chain link cat enclosure conversion to recording studio

I am going to be converting a cat enclosure to a recording studio since I am no longer breeding savannahs (anyone want a VERY CHEAP and friendly 12 year old f1 female spayed and up to date on all shots?). There are 4 rooms a 8' x 4' entrance an 8' x8' fully insulated enclosed kitten room and two 10' x 8' chain link fence enclosures. The Pictures are basically what I'm working with (the cat trees will be gone) The celling's are 1/4" board with approx 2-3" of dead space between them and the bottom of the house. The chain link fence is VERY tight and the 2x4's are on 2ft centers with 2x4's at 2ft and 4 ft high across to hold the bottom plywood and chain link fence. I would like to have a vocal booth and a couple of recording rooms and possibly smaller room to mic amps ( if that is good idea for banjo / dobro or high guitar), and a control room. I was thinking of putting 3/4" foam board behind the chain link and then 1/2" durock behind that. is that a good idea? should I use thicker foam board what brand is best? I would also like something before the foam board so it is not exposed what would work for that and still let foam board work? Would air extruded blocks be good for anything ( I have a lot of them not being used and they are 2' x2' and 4-6 inches thick). http://imageshack.us/a/img706/9686/img3572y.th.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img825/5225/img3577sg.th.jpg and the enclosed room http://imageshack.us/a/img41/1643/img3583nr.th.jpg Thanks Macmanmatty

Hi "Macmanmatty", and welcome. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :) The first thing we'd need to know is how much isolation ("soundproofing") you need, in decibels. That's the basis for all studio builds, since it defines the materials and construction techniques you'll need to use. So before doing anything else, get yourself a sound level meter (you can buy a good one for about US$ 80 to 100 on eBay or Amazon), and do some testing to see how much isolation you need. Based on that, we can help you figure out what materials you'll need, and how to go about actually building it. - Stuart -

fixed my profile and will do a db check with a meter we are near Tyndall Air Force Base and they fly over our house all the time The big F-22s and F-18s and some times they do drone strikes in to the ocean near our house (fortunetly this is mainly at night).

we are near Tyndall Air Force Base and they fly over our house all the time The big F-22s and F-18s and some times they do drone strikes in to the ocean near our house

Ouch! :shock: :!: OK, it sounds like you are going to need some hefty isolation, then! - Stuart -

which is why I just figured just buy the maximum amount insulation that would reasonable for me to afford. But If you still think a sound meter would help Then I will get one.

which is why I just figured just buy the maximum amount insulation that would reasonable for me to afford.

It seems there's a basic misconception there: Insulation does not isolate. What you need is "isolation", not insulation. Isolation is a concept, while insulation is a building material. Isolation is also called "soundproofing", but that's not a good name for it, since it is actually impossible to "soundproof" something, in the same sense that you can "waterproof" something. But anyway, isolation is not something that you can buy: it is a system that you design and build, using common construction materials. Insulation can be part of an isolation system, but insulation by itself is no use at all. The more isolation you need, the harder it is to design and build, and the more expensive it gets. It's actually an exponential curve: each time you need 10 dB more of isolation, it gets ten time harder to do it, and several times more expensive. For example, going from 20 dB isolation to 30 dB isolation is easy and cheap: you can do it for a few bucks over the weekend. But going from 90 db isolation to 100 dB isolation is massive hard and hugely expensive: as in "millions of dollars" expensive: In both cases the increase was just 10 dB, but because dB itself is a logarithmic scale, higher numbers mean huge amounts of money. As far as I'm aware, there's only a couple of studios on the planet that are isolated to around 100 dB. So, when you say "as much as I can afford", it would really help to know what your budget is for your studio. If you want to spend just one grand, then you are fresh out of luck for isolating the sound of low-flying jets and gun fire. On the other hand, if you say you have 50 grand to spend on it, then you stand a good chance of succeeding. That's one of the reasons why the forum introduction asks for your budget: so we don't start telling you to do things that you can't afford, on the one hand, or on the other hand, that we don't bother telling you the best possible way to do things because we think you can't afford it.

But If you still think a sound meter would help Then I will get one.

