SOH Studio - Design and Construction

Hello everyone, Well here we go, after several weeks of reading in this awesome forum I think I'm ready to make a post for the new studio I'm about to build. I'm amazed by the wealth of knowledge here and the people contributing! Great atmosphere :) I have had a home studio for over 10 years now, done lots of producing in that time and the time has come to finally move to a location outside of my home. We are moving to the Netherlands in august and the studio will be 6 km away from my new home. I have 3 rooms available in an industrial building, which I am free to do with whatever I want. Since I don't have to pay rent for the rooms I can devote the budget and time to getting something nice. The budget is around 5000€ but obviously if possible I'd like to keep money for wiring and maybe some equipment still. If needed we can stretch a bit. I will be using the studio for productions for clients and myself as well. I usually do pop/rock/jazz depending on the clients. I just bought a db level meter and figured that most of my mixing is done between 85 - 90 db with the occasional peak of 95 db. I intend to have a drum booth in the live room, so for the live room I think the insulation will have to be more then that of the control room. The rooms are: 3,74m x 5,43m (Control Room) 3,74m x 6,65m (Live Room with Drum Booth) 3,74m x 1,43m (Vocal Booth or PC/Storage Room) With a max height of 2,91m Worth mentioning also is that the rooms are next to a day care centre in the same building, so I really need to take care of sound insulation. I have been playing with sketchup for the last couple of weeks and this is the current situation: Unfortunately the sketchup file is 16mb so if anyone knows how to shrink that I'd happily post it, for now there is a jpg and dimensions to give an idea. The floor is epoxy concreit, so that's very flat and nice to build on. I am convinced about the room within a room designs and plan to build with floating floors that rest on neoprene. To illustrate this I found the following in one of the other treads: About soffit mounting the near field monitors, I'm willing to do it but I have to be able to change them later on since I'm planning to get some Genelecs in near future. Also I would like to use an additional set which won't be mounted. So then I wonder if it's worth the hassle. I did find http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=718&start=0 about flush mounting for variable size. I have been designing with sketchup the last few weeks and came up with several ideas. I will show a jpg of what I thought was a possible setup: In this picture I don't have soffit mounted speakers but that doesn't mean it's not something I wouldn't do... Also one of the reasons is the door in between the two main rooms. I don't know if it's a good idea to soffit mount with a door in the middle? I am not sure about room dimensions and ratios. I would need some help there. I have a 2 seater couch but I don't know where to put it in this setup. Any ideas there or suggestions on a better placement of the main stuff in the control room are welcome. The inner room height would be maximum 2.8m I'm not a design guru/expert. I have done my best to present some ideas. Anything can be adjusted or modified, I'm open for any comments, tips, modifications. If any information is missing I'll gladly provide it. Thanks for your time and interest, looking forward to your replies 8) Daniel

Hi Daniel, and Welcome! Looks like you have a reasonable basic design.

the rooms are next to a day care centre in the same building,

:shock: OK, so good isolation is a key design goal, for sure!

The floor is epoxy concreit, so that's very flat and nice to build on.

Good! excellent base. But what about the walls, and the ceiling/roof?

I am convinced about the room within a room designs and plan to build with floating floors that rest on neoprene.

Sorry, but you don't have the budget to do that correctly. Floating a floor successfully will eat up your entire budget, plus more. The good news is that you most likely do not need to float your floor anyway. I'd suggest that you read these carefully, to understand what is involved in floating a floor: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8173 http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/p ... /ir802.pdf Take a careful look at both of those before you decide of you actually do need to float your floor. To be honest, the ceiling and walls are far more likely to be the weak points in your studio than the floor.

About soffit mounting the near field monitors, I'm willing to do it but I have to be able to change them later on since I'm planning to get some Genelecs in near future.

There is a method (invented by Barefoot, I think) for doing that. If you search the forum, you should be able to find it. Basically you leave a square section in the middle of the soffit that is larger than the biggest speaker that you might ever use, and you build specific square plates that fit into that and also fit around your speaker, each time you change. I don't recall all the details, but it's here on the forum somewhere!

I did find viewtopic.php?f=12&t=718&start=0 about flush mounting for variable size.

Yup! That's the one!!!! Not hard to do.

Also one of the reasons is the door in between the two main rooms. I don't know if it's a good idea to soffit mount with a door in the middle?

