Casaestudio Project

Hello everyone. Two friends and I have been reading these forums for a while and I think time has finally come to start our own project. Therefore, it's also time to seek some advice and guidance from the experts in order to plan it properly before we start. I have to say that we owe the "little" we've learned so far to this forum, as well as to Hispasonic and Gervais' book "Build it like the pros". Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge !! Before I ask any questions I'll try to give a complete description of the situation, aim and construction plan, so I don't waste your time asking for any additional info afterwards (although I'll be glad to give it if asked!) So ... this is the project: Location: 45 km from Madrid, Spain Website for reference: http://www.casaestudio.es Budget. about 7000€ DIY Rooms to apply Isolation to: 2 (Total of 30m2 / 98,42 sq ft) Maybe also the CR. Rooms to apply acoustic treatment to: 3 (1 control room and 2 studios; 50m2 / 164,04 sq ft) Building description: - Detached house not sharing its foundations with any other house. - NO ONE LIVES in the house, just artists while recordings are taking place… So, some structural sound transmission could be tolerated. - Ventilated roof with steel trusses and porexpan plates over the ceiling. The roof is about 3m high at the ridge and about 40cm at the eaves. - Ceilings are made of plasterboard screwed directly to the roof's steel trusses. The ceilings cannot be raised unless a complete re-roofing is undertaken, which is far beyond our budget. We could actually raise the ceiling without redoing the roof but the steel trusses should stay in their position, which would render them visible from inside the house, and that would be a massive structural noise bridge, I guess. - The “shell” of the house, as well as the wall that divides the garage and the living room are made of brick walls. - Inside walls made of plasterboard (drywall). I don't know what’s on the inside yet. - Ceramic tiled floor in the house, - Concrete tiled floor in the garage - Closest neighbours are 6 meters (19,68ft) away from the house. The rooms we'll be working on are the current living room (which we are planning to turn into 2 rooms) and the adjacent garage. ACTIVITY TO DATE The living room has been used as the only live/rehearsal room. It has a chimney acoustically untreated (which acts as a sound tunnel to the outside!). Not special sound insulation at all in the room; just some acoustic treatment. DIMENSIONS Living Room: H 2.50m (8,20ft) W 3.60m (11,811ft) L 7.45m (24,44ft) ; 28,18m2 / 92,45 sq ft Garage: H 2.50m (8,20ft) W 3.67m (12,04ft) L 6m (19,68ft) ; 22.02m2 / 72,24 sq ft AIM: Stop bothering the neighbours, even if they are in their garden. Some noise would be tolerated but not as loud as it is today. AIM: To turn the living room into a Control Room and Studio "B", which will be rather dead and used mostly as a vocal booth/amp room. Light/medium isolation will beapplied in Studio "B" AIM: To turn the garage into Studio "A". Medium/High isolation. This room will be used for tracking drums / full band and as a rehearsal room for a full band (rock). INSULATION AIM: +-60db for Studio “A” (Garage), +-50db for Studio “B”, +-40db for CR (not sure whether to insulate) OTHER INFO We have used the house several times for tracking and it seems that, most of the sound leakage occurs through the ceiling/roof. PLANNING IN DEPTH GARAGE (STUDIO "A") : H 2.50m (8,20ft) W 3.67m (12,04ft) L 6m (19,68ft) ; 22.02m2 / 72,24 sq ft Before we started working on it, the garage had three brickwalls. The front consisted of a large up-and-over wooden garage door. There was a 70cm wide wooden door in the back wall, opposite the large garage door, and a window in the side wall to those two. We have removed both doors and window, built a wall where the large door used to be with 15cm hollow concrete blocks and the window hole with bricks; both rendered with mortar. We are waiting to put a new door, which will be the only way in to the garage from the living room and to close the hole where the back door used to be, with a new concrete block wall. As we were able to see when we were removing doors and windows, it seems that the brick walls have an air chamber between the bricks and another layer of thinner bricks, but that is hard to tell for sure. The wall adjacent to the living room is a load bearing wall and will be dealt with carefully as we'll need to place a window and a door in that wall. We'll hire an architect for that. After we make holes in that wall to allow the installation of the door and the window, we might be able to get more information about that wall construction and to know if it really has an air gap between the two leaves of bricks, which is a normal feature in home building in this area. But one thing we can be sure of is that there are flanking paths between those two leaves: there are metal beams at the top of the hole left by the small wooden door we're about to seal, as well as at the top of the window hole we have sealed. The hole where the large garage door used to be is framed all around with heavy steel beams. The floor is made of concrete thin tiles, which sit on a concrete slab, which in turn rests over sand, I think. The floor is about 1 step lower than the rest of the house (20/15cm) The ceiling is made of plasterboard screwed directly to the roof's steel trusses. At the back of the garage there’s an adjoining tools/machine/ little storage room (3.67m x 1.7m). The boiler and the washing machine will live in there as well. Hopefully that will work as an air lock, adding to the insulation, which would be just as well, since our closest neighbours live about six metres from this wall. This room shares one brick wall with the garage and one brickwall with the CR (current living room). The other two outside walls are made of hollow concrete blocks filled with mortar on both sides. They also share the same ceiling. Now, the plan is to build a room within a room BUT we want to lose as little in height as we possibly can, since the room is “only” 2,50m high. - Insulation needed: around 60db, I guess. - Air conditioning: using Fujitsu ASY 35 UI LLCC - Air renovation: using a silent air extractor + DIY silencers. We are contemplating two different approaches and haven't chosen either of them yet: - Brick/block wall building method. - Drywall/steel framing method. OPTION A.- Drywall building procedure seems to be quite straight forward, cleaner and, maybe, more desirable for non professional builders. Also, the finishing touches would be easier to accomplish. With drywall we would do something like this: Bolt the wall steel frame to the floor and build with this design: Chovacustic 35 fieltex glued/bolt to the outer leaf (existing envelope walls) - steel frame leaving 10cm air chamber - rockwool 70kg/m3 filling that chamber - drywall 15mm - Chovacustic Viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm. Estimated +-60db attenuation with this system and would "lose" 14cm from each wall. :?: :?: :roll: :?: :?: Our main brain crusher is the ceiling, though. We know the insulation of any room is as effective as its weakest leaf... and the ceiling is our biggest challenge. The ceiling construction method we first thought of was: Chovacoustic 35 Fieltex (pdf attached) bolt to the current drywall - Silent blocks hanging from the current drywall (but attached to the steel truss) - steel frame leaving a 5cm gap - fill that gap with rockwool 70kg/m3 - drywall 15mm - Chovacoustic Viscolam 65 (pdf attached) - drywall 15mm This way we would lose about 8cm in height. This ceiling method was taken from http://www.hispasonic.com/foros/resumen-indice-insonorizacion-local-ensayo/461553 Then we have came up with other "crazy" ideas such as, wood beams sitting on the air gap of the walls so the ceiling could rest on them and be decoupled from the structure. 8) We have thought of leaving the floor untreated and laying just a 2mm layer of polyurethane on top of the current tiles and a 7/8mm laminated floor over it. The walls would be bolted to the concrete tiles and slab and the floor would be laid after the walls are finished. Should we do it the other way around? OPTION B.- On the other hand, It seems to us that brickwalls would give us better isolation and would be cheaper for us to build, but we would lose more room. Also, the implementation of the air renovation and aircon seems more challenging with bricks (and more importantly, harder to fix or improve afterwards) We have some experience with brick/block building but we are not skilled/experienced with "smooth finishing".. :oops: :roll: If it were built with bricks, the plan could be this, roughly: A1.- Eliminate air gap, in case there is one, between the two layers of the existing brick walls in the garage. As said before, we might be able to know if there really is one when we install the door to the garage from the current living room that's becoming Studio B and Control Room. To eliminate the air gap we could fill the space between the walls with sand or mortar (We are guessing but that could be nearly 2'5 cubic metres if the air gap is 5cm thick???... sounds like hard work but it has the advantage of sand being very cheap... 0,03€/kg). We could also strip the first layer, then plaster the newly exposed bricks. That would give us a slightly wider room, and the possibility of plastering the face to which we wouldn't have access otherwise. The first layer is made of this kind of bricks: (http://almacendemateriales.com/ladrillo ... n30154.jpg) A2.- To dig a trench through both the existing tiles and the concrete slab along the whole perimeter of the garage in order to lay a good foundation for the new brick walls. A3.- Build the brick walls and plaster at least the inside of the "room within the room". We don't know if we're going to be able to plaster the side that would be between the two leaves (and hopefully single) air gap. Bricks to be used for these walls: (http://www.materialesdeconstruccionmadr ... ado103.jpg) A4.- For the ceiling of the new room, we could install new steel beams resting only on the new walls. These would be 4cm high. The easiest way to close the space between those beams would be to use bricks first and then pour a concrete layer over them, but that would take upsome room height. So, we may go for the denser concrete layer only, with some steel bars inside. Bricks to close the space between those beams: (http://almacendemateriales.com/ladrillo ... n40204.jpg) A5.- The other layer of double wall on the ceiling would be completed with the same sort of drywall the ceiling had before we started working. The one screwed onto the light steel trusses that hold the roof. Drywall with several layers I guess... maybe up to three 13mm layers, as the concrete on the new room's ceiling is going to be thin and the air gap in the ceiling is going to be about 10cm high. A6.- There would be rockwool (or another absorbent material) filling the air gap inside the double walls (and ceiling) to some extent, but we still have to decide the better way to do it. We have read on page 172 of the Mastermaster handbook of acoustics by F. Alton Everest that maybe low density mineral fiber balls could be used and we are trying to figure out what that is (maybe what we call "perlita"?). We're also trying to figure out how to get some inches between the rockwool and the walls, as we have read it could lead to the same results as using thicker rookwool. All this rockwall installation seems harder to build with bricks than with drywalls, as we've been told that rockwool can't be in contact with water or it will not work... even if it gets dry again... does rockwool "die" when it gets wet? A7.- All the inner walls and ceiling of the room would be painted to cover the mortar. A8.- The floor would be untreated. The existing tiles could serve as a base for new tiles or a non floating wooden floor as in Option B STUDIO "B" This room will be used mainly as a vocal booth/isolated space for other acoustic instruments during live sessions (i.e. accordion, harmonica, light percussion, vocals...). The sound pressure in this room will not be as high as in Studio "A"... But, who knows if a drum kit could ever be played in this room... maybe if need be! It will surely be used as an amp room as well, though. We would strip the existing drywall inner leaves and leave the outer leaves as they are. We'll probably be using drywall in this room, but maybe we'll go for 5cm air chamber instead of 10cm. The system would be: existing walls as outer leaves - 5cm air chamber filled with 70kg/m3 rockwool - drywall 15mm - Viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm. +- 50db attenuation expected. The new wall between CR and Studio "B" would be a double wall: drywall 15mm - viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm - rockwool 70kg/m3 5cm - rockwool 70kg/m3 5 cm - drywall 15mm - viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm. The ceiling and floor would be as in studio "A". This room has quite a large double glass door, which connects the current living room with the outside porch and we are still figuring out what to do with it... It's lovely to have some sun light in so, we are planning on enclosing the porch with glass in the future (a conservatory of sorts). This could occasionally be used to track other acoustic instruments when needed... As far as ventilation is concerned, we still don't know where the best place for the silencer boxes is. IOW whether to put them inside or outside the house., or even inside the ventilated roof. Should it be inside, what is the best place? Any info on that will be greatly appreciated! CONTROL ROOM This is still under its early planning stage. The dimensions chosen for it are taken from one of the golden ratios I've found: 1:1.4:2.1 **Update** will change it to 1:1.4:1.9, the best and prefered ratio for Louden. Anyways, I'm still looking for a lot of answers regarding its design and I'm still reading a lot. I'll come back with fewer questions in a few days, I'm sure. The rough drawings you see are just that: very rough. I still don't know whether I should isolate it at all (if I do it I won't be able to comply with the ratio I've chosen) and I haven´t done much planning of the acoustic solutions to integrate in order to tune it right... I'm sure I'll come up with something! I've always treated my mixing rooms by ear and always end up finding my way learning how their sound was and interpreted correctly after some time. This is the first time I do a design before hand... :) Questions: We would love to know opinions and suggestions for the isolation of the rooms. I think it would be quite hard to install an acoustic door on a drywall so we thought on installing 2 sets of glass slide doors in between Studio A and B. Any suggestion? Regarding the shape of the rooms, do you think it's desirable to destroy parallelisms between walls? I'm very lost at designing them. I would really want to come up with a "sweet spot" to place the drumset in Studio A... Any advise on the geometry of the room? Should I do that in the acoustic conditioning stage better? Knowing we have access to the ventilated roof, Is it recommended to place the air exchange silencers there? I'm away from home at the moment but will be back tomorrow and I'll try to get you fresh pictures from the rooms. As we say in Spain, this post is a BRICK... sorry. I just hope you can digest it well. A thousand "thank yous" for that!! Salud! Niko (Silvestre, and Marcio)

