19th century terraced house top floor help:(...

Hi there, *Please feel free to skip to the questions, as what follows is mostly a vain attempt to make my question seem a little less dumb* I almost make a living out of djing and producing dance music. I have made records in terrible (bed)rooms where i could all i could do was work on a thumping house track to compete with the traffic, car stereos, pimps, prostitutes, dealers and the police doing their thing just outside my window. Other times i have been the culprit with no noise to compete with but a neighbours baby trying to do its thing and sleep in the adjacent room:(...still you manage with what you got... So when my girlfriend inherited some money and set about buying a house i thought finally i can find somewhere where the outside world and i can go about our business harmoniously. So after hearing from estate agents and the like 'you need a Victorian place mate (built in the 1800's) - they don't build em like they used to - the walls are proper thick' - that's precisely what we did. Unfortunately it was only after we bought the house and a room was designated as the studio that i decided to buy a book on the matter. Well, Rods book was bit of a depressing read for me. From the very beginning I found that the room is too small and with not a concrete slab in sight, the floor is a joke no matter what i do to it - and never mind that - being on the third floor i'll need to get a structural engineer in if i wanna add anything more than a shelf to the room! But as depressing as the read was for me, it has saved me a load of hard work, dosh and who knows, maybe even a life! So here is the room and my first attempt on sketch up; and an (even more pointless) photo... The borders of the room are as follows 1) Front (brick) wall with window and sloping roof - not too much sound escaping out this way at likely mixing levels - unlikely to bother anyone too much 2) Back (stud) wall - backs onto our bedroom which is pretty loud but i have co-operative girlfriend and dont work unsociable hours (not loud anyway) 3) Side (brick) wall with chimney stack and alcoves on the other side of this is a neighbours bedroom which she doesnt use 4) Side (stud) wall with door - is our corridor and stairwell then brickwall then other neighbor.. 5) Floor laminate on pine subfloor on wooden joists - underneath is our spare bedroom which is pretty loud but not really a problem 6 Celing and roof - as for 1 and if anyone can hear me from leakage up there then hopefully the intermittent sound of earth shattering sub bass from some of the car stereos you get around here will deflect some of the blame... As for those incredibly built Victorian walls - i can hear pretty much everything that takes place against both neighbours walls like phone conversations and their tvs. Not so much impact noise and i don't really hear any of their activities that are over a couple of feet away from the wall. This doesnt concern me but doesn't say too much for what the wall will do in containing my sounds. I have taken Rods advice on the chin and will only do 'a bit' knowing that my studio is compromised from the start. I don't monitor very loud apart from occasionally checking that the bottom end is as it should be and am not recording anything that i wont make sound lo-fi any way. I am only really concerned about the neighbour who lives adjacent to the room but only uses the floor of her flat that is below that. Questions My questions at this stage involve the floor and as soon as ive finalized what im doing with it (even if nothing) the sooner i can start making music and see if i need to do something about the walls. I know these measures are not on a scale of what most people are doing on this site but if any of them takes the edge of the sound a bit and are worth doing please let me know; 1) A friend told me to put down two layers of high density sound insulation(rockwool) down on the existing floor and then put two layers of soundboard on top of this....is this akin to the dreaded 'trying to float a wooden floor' or is it just adding mass? or 2) Takeup the floor and put loft insulation between the joist or 3) Put acoustic mats on the sub floor and cover with chip board and relay laminate.. Thankyou for taking the time to read - anything you can add is much appreciated. Steve

Hey Steve, and welcome! Ouch! That's not a pretty room you are stuck with! Apart from the floor, I'd say your single biggest issue in there is going to symmetry. Your stereo imaging is going to be shot to pieces, I don't think you'll be able to get a decent sound stage in that room as it is, and your mixes will most likely not translate very well at all. I'm wondering if you could extend that ugly angled ceiling across the rest of the room (drywall on framing), so at least the front of the room would be reasonably symmetrical? You'd lose the window: how important to you is natural light or the view? You'd probably gain a bit of isolation from the outside, and you won't create a third leaf since you say that wall is brick. Yeah, it would make the room a bit smaller, but it would make it symmetrical at the front, which is important. Regarding isolation: you say that you probably can't add too much extra weight to the room, but you CAN decouple it better! This would involve taking of the existing drywall from the inside of the room on all the walls that are stud walls, putting resilient channel across the existing studs, then putting the drywall back again. If you can put a bit of extra weight up there, then use the drywall that you remove to "beef up" the drywall on the other side of the wall, between the studs, and make your new layer of drywall (on the resilient channel) 5/8. For the "Chimney" wall, I think I'd frame in those little "nooks" on either side of the chimney and put drywall over that, for both isolation and symmetry.

...told me to put down two layers of high density sound insulation(rockwool)

Actually, rockwool is not really "sound insulation". In the sense that it does not stop sound. (If you don't believe me, put a piece of rockwool in front of your speaker playing at a normal level, and see if you can still hear the music with the rockwool on front.... It does not stop sound.) It absorbs sound very well, sure, but wont stop it. What stops sound is mass, not insulation. And high density rockwool won't help you any extra either. Once you get past roughly 48 kg/m3, there is no additional benefit to higher density: It does nothing useful acoustically, except eat money out of your wallet. 48 kg/m3 is the recommended density for acoustic insulation. in walls, ceilings and floor. However, that said, I'm not sure how it would work when squashed up under a couple of layers of "soundboard" on your floor.... hard to say. Depends on many factors... Of your three proposed solutions, #2 does not add mass, so it is the least useful. The other two do add mass, and they also attempt to decouple. That may or may not be successful, but unless you can also isolate the walls from the floor, any benefit you get might not be that great. Of the 3 options, I'm inclined to go with #3, but once again, whether or not it will work effectively depends on many factors. Sorry to be so vague about your floor! Maybe others can give you better ideas on what to do there. But no matter what you end up doing with the floor, unless you also fix your serious symmetry issue, it will be really, really hard to mix well in that room, and to produce mixes that translate well. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, Thankyou so much for your reply, whist it contains more bad news, it is so much better to hear it now than later on down the line when the credit cards have been maxed out for something ineffectual. From your advice Ive decided to just set up in the room first without spending or doing anything. I can then hopefully see how bad it is in terms of treatment and soundproofing before I start. It may be that i have to go back to drawing board as the room is just unworkable :horse: . Can i ask you if you think the stereo imaging will be worse if the speakers are facing away from the asymmetrical pitched wall or if they are facing it (from the opposite wall). With the kinda music i do most of the important stuff is placed bang in the midde of the stereo image with only some pretty stuff on the sides to fill it out - which maybe i can sort with head phones :cry: . Thanks again! Steve

Hi Steve, So there is a spare room underneath? Or better not to go there? haha If you hang your door so it opens into the corridor, the 3m wall could be the front... though, a door like that could be dangerous. Either way, make your door heavy and airtight, with a window. Let us know how it goes! Geoff

thanks geoff:) will definitely put the door on the other side esp so i can raise the floor a bit.... i have set up temporarily under the dreaded weird asymmetrical bit....its the furthest point away from other life forms and the aspect feels better.......i am hoping the stereo imaging problems wont be so bad firing nearfeilds straight into the ol' lugholes! I'll only be able to tell when im able to be objective about a mix ive done there.....no knocks on the doors from neighbours yet - not that i can hear anyway:)...