No problem. Take a look at some of John's designs for very small spaces, such as the container-studio. You can do that, if you design carefully. Make your soffits as big as possible, and the door as small as possible, to maximize soffit space.

I am not sure about room dimensions and ratios. I would need some help there.

Use one of the many on-line calculators, plug in your existing dimensions, and see here you are. Adjust your dimensions until you get close to one of the known good ratios, and that's it. You don't need to worry excessively about ratios. As long as you are not close to a really bad ratio, and you have a fairly even modal spread, that's all you need. Not necessary to worry about hitting a fantastic ratio perfectly: just stay away from bad ones, approximate a good one, and you'll be fine. - Stuart -

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't need to angle all the walls in the live room. You can eliminate parallels just by angling one of the long walls... this might save you some space.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't need to angle all the walls in the live room. You can eliminate parallels just by angling one of the long walls...

Very true, but I don't think those are angled isolation walls in the LR. Maybe Daniel can confirm, but they seem to be more like angled slot walls, or some other type of treatment. But you are right: they do take up a bit of space that might be able to use a bit better. - Stuart -

Welkom Daniel :) 5000 euro is a very, very tight budget for plans like yours. There's plenty 'o peeps here on the forum who can help you plan a great design, you've come to the right place. When your design is in check you can concentrate on the details like walls, floors, ceiling etc. for example, in you drawing you talk about extra walls with RC on it. If you do double walls, skip the RC. But you'll get in the know by reading this forum as it's your new found treasure. :) succes! Ro. ps. where you at? I'm in Leeuwarden.

What a response! awesome guys :shock: I was busy the last few days with the whole move story. Banana boxes, more boxes, garbage bags .... :roll: Ro, we'll be moving to Baarle Nassau. Nice to see people "close by" hehe. Ok ... Concerning the budget, as I said it can stretch. I'm still busy with talks and might be able to double it. But I thought 5000€ should be a start already. Stuart, I have reworked a sketchup floorplan that is a lot smaller: I changed a few things as you can see; The monitors are soffit mounted and the Live Room hasn't got all the angled walls, I just put one angled slot wall in like jabbaz suggested. And yes those were not supposed to be isolated like the outer frame, sorry if my sketching is rough, I'm new at this. My idea was to eliminate parallel walls by adding some sort of treatment. Concerning floating floors; if it is not necessary then I'm cool with that. I'm just concerned about good sound isolation between the two rooms for starters and secondly between my rooms and the day care. If it saves money by doing a normal floor then ok of course! Again I have time to setup there, so that gives a lot of leeway budget wise, also I have the rooms free so I can devote resources and time to doing something proper. Which is why I joined here :mrgreen: The walls are concreit bricks, those grey ones, dunno what they're called in the first post I put that jpg in, the bricks material used there is pritty accurate to what they look like. Also check the picture below from the big hall there you can see them also. I will start with pics when the construction phase kicks off, here is one on the inside of the live room looking into the control room. The floor is taken out already in both rooms btw ;) The ceiling is a fake cealing that I can remove without trouble. Above that is a bunch of electrical stuff. The maximum height to work with is 270cm I was thinking to work with an average of 250cm depending on the slope/angle. The roof above that you can see in the following picture, this is the main hall btw where the day care will come. That is in build up phase as well. The two double doors are the entry to both my rooms. Please feel free to modify anything, the sketchup file is available now. I hope I answered the questions sufficiently. I shouldn't forget to mention that there is an airvent that goes through the roof. It's located in the live room. I did put it on the first sketchup jpg I posted. This is something to keep in mind in a later phase perhaps. Ok I think I covered it. Sorry for the slow reply, as I said I'm busy moving our house as well. We lived there 10 years ... amazing what you collect over that period of time :shock: I really appreciate all the help here it's amazing :) Greetings and hope to hear soon... Daniel

To echo what Ro stated in respect to this graphic: download/file.php?id=40362 Not only will the concrete be your best bet (whatever epoxy concrete is, there is epoxy paint and there is epoxy repairing materials...but I digress) the RC(resilient channel) on the stud walls is not required. Although there is much data that has been done in respect to this very item, I'm not going to look it up and go thru it (365 pages) to verify since it is a "metal" stud there may be a better TL...but for the most part, the individual framing for a room in room type construction is enough to satisfy breaking the path and negates the use of a material that is used to break the path, like RC.