Few more pictures. Downloading SketchUp... more plans to come soon. Roof trusses. Wall separating living room and garage (notice the fireplace on the left) That might stay in the control room design... Garage pics

INSULATION AIM: +-60db for Studio “A” (Garage), +-50db for Studio “B”, +-40db for CR (not sure whether to insulate)

Your goals are attainable, but 60 dB is pretty much the limit you can expect for typical home studio / project studio construction, such as yours. And yes, I would definitely isolate the CR to the same level as LR-B, at least.

We have used the house several times for tracking and it seems that, most of the sound leakage occurs through the ceiling/roof.

That is very typically the case with most houses. Losses through the roof, windows, doors and HVAC system are the major culprits, almost always.

We have removed both doors and window, built a wall where the large door used to be with 15cm hollow concrete blocks and the window hole with bricks; both rendered with mortar.

So the entire surface of those three walls is rendered now? Excellent. That's a great start. Now seal the surface with a good quality masonry sealant ("sellante de cal" is the type I normally use here in Chile). In fact, any decent paint that adheres well to cement will work. The purpose is to seal the porous surface air-tight.

But one thing we can be sure of is that there are flanking paths between those two leaves:

In that case, I would assume that the wall is acting more like a single-leaf wall, and do all the math based on that assumption. You have plenty of mass in those walls, so you should be able to get excellent isolation.

The floor is made of concrete thin tiles, which sit on a concrete slab, which in turn rests over sand, I think.

Excellent! :thu:

The ceiling is made of plasterboard screwed directly to the roof's steel trusses.

Not so good... :(

- Air conditioning: using Fujitsu ASY 35 UI LLCC - Air renovation: using a silent air extractor + DIY silencers.

Sounds good. What are the specs on that air conditioner? Do you have a link?

Drywall building procedure seems to be quite straight forward, cleaner and, maybe, more desirable for non professional builders. Also, the finishing touches would be easier to accomplish.

Correct.

Chovacustic 35 fieltex glued/bolt to the outer leaf (existing envelope walls) -

:!: :roll: :ahh: Did you read the information on that product provided by the manufacturer in their own data sheet? That's not what it is meant for, and would not help you at all. http://chova.com/documentacion/fichas-t ... tex-v2.pdf "Aislamiento acústico de todo tipo de conducciones, tanto de aire como de agua." It will work very well in that application, as well as possible helping a but to isolate slabs, but not as wall isolation. There's no point to it in that application.

rockwool 70kg/m3 filling that chamber

The density is too high. You will not get good isolation in low frequencies from that. The density should be around 50kg/m3 for mineral wool, or 30 kg/m3 for fiberglass.

drywall 15mm - Chovacustic Viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm.

Why do you want the Viscolam 65 in there? It isn't a CLD, and only appears to add mass and seal the surface. But that's an expensive product,and I don't see the need for it in your situation. You say you want about 60 dB isolation for your room. You already have a thick, heavy, sealed and plastered brick wall as your outer leaf. Two layers of 15mm drywall with an air gap of 15cm filled with 30 kg/m3 fiberglass will get you to that point. If you want to be certain, then go for three layers of 15mm drywall, or put a full application of Green Glue between your two layers. Either one will get you a bit more than 60 dB, in theory. However, that's just the walls. It does not matter how good your wall isolation is, if you don't also get the same form your ceiling, windows, doors, HVAC and electrical systems. Walls are relatively easy to isolate, windows a bit harder, doors and ceilings much harder, and HVAC harder still.

Our main brain crusher is the ceiling, though. We know the insulation of any room is as effective as its weakest leaf... and the ceiling is our biggest challenge.

Right! That is, indeed, a big weak point.

This ceiling method was taken from

Mmmm.... wellll.... I think I'll refrain from commenting on that... :) I'm sure they got reasonable isolation in there, but the amount of money the spent on unnecessary materials, and the time it took to apply them.... Mmmmm..... welll..... :shock:

Then we have came up with other "crazy" ideas such as, wood beams sitting on the air gap of the walls so the ceiling could rest on them and be decoupled from the structure.

Not crazy at all! That is, indeed, the correct way to do it. For proper isolation, the inner-leaf ceiling should rest ONLY on the inner-leaf walls, and all of that entire inner-leaf should be fully separate from the outer leaf: not touching at any point. Not even one nail.

We have thought of leaving the floor untreated and laying just a 2mm layer of polyurethane on top of the current tiles and a 7/8mm laminated floor over it. The walls would be bolted to the concrete tiles and slab and the floor would be laid after the walls are finished.

Perfect! That is, indeed, the correct way to do it.

A2.- To dig a trench through both the existing tiles and the concrete slab along the whole perimeter of the garage in order to lay a good foundation for the new brick walls.

