My first studio in Ireland

I live in Co. Cork, Ireland. I am moving into my new house this summer, the house is in the middle of a huge estate, with houses left, right, and behind within 30 or 40 feet. I am planning to make a studio in the house (the front sitting room) The front room will be the live room, but there isn't enough room for the control room inside the room which is 13x14 feet (4.07x4.28 metres). So the is room out the front of the house for a bit of building on! So these are the plans; LIVE ROOM 13x14x8 4 walls go in order of, (added onto the additional walls of concrete) single stud frame 3"s out from the original wall, gap filled with Rockwool, then 5/8" drywall onto the stud frame, then green glue, then last layer of drywall. Roof, I would be planning to use the same materials in the roof and in the same order! The roof would be resting on the inner newly built wall. Floor, The floor is concrete with wood on top. I have been advised not to go for a floating floor so I am just keeping it nice and simple and keeping it as it is, except for the floor boards! I will be putting double doors in, instead of the existing single door, and sealing as tight as possible. In the live room there is a fireplace, so I am planning on stuffing it with Loft insulation, and then blocking the front of it somehow, by building a frame around it, then putting drywall,green glue, drywall onto the frame Here is a pic of the fireplace; CONTROL ROOM 5x10x8 Not very big at all but its all the room available. So basically I will be recording everything in the live room, and the control room will only be used for mixing, editing etc. It is yet to be built so to get around planning permission, we have been tipped to make it into a type of sun porch, wwhich also means that if we do move later on, there will be another use other than a control room for thee room. The room will be built (from outer to inner) Brick, 3 or 4" gap filled with rockwool, then concrete block on edge, then insulated plasterboard. Seen as all I will be doing in there will be mixing and recording through monitors, there won't be high sound levels. Then the upper half is going to be window, triple glazed. Thr roof will be (from inner out) Layer of plasterboard, onto single stud frame 3"s down from roof, gap filled will rockwool, then concrete blocks. Inside the control room there will be a double window 6 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet high. And double doors in. here is what the walls will look like; Here is a picture of hopefully what the thing will looked finished from the outside (by the way, the balcony is coming out from the main bedroom, so it will just be on top of the blocks. My questions are How do I leave the walls on the floor, do I just put it straight down on the floor, do I put neoprene pads underneath? How do I build the frame around the fireplace without defacing it? Even though I know the materials in the ceiling, I know I'm missing vital stuff from it, but can't find out what or how to go about constructing it!? What is the best floor to use in my position? And if there is any flaws or even tiny bits I left out. please let me know as it all helps!!!!! Thanks, Mark.

Hey Mark. Welcome. There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to do to assure getting as many responses as possible. The announcement leads to this post (click here). Actually, several people, who are experts on this forum, will not reply if you don't do what is written in that post. Many others who are very helpful, will not reply out of respect for the moderators' wishes. Anyway, one thing that did stick out in your post is this:

Then the upper half is going to be window, triple glazed.

Bad idea: That's a three-leaf system. It will not isolate well at low frequencies. So things like kick drums and bass guitars will probably be heard outside, and things like truck engines will be heard inside. Triple leaf is fine for high frequency isolation, but bad for low. Better to go with two thicker panes, and MUCH greater separation between the panes (air gap) than is shown in your diagram. If you want good isolation to and from the outside world, generally the recommendation is to match the mass of the glass to the mass of the rest of your wall, but in your case that would be hugely expensive, since you have such a large area of glass in that room, and the rest of the wall is really massive too! Matching that would be hard: But anyway, you might want to re-think those windows. Also, I'm not sure how you would go about treating a control room that is mostly glass! I hope you like really bright acoustics! The reflections in there are going to be pretty amazing, and hard to control I don't see how you are going to be able to deal with that, without covering the windows with absorption.

How do I leave the walls on the floor, do I just put it straight down on the floor, do I put neoprene pads underneath?

Direct. Floating your walls is really, really hard to do right, so if that was the purpose for the neoprene, then chances are about a zillion ways that it can go wrong, and only 1 way that it can go right. If the neoprene is just meant to seal the wall to an uneven floor, then that would work, but there are other ways of sealing, and if the floor is really uneven the it would probably be better to level it first. So just put your walls directly on the floor, and seal them really well.

What is the best floor to use in my position?

Most folks seem to either just go with plain old concrete, finished in any number of amazing and creative ways, or put laminate flooring directly on top of the concrete. Or hardwood flooring directly on the concrete. The important point is to NOT have any type of air gap at all between the concrete and the finish floor. Just keep it solid, with no air gaps.

The floor is concrete with wood on top. I have been advised not to go for a floating floor so I am just keeping it nice and simple and keeping it as it is, except for the floor boards!

