First time home studio build in attic, requesting help

Hello everyone! So I just put in an offer today for a house and am tying to sort out the budget for the home studio so my wife can know what to expect. We had a standing agreement that since she moved me away from the city I loved, I got a home studio! Unfortunately, the major drawback is the house we fell in love with here had no basement, so the only option (unless the offer falls through) is to build the studio in the attic. First thing first: -Usage: I am a DJ first, and a producer second. Main usage is going to be listening to tracks, making edits, performing and recording mixes (all direct in, no mics), and then for the production it will mostly all be Ableton. I do have some external synths and drum machines I'd like to use as well, but again all direct in. So really, making just a mixing/mastering room. HOWEVER I also want to be able to do some live recording of vocals or single instruments (guitars, bass, some orchestral instruments, etc). So for that I'm thinking a small isolation booth. -Requirements: Since this will be in our home, my wife has requested I get it as quiet as possible. She understands that it won't be silent, but I'm looking at wanting as much sound absorption as possible so the downstairs doesn't have to hear me. Information about the space: HVAC: NONE Roof Material: Metal Weight joists can support: Unknown Current Dimensions: Main Room Left and right wall: 188inches Front wall: 142 inches Rear wall: 77 inches Rear open space: 65 inches Wall height before slant: 45 inches Ceiling width slanted: 72 inches Ceiling width flat: 34 inches ceiling height (floor to flat): 89 inches Height from floor to window: 20 inches Window frame height: 53 inches Window frame length: 68 inches Upstairs Closet (Potential vocal booth?) dimensions left and right wall: 67 inches Front/rear wall: 36 inches rear wall height before slant: 45 inches Ceiling length slanted: 72 inches ceiling length flat: 19 inches ceiling height (floor to flat): 89 inches Budget My wife and I have discussed 10,000 USD at current, though I may be able to get some more. Questions -To do a proper room within a room, I will basically need to tear out the existing walls, correct? I wasn't sure if I would be able to save them or not since if you look at the pictures, there is a crawlspace behind each of them with a lot of room. The way the previous person did the construction is hang up some studs and put drywall, and that's it. -Another wall question. So going from the roof in, the roof and blown in insulation count at 1 leaf? Then an air gap that should be filled with rockwool. Then the second leaf is 2 sheets drywall with green glue in between, around 4 inches of air filled with rockwool, and then some sort of finish (Im probably going to do a cloth wrap)? is that the proper 2 leaf setup here? If that is, then theoretically I can keep the existing drywall that's already up? -For the flooring, I know I need to get rid of the carpet. Once I tear that up, it looks to be hardwood running all the way across. Should I tear up the hardwood too and start from scratch, or could I keep the existing floor? Remember my main goal here is isolation from the rest of the house. I've been reading a bit and flooring is incredibly confusing. Floating a floor seems like the recommended means for upper level rooms, but I've heard a lot of folks say that they weigh too much? Really any tips and ideas here for how to do the floor would be appreciated. -Ceiling I am guessing I need to rip it completely out and start from scratch with the ceiling. How would I attach the angled ceilings to the top flat ceiling and walls? From looking at different plans, it seems to again be the same construction as a wall (insulation, drywall later, insulation, cloth), is that correct? -HVAC is a huge concern and something I have never messed with. The house doesn't have any air conditioning at all, and heating is electric baseboards (which will be removed). What can I do here? I truly have no idea. I have been looking around a lot and some folks mentioned a mini-split? With all the insulation will I even need a heater anymore? -Electrical I have absolutely zero knowledge in doing electrical work (and I'm not sure if NY allows people to do their own?). Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do for that? -I will basically have to tear out the existing closet completely and make a vocal booth from scratch I am guessing? At any rate, I want to have a window in the booth. Also instead of just running a snake (way too many inputs) I'd like to create a wall system where the artist can just plug in headphones, a talkback mic, and their instrument. I never see the booth having more than one artist in it ever. -I'd like to keep the window in the main room, but I know the current window doesn't work. Any recommendations for a studio grade windows I could put in both the room and the vocal booth? -I'm very concerned about height, as this space is going to have very low ceilings after I do all the required work. Any tips here? -My current monitors are JBL 308p's and no subwoofer. I have some monitor stands, but since I am already building the room, should I build a monitor enclosure? Also, anyone have suggestions for how far away the monitors should be from the walls? -Room shape, should I make the front wall be a 3 wall with a 5 degree angle or just make it straight? -Door to room and door to booth, any suggestions here? I'd probably need a sealed solid core door for the vocal booth and the entrance into the studio itself. Or would it be better to do a double door entrance to the studio? -Instead of trying to doo all this on my own, any recommendations for a designer who I could hire to do all of the planning? Anyone in or around Albany NY interested in a new project? -Last, with having cloth over all the walls, so I need to buy additional absorption panels? What about bass traps or diffusers? EDIT: How would you suggest getting internet cat5 cabling up to the studio as well? Images attached! Thank you for taking the time to read all this and help me out, you are all invaluable!