... and how would you then support the exposed edges of the existing slab? you can't just leave that with no foundation below.... You'd have to dig back under it, and pour a new foundation to support that. Lot's of work! Expensive...

For the ceiling of the new room, we could install new steel beams resting only on the new walls. These would be 4cm high.

How did you determine that? What numbers did you use for the dead load and live load? What span? What deflection?

he easiest way to close the space between those beams would be to use bricks first and then pour a concrete layer over them,

This is a ceiling we are talking about: How would you get access to the top of that to be able to pour concrete on it?

The one screwed onto the light steel trusses that hold the roof

What dimensions? Same as above: what span? What live load? What dead load? What deflection?

All this rockwall installation seems harder to build with bricks than with drywalls,

Yep...

as we've been told that rockwool can't be in contact with water or it will not work...

Who told you that? Do you have a link? Rockwool is made from.. well... ROCK! It is spun from mineral fibers that often come from slag, produced in various types of blast furnace. Basically, it is the left-over molten rock that is not wanted, after the metal has been extracted from it. Basically, it is rock. As far as I know, rock still remains as rock after it gets wet and dries again. There might be a problem if the mineral wool you use is made with a water-soluble binder, so check the data sheets for the specific product you have in mind. The data sheets will tell you about that, and what the possible issues would be if the product got wet then dried out again. Don't rely on "heresay": "Somebody tole me...." "I heard that...". Check out the fact for yourself, for the actual specific product that you plan to use. If you can't find specs for it published by the manufacturer, then don't use that product! Only use products that you have full documentation form showing that it will work as planned in your application. Don't guess.

A7.- All the inner walls and ceiling of the room would be painted to cover the mortar.

:thu: Correct!

A8.- The floor would be untreated. The existing tiles could serve as a base for new tiles or a non floating wooden floor

:thu: Correct!

We'll probably be using drywall in this room, but maybe we'll go for 5cm air chamber instead of 10cm.

:shock: Why? Did you do that math? Are you aware that your low frequency isolation would suffer greatly from having such a high MSM resonant frequency in that wall system? Thin air gap = high resonant frequency = poor isolation.... Never have less than 10cm air gap.

The system would be: existing walls as outer leaves - 5cm air chamber filled with 70kg/m3 rockwool - drywall 15mm - Viscolam 65 - drywall 15mm. +- 50db attenuation expected.

I would suggest something more like: Existing wall - 10cm air gap filled with 30 kg/m3 fiberglass insulation - 2 layers of 15mm fire-rated drywall. Isolation of around 55 dB.

The new wall between CR and Studio "B"

I don't see how you would accomplish that and still have each room built as a fully-decoupled single-leaf structure. Please show your full SketchUp model. I have a feeling that you are missing something important here...

This room has quite a large double glass door,

Do yo mean "double glass door" in the sense that there is a single door that has a double glazed unit mounted in it? Or do you mean that there are two doors,side by side, and each of them has a single pane of glass in it? That is two very different things.... Either way, that's a major weak point. It is pretty hard to get 60 dB of isolation, or 50 db, or even 40 dB, when you have a normal domestic operable door involved.

As far as ventilation is concerned, we still don't know where the best place for the silencer boxes is.

You will need two silencer boxes on each duct, in each room. One where the duct penetrates the outer-leaf of each room, and one where it penetrates the inner-leaf. And of course you need two ducts per room: one for bringing fresh air in, one for taking stale air out.

IOW whether to put them inside or outside the house.,

The boxes that handle the penetration of the outer leaf can either be outside the outer leaf, or in between the outer leaf and the inner leaf, in the air gap (if it is big enough). The boxes that handle the penetration of the inner leaf can either be inside the inner-leaf (inside each room), or in between the outer leaf and the inner leaf, in the air gap (if it is big enough).

CONTROL ROOM

You re wasting space with shape.

will change it to 1:1.4:1.9, the best and prefered ratio for Louden.

Why did you choose that one, and not one of the others? Also, your room is not rectangular, so simple ratios do not apply. The are only applicable to rooms that have six sides (4 walls, floor, ceiling) which are mutually parallel to each other. You show a room that has 8 sides (six walls, floor,ceiling), and at least six of those are not parallel to each other. So you cannot use ratios or simple room mode calculators to predict the modal response of your room.

I still don't know whether I should isolate it at all

Yes, absolutely, and without any question.

if I do it I won't be able to comply with the ratio I've chosen

Why not? I don't understand the reason for that.

I've always treated my mixing rooms by ear

:shock: bad idea: The human ear does not have the ability to do that. It cannot determine that there is an SBIR problem at the mix position at 73.5 Hz, nor that there is a modal issue in the 0.x.0 direction at 97.1 Hz, nor that there is comb filtering caused by a floor bounce at 105 Hz, nor that there is a reflection from the right speaker on the left side wall that is smearing the psycho-acoustic perception of directionality, nor that there is discrepancy between the decay times between the 150 Hz band and the bands on either side, nor that there is an imbalance of 3 dB between the levels of the two channels in the upper mid range, nor that there is a sudden phase shift in the room response to the left speaker at 43 Hz, nor.... All your brain can tell you about that is that "it sounds wrong". You might even be able to say "the bass is not tight", or "the high end is tinny", or "the vocals sound thin", or "bass guitars are muddy", but your brain does not have the capability of determining what the problem actually is, and if you don't know what it is then you can't fix it. the ONLY way to tune a control room is to analyze its empty response with a tool such as REW,compare the results to the specifications in BS.1116-2 (or EBU TECH-3276), then design specific treatment for each issue. When you do that right, this is the result: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20471 When you do that wrong, fiddling by ear, trial and error, and guessing, this is the result: viewtopic.php?t=20410 Which result would you rather have? :)

I think it would be quite hard to install an acoustic door on a drywall

Why? That's an acoustic door in a drywall inner-leaf, that I designed for a customer in Australia. Along with it's companion in the outer leaf (brick, just lke yours), that gets about 60 dB of isolation.

so we thought on installing 2 sets of glass slide doors in between Studio A and B. Any suggestion?

That can work, provided that you use proper acoustic rated sliding glass doors.

Regarding the shape of the rooms, do you think it's desirable to destroy parallelisms between walls?

No. It wastes space, and it is a myth that you need to do that, and you need to splay them by 12° if you want to eliminate flutter echo like that, and it wastes space. The ONLY reason why you would validly need to angle your walls, is if you are following a design concept for your control room that requires it, such as RFZ, CID, NER, or something similar. In that case, yes, you do need to angle some of the walls, and that has to be done at certain specific angles. You MIGHT also want to do that if you anticipate certain problems in your live rooms, or are trying to achieve a certain sound. Consider this: Most people consider Abbey Road to be among the best studios in the world. Look a the plans: there is not one single angled wall in the entire building: All of the rooms are rectangular.... In other words, you don't need to angle walls to get good acoustics. You can if you want, or if you are aiming for a certain sound, or if you are building an RFX style control room (which is highly recommended, for sure!).

As we say in Spain, this post is a BRICK...

Ojalá que mi respuesta no es demasiado "pesado" ! :) - Stuart -

Hi, Stuart, Thank you so much I'm Silvestre, owner of a pair of the hands (and maybe even a brain) involved in the construction of this studio. We owe you some updates and some new information we have come aware as we were working on it... and we would try to write a longer post later.

We have removed both doors and window, built a wall where the large door used to be with 15cm hollow concrete blocks and the window hole with bricks; both rendered with mortar.

So the entire surface of those three walls is rendered now? Excellent. That's a great start. Now seal the surface with a good quality masonry sealant ("sellante de cal" is the type I normally use here in Chile). In fact, any decent paint that adheres well to cement will work. The purpose is to seal the porous surface air-tight.

But one thing we can be sure of is that there are flanking paths between those two leaves:

In that case, I would assume that the wall is acting more like a single-leaf wall, and do all the math based on that assumption. You have plenty of mass in those walls, so you should be able to get excellent isolation.

We spent one morning guessing which of the garage walls were made of a single leaf of bricks and which ones were two leaves with a poor air gap and flaking paths... we were lucky to find out that the longer walls in the garaje were made of a single leaf of bricks and that only the short walls (the one with the garaje gate now sealed with cinder blocks, and the one in front of it at the rear side of the garage) were two "poorly built" leaves. That same morning we were able to split the inner bricks leaf to make those shorter walls a real single-leaf wall... and three days ago we begun to build a new layer of bricks to fill the gap at the sides of the sealed garaje door in one of those walls. I'm going to try to attach some pictures of that. The result is a thicker single leaf wall with an extra mass of around 170kg/m2

Then we have came up with other "crazy" ideas such as, wood beams sitting on the air gap of the walls so the ceiling could rest on them and be decoupled from the structure.

Not crazy at all! That is, indeed, the correct way to do it. For proper isolation, the inner-leaf ceiling should rest ONLY on the inner-leaf walls, and all of that entire inner-leaf should be fully separate from the outer leaf: not touching at any point. Not even one nail.