Ok great... I was reading again through John's manual. http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/Titles/Acoustics3.htm If RC isn't required then how about using the staggered stud wall method? Also is it required to float the walls on Neoprene or should I put the base of the frames directly on the concrete floor? Please keep in mind that I am trying to reach an as high as possible amount of sound proofing because of the activities in the building on the same floor. I'd like to be able to record live drums, which is why I want a drum booth so that it provides additional sound proofing and separation as well. Of course with or without drum booth I still want to attempt to reach the best possible sound proofing between the rooms and the rest of the place. Also could some of the design wizards here comment on the floor plan I posted, I'd be thrilled if someone could perform their brilliance and help me along the way :) Thanks for the positive help, truly appreciated, Daniel

Nother question. How much of this existing work are you prepared to remove? In order to get a proper double wall assembly you have a lot of demo work, as far as I can tell, ahead of you in the effort to make a well isolated environment. It seems that the existing room(s) are made of brick but already have a wood finish. How is this existing wood finish applied? Is it directly to the brick or is it attached to a framed wall assembly?

xSpace, I'm prepared to remove anything... As a matter of fact the floors are already stripped. I have two concrete floors in there right now. The walls and the ceiling are still the way they are shown on the pictures, but those can be stripped also. The work isn't the problem, I have plenty of help to get it done fast. I will ask someone to go check how the walls are applied to the brick, by means of frame or direct. Cheers, Daniel

Ok, I finally got info. I made some more pictures... As you can see the floors are stripped already. The second picture shows how the frame is attached to the brick wall. So that's easy to remove. It's just some small wooden slats behind the wall. Greetings, Daniel

Going back to your first post, you said:

most of my mixing is done between 85 - 90 db with the occasional peak of 95 db. I intend to have a drum booth in the live room, so for the live room I think the insulation will have to be more then that of the control room.

Drums easily go to 115 dB, and more if you have a heavy-handed drummer. Getting that down to a level acceptable for sleeping infants is a tall order. You are talking upwards of 65 dB. You don't have the budget for a floated floor, but you do for the next best thing: drum riser. At the very least, your drums and amps should be on isolated risers, to prevent impact noise and vibration getting into the concrete floor. This is on the GROUND floor, correct? In other words, underneath that concrete slab is just plain old mother earth? I'm looking at your updated design, and you seem to have three-leaf of four-leaf structures in the area of the drum booth: You need to fix that, if you want maximum isolation! 3-and 4-leaf will rob you of isolation in the low end, which is where you need it most.

I'm just concerned about good sound isolation between the two rooms

OK; so there is already a brick wall between those two, correct? And that cannot be removed? How thick is that wall? It will be a partial 3-leaf system in that area, but you can work around it. Just need extra mass and larger spacing. Have you decided on what NC curve you want for your control room? I'm also seeing what look like windows to the outside world just under the roof: is that correct? Tell us more about those windows...

The roof above that you can see in the following picture,

Tell us more about that roof.... Concrete? Metal? How thick? What is above?

I shouldn't forget to mention that there is an airvent that goes through the roof. It's located in the live room. I did put it on the first sketchup jpg I posted.

Tell us more about that air vent... Purpose? Size? Photos?

If RC isn't required then how about using the staggered stud wall method?

RC and staggered stud accomplish the same thing: decoupling. You need maximum isolation, so you need two leaves on separate frames. And ONLY two leaves. Not 3, not 4, not 1. Only 2, at every point around your studio.

Also is it required to float the walls on Neoprene or should I put the base of the frames directly on the concrete floor?

For what purpose? If you want to use neoprene as an airtight seal, then fine. But if you are trying to float your walls, that's a different story entirely.... Read here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8173 In other words, that is hard to get right, and pointless if you get it wrong. Beside, there may be issues with your local building code: where I live (Chile) internal stud-frame walls must be solidly attached to the floor with bolts, nails or suchlike, thus negating any possibility of decoupling (the reason here is earthquakes. Big ones! You don't want the wall jumping up and down on the floor, or sliding across it due to the movement... There might also be fire code issues. Check with your local municipality to find out what you can and cannot do.

Please keep in mind that I am trying to reach an as high as possible amount of sound proofing because of the activities in the building on the same floor.

The floor is not your biggest problem: The ceiling is. You need to figure some way of isolating your section of the building from the day-care section, such as maybe a vertical brick firewall that goes all the way up to the roof and seals against it. If you cannot do that, then you are probably stuck with a 3-leaf solution, implying more mass and larger air gaps to compensate for the lost isolation in the low end.