If your attic floor joists can actually handle the weight of a room in a room construction (I bet it cannot as is though), I'd say $10,000 is not enough. HVAC alone would eat up probably half of that. Insulation and drywall alone would probably eat up the other half. That doesn't include permits, electrical, engineered joists for your ceiling, windows, doors, flooring, acoustic treatment and misc like tools, trim, screws, etc. That's assuming you're doing all of the work yourself. If you want a designer, add more on top of that. By the way, since you just asked for a designer, you will probably get a bunch of messages from random people claiming they can help you but won't. If you want actual help, reach out to John Sayers directly. If he can't help you, HE will recommend designers. I think once your deal goes through, you need to identify the most important things you need (like HVAC, a good sounding room, isolation, etc). Then address each one in order of importance. Isolation will be one thing you may not be able to achieve well with your budget though. Greg

Greg, Thanks for the heads up. Personally, my number one concern is isolation, as I am constantly cold so having a hot room doesn't bother me. Plus, getting the isolation down first and then having the wife up to do some of her vocal recordings and seeing how warm it gets would be the best way to secure more funding to do the HVAC :D A good sounding room is a close second, but until then I can work with bad rooms. Heck, I've been DJing and running my own PA at raves and underground DIY spaces for long enough that I can do some pretty fun things with crap rooms. The offer was accepted today, so now its just the waiting game for inspections and attorneys and such. I'll shoot John a message as well, I just figured he would be much busier with commercial ventures.

Small update. Inspection on the house passed, so now just waiting for the legal process to finish. Should be getting into the space in about 30 days. Chatted with John through email. He didn't think the joists could handle a room within a room (I will have an engineer come out one of these days to get a real weight estimate) so for now he thinks I should just add another 16mm of drywall sealed with glue and then put in a sheet floor with rubber underneath. Hanging acoustic panels and such (Going to work with GIK Acoustic for those)

Hanging acoustic panels and such (Going to work with GIK Acoustic for those)

Glenn Kuras makes great products, but if you are handy enough to build your studio space shell, you are probably handy enough to make custom built treatment devices. I would highly recommend you build your own. A client of mine A/B tested his $300 bass traps against his home made $30 ones and REW mdat files clearly show that his home made ones performed better for his situation. After seeing those results, my client has been on a treatment device building rampage as he's filled with enthusiasm! Greg

I wouldn’t be opposed to building my own, but I have no idea where to start wit that. I would at least need some plans to go off of. When we had the home inspection it was a rainy day. I got to be thee so I messed around in the future studio space just to see what things sounded like. No pitter patter of rain on the metal roof, which was a concern so that is nice. However, the room is pretty loud. Just using my IPhone (all my equipment is still in a shipping container on its way here) the room red around 40db with peaks up to 60. Mostly highway noise around rush hour and on a wet road, so I think most days the room itself is going to be around 40 before any sort of isolation or treatment. The closer I moved to the window, the louder the readings, so i definitely need to replace that window ASAP. I need to get into the floor to see what it looks like. It’s THICK. Eyeball estimation of over a foot and a half between bottom of first floor ceiling and top of attic floor.

Super chunks and broadband absorbers are very easy and basic to build. These will drastically improve your acoustics. However, I'd recommend checking the forum and reading some control room tuning threads to see how important things like REW measurements are in tuning the room and deciding what devices to build/install next! Greg

What do you all think about filling the space between the roof and the drywall for the room with rockwool? It's a pretty big space (something like 3 or 4ft at the widest) and it's just empty other than the spray in insulation on the ceiling...

Insulation in cavities helps a lot. Are you saying they've spray foamed right onto the top side of the ceiling drywall though? Greg

From what I can tell, it goes: Metal Roof->plywood->Roof joists, spray foam into joists. Foam is at least a foot thick. See first posts pictures for what inside the walls look like.