That seems to be our choice now... the new ceiling would be resting only on the inner-leaf walls that seem to end being brick walls again: 170kg/m2 and half the price of a drywall leaf... ... as we plan to leave a 20cm air gap between brick leaves we think the resonance frequency of that double wall would go down to 20hz... but ... we won't be able to match the potential of those walls in an inmediate future (this year) by building a ceiling that isolates a similar way than those double walls with both leaves made of brick... we're forced to drywall construction for the ceilings, but resting on the inner brick walls.

The new wall between CR and Studio "B"

I don't see how you would accomplish that and still have each room built as a fully-decoupled single-leaf structure. Please show your full SketchUp model. I have a feeling that you are missing something important here...

I think I get the thing you're worried about... I think we cannot avoid to deal with three leaves to some extent. I'm going to attach a rough (and very simple) drawing of the walls we are dealing with (black lines on the paper) and the inner walls we want to build (red lines) That make three leaves in two sections of a wall... both sections are 180cm long (and a height of 250cm)

This room has quite a large double glass door,

Do yo mean "double glass door" in the sense that there is a single door that has a double glazed unit mounted in it? Or do you mean that there are two doors,side by side, and each of them has a single pane of glass in it? That is two very different things.... Either way, that's a major weak point. It is pretty hard to get 60 dB of isolation, or 50 db, or even 40 dB, when you have a normal domestic operable door involved.

[/quote] The door is going to be substituted... it has double glass (I think maybe 16mm of air gap between each glass) and it has two doors closing one toward the other... I think you could see it in some of the pictures I'm going to add to illustrate what we are doing (as part of the update and as a humble contribution to the wonderful legacy of information you guys have here) Please, excuse my grammar, vocabulary and all the rest... and my rush ending this post (woke up early this sturday morning to study with my guitar and... here I am... stuck in the middle with you) A big hug to you Stuart and lots of thanks for your support.

Some pictures of the garage door... now sealed and the brick wall fillng the gap the original wall had

The silliest drawing... inner leaf, red lines... existing leaf, black lines Two rooms within the actual living room (left side of the picture): control room and not-too-tiny room Another room within the actual garage (right side of the picture): not-so-small room You can see the three leaves involved... but we cannot get rid of that wall between actual the garaje and the actual living room The whole house is supported in that kind of steel frame you can see in the pictures... instead of th more frequent brick construction we had in this area, the house got to follow the original steel-framing way of building that (we recently notice) is a common feature in other countries

Our master, Nico, at the famous double glass double door

Several stages of the process of splitting wall layers that compromised the isolation and the design of the studio rooms

As you can see, we have a certain amount of work ahead and as long as we have nearly just begun to understand how the studio design has to be done, our ideas about what's to be done next may change in a lapse of hours But after so many options taken into consideration, it seems that the one I so roughly draw with a few lines is the one that allows us to cover a few points considered a necessity of Nico's studio: 1.- The big room in the garage might be rented for band rehersals that should not have access to the CR. 2.- Visual contact from CR to both studio rooms... and also between studio rooms 3.- The fewer the doors to access everywere in the studio, the better... there's the money factor involved here, too. 4.- Two studio rooms and not only one. It's an idea that has to be with the work in the studio, but alsowith the fact that rooms could be used to teach classes, so maybe It would be a hindrance to have just one... I don't know if I can give a better sketch or drawing or whatever to help define the design we're happier with right now... Maybe some pictures would cover that explanation and give a bit of sense to the proposition: Air gaps between (both made of brick) walls would still be 20cm... the small room maximum dimensions would be 230cm(height)x170cmx380cm The control room maximum dimensions would be 230cm (Height)x 300cm x 418cm There would be a corridor to give way to the studio A door(s) in the brick wall we have yet to break. Studio A would also be a room within a room... the former room being the garage, this time... The corridor would divide the living room in two and would be a 100cm X 360cm aprox. space that completes the air gap around the CR and around the studio B small room... and also between them... one would be walking along the air gap here... :? :roll: Maximum studio A (garage room) dimensions would be 230cm (Height)x 300cm x 540cm This option could be done with just four doors: one into the studio B, one into the CR, and two more into the garage room (Studio A) As long as we cannot see any other design that involves isolation in every room and that could get us away from three-leaves-walls systems, this seems the only option that fits all needs. Thanks once again for your patience and support.

Hi there Silvestre! It's great that all of you are here on the forum, and posting together.

we were lucky to find out that the longer walls in the garaje were made of a single leaf of bricks and that only the short walls (the one with the garaje gate now sealed with cinder blocks, and the one in front of it at the rear side of the garage) were two "poorly built" leaves

Excellent. Those are all high mass walls, so you should have no problems with isolation there, provided that you build the rest correctly.

The result is a thicker single leaf wall with an extra mass of around 170kg/m2

How thick is the brick? To get a surface density of 170 kg/m3, it must be only about 75mm thick. Is that correct? That seems rather thin for a brick wall...

brick walls again: 170kg/m2 and half the price of a drywall leaf...

Great! If brick works out cheaper than drywall where you live, that's excellent. It will give you better isolation too.

... as we plan to leave a 20cm air gap between brick leaves

OK, here's the problem when you build both of your leaves as brick. You have to be very, very, VERY careful that no mortar falls down the back, between the two leaves. It can easily create a flanking path across the cavity, which would degrade your isolation. So your bricklayers will have to work very carefully to ensure that they only put enough mortar on each brick so that it cannot squeeze out the back and spill over. And of course, you have to put insulation in that cavity as well. Insulation is a large part of the MSM system. So they also have to be careful to not damage the insulation as they are building the wall right in front of it.

... as we plan to leave a 20cm air gap between brick leaves we think the resonance frequency of that double wall would go down to 20hz..

Theoretically, if you build that correctly, the MSM resonant frequency would be about 11 Hz, the wall will start isolating above about 15 Hz, will isolate well from about 21 Hz upwards. That's really good for a home studio. The theoretical total isolation would be about 63 dB. However! That assumes you also do the ceiling, doors, windows and HVAC system to the same level...

... we won't be able to match the potential of those walls in an inmediate future (this year) by building a ceiling that isolates a similar way than those double walls with both leaves made of brick... we're forced to drywall construction for the ceilings, but resting on the inner brick walls.

Right, but you can still get it to be pretty good. Let's take a closer look at the ceiling / roof that you already have up there, to see how we can optimize it for maximum isolation. It would be a shame to have such excellent isolation in those walls that you are building so well, but then lose it all through a poor ceiling. Please post more information about the existing ceiling / roof.

think we cannot avoid to deal with three leaves to some extent. I'm going to attach a rough (and very simple) drawing of the walls we are dealing with (black lines on the paper) and the inner walls we want to build (red lines) .... The silliest drawing...

OK, I see what you are saying. That "black line" existing wall forces you to have a three-leaf wall in that area. Fortunately, your walls are very massive, so you will still be OK with that 3-leaf issue there. The resonant frequencies of that area will be about half an octave higher than for the places where it is 2-leaf. So there's no problem here.

The door is going to be substituted... it has double glass (I think maybe 16mm of air gap between each glass) and it has two doors closing one toward the other...

It would be nice to have the natural light from that door, so perhaps you could replace it with an acoustic-rated sliding glass door, then put another identical one in the inner leaf. Leave a larger air gap between those two, and have plenty of exposed insulation around the edges. Make sure that the glass is single-leaf laminated glass in both doors, as thick as you can afford, but at least 10mm+10mm with acoustic PVB interlayer. That will be pretty expensive, though!

A big hug to you Stuart and lots of thanks for your support.

:thu: - Stuart -

Oops! I see you posted more info while I was typing the above! I'll take a look at that, and add some more replies... - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

The result is a thicker single leaf wall with an extra mass of around 170kg/m2

How thick is the brick? To get a surface density of 170 kg/m3, it must be only about 75mm thick. Is that correct? That seems rather thin for a brick wall...

You are absolutely right, Stuart: the brick is 25mmx11mmx7mm (called "ladrillo tosco", here in Spain)... we have placed it the "wrong" way on its side, no on its bottom... but we are sticking it right to the mortar we're using to render the bricks unplastered we found when we splitted the (brick or drywall) layers in the former walls... We would use it the right way and give the inner wall a width of 11 or 12mm. I think that would give us 30 bricks per squere meter instead of the aproximately 22 that we are putting ("the wrong way") into the existing wall between living room and garage with NO air gap. We have checked the weight of some "tosco" bricks... and we believed that a wall with 30 bricks per square meter could be even heavier than 170kg/m2... maybe up to 200kg/m2... which is still better for us As for ceillings... we're about to give that option we talk before a more serious approach:

casaestudio wrote:

A4.- For the ceiling of the new room, we could install new steel beams resting only on the new walls. These would be 4cm high. The easiest way to close the space between those beams would be to use bricks first and then pour a concrete layer over them, but that would take upsome room height. So, we may go for the denser concrete layer only, with some steel bars inside. Bricks to close the space between those beams: Attachment: rasillon40204.jpg rasillon40204.jpg [ 5.39 KiB | Viewed 64 times ] (http://almacendemateriales.com/ladrillo ... n40204.jpg) A5.- The other layer of double wall on the ceiling would be completed with the same sort of drywall the ceiling had before we started working. The one screwed onto the light steel trusses that hold the roof. Drywall with several layers I guess... maybe up to three 13mm layers, as the concrete on the new room's ceiling is going to be thin and the air gap in the ceiling is going to be about 10cm high.

