New studio build in Van Nuys, CA

A word to the wise. Don't rush when you're scoring drywall... :shock: :cen:

Total cost as of today is $5191.04 Not too shabby! :shot:

Nicely done! Great progress! How big will it be when it's done? Dude.....that finger!!! :shock: Hope it mends! -A

Thanks! The room is 16x18. The 18 foot walls fade inward 6.5 inches to help fight off any standing waves. Vaulted ceiling is 9.5 feet at one end, 8 feet at the other end and 13 feet at the peak. Finger is already on the mend. Happened about a week and a half ago so it's feeling pretty good now.

The 18 foot walls fade inward 6.5 inches to help fight off any standing waves.

That wont work! :shock: I think you are confusing "standing waves" with "flutter echo". Splaying your walls will indeed help with flutter echo, if the splay is more than 6°, but it will not have any useful effect on standing waves. The room modes will still be there, regardless of whether or not you splay the walls. The only difference is that they will be at different frequencies, and peak at different locations in the room, but splaying your walls does not make them go away. About that finger: OUUUUUCH!!!!!! :cen: ooooooo! That hurts, just to look at.... :| Wow! I'll bet that was one of Murphy's better attempts, so far. Please take care from here on forward: We sure don't want any more events like that! - Stuart -

You're absolutely right. I was definitely confusing the two. As far as flutter echo is concerned, it did the trick. There is none whatsoever. But in the empty untreated room there is a good 3 second verb happening. I have a ton of acoustic panels already made and I intend to make about 2 dozen more when I start getting things set up. My iso booth is gonna have to wait a little while before it gets built. I've gone way too far over budget for now. I did pick up a really awesome door for the booth the other day on craigslist. Solid wood commercial door, stained, with a full length 1/4 inch glass window. Really exciting! Only $50.00! When I do end up throwing the booth together it will be a pentagon shape in the corner. As for the finger...Other than the small amount the booth will need, I'm done with all of my drywall. At this point if I never had to cut and hang another piece of drywall, it would be too soon. In the end from my beef up to my finished 2 inner layers I ended up using about 100 sheets of drywall. I haven't installed my second entry door yet, let alone do any extensive testing, but I can already tell that my isolation is working very well. The single door is the obvious weak point and the only real source of any sound leakage.

The only things I have left to do: Finish caulking and tape and mud on joints. Prime, paint, concrete stain and clear coat. Acoustic treatment. Move in. Install second interior door. And eventually...build my iso booth. Hopefully sooner than later. After caulking all top, bottom, sides and corner seams with acoustical caulk is it a bad idea to mud over them for a clean finish? Or should I just go over the caulk with a putty knife to get a clean seam and leave it at that? That's what I did with my first layer.

"Prime, paint, concrete stain and clear coat." You want to do the concrete first since you are going to mess up the walls during the process. Tape and mud your final layer after caulking.

Studio is basically finished at this point. I've already moved in and started working. I still have some minor cosmetic things like trim moulding and paint touch ups to finish. I wanted to hop on here and post some pics of the final stages in the build. Isolation booth turned out great. I've already been cutting vocals in it and they sound fantastic! The iso booth got 2 layers of 5/8" drywall with Quiet Glue in sandwiched in between just the same as my interior walls. I stuffed the entire thing from head to toe with 3" 2.5 pound mineral wool and covered with fabric. I also built silencers for the booth which I may eventually add fans to in the future. I created my own spin on these and added built in ducts to them. On to room treatments... I used 4" thick mineral wool for bass traps. Framed in the typical fashion in pine boxes. All of my other 2" panels and corner traps are made with Knauf rigid fiberglass batts (An exact OC 703 equivalent). I used thin wood strips to build the light framework to wrap with fabric. They ended up very similar looking to a speaker cover. To be continued in the next post...

I mitered the edges of my corner insulation batts to 45 degrees on each side so that they would fit neatly into the corners and then i finish nailed the fabric wrapped covers over them. Here's a look all moved in and setup with room treatments. I had already built 2 skyline diffusers and one QRD diffuser. I still have one more QRD to build to complete my diffusion on the back wall. My room treatments are more or less finished for now and the room sounds AMAZING! My isolation is really excellent in the overall. As for the iso booth, the silencers seem to be a bit of a weak point. But it's still very functional. The finished project has far exceeded my expectations. And I've accomplished it all doing 90% of the work by myself. I'm really proud of how it all turned out!

Nice! :yahoo: Congratulations!!!!! - Stuart -

Very cool!!! Well done and congrats! -A

Great space! Well done! I'm also in LA and soon to be undertaking a similar garage project...where did you find your insulation? What model exactly was that Knauf 703-type stuff? Also...whered you find the quiet glue?