building a room in ingolstadt/germany

Hi everybody! A brief introduction of myself and my project: My name is chris, I reside in Ingolstadt, Germany and I’d like to build a Studio/rehersal room into the basement of the row house I’m moving in. What s the purpose of this room: Mixing, practicing and recording music and rehearsing with a trio. Due to the fact that it’s a row house and because I’m working mostly at night (damn musicians curse), I’d like my room to be as soundproof as possible. As far as recording concerns: I’d just like to record bass and guitar (will be rec. in an iso cab), nothing else… As far as rehearsing concerns: a trio metal band (will not rehearse at night…) The final dimensions of the room should be 4.79 m x 3.89 m Unfortunately the room height varies from 2.15 to 2.23 m. The floor and the walls of the basement are made of concrete. The room is very dry, so there shouldn’t be a problem with mold. My initial idea was to build a rir construction very similar to johns construction manual i.e. a floating floor on sylomer, a triple layer gypsum wall with green glue in between and a 2 layer gypsum ceiling. Cavities filled with rockwool. But before starting building, I’d like to know if you guys think its possible to make my room so soundproof I can crank up my amp at 3 a.m. without disturbing my neighbors? (it’s a row house!) Second, (if that s possible) what about the floor? Floating? i can invest at least 2000 euro. Of course I have photos of my room, unfortunately not on this computer right now, will post them shortly. Hope you guys can help me…and I hope I didn’t forget any info required on the “before you post” topic …. Bye chris

Hello Chris I don`t see a chance to soundproof a room with that celling hight, aslo with a much higher budget, which is realy needed to do this kind of isolation. A soundprrof room is a airtight room, so you NEED a silent Ventilaion, for fresh air. But also with a higher budget around 5 times your budget you will end at bet with a quite well isolated room, but the celling hight ist so low, that a normal man can not stand anymorre in the room, and also acoustics will suck, because of the low celling, whre ist no more space for treating this important part of the shell. sorry for that bad news, but i can`t say more that the truth. The bst you can do ist to buy a good door, which ist around 1500,- and replace the existing windows with specail soundproof windows. The your budget ist gone. That all you can do, what will give you a good cost to success ratio in real live cheers Mika

Hi! So, here comes the plan and the pix. I got more detail on the structural facts of the house I’m moving in: The basement is indeed made of concrete, the walls to the neighbors are 23.5 cm thick. My initial plan was to build a RiR Construction principally following Johns construction manual. The window would be sealed with plasterboard, the resulting cavity with rockwool. For fresh air support I want to make a hose through the now obstructed window which leads under the porch (see pic). The hose (wrapped in rockwool) ends in a muffle with a vent. The cavity under the stairs will be my air outlet, built the same way as the inlet without a vent. The floor would be 6.6 cm in height (1.2 cm sylomer plus 3 cm joists plus 2.4 cm OSB), the ceiling beams would be 10 x 6 cm. The calculated room height would be 204 cm with 223 cm as prerequisite. Unfortunately the existing floor as well as the existing ceiling are not perfectly horizontal, resulting in a ceiling height of 215 cm at Wall C and 223 cm at Wall D. The door to the backyard will be reversed (so it opens to the outside) shortly. What I’m asking myself right now is following: Is my plan coherent and what kind of sound insulation can I expect? Do I need a floating floor anyway? Hopefully someone has another opinion than mika, nevertheless, thanks for your assessment mika! Bye chris

if it's just a rehearsal room, you might consider a "big booth" approach where you could leave 1.5m all around it and build it with floating the walls and a separate floating floor inside (just 2x 1/2" MDF on the sylomer or rigid insulation - skip the joists as they will make the floor act like a drum and give you some room height). survey your neighbors. maybe they wouldn't have a problem with day time rehearsals and therefore reduce the amount of isolation you need. with the booth approach you can easily add the ventilation required by exchanging it with your main room and the large gap around the it will definitely help with reducing the amount of sound hitting the neighbor walls. since you wouldn't have windows etc and only a single door, the isolation should be pretty decent.