We have found a neighbour that's been building his own home for years and is going to help with the ceilling... to get us the right beams for the mass we expect to pour over the bricks... Ah... We have access to the roof to do so... to pour the concrete above... we have to attach some pictures of that I'lll try to do it as soon as I can Thank you again and again and...

As you can see, we have a certain amount of work ahead and as long as we have nearly just begun to understand how the studio design has to be done, our ideas about what's to be done next may change in a lapse of hours

Please don't take this the wrong way, and I do understand that you guys are anxious and excited to get this place finished fast, but the very best advice I can give right now is one word: STOP! Don't do any more building yet. You are not ready. Here's why; You don't have a plan! That is a major mistake in studio building. Probably the biggest possible error you could make is to not have a full, complete, detailed plan before you start building. If you try to design it as you go along "al vuelo", you will fail. You won't fail to have a studio, but you will fail to have a good studio. At best, you will have a mediocre studio. You will be forced to do things that make no sense as you go along and run into problems that you would have seen in advance and fixed on paper. I can tell you this, without any doubt, from experience. There are many such studios documented right here on the forum, of people who rushed ahead and built, then had to start breaking things down again to fix problems, and having to make major compromises because they could not undo some things. Don't be like them! Stop building right now, and start designing. There are many, many issues I see in your situation that you have not taken into account, and that will bite you later. Among them, the big ones are that you have not even decided what control room design concept you want to follow, you have no idea what the acoustic issues will be in the rooms, nor how to compensate for them in construction. You have no plan for HVAC or for electrical, and those are two very major parts of studio design. When I am designing a studio for a customer, it often takes me the same amount of time to design the HVAC system as it does to design the entire rest of the studio, from foundations to roof! It's a BIG issue. You also don't have any plan for your ceilings, doors, or windows, which are three other major issues. So that would be my number one advice to you guys right now. Put your tools down, and pick up a pen, a calculator, and couple of books on acoustics and studio design. If you carry on now without first designing it completely, in full detail, it will NEVER be a good studio. It will be mediocre,and full of compromises. I have see this happen many times over: those cases where the people ignored the advice and just rushed ahead have ALWAYS turned out lousy. And those cases where the people listened, stopped, learned, designed, and did it properly, have ALWAYS worked out very well. I linked you to the Studio Three thread yesterday: that is one of those cases: The studio owner (Rod) realized he was out of his depth after he had already built a lot of stuff. Fortunately, he stopped and hired me to design it for him. It took a lot of extra time, but he now has one of the best studios you'll ever see. I do hope you'll be like Rod!

I don't know if I can give a better sketch or drawing or whatever to help define the design we're happier with right now...

What I would really like to see, is a complete SketchUp model of the entire studio, in full detail, showing the full layout for the control room, with the correct geometry, speakers and mix position in the optimal locations, correct treatment in the correct places, no problems with doors interfering with treatment, equipment, sight-lines or traffic flow, correct dimensioning and positioning of the HVAC ducts, silencer boxes, fans, dampers, intakes, exhausts, HRV, AHU, heat pump, piping, drains, etc., all of which is correctly sized to provide the correct air flow volume at the correct rate and the correct velocity for each room, in order to attain the correct NR or NC conditions, while also providing the correct de- humidification and correct cooling for each room, taking into full account the sensible heat load and latent heat load, occupancy, volume, climate, and all other factors. That's what I'd like to see! If you don't have all of that in place, then you should not lay even one more brick until you do.

The control room maximum dimensions would be 230cm (Height)x 300cm x 418cm

that is reasonably close to Louden's second ratio, but the floor area is only about 60% of the recommended size in ITU and EBU, and the volume is 69% of the recommended minimum volume for a control room. What precautions are you taking in the design of the acoustic treatment to deal with those issues? How will you provide and distribute the necessary amount of 309 sabins of absorption that you need for that room, to get the decay times within IEC/AEC specs? What coefficient of absorption would you prefer for that? Are you aware that your Schroeder frequency for that room will be 134 Hz, and what do you plan to do about that? Do you think that the Bonello curve for your room is acceptable? Do you think that the location with respect to the Bolt area is acceptable? Did you know that your 3.1.0 tangential mode and your 0.2.1 tangential mode coincide at the same frequency, which just happens to also be the Schroeder frequency? Is that something you should be worried about? Should you do something to treat that, or can you forget about it safely? What will the fundamental SBIR problem be at the mix position in that room, and how will you deal with it? Do you think that an overall RT-60 time of 200 ms would be good for that room? If not, would you go higher or lower? What would be optimal? That's just a few of the issues that you should be considering, based only on the dimensions of your control room... If you can't answer all of those immediately, then you are not ready to build. By all means, carry on with the outer leaf, get those walls done, plastered, sealed, etc. But don't do anything at all with the ceiling, doors or inner leaf yet. First, design it. Then when the design is absolutely complete, build it. I'm sure that this is not what you wanted me to say, nor what what you want to hear, but it is the absolute best advice I can give you right now. - Stuart -

Thanks sooo much for the advice, Stuart. That's actually what I was expecting (and somehow hoping) to hear from you. We've been working on the outter walls only and stripping all the original drywall finish to get a chance to see and fix any problem we see. We actually hoped we would NOT find the steel frame as we did and that has affected greatly on the options to make the ceiling higher. Anyways, I'll try to post pictures, ideas and info on the control room design. The bricks you saw on the pics were just for reference (nothing being built on the inner leaves!) :horse: We are forced to slow the pace in the next week and, since I'll be out for work with lot's of hotel time, I'll take my time to share my ideas as for the CR in depth. Anyways, we are mostly focused on the Live Room because that is the first we want to build. Thank you thank you THANK YOU very much. Your counceling means so much for us and the way you help say a lot about you. Congratulations.

Soundman2020 wrote:

By all means, carry on with the outer leaf, get those walls done, plastered, sealed, etc. But don't do anything at all with the ceiling, doors or inner leaf yet. First, design it. Then when the design is absolutely complete, build it. I'm sure that this is not what you wanted me to say, nor what what you want to hear, but it is the absolute best advice I can give you right now. - Stuart -

Hi, again, Stuart, I really appreciate all that "dogs" you have put names to. And also that (piece of) advice of going on with the outer leaf... because our holiday time is coming to and end and, when that will happen, we would be very slower working one by one instead of "as a team" It would be great to be able to give the house a bit more use than it has now... I have to learn about that SketchUp software and I have to finish my reading of the book of Everest and that couple of chapter on Gervais I was no so seduced to read about: HVCA and Room Acustics... :roll: We are taking things slower than it might seems, mainly due to we are coming into our last 15 days of full day work... we have to slow down even more after that. We wanted to update the information and expectations (maybe a bit of "decisions" about the design) because, to go on a little bit doing the outter leaf, we need to know whether we are leaving space for a door or not in the wall between the living room and the garage... we would save building time and materials if we could place the doors and visors between rooms Our problem with the three-leaves system becomes a problem with the design to some extent, when it comes to prepare the outter leaf... outter leaf is also an inner leaf some place of the studio... We wanted to have the garage isolated in this first stage of our building... we wouldn't have the same time available to build the inner leaf for the control room and maybe Nico would be working more than a pair of terms in the living-room with just its outter leaf (fiberglass at sight is a problem)... but if we had to stop before building a room within the garage we would like at least to close the gap you see here... As part of the outter leaves preparation we need to take that heater out the garage; to close that old door gap; and to give the garage a new door (even though it has to be changed or improved later): we need to get that room more isolation that it has with that HUGE hole in the wall... and we still need to go inside... :D ... so... do you think we could get a door at the end of that corridor?... even though we still don't know how "to tame that dogs" even if there would be no corridor at the end... Would it compromise too much any further design if we put a door at that place? We could close the door's gap (we know that now)... but it would be work... We promise not to jump out the edge of the cliff PS.- Hi, Nico... didn't know you were there too

Hello, guys! It's quite late over here but I wanted to keep my word and write back soon. I've been thinking quite a lot on the CR design and on the inner leaf configuration and I'm doubting again whether building it with bricks or drywall... The main reason is the final room dimensions to match a good ratio properly. :roll: The ceiling isolation is my other big concern because, if we choose building with drywall, I'm afraid of not reaching a proper level of isolation... Anyways, I'll get to that deeply later this week. Regarding the CR design:

that is reasonably close to Louden's second ratio, but the floor area is only about 60% of the recommended size in ITU and EBU, and the volume is 69% of the recommended minimum volume for a control room.

