool is cut and inserted into the cross section, should it be glued to the drywall/mdf panels? I read that if you make the wood panels on the inner and outer leaves different, it is more effective (hence 18mm mdf on the inside, and 12mm mdf on the outside, or even a different material altogether). Is this true? We have amassed a large amt of rubber carpet underlay and actual carpet itself. Can this be used effectively inside the walls at all? Are we on the right track? We need any and all of your suggestions to help us get through this incredibly frustrating time before we can just simply play music!

The case of the dissappearing Darryl and Dan Show!! Well, at lest you guys are back, with a different thread! Anyway... Hi Darryl & Dan, and welcome aboard! I'm probably NOT the best person to be helping you out here, since I'm also just starting out on my own build myself, and learning as I go, (its kind of like "the blind leading the blind" here!), but I noticed a couple of things in your post (or rather your Word document) where I think you might not be on the right track. My comment is about your walls, not so much your floor (I'm not too clued up on floors yet). Your best bet with the walls is definitely the right hand option in your diagram on page 8. This much I have learned You want ONLY two chunks of mass, and ONLY one air gap in between, partially filled with rockwool, fiberglass, or some such material. If I'm reading it right, the plan you described on page 5 is actually going to give you four leaves with three air gaps. Not good. I've also learned that RC (resilient channel) is not worth the cost. Neither is mass loaded vinyl. Just go with lots of layers of sheetrock (plasterboard, gypsum board, whatever it is called in your neck of the woods) on each side. It's relatively cheap, and it is massive. In other words, you should be thinking of 2 or 3 or 4 layers of sheetrock on the inside of the studs on "your" side of the wall you are building, and this should be nailed/screwed directly to the studs. No RC or anything else in between. Then a big air gap (several inches), partially filled with insulation of some sort, then the studs on the "other" side of the wall (also with insulation), and fianlly 2 or 3 or 4 layers of sheetrock on the "outside" of those studs. Just like the right hand diagram on your page 9, but with more layers of sheetrock. So what you are aiming for is "M-A-M", which means "Mass -Air - Mass". That's all you need. Lots of mass on one side, then a big air gap, then lots of mass on the other side. And you should use some gunk called "green glue" in between the layers of sheetrock. http://www.greengluecompany.com/ It isn't really glue at all: it is an exotic acoustic polymer that remains flexible and "damps" the walls, increasing your isolation greatly, especially at very low frequencies. I've also been told here that there simply is no substitute for Green Glue. You can't use anything else. If you can't get the real Green Glue, then its better to just nail/screw the sheetrock layers directly together, with nothing in else in there. So I have heard... I guess you could substitute MDF or plywood for one layer of sheetrock, but I'm not sure what that would do for you acoustically, and I doubt it would be any cheaper. The general consensus here is just to go for lots of layers of sheetrock. Oh, and regarding your question about what to build each of the two timber frames on top of: You want as little mechanical connection as possible between the leaves, so I'd say to put the "outer" one (the one that your neighbors in the print shop will see) on top of their floor, and the "inner" one on top of YOUR floor, whatever it turns out to be. And speaking of floors, I don't think it's a good idea to have any air gaps in your floor, since basically you are "floating" it like that, which I have learned is a really big no-no! But like I said, I'm not too clued in on floors yet: I've learned what NOT to do with them, but still haven't figured out what you actually CAN do. One final suggestion: You are going to be piling up an awful lot of mass in your walls and floors: Probably a couple of tons, by the time you are done. You might want to check with a structural engineer to make sure that the underlying building structure can take all that extra weight! It would be really sad if you built a great-sounding, fantastically soundproof studio on the third floor, only to find it down on the first floor one day.... OK, that's my 2 cents worth for now. Good luck with your build! Stuart