Haunted Dining Room Studio..

Howdy. This forum- Unbelievable resource.. Hope my project offers some value, as it unfolds, to the next person down the line doing the same thing on this small a scale. This home studio is to be built in a crazy, haunted 1920 dining room. Plan is below. First go at Smartdraw, so, well, that speaks for itself. Have enjoyed this amazing website; have also been reading, until crosseyed, many docs from the BBC, CDB CNC, IRC, NAIMA, and others. Some of it's just too doggone technical for the time (OK, and the brain) constraints I have, but I've picked up a lot of the basics. Small space I have to work with: 13'-2" x 15'-6". Recording: Jazz, Rock. Mostly personal projects. Maybe I'm Dreaming: I use Event 20/20bas that I'd like to soffit (after reading this forum): I have 2 of them now, want to increase to 5.1, IF it's feasible in this room. Budget: $7,000 dedicated to cost materials for floor, walls, and ceiling, as well as acoustic treatments, and wood for the desk/racks, which I will build myself. I'm a former builder with some good free help, so labor's not much of a factor here. HVAC: none. As long as I can open the doors to the booth, control room, and the small door to the cpu area next to the window (and open the window), the entire room will exhaust completely down to a temp of about 60-68 degrees in less than two minutes, no exaggeration. There are only about 5-10 days out of the entire year when this won't be the case. Location: Richmond District of San Francisco, near the ocean. There's almost always a crosswind that races through this house if a window on each side is open. All houses are independently built (around 1920), but jammed right up next to each other, contacting and transmitting all those dull thumps from one house to the other. Comparison: I got started in a 6' x 6' room with no flow-thru, computer setup, mixing on an old pair of Realistic Optimus 120s- this change will still be a big improvement, believe me. I know it could be a decent control room if I just use the whole space for just one room, but there are two issues. One, I really want to try to get a vocal booth, and Two, the object in the lower left is an 1800's wooden 6' tall pump organ that is required to be somewhere in the existing room, and I would like to keep it off to the side, just to where I can slide in there and play it. The organ stays in this room though, and I can't change that one. And I have tried. 1) Details aren't in my crude plan below yet, as I would LIKE to eventually set the CR up for 5.1. Is this even feasible at this size, to any true benefit? 2) Neighbors really need isolation. I'm telling you, it's Mrs. Kravitz next door. Their house touches ours along that wall. Would like to do the STC 60+ double-frame wall along that side. 3) I want to float a room-in-a-room, framed floors on neoprene, ceiling with multi-drywall on RC (leaf question on the horizon on that one though, I can feel it), all WITHOUT attaching anything to the present ceiling. The new one must be framed. Can't budge on that point, and I smell trouble on that point already.. Here's the plan- is it just plain ridiculous, or is it workable? Thanks, Perry http://www.perrydandrea.com

BTW, the ceiling in the existing room above is about 8'-10", but the corners are curved from the wall to the ceiling, and its full height is reached about 5" away from the wall. This room was once a large formal dining room. What was the "breakfast room" is now the present dining room. Other details: The original structure opening on the left (56") leads to the foyer, then seven feet farther left to the front door. The double doors on the upper right are actually a double casement window- this is where I would like to keep the computer tower both for sonic isolation as well as its own cool comfort (again, it's almost never warmer than room temperature outside, usually low to mid 60's during the day in the summer, 5-10 degrees less in the winter). Below on the right are a pair of french doors that lead into the present dining room, and around the corner from that is a swinger that connects to the kitchen. All those will be closed off and unused as long as this studio is here, which I project to be about 5 or 6 years, after which time I will dismantle the whole thing in lieu of hopefully a better space by then. "And now, Ladies and Gentlemen.. The DOORS!!" As for the doors.. my plan is to manufacture my own doors, each as a section of wall that opens and is sealed under force. As of now, my plan is to get the actual hardware (VERY heavy-duty surface hinges, closers, etc) perhaps from somewhere like Zero International ( http://www.zerointernational.com ). For visual between the CR and the booth, I will either incorporate a window into each door between the two rooms or put a tall, narrow window in the wall space beside them, depending on where the final plan puts those doors. But yes- these doors, with beefed-up structure for rigidity, will be the same thickness as the walls, abiding by the same leaf/air rules as the walls. I don't believe I have seen this yet in the projects described here (most DIY doors described in these parts start with some kind of actual conventional door to begin with- but these will be born of an actual wall section that is fortified and braced -maybe even on a wheel or two just in front of its seal- for its repetitive radial trajectory). If this were to be a commercial facility with lots of traffic, I would plan otherwise for the doors, just due to the potential wear and tear. But right now the plan is for this door to compete with the walls for TL, leaving its relative TL weak link squarely (and solely) in the hands of its seals. To have such a solution pre-made and pre-hung that would be on par with the walls would cost more than my entire materials budget for this entire project. The orange lines in the plan are tentative at this point and will be detailed based on whether this room will be even a half-decent 5.1 candidate or not. Also- There will be no light fixture or receptacle boxes built into the walls or ceiling. I'm going to feed a single cable from the present circuit into the CR as well as the iso booth for lighting (lamps, etc) via strips, and I plan to add a separate circuit, clean from the box, for audio, which will also feed through as a single cable and connect strips/power conditioners off that as well. NONE of the fixins in this studio need to be high grade for any reason other than functionality- the wood for the desk/racks will probably be a decent , like birch, plywood, for example, but I'm not looking for this room to be showcased in Mix magazine- I just want it to be lean and mean, and I'll make it feel good to be in there using extremely economical creativity. In terms of function, I want to take it as far as my budget will realistically allow, and that restriction alone precludes any sort of exotic style for style's sake. I got work to do here. Thanks for checking this one out. Perry http://www.perrydandrea.com

