JdB's Home Studio: Design Plans

Hello all, First of all, I would like to thank everyone that actively participate in this forums, your expertise and willingness to help others is fantastic! Now, on with the business (I read Stuart's Studio post and I picked this from there, hope you don't mind): Where am I? I live in Joane, Portugal, a little village around 30km from Porto. What am I attempting to do? Trying to have a home studio where I can compose and mix my tracks. Where am I right now in the project? Right now I have a rough idea of what i need and what i want, but maybe the two are not compatible, just need your expert advice so that I don't blow everything. How loud am I? I wish I knew, but one of the reasons i'm trying to build this is that my parents are always complaining about the "noise" I make. What do I record? I'm an electronic music composer/producer. What is my budget? Really, I was thing of something around 1000 Euros for the whole thing. What do I have to work with? The space that I have to work with is a small room with 3,45mx2,85mx2,65m(lxwxh), with 2 exterior walls and 2 walls connecting to the rest of the house. What’s it made of? All the walls are brickwall, with 15cm and the floor and ceiling are concrete with 20 cm. The wood trap door (on the picture) goes to a little wine cellar. What is your idea? My idea is to build a box inside a box, giving about 5cm between the box and the walls, so that I can prevent having sound getting out or in of the home studio. On the floor, i'm thinking about using rubber mat and carpet on top of the existing 3cm floor tile. For the open wall (the one that connects the 2 rooms, I was thinking of a 15cm wall made with wood studs, 2 layers of pladur and Green Glue in between them, and a Super Door similar to the one designed by Ro I used John's Small Studio Sketchup as the base for my own box, as you can see in the picture. As for materials, I was thinking about using wood studs (5cmx10cm), Pladur , MCF, Green Glue, Rockwool and fabric. What questions do I have? 1. Does my idea works or am I just dreaming? 2. Will I be able to build the studio with the 1000 Euros budget? 3. Will the rubber mat and carpet be enough for the floor and would the wine cellar trap door create some problem in terms of noise propagating through the floor? 4. Using this link, I calculated my room mode as the result was this: Computed Information: Room Dimensions: Length=3.15 m, Width=2.54 m, Height=2.35 m Room Ratio: 1 : 1.08 : 1.34 R. Walker BBC 1996: - 1.1w / h < l / h < ((4.5w / h) - 4): Fail - l < 3h & w < 3h: Pass - no integer multiple within 5%: Pass And the graph: Are these acceptable values for the studio I want to build? I'm uploading the Sketchup for the Home Studio, in case someone want's to give me a hand with the design (not very good with Sketchup, took me 3 hours to make!!! :D) Thanks all in advance for you advices and insight, it will be much appreciated. P.S. I'm sorry for not having the sketchup for the box, but I can't seem to copy paste it to my own...

JdB wrote:

Hello all

Hai there JdB! Overall your plans seems okay, a good start already. 1000 euros is a not much, but (depending on your level of demands) it could be done, but it's gonna be tricky. Brickwalls; excellent. a room-in-room is cool, but in a tiny room .... gotta design that.

3. Will the rubber mat and carpet be enough for the floor and would the wine cellar trap door create some problem in terms of noise propagating through the floor?

Is the winesellar gonna be a problem conserning isolation? does anyone live there? Acoustically it might be a problem; it can be turned in a reverb hall. Is the cellar still in use? add mass to the hatch/shutter. I wouldn't worry about room-ratios. The walls are already up and the room is too small to make a serious adjustment with your to-be-build innerwalls. The uploaded sketchup doesn't say much, it's just a box. Take the time to learn sketch-up, check the tutorial videos on the official website. They are a great help(!) Read this forum as much as possible and learn the good stuff. cover the basics atleast. Might wanna buy Rod's book too.

Hi Jdb - yes you can do it - don't over do it, cos it will cost more. You have a typical mediteranean brick and concrete construction. Just don't connect to it apart from the floor. I see you have the modules which are fine but you need to remove yourself from the rest of the building by the room within room system. Build an inside/out wall system - walls and ceiling with 2 layers of 5/8" Pladur (drywall) no green glue and you'll be fine. Then build the modules inside that shell. Don't forget the rear absorbers in the room design - they are very important.

Hello all, Ro:

does anyone live there? Acoustically it might be a problem; it can be turned in a reverb hall. Is the cellar still in use? add mass to the hatch/shutter

No, no one lives in the wine cellar, it's just the place where my father keeps his wine :) The trap door is 2.5cm thick of hard wood, quite heavy, so i'm thinking of making a wood panel with some rock wool from the bottom up, what you think? I followed your advice and spend this morning watching the Sketchup tutorials, thanks for the tip. John: Yes, I know they are important, but my problem is, I only have 22cm between the wall and the trap door, is it enough? (And I still need to be able to open the trap door) No green glue? Nice, less money to spend :) But what about the wall I will need to build to separate the 2 rooms? No green glue as well? As I spent the entire morning learning Sketchup, I was able to update my Sketchup with the inner wall, speaker module and side absorption panels..As always, all comments and advices are more than welcome! Regards, JdB