My work in progress

Though I have done a little bit of work to my attached garage that I'm using as my tracking/mixing space... I'm in the planning stages of a renovation that will allow an adequate mixing/tracking environment. I am hoping to have a mixing space and tracking space when i am through. My space is a little less than ideal in terms of square footage. 20.5 ft deep x 19 ft wife x 9.5 ft height. Attached is a Sketchup of what I have so far. All of my acoustical additions are rockwool 2x4x2 DIY frames with burlap wrapping. I also have slatted corner absorbers, hardwood floors, and all of this is on a slab that my home was built on in 2004. Unfortunately one of my walls (the one behind my mix position) is a garage door with the frame all still installed. i did not include that in my Sketchup picture. it is virtually untreated at the moment except for some makeshift acoustical treatment that is identical to the rest of the room. My mix position is planned to be at 30% of the rooms length when i build an actual mixing room. I would like to include a slatted wall, soffit mounted monitors (Event Sound Precisions 8).. continue with the hardwood flooring.. and also if it were to be beneficial I would enjoy a nice mixing cloud as well as more diffusion. My main concerns are the options for building my two rooms with the space that i have. The attic access drop down ladder as well as the water heater for my home are both in this room which may pose a bit of a problem.. as well as there are no Air conditioning vents ran to this room either (since its a garage).. i have been using a window unit (less than ideal i might add). But i believe the biggest problem of all that i am running into in terms of building is my garage door an its frame. im not sure which direction i should take. I know i am going to use this as a studio... so no garage door will be necessary... any suggestions for build direction? to recap on the space itself: 2 rooms.. 1 mixing 1 tracking home is built on slab.. very solid connection to the earth.. no current AC or heat is run to this room.. currently using a window unit. water heather and attic access are both in this room GARAGE DOOR :horse:

If you are going to have two rooms, your treatments are useless at this point. what you should be considering is the wall framing that you intend to install to actually make these two rooms separate. As you work with the layout the ways to deal with the water heater (is it gas?) and the attic access(which can be moved if need be). I assume that you either do not need isolation, or you are mis-guided when thinking that the treatments will do this for you. The garage door, if you are TRULLY getting rid of it, the best way would be to remove the entire door and tracking guide, then build the open area back to look just like the exterior. But if you are not concerned with isolation, and you are not concerned with the windows, then heck leave the door and move on to other things.

Hi there, "heygermandude" ( :!: ). Welcome!

My mix position is planned to be at 30% of the rooms length when i build an actual mixing room.

That's probably a bit too close to the front for optimal acoustics. The general guideline is 38% (starting point, not carved in stone!). At 30% I'd also suspect that your speaker geometry would be rather highly angled, and your sweet spot would be squashed. Regarding your layout: from your picture, it looks like you could take a slice of the side of the room where the attic access and water heater are, and just use the remaining section for your studio. You could then use that "sliced off" space as an exchange chamber for your air conditioning, and/or storage / machine room, or maybe even put a small iso booth in there. If you post your SketchUp file here, it would be easier to see what you have and what your options are. I agree with Brien on the garage door solution: take it out and build a wall to replace it, if you can. Make the outside match the rest of the building. You didn't mention how much isolation you need, how the exiting structure is built, what your priorities are, what type of music you record/mix, or your budget, all of which are rather important factors. Maybe you could add some more details about those, and post some pictures too. - Stuart -

Thanks! Adding that information would be helpful im sure! I suppose in terms of isolation it needs to be as isolated as i could possibly get it. the garage is attached to my house and not too far away from my neighbors. I'd like it to be as isolated as possible. I mainly deal with rock,pop, and harder genres though i do have a few friends who enjoy recording country in my studio. my budget isn't "sky's the limit".. but i don't believe i can really put a number on it due to me really have a large amount put back and I can easily provide more if needed. I have about $3,000 put back right now. I realize that can be used up very quickly in this type of build process but there is more where that came from. I am almost leaning toward building a separated building away from my existing garage to avoid some of these garage door issues and other things that may arise due to it's current build type. i don't know too much about building but the walls in my garage are just framing with dry-wall over it, I dont believe any insulation is between those walls since its just a garage. My so called "plans" would be kinda just to build rooms inside of this garage with room for build aspects that lean toward isolation. I'll post my sketchup of an idea that i got just kinda looking at what john has designed and pretty much trying to apply those ideas to my space. again with me not being a builder or know too much about designing i dont even know if this idea can really work. i know that my currently acoustical treatment does not help with my plans or with isolation.. i mostly just mentioned it to mention that i have it right now for my current usage of the space. i realize all of that will not make a difference when i actually start building the framing portion. the framing is really what i need help with and moving on from there will be a little easier. once i get the framing ideas down then i'll see what kind of space i am working with for my two rooms and how isolation can be better achieved within that build. i appreciate all of your help so far!