Good advice! You do NOT want to try to float your floor! Some other points about your control room: 1) That's a really small room! 2) The dimensions: You don't say what the height of that room going to be, but you have a major issue with the other two dimensions: The length is exactly twice the width. 5' vs 10'. Bad idea. You'll have nodes and nulls reinforcing each other big time with those dimensions. You'll be able to decide if you want to listen to the bass guitar or the kick drum, just by moving your head a few inches! But you probably won't be able to listen to both at the same time... for example, you have 2 axial modes exactly coinciding at 113 Hz., 2 tangentials at 133.3 Hz,, another two tangentials at 180.8 Hz., three modes coinciding at 282.5 (2 axials and a tangential), etc.... (I'm assuming that the height is 8 feet). It will be really hard to treat that room effectively, and your mixes will not translate well. That needs to be re-thought. Choose one of the good ratios, and adjust your dimensions to get as close as possible. 3) You need to fire your speakers down the long axis of the room, not across it, so you will be facing one of the "5 foot" walls, and the other will be behind you. 5 feet apart is roughly the distance that you want between your speakers, but that would place them in the room corners, which is about the worst possible place you can have them. If you move them away from the walls, they'll probably be too close together to get a proper stereo image. Also, if you place your speakers 5 feet apart, then in order to get the 60° intersection angle, you'd have to have your head roughly 5 feet into the room. Of a 10 foot room. That places your head exactly at 50% of the room depth, which is the worst possible position. Your ears will be right in the middle of every first order null and every second order peak for every single mode of the room! Ouch! If you can mix anything at all even half decently in a room like that, then I'll take of my hat and eat it. (Well, I really would, but i don't wear a hat.... ) 4) Symmetry: In order to get a good sound stage and accurate stereo image, your room must be symmetrical about the center line, at the very least from the front wall to the mix position. In your case, the entire left wall is glass, while the right wall is not. It has glass in it, but it doesn't look like it is in the place where it would need to be 5) Treatment. A small room needs huge amounts of bass trapping. I don't think you have enough space for it, and in any event since the walls are glass the bass trapping will be visible from the street. Ugly! I assume that the green line marked "2 feet 6 inches" is the door to the room? If so, then it is right at the position where you need to have either a bass trap or a speaker (depending on which way you orient the room). 6) How are you going to put absorptive treatment at your first reflection points, since they are going to be smack in the middle of the glass, on both sides? Are you planning to hang them in front of the glass, or put them on stands? Sorry to be a bit of a wet blanket, but you did ask for folks to point out details that we noticed with your current design! My suggestion would be to try to make that room bigger, base it on a good ratio, and do something about all that glass. Those are the basic problems. - Stuart -

I wrote this huge detailed responce to your post and then explorer crashed. So glad you chimed in soundman. Ditto to all points.... plus I'd go with an inside out live room. Remove the fireplace surround and store it in the garage. Fill it as you suggested and build wall infront

I wrote this huge detailed responce to your post and then explorer crashed.

Ouch! Been there, done that! I know how it feels... Aren't you glad that Microsoft programmers are so good at their jobs? :) Good point about the inside-out constriction! - Stuart -

"Good point about the inside-out constriction!" Was that a really bad PUN! or just a humours spelling mistake? :!:

Was that a really bad PUN! or just a humours spelling mistake?

Ooooops! :oops: Naah, that was just me trying to type a coherent post at nearly 2:00 AM, and relying too much on the spelling corrector... :roll: And speaking of "humours" spelling mistakes.... :) - Stuart -

Thanks again Soundman! You have already helped me out alot since I joined the forum! What am I missing from my posts that the moderators won't respond to? Basically I don't have much room to move about with, basically I can go maybe 1 foot either way so, 6x9 0r 4x11, or possibly 5x11 at a push so I'll have to try and fins out which would work best! And the control room height is will be 8 most likely, but I could make it bigger if it was much of a benifit! I was thinking of making shutterswith bass traps on them so the side facing out might be just wood but on the inside the bass frame and probably rockwool inside it with clith around it. So then when I'm recording I can close over the shutters, sure it will mean no sunlight but that wouldn't make a huge difference! So just put the floor straight down and seal it extremely well, and that should do the job so! Yhe only thing about facing the 5 foot wall is it would be a bit awkward, with the window into the live room on the other wall, but I guess it would make it a hell of alot better sounding for me! ya, placing the speakers will be a huge problem all right! By the way, the picture with all the dimensions is a bit wrong. The control room is actually central, so the 2 rooms will be symetrical roughly, it doesn't make a difference to the sound but positioning will, because it means I can shove a bass trap in that corner of the live room now! So is there any stand out problems with the live room?

lilith_envy wrote:

I wrote this huge detailed responce to your post and then explorer crashed.

I know how you feel! If you can find time to just point out the main factors of the responce it would be hugley appriciated! Thanks, Mark.