Your attic area sounds like the design needs air to flow through it so you shouldn't fill it completely with insulation. Are you saying there is no insulation sitting on top of your ceiling drywall though!? Greg

I'll need to get into the floor to double check. from the brief glance I saw during the inspection, I think it goes: 1st floor ceiling (drywall?)->4inches open space->more drywall.>fiberglass insulation->attic floorboards (2x4s)->carpet

Sorry, I'm referring to your attic space that you initially asked about. Greg

Oh, the finished space inside the attic? That's all filled with the spray foam insulation. If you look at the photos, the drywall painted blue is attached directly to the roof joists, so it goes Metal roof->Plywood on top of joists->Spray insulation->Ceiling drywall on bottom of joists.

Oh, the finished space inside the attic? That's all filled with the spray foam insulation. If you look at the photos, the drywall painted blue is attached directly to the roof joists, so it goes Metal roof->Plywood on top of joists->Spray insulation->Ceiling drywall on bottom of joists.

Dang, that sucks. Spray foam is closed cell and does NOTHING acoustically speaking :cry: Greg

Yeah. It's amazing how well it retains heat, but sound it doesn't do anything. I'll be super curious once I get everything in and set up how things sound outside. Luckily I'm on a corner oversized lot, so I have some good distance (for a city block anyway) from my neighbors. Got my initial quote from GIK today. Looking at at least 2k for decent treatment, 3k for great. Redoing the floor by pulling up the carpet and laying down rubber acoustic matting and then covering with wood is about 2k based on some pricing estimates and such from sites. Unsure what adding the 16mm of drywall with green glue on the walls and rehanging the ceiling with sound isolation clips would cost. Stuff adds up quick! And this is only for very basic level stuff.

vutall wrote:

Yeah. It's amazing how well it retains heat, but sound it doesn't do anything. I'll be super curious once I get everything in and set up how things sound outside. Luckily I'm on a corner oversized lot, so I have some good distance (for a city block anyway) from my neighbors. Got my initial quote from GIK today. Looking at at least 2k for decent treatment, 3k for great. Redoing the floor by pulling up the carpet and laying down rubber acoustic matting and then covering with wood is about 2k based on some pricing estimates and such from sites. Unsure what adding the 16mm of drywall with green glue on the walls and rehanging the ceiling with sound isolation clips would cost. Stuff adds up quick! And this is only for very basic level stuff.

Hi Vutall, Studio costs can easily build up! Sound isolation and aircon being the biggest money sinks. You are limited quite alot by not having the support for room in room, (without replacing the floor joists of course). You can decouple to a certain degree with resilient devices though. Resilient bars across the ceiling and walls and 2 layers of plasterboard with green glue will likely be the best bang for your buck in your situation. You could get 45dB-ish of isolation with the wall in this scenario. Your floor will be a weak link. Second floor rooms will be hit the worst. Most of the noise will be flanking through the structure via the floor joists. There's no easy way around this. You could spend half (or more) of your budget fixing the floor first, or consider resiliently lining every room on the second floor (ceiling and walls). If I were you and have family in the house you don't want to disturb, I would give my wife/kids the attic and persuade my wife to let me have $20 - 25000 to build an outbuilding studio in the garden. Let her know it will increase the house value for when/if you move as you could market it as an airconditioned home office / home theater so you should recoup some costs. Dan

That's not a bad idea Dan. We certainly have the space for it in our yard. We also were thinking of tearing down the above ground pool, so maybe it could go in the same space. Thanks for the heads up!

Cool :thu: If you go ahead with an outbuilding, definitely get more advice from this forum, you'll need it! :wink: You'll need to design the building from the ground up as a studio, so make sure you don't just go getting a builder in to build a "shell" first, because everything from dimensions to electrical outlets needs careful consideration and often cannot be built with the "standard" construction methods. I'm in the middle of my own garden outbuilding studio so if you want to you can have a look through my build thread for ideas: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=21269 Mine's been 2 years since I was at your stage though. If you have more time/money for contractors you could probably get it done quicker; maybe a year from design to completion. Dan

Thanks for the link, I've looked through it and like it! If you don't mind me asking, what's your current running total of expenses so I can get an estimate?

I'm looking at £10 - £12K for the complete cost. I've done all the work myself and with family help. Only have now got contractors to connect electrics and A/C as these are legal requirements. I'm about £5k in so far. Dan

