Residential recording studio project in Loire valley

Hello everyone, long time reader first time poster. So I’ve finally scraped together enough funds (hoping to get away with 50k including equipment) to take the dive and throw myself into a residential recording studio project which has been a long time in the making. I’ve been living on a beautiful slice of secluded French countryside for two years now and have been gradually getting basic renovations done(new plumbing, heating, roof repair etc) its time finally to move on to the studio itself and I’m hoping to get things finished by the end of the summer. Attached is a large plan of the whole property and a floor plan of the attic which will house the studio. Underneath this the downstairs area is composed of 6 small ‘bedrooms’ and 2 bathrooms to accommodate the musicians. The attic has a triangular roof which starts above the 1m high side walls rising to about 5m at the apex. There are two V-lux windows on the south facing side as well as a bay window at the east end of the southern wall. The larger room is divided in 3 lengthways by two sets of heavy wooden crossbeams which traverse the room 2.3m above the ground. The existing walls are all 500mm solid stone held together with various coats of plaster and cement. To every external wall I’ve just added 75mm of ‘acoustic plus’ insulation attached to a double layer of plasterboard with an additional 260mm of fibreglass insulation under the slate roof. Taking in to account neighboural proximity I think all outside noise can safely be considered as dealt with. Floors throughout are old wooden boards with little to no sonic isolation from the downstairs bedrooms so I will have to come up with some kind of solution. The whole floating floor issue seems mighty controversial from what I’ve read and my carpenter has suggested simply laying down a 50 mm high wooden frame covered by chipboard panels and filling the gap with either rockwool or Styrofoam balls but i'm open to suggestions. So far the attic is simply divided in two by the single interior stone wall which has a chimney running through it at about the point that I’ve indicated on the drawing. I was planning on smashing the wall around here and putting a pane of glass on either side of the flue. Do you think this could have sonic repercussions due to the fact that the gap between the panes extends above and below? I’m assuming I would at least have to block the fireplace and the chimney. Otherwise all the partitions marked on the plan represent just one possible layout. I’m curious to see if anyone else has a better suggestion. Theoretically I could devote the whole eastern space to one massive live room as there is already a bathroom just down the stairs and a large commercial kitchen and communal hall in another building close by. However I do like the idea of keeping some kind of relaxation space close to the studio for those long gruelling sessions and I figure a rec area can always double as an extra iso space if needs be. I haven't properly attacked the CR treatment program yet but my room modes look fairly clean. I’ve lowered the ceiling to 3m with plasterboard leaving a slope at either end. I'm attempting an LEDE design hence the 6m depth which will mean fabrics up front and some kind of diffusers in the back. There is a 1m gap between the rear stone wall and the plasterboard/insulation which could conceivably be converted into somekind of bass trap. There is also a single double glazed window to which I plan to add a second. The most interesting aspect of the project is the church 5m away from the studio. My plan is to run a multicore in there and use it as a second live room/mega-reverb unit. I hadn’t considered treating the church for fear of damaging the natural acoustic although I’m curious to see if people have any ideas on how best to make use of it. There are two possible noise problems the first being loud farm equipment during harvest time and the second being army jets who train occasionally in the area. Could I sonically isolate the church without hurting its sound? I would probably be used for classical music so even small amounts of background noise could be problematic. Its 20m long by 11m wide with a 9m high vaulted arch ceiling. The interior is all stone with a dozen 2m by 0.7m stain glass windows. The studio as a whole needs to cater for a wide range of styles, my personal area of expertise is dance and hip-hop but I already have interest from classical musicians, rock groups and African percussionists amongst others. I have attached a sample gear list, it’s a little more than what I can afford but should give an idea of the kind of set up I’ll be dealing with. I’ll try to post some pics soon and try to keep updated with any progress. So to recap my main questions are 1) What to do with the floor 2) How to best layout the interior 3) Chimney-window, can it work? 4) Is it feasible to sonically isolate a church? Thanking you all for this wonderful resource which has already helped me so much. -Sam

""You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." We'll see... Good introduction by the way... Brien

^^ hehe normally that quote is supposed to help avoid conflict in forumworld but I guess here it almost sounds provocative. Well I'm all ears gurus, show me the 'one true way'... -sam

Hey guys so I'm moving ahead with the floor. I've found the following acoustic pads http://www.akustar.com/tech/146_i_pads.htm and so I'm going to attempt a full floating configuration. I've posted a diagram of what I think this should look like below along with the dimensions of available materials. I plan to have a professional carpenter help me although he knows next to nothing about acoustics/audio so I would appreciate if someone could take a quick look and let me know if I've got the right idea.

Looks like a light-weight thin three-leaf floor to me. I doubt that would work very well for low frequencies. Did you read this?: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8173 - Stuart -

yeah I did read that post but it was awhile ago, rereading it now I think I can safely say I won't bother trying to float anything, if you read my original post you can see I was always a bit sceptical. So imagine I remove the rubber pads from the drawing I can see I'd still be left with a three leaf design but its seems the only way to avoid this would be by ripping up the old floorboards, which numerous people have advised me against and which I would prefer to avoid doing if at all possible. Surely there must be something I can build on top of the existing floorboards which will give me some decent sonic isolation?