I'd like to be able to record live drums, which is why I want a drum booth so that it provides additional sound proofing and separation as well.

it won't work with the way you have it now: you have the drum booth built as a separate structure inside the live room, which is built as a separate structure inside the outer leaf. Thus, 3 leaves at least (maybe more, depending on where you were planning to put drywall). To clarify: All three rooms are inside the outer leaf, individually. Each of the three rooms is surrounded by its own inner leaf, and no room is inside any other room. Imagine three matchboxes sitting inside a shoe box. Three separate rooms, not touching each other, and sharing the same outer leaf.

The second picture shows how the frame is attached to the brick wall. So that's easy to remove. It's just some small wooden slats behind the wall.

You might as well get all of that out, I reckon: it is no use to you the way it is at present, and it would be useful to be able to see the bricks, and how they attach to the ceiling. - Stuart -

Hello everyone :) Ok … a long time since I posted back but a lot has happened since! All good news though, the budget is gone up, I managed to secure 15.000. So if that’s not sufficient then we’ll have to spread the project over a period of time. In the meantime I have stripped all wood finish from both the rooms. I also took out both ceilings. The ‘brick’ wall that was separating both rooms was made out of 10cm thick Ytong. I took that down as well. So now everything is stripped and it’s one long room of 12,3m x 3,59m. Here are some pictures from the demolition work: And the gigantic mess I created :mrgreen: Now some other big news … I have been discussing things with the daycare center guys and it turns out I can use more space then originally planned. So that means that the space I have available now just got 16,8m x 4,2m bigger, that is 70m2 added. So originally the long room as it is now, is 3,59m wide and is separated from the big hall with a brick wall. Now it turns out I can also knock that down and expand the rooms in width. ☺ SO … the situation looks a lot different now and layout wise I changed quite a bit. I made a complete new sketchup model, it is an accurate model of the current situation of the space I have available now. Unfortunately the size of the new model is 1.1mb so I don't think I can post it here, if anyone knows alternative ways that would be cool and I'll post the sketchup file as well. In the meantime here is a 2D export: The brick wall that separates the rooms from the big hall (not shown on this picture anymore) will be knocked out this month still. After that I will need to add the new wall to mark the final dimension of the studio space. The wall on the most right on the picture will be set up in November, the guys from the daycare center are taking care of that side. Ok so that’s the update for the current situation. Now let me come to Stuart’s questions, I will quote each section and reply.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Going back to your first post, you said:

most of my mixing is done between 85 - 90 db with the occasional peak of 95 db. I intend to have a drum booth in the live room, so for the live room I think the insulation will have to be more then that of the control room.

Drums easily go to 115 dB, and more if you have a heavy-handed drummer. Getting that down to a level acceptable for sleeping infants is a tall order. You are talking upwards of 65 dB. You don't have the budget for a floated floor, but you do for the next best thing: drum riser. At the very least, your drums and amps should be on isolated risers, to prevent impact noise and vibration getting into the concrete floor. This is on the GROUND floor, correct? In other words, underneath that concrete slab is just plain old mother earth?

Yes it is all ground floor, nothing beneath and a flat roofing above, no additional levels above or anything. It is a plain ground level building.

Soundman2020 wrote:

I'm looking at your updated design, and you seem to have three-leaf of four-leaf structures in the area of the drum booth: You need to fix that, if you want maximum isolation! 3-and 4-leaf will rob you of isolation in the low end, which is where you need it most.

For the drum booth I intended to do like another room inside the live room but I understand what you mean now. So instead I will make the drum booth a separate structure to respect the Mass Air Mass principle. Please check my updated design and let me know if that is any better.

Soundman2020 wrote:

I'm just concerned about good sound isolation between the two rooms

OK; so there is already a brick wall between those two, correct? And that cannot be removed? How thick is that wall? It will be a partial 3-leaf system in that area, but you can work around it. Just need extra mass and larger spacing. Have you decided on what NC curve you want for your control room?

There was a brick wall between both rooms. It was a 10cm thick Ytong wall and is now gone for good :D As to the NC curve for the control room (and I would suggest for the drum booth as well) I think NC-15 or NC-20 would be good. I need maximum insulation and my resonant frequency needs to be as low as possible.

Soundman2020 wrote:

I'm also seeing what look like windows to the outside world just under the roof: is that correct? Tell us more about those windows...