That's pretty great! Not as bad as I thought, but still pretty pricey. So, here is the layout and suggested panels from GIK. After shipping and such, looking just about $3,000 US. Right side of the picture (What I call the rear of the room) is where I will have my desk and monitors. Just wanted to double check with you all before I pull the trigger that this all looks good. GIK had one of their specialists work it all up for me, but I always like to double check with others too! Finally, instead of tearing the carpet out right now, what about throwing down some of that cheap plastic office chair mats? It would give me a reflective surface instead of an absorbing one, and would be a good temporary platform to work on until I decide if I want to actually build out this room or build an outbuilding. At least in theory. Any ideas there? Products used: (rear wall) 2x Soffit Bass Trap, Range Limited. -one in each corner 2x Monster Bass Trap, Range Limited -one next to each Soffit (Middle of wall) 2x 244 Bass Trap -One on each wall, Landscape orientation (Rear Ceiling) 5x 242 Acoustic Panels (Front Ceiling) 10x GridFusors (Front Wall) 1x Soffit Bass Trap, Range Limited. -in corner 2x Monster Bass Trap, Scatter Plate -next to soffit

vutall wrote:

That's pretty great! Not as bad as I thought, but still pretty pricey. So, here is the layout and suggested panels from GIK. After shipping and such, looking just about $3,000 US. Right side of the picture (What I call the rear of the room) is where I will have my desk and monitors. Just wanted to double check with you all before I pull the trigger that this all looks good. GIK had one of their specialists work it all up for me, but I always like to double check with others too! Finally, instead of tearing the carpet out right now, what about throwing down some of that cheap plastic office chair mats? It would give me a reflective surface instead of an absorbing one, and would be a good temporary platform to work on until I decide if I want to actually build out this room or build an outbuilding. At least in theory. Any ideas there? Products used: (rear wall) 2x Soffit Bass Trap, Range Limited. -one in each corner 2x Monster Bass Trap, Range Limited -one next to each Soffit (Middle of wall) 2x 244 Bass Trap -One on each wall, Landscape orientation (Rear Ceiling) 5x 242 Acoustic Panels (Front Ceiling) 10x GridFusors (Front Wall) 1x Soffit Bass Trap, Range Limited. -in corner 2x Monster Bass Trap, Scatter Plate -next to soffit

Hi Vutall, I'm have a look more closely this evening, but at first glance I wouldn't think it's great to be honest. I think those "gridfusors" are hugely expensive for what they are and, being polystyrene, won't work well for diffussion, as well as being too close to your head to be useful. Dan

are hugely expensive for what they are and, being polystyrene, won't work well for diffussion, as well as being too close to your head to be useful.

:thu: Exactly. Numeric sequence diffusers need to be at least ten feet (3m) away from your head, and perhaps more if they are tuned low. How far away would those be from your head? I'm wondering what the target decay time is for that room? That should be one of the factors that you are aiming to get under control. What are you aiming for there, and what will the treatment that you show in that image actually produce? Considering the size of the room, I'm not fully convinced that the proposed treatment is going to get the acoustic response under control. It's a start, but likely not all that you will need. I have nothing against GIK: in fact, I like them, they do sell good products, and Glen is a respected member of this forum. But do take into account that if there's a company that sells only bananas, oranges and apples, it's unlikely that they'll advise you to eat eggs and lettuce as well, even if that's what you really need in your diet... I think you get the point. Companies promote their own products, obviously. If you need eggs in your diet but the grocer only sells bananas, oranges and apples, would he tell you to NOT buy his apples, and go somewhere else to buy eggs? - Stuart -

The ceilings of the room are just a little under 8f high. When I'm at the console mixing the diffusors would be more than 10ft away due to angles.

OK, that's good, but what frequency ranges are those devices tuned for? D'Antonio and Cox (the guys who wrote the book on this type of diffuser, and did all the research to figure out how they work), suggest that ten feet is the minimum distance, but you might also need more distance if the device is tuned low. In different papers, they suggest at least three times the wavelength of the lowest scattering frequency (which is an octave below the tuned cutoff frequency), or seven times the low cutoff frequency. Those work out to be very similar, actually, but in both cases the distance is related to the tuning. Here's why: That's the typical type of sound field pattern you get from this type of diffuser. As you can see, close up to the diffuser, there is severe "lobing", where the phase, level, and direction of the sound field is broken up into discreet parts that you can hear as you move your ear around: the diffusion is NOT even at close distances. It needs quite a distance before the parts of that pattern merge together again into a true diffuse field. If your ears are too close to the device, then you are not hearing smooth diffusion sound. One ear might well be hearing something different than the other ear, and just moving your head a bit side-to-side or front-to-back could move one or both ears into a different region of the pattern. For mixing, you need to have a clear, smooth, diffuse, low-level sound field that arrives at your ears no less than about 20ms after the direct sound from the speakers already reached your ears. During that 20ms gap, there should be NO sound arriving at your ears, or as little as possible. Then the diffuse field arrives after about 20ms, and it arrives smoothly, evenly. That's the issue here. That's part of the reason for the "minimum 10 feet" rule: because if it is ten feet behind you, then the "there-and-back" distance to your ears is 10+10feet=20 feet, which works out to about 20ms of time delay (sound travels roughly one foot every millisecond). In other words, the sound came out the speakers, hit your ears, carried on past your ears for at least 10ms, hit the diffuser, then came back again for another 10ms, and therefore your ears hear it 20ms after they heard the direct sound. If you are closer than ten feet, then the sound arrives too soon, and that potentially messes up your psycho-acoustic perception of the direct sound. And in addition to the above, if the wavelengths of the diffuse sound or scattered sound are very long, then even at ten feet they have not had enough distance to merge and smooth out, so your ears might be in "lobes" of different intensities, phases, and timing, which once again can potentially affect your perception of the direct sound field.