Yes, you'll need it all throughout your studio build, and especially when the time comes to calibrate your sound system, and do the acoustic tests that you need to do to design the acoustic treatment. And you'll still need it even after the studio is fully built, to check your levels and re-calibrate the system every now and then. Take a look around eBay and Amazon for meters made by Extech, Mastech, Galaxy, and maybe even the better ones from Pyle. But stay away from the cheap Chinese junk that cost under US$ 50 new. A good one will cost you around US$ 80 or so. Make sure that is has both "A" and "C" weighting, as well as "slow" and "fast" response. Those are the absolute minimum requirements. Here's a couple of options: http://www.amazon.com/Extech-407730--13 ... 000EWY67W/ http://www.amazon.com/Mastech-Digital-s ... 00879E95I/ http://www.amazon.com/Galaxy-CM130-Soun ... 0002GWFG4/ - Stuart -

By "near" tyndall air force base I meant 35 miles from it. The planes fly over our house about four or five times a week twice a day on those days for about 30 min. The drones are about once a week or two not near us and mainly at night but It still shakes the whole house when they launch one. The rest of the time there is almost no noise other than rain, animals, people yelling and diesel tractors going down the road Not every day and 200ft+ from the studio. Basically most the time the only sound is nature and hard rain (we are turning into Vietnam down here Hard rain 5 months of the summer hardly any rain the other 7) I see I left A lot of info out in that last post but I had somewhere to go. Also I noticed that all sound meters you showed are condensior microphones, It wouldn't be possible to use my Fire Face 800 recording interface and macpro or macbook along with one of my many condensior mics and short xlr cable to do the same thing (possibly even better?)? My budget for the isolation of the two rooms is about 2k (But if I need to spend more I will). I have a 500-1000 budget for wiring, But there is wiring there (one celling light and one outlet in every room, but will add more) but it never got hooked up and the sub panel was never installed. I also have another 1-2k budgeted from room acoustic treatment as this is also needed and not the same as isolation treatment and I would possibly use a little more if needed to build the vocal booth. If you read my profile interests You'll see that I good understanding of math physics and chemistry (not sure I'll need that here though), as I have 2/3's of an Electrical Engineering / Computer Engineering degree and then got cheap and read most of the textbooks for the courses I hadn't taken yet. I learn quick! I'm also assuming that all DBA DBC and DBZ weightings are still based on the LOG of base 10 for their scale?

It still shakes the whole house when they launch one.

There's not much that you can do about that on a typical home studio building budget. It is possible to isolate to extreme levels, but the cost is pretty high, and probably not something you'd want to do if you can work around it by not recording at the times when those drones are in the air. Any external vibration that physically shakes the walls, floor or ceiling is going to need a proper floated room, and that escalates the cost wildly, so it might be better ti just plan on typical levels of isolation, and schedule recording around those noisy things.

I noticed that all sound meters you showed are condensior microphones, It wouldn't be possible to use my Fire Face 800 recording interface and macpro or macbook along with one of my many condensior mics and short xlr cable to do the same thing (possibly even better?)

Well, it might be possible, but I doubt it would be better! And you'd still have the basic problem: how would you calibrate your jury-rigged system to accurately represent the correct Sound Pressure Level? That's what those meters do: they measure the actual sound pressure level, in terms of variation in micro-pascals with reference to the international standard of 0.000022 pascals, and display the result as Decibels of Sound Pressure Level, adjusted to either "A" weighting, "C" weighting, or unadjusted flat response. If you can figure out what voltage will be produced by one of your mics at a level of 0.000022 pascals pressure variation at the mic diaphragm, and figure out how to register that as 0 dB unweighted on your software, then you could probably do it yourself. In addition, the mic would have to be a true omni-directional mic with absolutely flat response from 20 Hz. up to at least 8 kHz. Or you could just pony up 80 bucks for a decent sound level meter, and save yourself all that trouble! :) Just to clarify: You CAN use a good omni mic with an ordinary interface and a PC or Mac for measuring the acoustic response of your room, and you will indeed need to do that at several points in the construction. But you still need a sound level meter to calibrate that setup. Your interface has no idea what a level of -43dBu coming from your mic means, in terms of dB(SPL), and the only way to set up that relationship is by using a calibrated sound level meter as the point of reference. So you'll use REW software for analyzing the acoustics of your room, with your omni mic and your Fire Face 800 and your Mac, and REW will display a value that it thinks might possibly maybe perhaps be roughly in the ball park general region of the sound level in the room, but it has no idea if that is correct or not unless you tell it. In other words, when REW sees that -43 dB signal coming in the Fire Face, it might think "That is 87.3 dB", but it has no way of knowing if in reality it is 47 dB or 117 dB. The only way it can ever know, is if you measure the REAL level in the room, with a calibrated sound level meter, and then tell REW what that level really is. There is a procedure for doing that, and you'll go through it when you get to the point of using REW to check your room, but you'll need a sound level meter to do that. And you'll need it now too, to check the real levels in the area where you plan to build, as well as the real levels of how loud you are, and how quite you need to be.

My budget for the isolation of the two rooms is about 2k (But if I need to spend more I will)

You very likely will need to spend a lot more than 2k to get a reasonable level of isolation. Right now you don't have any walls at all, and you need to build two walls, back to back, with a gap between them filled with insulation. You need the same for the ceiling, plus doors, windows, seals, etc. 2k won't go very far towards that.