The windows on the top to the outside world are all around the entire building at mostly the same height. They are single layer glass in a 6cmx6cm frame. They have no purpose to me since all the light I intend to use will be artificial anyway. As far as I’m concerned they can be closed of completely before the rooms are installed. They are present in all three rooms. Question : What would be the best way to close of those windows? Can I use Rockwool and ceil it of with Ytong bricks or drywall on the inside ? If I close them off some way or another that won’t create another leaf of mass? Like ‘Glass’ ‘Rockwhool’ ‘Brick/drywall’ ? Here is a picture of the windows:

Soundman2020 wrote:

The roof above that you can see in the following picture,

Tell us more about that roof.... Concrete? Metal? How thick? What is above?

The roof is a metal construction containing a layer of heat insulation. On the top is a special sealing to prevent water from leaking through. This metal construction goes over the entire building. I have been pondering to add some sort of insulation underneath to maybe prevent sound vibration from leaking across the rooms and into the daycare centre. Any ideas if this would be useful and what type of insulation to use? I’m not talking about the ceiling from the rooms which we will build. I’m talking about the real roof here. Here is a picture of the roof from the taken from the inside:

Soundman2020 wrote:

I shouldn't forget to mention that there is an airvent that goes through the roof. It's located in the live room. I did put it on the first sketchup jpg I posted.

Tell us more about that air vent... Purpose? Size? Photos?

The air vent in the live room is a single pvc tube going straight up into the roof to the outside of the building. It is closed on top with a cap to prevent water coming in from the outside when it rains. I suppose it was installed for additional ventilation in those rooms. Talking about the roof, I will be using air conditioning to provide fresh air. I intend to place the compressors on the roof and feed the lines through that whole to the rooms perhaps. The PVC tube itself has a diameter of 11cm. The length of the thing is irrelevant since I can saw it through right up to where the roof is. Here is a picture of the Air Vent:

Soundman2020 wrote:

If RC isn't required then how about using the staggered stud wall method?

RC and staggered stud accomplish the same thing: decoupling. You need maximum isolation, so you need two leaves on separate frames. And ONLY two leaves. Not 3, not 4, not 1. Only 2, at every point around your studio.

I have reworked the design, at the bottom of this post is a new picture posted. I have worked with two leaves for all the rooms now.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Please keep in mind that I am trying to reach an as high as possible amount of sound proofing because of the activities in the building on the same floor.

The floor is not your biggest problem: The ceiling is. You need to figure some way of isolating your section of the building from the day-care section, such as maybe a vertical brick firewall that goes all the way up to the roof and seals against it. If you cannot do that, then you are probably stuck with a 3-leaf solution, implying more mass and larger air gaps to compensate for the lost isolation in the low end.

This brick wall will be added in November, it is the one on the right side on the sketchup picture I posted.

Soundman2020 wrote:

I'd like to be able to record live drums, which is why I want a drum booth so that it provides additional sound proofing and separation as well.

it won't work with the way you have it now: you have the drum booth built as a separate structure inside the live room, which is built as a separate structure inside the outer leaf. Thus, 3 leaves at least (maybe more, depending on where you were planning to put drywall). To clarify: All three rooms are inside the outer leaf, individually. Each of the three rooms is surrounded by its own inner leaf, and no room is inside any other room. Imagine three matchboxes sitting inside a shoe box. Three separate rooms, not touching each other, and sharing the same outer leaf.

I have corrected the design for the drum booth, it is a separate room now. check if this is workable please. So then finally here is my new layout posted as a 2D export, again if I can find a place to host bigger pictures I'll upload the sketchup file when needed. The white internal walls from the rooms are the walls with drywall, the brown walls are just treatment like bass traps, slat walls and some diffusers. At the back of the control room behind the FX rack I want to put a platform with a couch in the middle. Above the couch will be the diffuser. As you can see there are now three seperate rooms and all is worked around the mass-air-mass principle. I am not sure yet concerning the Live Room as to what treatment to place and where. I put one bass trap on the left there but I'm not sure what is needed there. The bass trap was placed to also prevent the parallel wall and break the reflection a bit between the two walls. Any suggestions there? The Control Room was designed around an example from Glenn. It's all still ground plans of course but it should give an indication if I'm on the right track. The Drum Booth has two sliding glass doors, I'll need to figure out a good way to design that, but for communication purpose I thought it was best to use this instead of a closed booth. I understand that the floating floor is hard to do and expensive. But what about only floating the floor from the Drum Booth? It is a relative 'small' space compared the rest so I think perhaps that could be worth looking at? To recap some of the questions: - What must I do to close of the windows properly without creating extra leafs? How do I seal them of correctly? - Is the updated design correct concerning mass air mass? Like Stuart explained I designed it like three matchboxes inside the outer leaf. Any comments, remarks that jump out? - Is there a need to add insulation on the existing metal roof frame? - What amount of mass do I need to add to get the resonant frequency of the interior walls below human hearing? - What other treatment would be needed in the live room except for the bass trap that I put in already? It took a while for me to compile all this info and reply, all the demolition took place as well. I have been reading on this forum almost daily though. I hope to have replied properly. Thank you guys and especially Stuart for taking the time and interest. It is becoming an interesting ride! :yahoo: Greetings, Daniel