I have replanned the control room giving it a bigger dimension: 2.35m x 3.40m x 5m. Room ratio: 1:1,45:2,13 I have made this decision despite the initial functional location of the small room (vocal/amp booth) that allowed direct access to the live room directly from the house without having to enter the CR... but I think it's still a nice setup for both tracking and mixing plus I added a small machine room/shelf, which is a neat thing. The nearest Louden ratio to this room design is 1:1.4:2.1 (6th best ratio)

How will you provide and distribute the necessary amount of 309 sabins of absorption that you need for that room, to get the decay times within IEC/AEC specs?

According to the new dimensions of the CR, I believe we will have to achieve 378 Sabins of absorbtion to get to ITU RT60 (0.18sec.). There will be some bass trapping and mid-high absorbtion to apply. Our aim is to get to 0.20 sec., which I believe is a very good reberveration time for mixing. I intend to build bass traps on the front and rear corners and build DIY absorbtion pannels to be placed on the walls (probably behind a wood frieze with holes on its surface) I'm still researching to design this right... But i think it's very much doable to reach the level of absorbtion we need. I already have a lot of 4cm Auralex Pyramid (about 30 pannels) and some RPG Profoam http://www.rpgeurope.com/products/product/profoamacousticdata.html but I don't know yet wether I'll use them in the LR, VB or CR.

What coefficient of absorption would you prefer for that?

Don't know 100%, yet. Still researching and learning...

Are you aware that your Schroeder frequency for that room will be 134 Hz, and what do you plan to do about that?

Bass trapping, right? The updated Schroeder frequency for the new dimensions is 182hz acording to http://amroc.andymel.eu/?l=490&w=340&h=235&re=EBU%20listening%20room but it is 129hz acording to Bobgolds calc. :?:

Do you think that the Bonello curve for your room is acceptable?

Now, it is, I think. But would be probably worth it to decrease the lenght of the room until 4.9m in order to achieve a better Bonello curve.

Do you think that the location with respect to the Bolt area is acceptable?

Yep, I do with this room.

Did you know that your 3.1.0 tangential mode and your 0.2.1 tangential mode coincide at the same frequency, which just happens to also be the Schroeder frequency? Is that something you should be worried about? Should you do something to treat that, or can you forget about it safely?

I didn´t know... And I still don´t know exactly how important it is. Even though I should have no more coincideces, would you throw a little light on that or point me where to read about that, please?

What will the fundamental SBIR problem be at the mix position in that room, and how will you deal with it?

Don't know... yet. But here are the results from SBIR calculator at http://tripp.com.au/sbir.htm Could you explain it to me roughly?

Do you think that an overall RT-60 time of 200 ms would be good for that room? If not, would you go higher or lower? What would be optimal?

I've read that optimal, for mixing, would be 0,33ms. But ITU is 0.18ms and EBU is 0.2 and both are desirable. What do you think? This is the info thrown by Bobgolds Room Modes Calc: Computed Information: Room Dimensions: Length=4.9 m, Width=3.4 m, Height=2.35 m Room Ratio: 1 : 1.44 : 2.08 R. Walker BBC 1996: - 1.1w / h < l / h < ((4.5w / h) - 4): Pass - l < 3h & w < 3h: Pass - no integer multiple within 5%: Fail (ratio3 = ratio1 * 2) Nearest Known Ratio: - "10) M. M. Louden: 1971: 6th best ratio" 1 : 1.4 : 2.1 RT60 (IEC/AEC N 12-A standard): 225 ms - ±50ms from 200Hz to 3.5kHz = 175 to 275ms - ±100ms above 3.5kHz = 125 to 325ms - <+300ms at 63hz = 525ms - 300<RT60<600ms RT60 (ITU/EBU Control Room Recommended): 182 ms - ±50ms from 200Hz to 4kHz = 132 to 232ms - <+300ms at 63hz = 482ms - 200<RT60<400ms Absorbtion to achieve ITU RT60: 370 sabins Volume: 39 m^3 Surface Area Total: 68 m^2 Surface Area Floor: 16 m^2 Surface Area Ceiling+Floor: 32 m^2 Surface Area Front Wall: 7 m^2 Surface Area Front and Rear Wall: 14 m^2 Surface Area Left Wall: 11 m^2 Surface Area Left and Right Wall: 22 m^2 Surface Area 4 Walls: 36 m^2 Surface Area 4 Walls + floor: 52 m^2 (sabins - front wall - carpet) / Left+Right+Rear wall: 39 % (sabins - front wall) / Left+Right+Rear wall: 94 % Schroeder Fc: 129hz Frequency Regions: - No modal boost: 1hz to 35hz - Room Modes dominate: 35hz to 129hz - Diffraction and Diffusion dominate: 129hz to 516hz - Specular reflections and ray accoustics prevail: 516hz to 20000hz Count (35.1-230hz) : Axials=13, Tangentials=54, Obliques=72 Count (35.1-100hz) : Axials=4, Tangentials=4, Obliques=1 Critical Distance (direct = reverberant field): 3.80m Stuart, I'll try to get you sketches of the AC, electrical and CR layout soon, so you can give us your opinion if you don´t mind. Thanks again. Lots and lots.

Hello, Stuart and friends. Updating here. I think I'm starting to get somewhere on the design of the envelopes. Since we have the ok to embed (with bricks and cement) the frame right next to the brickwall in between the garage and the living room, we are making that brickwall 20cm thick and adding a lot of mass. We are leaving the gaps where we will probably install doors and windows untouched. You should remember that a brickwall is the visible wall inside the garage, but in the living room side the room was finished with an air gap + drywall screwed to the so called frame... We have one more issue to solve, though: That brickwall separating the garage and living room is connected to the rest of the OUTER walls of the garage. Bad. The good news is that nothing is sitting on it; that wall is just standing there... so I imagine we could cut and separate that wall from the rest right at the end of that wall, disconnecting it from the rest of the outer walls. Looking at the drawing will definetly help to understand (note that the thickness of walls may difer a little bit with the real meassurements) Before, we were dealing with a mandatory 3 leaf config because we didn't know if we could touch the framing or not. Now I'm happy to announce that we will be having a 2 leaf system after embedding the frame into the existing wall. Great. As for the ceiling, our idea is to lay a 4cm concrete in the LR, a 10cm air gap and 2 layers of 15mm drywall. Do you think that will work well enough at killing the sound? Now, I have a few issues I'd like to ask about: - Would it make a huge impact to leave only a 10cm air gap between CR and VB while keeping the 20cm airgap for the rest? If possible, I'd like to do that also in the left wall of the garage because that wall goes directly into a tools room, that will be working as an airlock as well. - That tools room could make one or two great amp booths in the future... Would you do any pre-work to set it ready to isolate it in the future? (Other than cabling) Control room design coming soon. Cheers!

Hello again, Nico, We have just talked about writting this one. Please be clement with us, all you wise people in this forum, and we'll try not to screw it up too often in our way to knowledge. We did this time. The solution we (through Nico's "Casaestudio" user account) explainedin our last post have been rejected a week ago in a session where we met to talk about the possibilities of the actual building. It wouldn't work as a two isolated leaves system as long as the wall between the living-room (the room that would have the future CR in) and the garage (the one to containg the live room) is conected to every other wall in the house by the beams that hold the roof. That was the reason we came up with the three leaves alternative. We are doing our homework... we promise Just a glimpse at our not yet finished SketchUp representation of what we have here, to prove we are taking your words and efforts seriously... I have attached a *.skp file... every wall in the image there is conected to the roof and to the actual drywall ceilling (250cm height... right where the walls end) I could answered some questions too about the resonance frequency of the walls and ceillings Nico is proposing in the previous post (I think he knows and fears that too) although I know he maybe would like too contrast the results with the ones an expert would get. Here I go. a.- I'm guessing our walls with a "tosco" brick place on his right side could be around 200kg per square meter. Those are the walls Nico draw as "12cm". b.- Still guessing... our reinforced walls with a "tosco" brick turned, sat on the "wrong" side, and plastered against a brick wall like the previous 200kg/m2 could end being around 270kg/m2. Those are the walls listed as "20cm" c.- The inner walls as "9cm" (green line on Nico's drawing) are "toscos" again... bricks that would sat on their side instead of their bottom... with their holes fully (or maybe "fooly") plastered to make them solid... around 170kg/m2 d.- The "16cm" wall is a cinder block wall... I have read somewhere... maybe in this forum, in a thread of a french studio in a farm... that this kind of walls could be around 280kg/m2 but maybe I'm mistaking the source and the data. e.- the drywalls in Nico's drawing might be around 30 to 35kg/m2... depending on their thickness... wouldn't they?... 30kg/m2 for a 3,4cm wall made up of three layers of drywall?... and 35Kg for a 3,8cm drywall in several layers?... I don't get along too well with drywall... you will realize... So the resonance frequencies would be as follow (I hope I made the maths right) 1.- with a double wall with a leaf as the one described on "a", 20cm of air gap, and another leaf as the one in "c": 19.6Hz 2.- same air gap, but a leaf described as "d" and a leaf described as "c": 18.2Hz 3.- same air gap, but a leaf described as "b" and a leaf described as "e": 34Hz to 35.7Hz 4.- same air gap, but two drywall leaves as in "e": 44Hz in the best case... it seems too little to me... maybe I did something wrong ... and an option Nico's drawing and choice in that last post doesn't reflect... 5.- same air gap, but a leaf described as "c" and a leaf described as "b": 18.3Hz Sorry for our continous and on going posting We (Nico, Marcio and I) haven't met for a few days and guess will come up with new (maybe old, as they were discussed before) solutions. We hope not to end with your patience Have a nice day

You should remember that a brickwall is the visible wall inside the garage, but in the living room side the room was finished with an air gap + drywall screwed to the so called frame...

