DRUM BOOTH CONSTRUCTION | John Sayers’ Recording Studio Design Forum archive

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. The basic concept is right, but there are a few pretty big errors in there that have greatly reduced his isolation: The biggest one is the electrical boxes! :shock: All those huge, gaping holes cut through the isolation... bad idea. You can bet that sound is just gushing out trough those. All electrical should be done inside the room, using surface-mount. Then there's the issue of doors: those look like ordinary hollow-core or foam-core doors, so there's very little isolation from that, plus they have not been beefed up with a second layer, so there's only one single seal per door. That's a potential point of failure right there. And the handles too: those are just normal "through the door" latch sets, fitted by drilling a very large hole all the way through the door: another major reduction in isolation. Studio doors should have no penetrations, and should use automatic closers and/or magnetic seals to keep them closed, with just simple pull handles on the surface to open them. Then there's the window: the tow sides are not decoupled at all! There's some major flanking going on there... That's why he is only getting 30 dB of isolation, despite all he did. That's barely better than a typical house wall. Done properly, that should have given him over 40 dB of isolation. He did the test at 85 dB, which is fine for a a test, but his drums will be running more like 110 to 115, so the level outside will still be up in the 70's or 80's. That's loud, by any standard. I'm not sure he accomplished what he was hoping for at all, in terms of isolation. Then there's the carpet... :shock: :? :!: :roll: If anyone ever doubted the problem with carpeting studios, just listen to the difference in the way his voice sounds on part 8, at around minute 2:40, then listen through to 3:05. Wow. That "dull muddy boom" sound is so typical of what carpet does, sucking out all the highs and doing nothing for the lows, which is the exact opposite of what a small room needs. If only he would have left that great concrete floor as it was, or laid laminate, then treated the CEILING accordingly, it would sound a lot better in there. And finally, there's the HVAC system: 3 PC fans stuck through a hole in the wall! :shock: And even though they might well bring some air into the room, that will work for about 5 or 6 seconds, until the room is pressurized as much as 3 fans can accomplish... Since there is no place for air to EXIT the room, there won't be any FLOW of air either: There's only an inlet, no outlet... The only place air can get out again, is through the gaps around the fans themselves, so those fans will basically be swishing air around themselves, then back out again. No ventilation. So thanks for posting that: it's a good example of how not to do it, and people here sure can learn from that. By paying a little more attention to detail, and just doing a few things differently, it could have been so much better, at no extra cost. - Stuart -