I guess I must have missed your updates, Daniel! :oops: Sorry! :oops:

All good news though, the budget is gone up, I managed to secure 15.000.

:yahoo: Better! Still tight but MUCH better!

The ‘brick’ wall that was separating both rooms was made out of 10cm thick Ytong. I took that down as well. So now everything is stripped and it’s one long room of 12,3m x 3,59m.

That's more good news. Gives you more freedom in the layout.

have been discussing things with the daycare center guys and it turns out I can use more space then originally planned. So that means that the space I have available now just got 16,8m x 4,2m bigger,

It just gets better and better! Maybe you should go buy some lottery tickets, before your luck runs out! :)

I made a complete new sketchup model, it is an accurate model of the current situation of the space I have available now. Unfortunately the size of the new model is 1.1mb so I don't think I can post it here, if anyone knows alternative ways that would be cool and I'll post the sketchup file as well.

Did you PURGE the file before saving it? Open the "Model Info" window, go to "Statistics" and hit "Purge", then save it. SketchUp has a habit of accumulating garbage internally, and never gets rid of it until you purge. If that doesn't make it small enough, then PM me and I'll give you a place where you can upload it.

For the drum booth I intended to do like another room inside the live room but I understand what you mean now. So instead I will make the drum booth a separate structure to respect the Mass Air Mass principle. Please check my updated design and let me know if that is any better.

Looks good from here, but I'd like to see the full SketchUp, to make sure.

The windows on the top to the outside world are all around the entire building at mostly the same height. They are single layer glass in a 6cmx6cm frame. They have no purpose to me since all the light I intend to use will be artificial anyway. As far as I’m concerned they can be closed of completely before the rooms are installed.

Great! You have two options: Fit heavy plugs over them, to isolate, or take them out and fill in the gaps with brick. About the roof: I'm starting to think that maybe this is one of those occasions where a 3-leaf roof might be in order... The reason is that I don't see an easy way to ensure that the walls to the day-care place and other places around that roof, can be sealed properly. I also don't see an easy way to get more mass on that outer leaf, plus eve if you could, it would only be on YOUR part of it, not on the rest. So maybe the ideal thing here is just to build an "extra" ceiling up there, wall to wall over your section of the building, put plenty of mass on it and leave larger air gaps, to compensate for the 3-leaf system.

Talking about the roof, I will be using air conditioning to provide fresh air. I intend to place the compressors on the roof and feed the lines through that whole to the rooms perhaps.

If you are going to mount HVAC on the roof, then make sure it gets mounted PROPERLY for this application, with vibration mounts and decoupled ducts. This is another reason to consider a 3-leaf roof...

I understand that the floating floor is hard to do and expensive. But what about only floating the floor from the Drum Booth? It is a relative 'small' space compared the rest so I think perhaps that could be worth looking at?

I still wouldn't try to float that floor. For information on WHY that's not such a great idea, take a look at these two: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8173 http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/p ... /ir802.pdf Rather, I'd just build an isolated drum riser inside the drum booth: It accomplishes almost the same purpose as a floating floor, but is MUCh cheaper and easier to build.

- Is the updated design correct concerning mass air mass?

Looks good, but I'd like to see the actual SKP file.

- Is there a need to add insulation on the existing metal roof frame?

Yes, but if you go 3-leaf it can just be on top of your middle-leaf, instead oc being attached to the underside of the outer-leaf roof.

- What amount of mass do I need to add to get the resonant frequency of the interior walls below human hearing?