Just to be 100% certain: So your plan now is to replace that frame with a second brick wall, right next to the original wall, and fully touching it?

so I imagine we could cut and separate that wall from the rest right at the end of that wall, disconnecting it from the rest of the outer walls.

I would not do that! That would leave the wall with no lateral support, and it might also be providing lateral support for other walls. Check with a structural engineer before you make major changes like that! Even though it might not be supporting any load above, it might still be providing structural support for the walls on either end... simply cutting off the ends like that would be a really bad idea if you want the house to stay standing up! Never modify any major part of a building with first consulting a structural engineer. If he DOES confirm that the wall is not doing anything structurally at all, then don't just cut the ends: take it out completely. It will give you a few inches extra space, and better isolation for less work. If you are able to cut the ends, and want to leave it in place anyway, then you will likely need to add brick pillars at each end to provide proper lateral support. That would also likely involve digging proper foundations for those pillars...

As for the ceiling, our idea is to lay a 4cm concrete in the LR, a 10cm air gap and 2 layers of 15mm drywall. Do you think that will work well enough at killing the sound?

Once again, check with a structural engineer on how to do that, and even if you can do that. 4" of concrete over several square meters is very massive: it weight a LOT. It needs to be supported correctly with a suitable grid of rebar, correctly tied into the walls and anchored properly. It needs to be supported from below with a suitable arrangement of jacks while it is curing initially, which can only be removed after a certain amount of time, it needs to be kept damp for several days to ensure proper curing without cracking, etc. Another alternative might be to do a "beam and block" ceiling there, then put concrete on top of that.

- Would it make a huge impact to leave only a 10cm air gap between CR and VB while keeping the 20cm airgap for the rest?

It would make a difference to the isolation between those two rooms, yes, but not to isolation between those rooms and the outside world. However, if all the walls are brick, then the difference doesn't really matter. The weakest points will be the doors, windows and HVAC system, not the walls.

Would you do any pre-work to set it ready to isolate it in the future? (Other than cabling)

Render (plaster / seal / paint) all the walls and the ceiling at the same time you do that for the other rooms, and also put all your HVAC ducts in place.

Control room design coming soon.

:thu: looking forward to seeing that!

every wall in the image there is conected to the roof and to the actual drywall ceilling (250cm height... right where the walls end)

Those are all parts of the outer-leaf, so that's not a problem.

I'm guessing our walls with a "tosco" brick place on his right side could be around 200kg per square meter

Masonry in general has a density of roughly 2300 kg/m3, give or take a couple of hundred. So just use that and measure the thickness to get your ballpark figure for the surface density. If your walls are 12cm thick, then the surface density would be about 276 kg/m2. (That considers typical mortar and rendering).

could end being around 270kg/m2. Those are the walls listed as "20cm"

More like 460 kg/m2.

c.- The inner walls as "9cm" (green line on Nico's drawing) are "toscos" again... bricks that would sat on their side instead of their bottom... with their holes fully (or maybe "fooly") plastered to make them solid... around 170kg/m2

Less, because you would never be able to completely fill the holes. Also, you would not be able to put any load on that wall: no ceiling. You can't build a structural wall with bricks laid on edge. Why would you even want to do that? I don't understand the reasoning behind that, it's unsafe, and I'm pretty sure it would not pass inspection as a load-bearing wall.

d.- The "16cm" wall is a cinder block wall... I have read somewhere... maybe in this forum, in a thread of a french studio in a farm... that this kind of walls could be around 280kg/m2 but maybe I'm mistaking the source and the data

Less. Around 190 kg/m2. Cinder block is lighter than brick or concrete.

e.- the drywalls in Nico's drawing might be around 30 to 35kg/m2... depending on their thickness... wouldn't they?... 30kg/m2 for a 3,4cm wall made up of three layers of drywall?... and 35Kg for a 3,8cm drywall in several layers?...

5/8" (16mm) Drywall weighs about 11kg/m2. So assuming you are planning on using 16mm fire-rated drywall, yes, your assumptions here are correct. - Stuart -

Thank you, Stuart, for all the data you're providing here. As I told you, maybe we wrote too fast coming with a new design, in an attempt to avoid the three leaves... but It's likely we'll abbandon that idea

Soundman2020 wrote:

You should remember that a brickwall is the visible wall inside the garage, but in the living room side the room was finished with an air gap + drywall screwed to the so called frame...

Just to be 100% certain: So your plan now is to replace that frame with a second brick wall, right next to the original wall, and fully touching it?

The plan is to keep the frame in its place and build a brick wall fully touching the existing wall... then, the frame will become embeded in the wall letting us open the door and visor gaps on that wall... taking the necessary precautions to open a gap in a wall... a beam on the upper side of the gap, resting in the wall on the sides of the gap... As i said before, I think the idea of cutting the wall becomes useless to get a two leaves system as long as the wall between the living room and the garage touches the roof anyway... cutting the wall won't isolate parts of that wall from the outer leaf

Soundman2020 wrote:

c.- The inner walls as "9cm" (green line on Nico's drawing) are "toscos" again... bricks that would sat on their side instead of their bottom... with their holes fully (or maybe "fooly") plastered to make them solid... around 170kg/m2

Less, because you would never be able to completely fill the holes. Also, you would not be able to put any load on that wall: no ceiling. You can't build a structural wall with bricks laid on edge. Why would you even want to do that? I don't understand the reasoning behind that, it's unsafe, and I'm pretty sure it would not pass inspection as a load-bearing wall.

It's true... those "tosco" bricks shouldn't be laid on their edge... I got caught in the trap of reading measurements on that drawing and translate them to brick dimensions and orientation... without thinking too further... that was not an option we have discussed before... inner walls width supposed to be the width of a brick placed the normal way to build a wall (11cm), plus the additional with of the mortar to plaster the brick... around 12cm... Written right beside the green line should say 12cm. As for the weight of the solid brick, we have make a test... maybe we should repeat the measurements... we have weighted a brick as it comes from the factory (1.8kg), and then we have weighted it after we have filled it with mortar and after it had dried inside giving approximately a solid brick... it weighted 3.4kg after that When we laid bricks on their edge we do it only to stick them to an existing wall without leaving a gap... almost nailing them... So in that case, we are using around 25 bricks (that would be more than 40kg) per square meter, plus 100kg of sand and 20kg of cement... I don't take water into account... so that should give 150kg/m2 at least... but surely more... I prefer being stingy with the density of walls, not to be over optimistic about the isolation provided... we're not professional builders and we don't need to get profit on building... just good results... so stingy predictions of results seem right in this particular case (wall mass) I'd like to think you were right when you said this, a few posts before:

Soundman2020 wrote:

The result is a thicker single leaf wall with an extra mass of around 170kg/m2

How thick is the brick? To get a surface density of 170 kg/m3, it must be only about 75mm thick. Is that correct? That seems rather thin for a brick wall...

