Recording Studio / Rehearsal Place in Berlin

Hello everybody, I know this forum for long time now and was reading alot about interesting projects, acoustics and many other issues since like 2 years here. Now it is time for my project: The room I want to build the Studio/Rehearsal Place in is already rented and now it comes to planing and designing the room. The existing walls are made out of concrete as well as the ceiling and the floor. The room is going to be used by 2 Bands, a pianist and a DJ for rehearsal purpose, an Artist for painting/studio and me (being a member of one of the bands) as a space for live recording and mixing. The landlords condition is that we build a drum raiser filled with sand , a 2.5cm thick wall around it (or in front of it) and a wall to isolate the reheasal/recording noise from the other recording studios. We want to seperate the room so we have a control room and a rehearsal/recording room with a vocal booth. With the average height of the room being 2.56m (at some places its 2.57m or a bit less) i found Loudens 3rd best room ratio (1:2.10:1.50) very suitable for the control room. Our Budget is around 3000 - 4000EUR. Below you find pictures of the room and my first ideas of designing it. This is my first idea: The right room is the control room. I didn't put any doors/glass in the sketch. There is a 2.5m corridor going to the room. What do you think? Greetings, Robsn

Hey you guys! I came up with another idea that from my point of view makes more sense acoustically and to see each other while recording. What do you think?

Hi "robsn", and welcome! :)

The landlords condition is that we build a drum raiser filled with sand ,

Why would you want to fill it with sand? That doesn't make a lot of sense. The purpose of a drum riser is to decouple the drum kit from the floor, normally by resting the deck on a thick layer of insulation. If you replace the insulation with sand, then you have not decoupled anything! You have added mass, sure, but that won't help if you don't also decouple.

a 2.5cm thick wall around it

I don't understand this either: Why would you want to build such a thin single-leaf wall around just the drum kit, when you say that you are also going to isolate the entire room? Are you saying that you actually want to have a drum booth AND a live room AND a control room?

We want to seperate the room so we have a control room and a rehearsal/recording room with a vocal booth.

OK, but you also spoke about have a room for the drums, built on a drum riser: Where is that going to be? I don't see it on the diagrams.

This is my first idea:

The walls are coupled. To isolate a room, you need to have a totally decoupled inner-leaf wall that does not touch an part of the existing walls or ceiling. Your control room shows a wall around only three sides, so you need to add the wall for the other side. The live room only shows two sides done so you need to do the other two as well. Also, the iso booth only shows two walls done for isolation: the other two also need to be done.

I came up with another idea

The control room and live room layout are better, but the other two rooms are not practical. Also, all of the walls are still coupled. If you want good isolation, then you need to correctly decouple the walls in each room. - Stuart -

Hello Soundman and thank you for the response! :mrgreen: A lot of things happened the last weeks... I worked on the design and decided to make the control room and the booth decoupled from the outer walls. We already built the long wall for the rehearsal/recording room because we have to move all our equipment soon and also need a space where we can already rehearse. I talked to the landlord again: The isolation to the other studios/rehearsal rooms doesn't have to be that strong. He said it is good enough with the wall we already built and he just wants everybody do damp their sound a bit, not isolate it totally. Drum Raiser: We are not going to do the wall around the drums... :D Because we have two drumsets we thaught to make two seperate risers with wheels. It would be nice to be able moving them around. 1. Question: Are wheels + insulation a good way to decouple the raiser? 2. Question: Does sand make sense when the raiser is decoupled? 3. Question: Do you see a better way to make a space-saving drum raiser for two drumsets? Door: For the entrance door and the door attached to the wall we built i thought to use massive wooden doors and add another layer of mass to it. Am I right? Studio Plan: Question 1: What do you think about the new layout for the control room and the vocal booth? (i didn't put the doors into the layout yet) Recording/ Rehearsal Room: The isolation wall had to be done fast because of what i wrote earlier. I hope the construction will do the job. We used 100mm dry walling aluminium profiles (+ 100mm rockwool) and to those touching the outer walls we added a layer of 3mm rubber foam and screwed them to the walls. I think it will isolate the air-sound more than it will decouple the walls. Till now we added one layer of 12.5mm gypsum drywall and left a 3mm space to the outer walls which we wanted to fill with silicone afterwards. For the second layer of drywall we have heavier 12.5mm gypsum sheets of drywall called "knauf piano" that are made out of 2 layers and have fibers inside. Question 1: Waste of money? :D

I worked on the design and decided to make the control room and the booth decoupled from the outer walls.

Great, bu is there any reason why you didn't do the same for the live room / rehearsal room?

Because we have two drumsets we thaught to make two seperate risers with wheels. It would be nice to be able moving them around.

All that you will achieve with a drum riser is to decouple the impact noise from the floor. Is that your goal? A riser will not help at all in dealing with the airborne sound form the drums. All it does is stop the physical impact of the pedals and hits from getting into the floor.

1. Question: Are wheels + insulation a good way to decouple the raiser?

Yes, you could do that. Put the wheels on one end, such that they are slight above the floor when the riser is sitting flat, then put handles no the other end so that you can lift that end (like a wheelbarrow) enough so that the wheels touch the ground and the riser is off the floor, then you can wheel it around as needed.

2. Question: Does sand make sense when the raiser is decoupled?

For what purpose? Adding mass is always useful, but you are not trying to isolate a room here: just to decouple the impact from the floor. Two or three layers of thick wood is plenty for accomplishing that. Besides, if you want to put wheels on it, you don't want to make the things so heavy that you can't move it!

Door: For the entrance door and the door attached to the wall we built i thought to use massive wooden doors and add another layer of mass to it. Am I right?

That door doesn't really matter, since you have chosen not to decouple the rehearsal room from the building. Just a single solid-core door will probably be fine. As long as it has the same surface density as the leaf that you put it in, and good seals, that's all you need there. It would be different if you decouple the room properly, but with the plan you have chose there won't be much isolation anyway, so the door does not need to be much better than the rest of the room.

and to those touching the outer walls we added a layer of 3mm rubber foam and screwed them to the walls.

In that case, the rubber didn't actually do much at all, except to improve the seal around the edge of the wall. The simple fact of screwing through the rubber into the outer-leaf means that you have short-circuited the decoupling provided by the rubber, and the new wall is fully flanking to the rest of the building.

I think it will isolate the air-sound more than it will decouple the walls.

It's the same thing. Airborne sound makes the walls vibrate, and since the are mechanically coupled to the existing structure, the vibration will flank to the rest of the building.

Till now we added one layer of 12.5mm gypsum drywall

That is too thin for maximum isolation. You should only ever use 16mm drywall for isolation. 12mm is too thin, too flexible, and too low in mass.

and left a 3mm space to the outer walls

Do you mean at the end of the wall, where the new drywall joins up with the existing outer wall of the building? That gap is not any use, since the framing itself is coupled and flanking.

Question 1: Waste of money?

Not a "waste", no. Just money that is not very well used! :) - Stuart -