Here's the plan- is it just plain ridiculous, or is it workable?

well I suppose if you came from 6 x 6 it would be fine.:) 15 x 12 would be a reasonable sized control room IMO but to shorten it to get a tiny booth and a wasted area (bottom left) is pushing it don't you think?? could you use the 7' hallway to the front door as a booth? cheers JOhn

Indeed I can. John, thanks for your response. I believe the voice of reason is what I really needed here. 8) I'm going to turn this puppy 90 degrees and maximize my space. The layout of the original structure would lend itself best to putting the monitors on the left wall, due to the symmetry there, and just enter the CR between the monitors. I can worry about 5.1 later, perhaps using a different set of smaller speakers on stands equidistant from the chair. The 5.1 thing is not a huge issue at this point anyway. The challenge is, I would like to take advantage of that incredible cool flow-thru marine breeze for quick cool-downs, but that would mean access to that window through the bass trap in that area (upper right), and I'm getting a sinking feeling that may not be too feasible. Anyone ever hinge a false wall to get to a door in the M-A-M wall? -OR- Actually the better possibility is that the window just remain closed and build over it, rather than affecting the crucial bass trap in the corner; then, if the upper door of the two french doors on the right side of this room is close enough to the center of the CR back wall, there could be a narrow door in the middle of that wall (as in some designs here that have a door there), and with it temporarily open, the same cool air flow-thru effect can be achieved by opening the window in the breakfast room beyond. In that case, I'm sure that the interior surface door needs to be absorptive, particularly being parallel to and opposite the entrance door. My computer is full of 10K and 15K SCSI drives that scream like a bunch of little mechanical banshees. The tower has to be outside of the CR listening area if at all possible, and I suppose maybe one of the corners behind a monitor? (the rear of the control room is too far away for some of my equipment, cable-wise) The antique organ will be moved to another room, thanks to a little shifting, so now this project can be more streamlined. I'll redraw the plan, and if I'm not missing anything crucial (or when, is more like it), then I will move it over to Studio Construction. John, thanks again for the nudge in the right direction! Perry

I was considering monitoring from the east wall, but other needs led to another redraw. Here's my Plan C: I'm considering this arrangement due to the no-brainer of having my machine area (computer tower) accessible from the door to the kitchen, making it unnecessary to put a door in the actual control room wall there. I can just reach the computer from the other side, through the kitchen door, not to mention that the door there can be opened to give the computer a little cooler air as well. I don't think there are any major considerations concerning this general plan- if there are (in addition to the fact that I have to make the entry door in the back of the room very absorptive inside the control room), please feel free to jump in. If it seems like at least a good starting point, I need to address this issue of isolation with my circumstances. Floor: This is a hardwood floor over a basement area that's been converted into a mother-in-law apartment (yes, complete with a tenant) that, itself, has a 7-foot framed, sheetrock ceiling attached to the floor joists of my room, as is, apparently, the framing of the walls of the mother-in-law apartment. Those walls sit on a 8" thick pad of concrete that was built on top of however thick the original concrete floor is. Anyway, I would say that the floor in my existing room is a two-leaf system with 9-1/2" (depth of the actual 2" joists) of airspace between the leaves. Walls: The southern wall of the control room is an exterior wall (complete with siding) in contact with the complete exterior wall of the neighboring house. So this is probably a triple-leaf system itself, and I have my doubts about there being any insulation (1920 construction in a marine climate, right next to the coast- remember what Mark Twain said about summers here- well, the winters are just a few degrees below that, so, it's like mild air conditioning almost all the time out here). All the other walls (only a tiny section of which is exterior) are clearly two-leaf plaster walls, certainly hollow. Again, my materials budget is $7,000.00, and I need maximum isolation given these circumstances: 1) The budget is for all materials in this construction, including final acoustic treatment. 2) There will be no concrete involved in this design! 3) I cannot attach anything to the present walls or ceiling. I'm leaning towards floating a floor, regardless of the introduction of a new leaf to that partition, as most of the sound that needs to be isolated is in the vocal and trumpet ranges. During the day there can be some bass bleed-through, as the neighbors next door and below are pretty much gone during that time- the living room of this house is like the soundboard of a piano, but this floor has a much more solid feel to it, due to the additional walls and beam underneath. I just need to locate them exactly with a scanner when it's time to float the floor (thanks to the tip from Steve). On the west side, the lower "doors" are a double casement window, and the french DR doors above them simply will not be used, except for the possible ventilation "hatch" described below. I have absolutely NO problem using triple layers of drywall on any leaf anywhere in this design. I just need to know if this is a workable starting design and then what to do about designing all the leaf systems in this control room. I actually prefer some form of double wall for the south wall. And my present plan is to totally build a room within a room, including a fullly framed, sealed, and angled ceiling system. I also plan to put some kind of "hatch" door, maybe 1'x3', in the middle of the wall between the monitors, to allow for cross ventilation between sessions. The seabreeze (and occasional landbreeze, for that matter) will be able to exhaust the entire room in just a minute or two, dropping the temp to the upper 60's in a hurry. But heating this room will not be a concern. OK- Plan C: The inside dimensions of the existing room are 13'-2" x 15'-6". Perry