New construction w/ rubber floors

Hello all, We have begun construction on a new production facility in Florida. The sound room will mostly be used for post production as well as some music/band recording. The current floor in the studio is concrete and the builder was recommending rubber floors like you would see in a gymnasium. I'm assuming they're suggesting this for the absorption and noise damping qualities, but is this good material for all or any of the rooms (control, studio, vocal)? My thoughts for this space would be hardwood floors in both the control room and studio with throw rugs, and then carpet the vocal booth. I've attached a diagram (sorry it's so small) of the space...the dimensions are slightly changing, as the studio and vocal both will now both be about a foot bigger pushing into the control room. Let me know if you need any more info. Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi "Optical", and welcome! :)

The current floor in the studio is concrete and the builder was recommending rubber floors like you would see in a gymnasium.

Let me take a wild guess: The builder has never built a studio before, right? :) Concrete is a great surface for a studio floor. Look around at some of the best, most well-known, and highly regarded studios in the world: How many of those do you see with rubber floors? :D Your honor, I rest my case. So concrete is great, acoustically, or if you don't like the look of concrete, then like you say, lay hardwood flooring directly on top, or maybe laminate flooring, or even ceramic, or perhaps even linoleum. Pretty much any hard, rigid, reflective surface will work fine. But I don't think rubber fits that bill too well... A rubber floor in a studio would be a bad idea, acoustically, aesthetically, and for many other reasons. Of course, having a hard floor (which is what you DO see in the above-mentioned world-class studios) also implies that the acoustic treatment of the rest of the room is correctly designed. Based on your other comments, and on the plans you posted, that too seems highly dubious...

I'm assuming they're suggesting this for the absorption and noise damping qualities,

If they are, then they know precious little about acoustics and studios design! Rubber has very little use as acoustic absorption or noise damping. It DOES have many uses in studio construction, yes, such as a spring for MSM based isolation in come circumstances, and as an airtight seal. But not for acoustic absorption. Absorption requires soft, fibrous, open-cell, limp materials, such as fiberglass and mineral wool, some types of foam, and similar things. "Rubber" is none of the above.

but is this good material for all or any of the rooms (control, studio, vocal)?

No, it's not a good material for ANY of the rooms, period.

My thoughts for this space would be hardwood floors in both the control room and studio with throw rugs,

Exactly! It looks like you've seen a few more pro-studios than the builder has! :) And you seem to understand sound, acoustics and the recording process just a tad better than the builder does!

and then carpet the vocal booth.

Probably not. Carpet has few useful acoustic properties, and unless you are using proper acoustic carpet, you have no idea what you are getting. Ordinary carpet has selective absorption, meaning that it absorbs some frequencies much better than others. It absorbs high frequencies fairly well, mids to a certain extent, and lows not at all. Which is, of course, exactly the opposite of what you need for small rooms! ALL small rooms, without exception, need a lot of low frequency absorption, some in the mid range, and zero in the highs. That's why carpet usually makes a studio sound worse, since it isn't even neutral: it does the opposite of what is needed, and leave the room sounding "honky" and "boomy". In fact, you generally need to negate the high-frequency absorption of some treatment that is used correctly in studios (such as large bass traps, for example) in order to PREVENT them from taking out too much of the high end, and keeping the liveliness in the room! So forget carpet, unless there is a really, really good acoustic reason for that. There almost never is. It's one of those acoustic myths that carry on circulating, and refuses to die. It's right up there with egg-crates. Those are the two things that "everybody knows" are perfect treatment for studios, yet are also the two things that you NEVER see in properly designed studios.

I've attached a diagram (sorry it's so small) of the space...the dimensions are slightly changing, as the studio and vocal both will now both be about a foot bigger pushing into the control room.

To be honest, that doesn't look like a design done by professional studio designer. There are numerous "questionable" issues there, starting with the total lack of isolation! From the plans, there is no evidence of the type of MSM isolation walls that would be needed for as studio like that: on one side you have the elevator shaft for the building! :shock: Major problem, right there. Diagonally next to that is the men's room, so you have running water noise issues. On another side you have what looks to be a chromo-key studio (at least, the wall shapes suggest a large green-screen set in there... maybe I'm wrong). Not known for being silent places, especially if there's a music video session in progress, for example... And the other two sides seem to be the main access passage for about two dozen offices and assorted other rooms! There are some pretty big isolation requirements all around, and no sign of any isolation walls: You might want to rethink that! Without good isolation, that studio will be unusable, in the worst case, or very annoying, best case, turning out mediocre work. The control room shape also appears unworkable, and the vocal booth appears to be too small to be of much use. You did say that the vocal booth is now a foot bigger, but at the expense of the control room, which was already too small. I would suggest that you lose the second set of doors to the video set (the ones that are right next to the control room), or at least change the wall shape there to diagonal, so the doors can go across the diagonal, and give you several feet to move the control room over, and re-shape all three rooms for better acoustics, and overall improvement. And if possible, maybe even take a foot or so of the side of the video set, for the sound studio area. It's nice to have a big video set, yes, but you don't need space to make video look good, while you DO need space to make audio sound good. Light doesn't look better in big rooms, and it doesn't look worse in small rooms. But sound is not the same: Small rooms sound bad, larger rooms sound good, because there is a direct relationship between the wavelength of sound waves, and the dimensions of rooms. EBU recommends a room volume of AT LEAST 1500 cubic feet for critical listening: your control room doesn't even come close. I'd really, really suggest that you re-think the overall design here, since there's so much that is being done wrong for sound, including the rubber floors! But even though rubber floors are a biggie, and would create a lousy sounding room, they are still the least of your worries right now. To be honest, it looks to me like the entire sound studio area was kind of thrown in there as an after-thought, as though someone said "O gee, maybe we might need some sound stuff done to, so let's just dump in this quick triangular thingy, and another one next to it, and we'll call that our 'studio'". Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it looks like to me. I know that "rubber floors" is what you came here to ask about, and it sure as hell is important, and sure as hell needs getting taken off the plans, but even so it's only small compared to some of the other issues with that design. Please, please, please, re-think, re-plan, expand, and maybe even get someone like John involved in this design. This is obviously a big-budget project, so there shouldn't be any issue paying John's fees to ensure it is done right. In fact, a designer such as John would probably end up saving you money overall, since he'd make sure that the place was designed and built right from the start, and won't need to be modified later to make it work. (Or even worse, torn down and re-built correctly).

Let me know if you need any more info.

You say the plans have changed, and things are now differently shaped, so an updated plan would be really good. So would photos of the space as it is now. - Stuart -

"The current floor in the studio is concrete and the builder was recommending rubber floors like you would see in a gymnasium" I would ask why this material has been spec-ed. It could be, could be, that depending on band size and gear, there is some needed, in the contractors estimate, a need to reduce the hard surface of concrete that can create unwanted noise from moving shoes, stands, etc. It is a material that will simply lay on the floor so it has little acoustic use UNLESS the overall volume of the room has been considered plus the surfaces that will be a part of this build and the geometry of same, which I have not seen a height of the rooms or even a list of materials that will be used. So I would ask directly, why and how much coverage and for what is the payoff in doing this.