Tracking vocals/non drum instruments, they would only be a few feet from the performers.

That probably isn't too much of an issue, and can even be beneficial. By carefully placing your instruments and mics, you can possibly take advantage of the not-fully-diffuse sound field, and in any case, for musicians, they don't need the "20ms delay" in any case! They are performing in a more live space, and do not need the strict control that you need for mixing in a control room.

As far as target decay time goes, I honestly have no idea. I really don't know what I'm doing to be honest and was leaving the suggestions and science to the professionals haha.

The decay time refers to how sound dies away after the speaker or instrument stops producing it. In other words, if the speaker is playing a song, and you suddenly turn it off, how long after you flip the switch can you still hear the sound bouncing around in the room? There are tables and specifications and recommendations for that, for different situations. and that's where you are going to have a problem: you have one single room that you are trying to use for two very different acoustic purposes. The decay time for a control room absolutely needs to be in the range 150ms to about 350ms, depending on the size of the room, but for most home studios, a good goal is around 200 ms (there are equations for calculating the exact time, based on room dimensions). But for the musicians, and for tracking, you need a much longer decay time: maybe 500ms to even as high as 1800 ms, depending on genre, instruments, musicians, etc. So, you have a major conflict on your hands! In order to mix well, you need 200 ms, but in order to track/rehearse/jam well, you need maybe 800 ms. You can't mix properly in a room with long decay times, because the room itself masks some of the sounds that you need to hear, and you can't play well in a room with a short decay time, because it sounds dull, lifeless, uninteresting... That's the issue. The guys at GIK have tried to divide your room into two areas to help a bit with this: one area is more live, reflective, diffuse, for performing, and the other area is a bit drier, but is is still only one room, and the two "ends" of the room are still connected. What I would suggest, is that you consider building some variable acoustic devices, so you can change the response of the entire room to meet different situations. In other words, you have panels on the walls that you can flip, slide, or rotate to expose different types of treatment to the room: when you expose the absorptive part, that brings down the overall decay time and makes the room more "dry". When you expose the diffuse part to the room, that improves the decay time a little and adds some soft character to the room. And when you expose the purely reflective parts to the room you get a larger increase in decay times, and more specular reflections bouncing around. So you can adjust the response to be any way you want it.

Need the rear half of the room to sound good for mixing, and the front half of the room to sound good for tracking.

I think you have that backwards! The front of the room is where the speakers are: it's the wall in FRONT of you as you sit at your mixing desk, mixing. In other words the wall that is closest to your head. The rear of the room is the part behind you as you are seated at the mixing desk. The rear wall is the one that is furthest away from your head as you are seated at the desk, mixing. But anyway, the issue still remains: if you divide the room into two acoustic "zones", that doesn't solve the problem. As you are seated at the desk, trying to mix, you will still hear the longer uneven decay times form the rear end of the room, and they will potentially affect your ability to correctly perceive the direct sound from the speakers. And when your musicians are playing at the back of the room, the won't be getting the long decay time they need because that would have to come from the furthers wall (the front wall), but there won't be any reflections from that end of the room, because it is too dead! That's your dilemma. By trying to treat the room to do both things at once, you end up with a room that is lousy for both! It isn't good for mixing, because the far end is too live and uneven, and it isn't good for playing, because the far end is too dead and lifeless... The solution is variable treatment. Eggs, not apples. :)

unsure when my storage container with all my gear will get here. Hard to do a REQ reading without my stuff

As soon as it arrives, set up a minimal system in that room: just the speakers against the front wall, and the mic at the mix position, and your DAW on a small desk roughly where the real desk will go. Do your initial tests like that, in the empty room. It will sound terrible and look really bad on the graphs, but that's the entire point! It shows you all the ugly defects in the room, in all their terrifying splendor! :) - Stuart -