Nice intro and great communication on the design. My compliments. From reading your posts, I think you are learning my tagline naturall. :D There is nothing you can add to your floor to significantly improve the isolation of music. The most difficult part of music isolation is the low end. The current construction has a natural resonance around 63 Hz. Andre

you can get rid of the inner leaf by simply making holes in it so the air joins and becomes one.

hmm thanks for your responses guys, so technically the old floor is already full of holes! its certainly not airtight but what do you expect from hundred year old floorboards... Will a few cracks be enough to do the job or do the holes need to be numerous and regular? Otherwise I was wondering if there might be some kind of mousse I could try using to fill the gap without having to remove the whole floor. Also curious as to how you calculate the resonance frequency? From what i understand more mass = lower resonance?

Chris - don't get involved in resonate frequencies etc, just accept that the inner floor is full of holes so don't be scared off by 3 leaf systems etc. :)

In my previous studio I built a drum riser to isolate the kick drum from the concrete floor to avoid sound transmission via mechanical vibration through the floor. What I did was build a 2x4 frame sheeted with plywood on both sides and filled it entirely with sand. I then carpeted the top to keep the drums from sliding around. It worked extremely well, the drum riser did not resonate at all, infact I had to remove the blanket from inside my kick drum so I could hear it over the rest of the band when playing. Sand works wonders for low frequencies because when it vibrates all the surface area of all the little particles rubbing together convert a lot of energy to heat. It is heavy though, I am not sure you'd want to cover the entire floor of a second floor building in 4" of sand, however you could try building risers for the drums and amps. Also if you build separate risers for each it will considerably lessen the transmission from other sources up your mic stands if you are tracking more than one instrument at a time. -jER

Death By Darwin wrote:

...I am not sure you'd want to cover the entire floor of a second floor building in 4" of sand...

Dry sand weighs approx. 100 pounds (45.36 kilograms) per cubic foot. It may not be the best material to use in an upper level wooden structure. Assuming the floor can support the additional weight there are several ways this kind of project could go. You could place 2" thick 703 on the floor and install plywood/OSB in a staggered pattern to help keep some of the sound in your room and less from going downstairs. You might simply add the additional plywood/OSB over 15# felt to add the mass and/or remove the ceiling below to add resilient clips/channel to decouple the ceiling from the floor, assuming (once again) that the ceiling is one membrane and not several rooms to deal with. Stone construction that you are talking about, with timber for the joists, has the floor joists mounted to or rather set into the stone wall. So my question would be, if I were in your shoes, how is the flanking affecting the lower environment? If you were to do something to the floor to reduce the air-borne sound how much of an issue will flanking be in the downstairs or vice-versa? Just some of the things I would be thinking about.

Ok so with deadlines looming here is the approach I settled for: 40mm rockwool bats in between 63mm wide joists covered by a layer of felt and 18mm OSB, I plan to lay carpet possibly over an additional layer of felt after I've done some speaker tests and worked out my RT60. So far I havent screwed the OSB panels to the joists and the floor feels fairly solid so Im wondering if I can away with leaving it as is? my understanding is that the decoupling should raise my STC? Photos attached

...covered by a layer of felt and 18mm OSB, I plan to lay carpet possibly over an additional layer of felt...

Probably not a good idea! Carpet is really good at absorbing frequencies... selectively! It's great for absorbing highs, not so good at absorbing mids, and really lousy at absorbing lows. That's kind of the exact opposite of what you want in a studio. Normally, you need a large amount of bass trapping to control the lows, while you want to keep the highs in the room, to keep it lively. So I'd say forget the carpet, and go with something like laminate flooring. - Stuart -

yeah makes sense which is why I was gonna wait to do some sound tests. Currently with gyprock roof + walls the room is way too live so a bit of HF absorption will be necessary somewhere, but I suspect you may be right and carpet on the floor will be overkill, what about something like sisal? I imagine it would be a little more reflective than standard carpet...

I'd worry about bass trapping first, and then deal with any high-end issues that you might still have afterwards. Bass trapping is large, deep and plentiful: it should take care of a lot of your highs in any case, as well as the lows, so you might find that after you get the bass trapping right you actually don't need any more absorption for highs, and you might even need to put some highs back into the room! It's not a good idea to cover the floor in any case, for several reasons, so I'd leave that for a very last resort; if your room is still too lively after you do everything else, then you could put down a couple of thick throw rugs to finish it off, but I doubt that you'll get to that point. You'll probably be putting reflective surfaces back into the room after the bass trapping is done. - Stuart -

I would have installed the felt underneath the 63mm wide joists joists as a matter of typical procedure. It may or may not be an issue but wood directly connected to wood will squeak so breaking that connection is always taken into consideration. Another smaller advantage in your specific situation is that the felt can reduce some sound level passage better had it been directly on the top of the existing floor rather than placed higher above it. But it may be a moot point, so no worries ;)

^^ I did actually consider this but was worried by the prospect of creating a third leaf and blocking the holes in my old floor something which john pointed out earlier in this post, although thinking about it now I guess felt doesnt really constitute an airtight layer... ah well too late now.