:) :!: Good question! It's a combination of mass and air gap. I'll fiddle around a bit, and see what I come up with for that. Easy question, hard answer... ! - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart, I figured you were busy :) I have two quick questions about the windows and the roof system...

Soundman2020 wrote:

The windows on the top to the outside world are all around the entire building at mostly the same height. They are single layer glass in a 6cmx6cm frame. They have no purpose to me since all the light I intend to use will be artificial anyway. As far as I’m concerned they can be closed of completely before the rooms are installed.

Great! You have two options: Fit heavy plugs over them, to isolate, or take them out and fill in the gaps with brick.

Ok, taking the entire windows out and replacing them with brick isn't an option, because that will alter the outside of the building and then you are in conflict with permits and so on... So the other alternative is what you suggested, to seal them off. So in front of the window frames I have about 10 cm left. You can see it on the Window picture I posted in the post before this one, there is a 10cm brick 'base' in front of where the frame sits. What I could do is just caulk the seams with silicone and then put 10cm brick directly against it so that the wall is effectively closed off. Would that be a good solution?

Soundman2020 wrote:

About the roof: I'm starting to think that maybe this is one of those occasions where a 3-leaf roof might be in order... The reason is that I don't see an easy way to ensure that the walls to the day-care place and other places around that roof, can be sealed properly. I also don't see an easy way to get more mass on that outer leaf, plus eve if you could, it would only be on YOUR part of it, not on the rest. So maybe the ideal thing here is just to build an "extra" ceiling up there, wall to wall over your section of the building, put plenty of mass on it and leave larger air gaps, to compensate for the 3-leaf system.

Soundman2020 wrote:

- Is there a need to add insulation on the existing metal roof frame?

Yes, but if you go 3-leaf it can just be on top of your middle-leaf, instead oc being attached to the underside of the outer-leaf roof.

What I was thinking originally was to put Rockwool boards up the roof with big washers to hold them in place... I would do it for both sections that cover my area of the building. Would this be enough insulation to dampen rain noise and inside interference with the daycare center ? Of course I'm not talking about the inside walls .. that's another story, I was merely thinking about adding mass to the roof system to block out rain noise and add separation in the building. I'm prepared to build a 3rd leaf for the ceiling system if that's required, I'm just thinking out loud here to bounce ideas. So basically I'm wondering if Rockwool alone attached on the roof with big washers would already help or is adding a 3rd leaf inevitable? Greetings, Daniel

What I could do is just caulk the seams with silicone and then put 10cm brick directly against it so that the wall is effectively closed off. Would that be a good solution?

That would work acoustically, yes, but you might have trouble with moisture trapped in that tiny air gap, between glass and brick. There must be a way of dealing with that, but I'm not sure how. Silica gel, maybe? Perhaps Brien has an idea about how to deal with that.

What I was thinking originally was to put Rockwool boards up the roof with big washers to hold them in place... was merely thinking about adding mass to the roof system to block out rain noise and add separation in the building. ... So basically I'm wondering if Rockwool alone attached on the roof with big washers would already help or is adding a 3rd leaf inevitable?

Although the Rockwool would add mass, it isn't enough to make a big difference, and that isn't really the purpose of insulation anyway: It is meant primarily to damp resonance, second to absorb, but not to add mass. It won't help at all to isolate, but will help in other ways. Think of it like this: Is a sponge useful to mop up spilled water every now and then? Yup! Can you put a sponge over the end the tap, to stop the water coming out. Nope! Doesn't work. Water pours through, same as always. It's the same with insulation and sound: good for treatment ("mopping up" spilled sound where you don't want it). Useless for isolation ("in front of the tap" trying to stop sound getting through). So I'd still use absorption in that roof space, and it will help with some things, but it won't isolate.

is adding a 3rd leaf inevitable

Looks like it might be, unless you can absolutely seal all of your walls perfectly up to the roof, and also add significant mass to the roof. Probably hard to do that, and expensive. - Stuart -

Ok a short update. Monday (Tomorrow) a heating specialist is coming to take away the heating pipes that are above my section where the studio rooms are. They will be put in the hallway section instead. Tuesday the existing 12m wall is going down. Wednesday the stones for the new walls will be delivered and hopefully Thursday I can get the windows sealed off... So now would be a good time to figure out a solution for the humidity between the glass and the brick once it's sealed off. I am going to get a special foil to cover the windows with to block heat/uv from coming in. Any tips for humidity? That would be really helpful. I will post pictures from the progress :) Thanks guys, Daniel