the walls in my garage are just framing with dry-wall over it, I dont believe any insulation is between those walls since its just a garage. My so called "plans" would be kinda just to build rooms inside of this garage

Unfortunately, that would not be a good idea, and could even end up making your isolation WORSE, believe it or not. This is kind of hard to grasp, until you start understanding how acoustics works, but there is an issue with building extra walls in front of existing walls. This is called the "three-leaf" problem. Basically, an isolation wall is a tuned system. It is tuned to a natural resonant frequency. It does not isolate at all at that frequency, and isolates progressively better at all higher frequencies. Obviously, if you can tune it to a very low frequency, lower than than the bottom limit of human hearing (20 Hz, roughly) then the wall will isolate all of the frequencies that we can hear. That's the goal. For complicated reasons of physics, it turns out that the best way to do that is with a two-leaf wall, called an "MSM" (Mass-Spring-Mass) wall. Basically that means that you have a "leaf" of drywall on one side ("M") an air gap in the middle with insulation in it ("S") and a second "leaf" of drywall on the other side. If you add another leaf, it turns out that it re-tunes the entire wall to a much higher frequency, thus reducing the isolation for low frequencies, not increasing it. Not intuitive, but fact. There's one other condition you need for this MSM thing to work: decoupling. That means that there is no mechanical connection between the drywall on on side, and the drywall on the other side. Of course, in normal house walls, both leaves of drywall are attached to the same set of studs, which "couple" them together, and that's why normal house walls don't isolate very well. To decouple, you build TWO frames a short distance apart, with drywall on only ONE side of each frame. Simple! In your case, you already have two leaves on your existing wall, so if you just put up another frame and put drywall on one side of it, then you would have a 3-leaf wall, which will isolate worse in low frequencies (kick, toms, bass, keyboards, etc.), not better. So you think "OK, well I'll put drywall on both side of my new frame, as well!". Nope. That would make a FOUR-leaf wall which isolates even worse than 3-leaf for low frequencies! So, that's just a long way of saying that what you will have to do to start your build, is to take off the existing drywall, to expose the studs. With that gone, then you can build another frame an inch or so away, and put new drywall on only one side of that, thus creating a good fully-decoupled MSM isolation wall. So you had the basic idea correct, of building a "room-in-a-room", but that important detail of 3-leaf vs. 2-leaf was missing.

i know that my currently acoustical treatment does not help with my plans or with isolation..

When you take it out, save it, as you'll be able to re-use it later, in your new room.

I suppose in terms of isolation it needs to be as isolated as i could possibly get it.

You need to put a number on that, in terms of decibels of transmission loss. You can figure that out with a simple sound level meter, by measuring the level of a typical session that you might normally record, then also measure the level of what is "quiet enough" for your neighbors, or for others in your house, or better still, "quiet enough" to meet your local noise regulations. Call your municipality to find out what they are. So once you now "how loud you are" and "how quiet you need to be", subtract "B" from "A" and you have your isolation number. With that number in hand, you can decide on the type of construction you need to build in order to get that number on your budget. THEN you can start designing the shape of the room, positions of the new stud walls, etc. There's a process here that you should follow to figure out how to build your room correctly, and is starts with figuring out your isolation number. So beg, borrow or buy a sound level meter (if you don't already have one), and make those measurements, then we can progress from there. You can pick up a meter on e-bay for around fifty bucks or so. Not expensive at all, and you'll need one anyway for the final "tuning" of the room (installing the final round of treatment inside your finished room). - Stuart -

man that was so helpful that my mind is blown! you are fantastic and hopefully I can get a better grasp on this as we go lol. ill get started right away. would a good way to determine how loud I a m to my neighbors is to use the meter outside of my space closest to my neighbors and see how loud it is there? that way I could get a grasp on the level it is to them?

would a good way to determine how loud I a m to my neighbors is to use the meter outside of my space closest to my neighbors and see how loud it is there? that way I could get a grasp on the level it is to them?

Yep! Set up a full-range speaker system in there, and play full-range music at the level you normally expect to produce once the room is finished. That might be anywhere from 85 dB if all you do is mix, up to about 115 dB or more, if you plan to track rock bands in there with acoustic drums. Then measure the levels outside the room right now. that will tell you how much isolation you already have. Now get someone else inside to turn down the volume while you carry on measuring outside, until it gets low enough that you can't hear it above the ambient noise level. That tells you how quite you need to be. Of course, you should measure the "quiet" level at the quietest time of day when you think you'll be making noise in your room, which is most likely something like 3 AM or some such... - Stuart -

good deal I will do so asap