I also have another 1-2k budgeted from room acoustic treatment as this is also needed and not the same as isolation treatment

That's reasonable to get started, and get the basic treatment in place. Then you can test the room using REW to see how it is responding, and decide if you need more treatment.

If you read my profile interests You'll see that I good understanding of math physics and chemistry (not sure I'll need that here though)

Probably not the chemistry, but the math and physics will certainly come in handy! Acoustics is all about the laws of physics: Building the isolation system for your studio is based the laws of resonance (mass-spring-mass), and also mass-law, to a certain extent, so the ability to understand and solve the equations will definitely be very useful!

I'm also assuming that all DBA DBC and DBZ weightings are still based on the LOG of base 10 for their scale?

Yes, they are log base 10, not log base e (which makes things a lot simpler!) But SPL measurements are pressure-based (just like voltage), so calculations for changes in SPL are 20 log, not 10 log( which applies only to power-based measurements). So a 6dB increase in SPL is twice the intensity, whereas for power-based measurements, you need only a 3 dB increase to get twice the intensity. And of course, none of that tells you much about how loudl you perceive a particular change in sound intensity: So an increase of 3 dB in power output from your speaker will produce a 6 dB increase in SPL, which is twice the intensity, but you would not hear it as being twice as loud, since people generally judge a 10 dB increase as being twice as loud. (Of course, the above SPL changes assume free-field conditions, which don't occur in home studios anyway...) And likewise, none of the above bears any relationship to the dB levels show on VU meters, which in turn bear no relationship to the DB levels shown on analog peak meters, all of which bear zero relationship to the dB levels shown on digital meters, which only measure dBFs. And that's without even getting into dBu, dBv, dBV, dBm and all the others, which actually are related to each other (but not to dB SPL or dBFS). Confusing stuff, this whole decibel thing... :) - Stuart -

ello, I am back with a lot more info. I bout an american recorder sound meter. The ambient readings for A is under 30db and for C is 45db and . This for just nature and wind. When the neighbors have there AC/ heat about 100ft away on the A jumps to 45db and C goes to 50db. But that is only by the long outer wall of the live room. The maximum DB readings (loudest when a Semi- Truck goes by this doesn't happen often as we are on back county road but there are still stores that need pepsi, Miller, and sysco; ). 50db for A and 75db for C. I have never actually gotten numbers this high they are rounded up from around 47-49 for A and 73-74 for C. I have included a cad drawing of the studio. Everything is to scale. and all dimensions are in inches if the number has more than digit after the decimal point round up to the nearest .5 inch. The square in the middle is a filled concrete block and is one the pilings for our house that is 12 foot high in the air. I plan to rip all of the current celling and bring the studio to the bottom of our house which makes the ceilings about 9' 8" high. The concrete slab it sits on is at places slightly over 2ft thick. Every line in the wall is where a 2x4 is they are on 2ft centers but for the outer walls where the 1/2" durock will be installed I will add additional 2x4's on 3ft centers. To make things easier would there be any problems installing them rotated 90 degrees to they are flat with the boards that tie the chain link fence. where there is a double wall in the live room the inner 2x4's will be on 18" centers for the 3x5 durock sheets which will also be 1/2". I was going fill both walls with 3 1/2" thick r-13 fiberglass insulation that is 15" wide and seal all gaps with great stuff expanding foam. NO durock or anything else other than the insulation and chain link fence on the insides of the walls and they will be 1" apart from each other unless you think I would need more? and I will leave the chain link fence unless there is a VERY good reason not to. I was only double the outer walls of the the live room as I don't have that many db's to cancel and I think that it would only needed there? In the control room I plan to do all of the mixing and monitering with headphones as that is what I am used to and with weird way of hearing things that works best for me. ( I hear can't notes, octaves , keys or anything musically related All I hear is sounds and I can hear sounds no one else does. I hear people talking (most likely people in the control room) in old records from the 50's 60's and 70's that no one else can; But I can play ANY stringed instrument very good and by ear). The walls of the control room are already covered with 3/8" plywood on both sides and filled with 3 1/2" fiberglass insulation (but it was old and some of the paper was rotten). Would their be any added benefit to putting 1/2" durock on the outside over the plywood? Or on the inside aswell? The doors are homemade doors out of 2x4's that are 3 1/2" thick one side now is 3/8" ply wood and I will fill them with insulation and put durock or possibly more plywood if the weight limits won't let me use durock. They are hung by three heavy duty hinges and are 80" tall. To cool this the summer I was just going to put a window ac in the storage room and turn it off when I am recording. Sometimes in the summer the outside humidity is 100% and temps are 98+ would I need an additional de-humidifer and possibly a source of fresh air as well? Any other tips advice or ideas would appreciated! Thanks Jesse Macmanmatty