Here are some images of the bricks literally drown in mortar, laid on their edge (7cm) and nailed to the previous 12cm brick wall... to give a 20cm brick wall... we are plastering the old bricks of the previous wall before sticking the bottom of the new brick to their surface... I don't know if I made myself clear in this text Good night

Hello! It's been a month since our last post but we are still working. Silvestre and Marcio are back at work so I'm working by myself lately. Slowly but also constantly. So, a recap: Due to budget issues I'm going to build the Live room first, leaving the CR and Vocal booth for later. I'll get the HVAC conducts, electricity and audio cabling done for CR and VB and, If budget allows it, I'll get the VB isolated too, but I'm FOCUSING ON THE LIVE ROOM and will leave the CR for the last room to build. These are the technical specs of the design: ELECTRIC: In addition to the setup of the house's electrical system I've added these independent new circuits for the studio. 1- Main Switch, 32A 2- Electric differential, 40A 30mA 3- HVAC: Cable section 2,5 mm 16A 4- Daw: Cable section 4 mm y protegerla con 16A. 5- Plugs: Cable section 2,5 mm 16A 6- Rack 1 & 2: Cable section 2,5 mm 16 A 7- Lightning: cable section 1,5 mm 10A 8- New and independent earthing (Star) Electricity will get to each room in two surface mount distribution boxes (1 for lightning and 1 for plugs). Plugs and lights will be surface mounted. Comunications: 2 CAT6 RJ45 cables will get to each room. One end will go to PC/machine room and the other will go to CR. AUDIO: 5x 8ch Mogami Snake from LR to CR (24 mic inputs + 8 spare + 8 headphone) 1x Spare tube for future upgrades. HVAC consisting of - Fujitsu ASY 35 UI LLCC for aircon. Split system reasonably silent - S&P TD160/100 Silent http://www.solerpalau.com/td-160-100-n-silent-230v50hz.html for extraction. - Probably S&P TD160/100 Silent for renovation. - 4 DIY silencers (2 for intake, 2 for outake) I haven't started building the inner leaf of the LR yet, just getting the outer leaf ready. - We found a huge resonance under half of the tiled floor in the garage so we took the tiles off. We found they didn't use a lot of cement when they installed the tiles and they left many air gaps: that part of the floor was acting like a drum. We poured concrete there and now that issue is fixed. - We are finishing rendering the brick walls and filling every minor crack we found on them. - We have "transfered" the electrical installation of plugs and lightning in the garage to the brand new tools room we built right next to the garage. - We have moved the gas heater to it's new location and now we are waiting for the official tech service to come and verify everything is running smoothly and safe. Gas is permanently off until then. Next steps will be: - To open the gap for the window between LR and CR. That will be hopefully done this coming week. - Build the HVAC silencers and ducting. - Preinstall the Aircon leaving the tubes ready. - Drive the electric and audio cabling through the air gap of the walls. They'll go in different paths and won´t meet at any place. - Paint the outer walls and ceilling with plastic paint. - Install the door for the outer leaf. Once I finish all that I'll move to the building stage. I hope that will be on the last weekend of october... I really need this room to be built and running ASAP... I'll keep on with updates and sorry for not having the sketchup project ready yet. Too many things, so little time. Since I have not yet decided wether to build the CR or not (budget, you know...) I was wondering if a little asymetrical CR woud be a major and dramatic inconvenience... because it looks it will have to stay asymetrical for another year or two at least. Any thoughts or comments on that? Cheers and many thanks in advance.

Due to budget issues I'm going to build the Live room first, leaving the CR and Vocal booth for later.

That's fine, but you still have to design the entire studio first! All three rooms, plus the isolation system, plus HVAC and electrical. All of that MUST be fully designed before you start building any of it. If not, the I guarantee that you will run into serious problems later, when you find that doors, windows or HVAC ducts are in the wrong place, or your sight lines are lousy, or you can't pur the treatment you need where it needs to go, or some other major problem. Design the complete studio, with everything in place, and only then start building. I know that you already have a simplified plan-view rough sketch on paper, but that's not complete enough. A "studio design" implies a full 3D model, with everything in place, so that you can check for issues such as the above: sight lines, conflicts, or even simple issues such as which way a door should open to provide the best access path, or to avoid banging into the desk, sofa, drum kit, or another door...

I really need this room to be built and running ASAP...

You've probably seen me say this before, but rushing a studio build is a recipe for disaster. Don't rush. First design, in full detail, then build.

I was wondering if a little asymetrical CR woud be a major and dramatic inconvenience...

Depends where the asymmetrical part is, and how bad it is. If it is at the back of the room, far behind the mix position, then that's probably fine, and likely won't be a problem. But if it is in the front of the room, from the mix position forwards, then that's a problem. Also, if it is just a few mm difference, then that's likely not a problem, but if it is a couple of cm or more, then yes, that's a problem. Think of it this way: the wavelength of a 20,000 Hz tone is about 1.7cm. The half-wave is a bit more than 8mm. The quarter-wave is slightly over 4mm. So if your speakers are 8mm out of symmetrical, you'd have phase cancellation and comb filtering. So you think: "Well, yeah, but that's 20k! Nobody hears that high anyway! And nobody builds rooms to 4mm accuracy!" (actually, I do, but that's me...). So consider 1 kHz, right in the middle of the mid-range: wavelength is 34 cm, half wave is 17 cm, quarter wave is 8.5cm If your room is out of symmetrical by 8cm, then you'll be having phasing issues in the entire upper mid range, and all of the highs. So if the left speaker is just 8cm further back than the right speaker, or 8cm off to one side, or the ceiling dips 8cm lower on the right, then you will have problems in one entire half of the musical spectrum. Symmetry is important. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

That's fine, but you still have to design the entire studio first!

Yep, I know. :wink: I really take your words into consideration. It's a pitty I had never used SketchUp before starting this project but I got to it this weekend at last. I'm learning veeeery slowly but I think I'll get there eventually. I'll try to set the basic layout early this week so I can share the sketchup file. Anyways, as you advised before, my intention is to start building once the complete design is done. In the past weeks I've been working on details such as HVAC, electricity and doors and have been sketching some other CR layouts as well. I'm Reading a lot in the little times I get. :thu: That's why I asked about the asymetrical CR, I need to have that design clear before I move on. This is one of the alternate sketches I've done as for the whole studio. It only shows the isolation leafs and the doors would be sliding glass doors. In the CR it's also drawn the frieze, leaving the gaps where some acoustic treatment would be applied. The PC room is not drawn yet. Note I added an Iso booth inside the live room; makes the live room smaller but I think it would be very much used here if implemented. But again, I have the feeling that after the acoustic treatment is set, the room will end up being too small. Maybe I could build a smaller Iso... or forget about it? ... What do you think? The dimesions would be about 2.35m x 4.15m x 3.68 As you see, the asymetrical issue wouldn´t be very severe in this case... I think. This is the other layout I´m considering. The asymetrical issue in the CR is somewhat bigger here, so is the room itself. There are so many things to take into consideration: The windows locations for each option will have a whole different effect, for example... A bigger CR would provide more confort when mixing with the band or tracking from the CR... so many things. :roll: I'm not in a crazy hurry and I don't want to rush now, but one of the use I do of the place is as a practice room for a few bands... Not having the LR ready stands as a little hole in my pocket wich I'd like to mend quickly. :P That's why my intention is to get HVAC, electrics and audio/video lines planned, even if the control room and vocal booth's treatment is not defined, and get to work. I'm aware, though, the room plans/shape need to be carefully defined and refined. That's my path. Thanks again and big hugs!

Ok, Now I'm feeling more confortable working with sketchUp. Great! I'll be working on it some more during next weekend. I have my daughter sick at home and a few stuff I need to take care of urgently, but I hope I can really move on fast because every hour I spend with SketchUp speed up my workflow a lot. I want to leave here two SketchUp project files in case you want to check them out. Still trying to find the best layout for the CR... Thanks!

In recent days I have been designing in SketchUp. So far I've taken care of both, inner and outer, leafs. I know next will be boring to some but I think it is worth it to make some comments on some points: DOORS (meassures are subject to slight changes) CR to VB (200cm x 110cm): practicable glass (8mm+8mm) double door, opening the first door to the right. You reach that door only on the left side of the CR. VB to CR (200cm x 110cm): practicable glass (6mm + 6mm) double door with opening the first door to the left. CR to LR (208cm x 206cm): Slide glass (10mm + 10mm) door. LR to CR (228cm x 206cm): Slide glass (8mm + 8mm) door. CR to HALL (202cm x 70cm): Normal door, reinforced and adapted. HALL to CR (207cm x 70cm: Normal door, reinforced and adapted. CR to Additional Living room (in the back of the CR) (197cm x 178cm): slide glass (8mm +8mm) door. Additional Living room to CR (200cm x 180cm): Slide glass (6mm + 6mm) door. LR (loading/unloading door) to storage room (200cm x 90cm): Glass (8mm+8mm) door Storage Room to LR (200cm x 90cm): practicable glass (6mm + 6mm) double door with opening the first door to the left. Storage room to outside: Normal door, reinforced and adapted if needed. You have probably noticed the two “internal” sliding doors in the control room, one on the left side and one double door on the back. I thought that would be a neat solution to simetry issues when mixing. These back doors could be treated with diffusers with absorbtion on their back while the side door would be treated as needed. There is an alternative (attached) in which the internal slide door on the left would be removed and the inner wall leaf would run all long closing that side. May be this is a better solution. Maybe I could even use that airlock as an ampbooth some time… ☺ I´m gonna be throwing the cabling in sketchup next. I´ve come out with a lot of wiring including mic lines, tie lines, video, rj45, bnc... If you want me to I can drop down the list of the wiring design in here. As soon I get done with the cabling I´ll try to draw the HVAC layout. … And, in the meantime… I keep on finishing the outer walls rendering, plastering, painting. Stuart and mods, maybe this threat should be moved tu studio design? Any suggestion or comment is welcome!