Basement Two Room Studio

Hi All, I've been browsing and admiring the board for many months and am now very anxious to start construction of a modest private recording studio in my basement. I'm totally open to any construction ideas, but the general layout was agreed to with my wife to leave adequate living space in the rest of the basement and appear moderately normal if and when we sell the place. I apologize for my lousy AutoCAD work, but I posted some basic information, pictures, and CAD drawings converted to jpegs at: [url]http://home.comcast.net/~mkaducak I'm definitely an amateur, so please don't hold back if you have comments. I look forward to making a donation if I get some good feedback. Perhaps I should have broken my concerns up into several posts, but here goes... The issues I'm currently struggling with are: 1. Is RC needed on walls since top plates are directly connected to ceiling joists? Are sway braces and no RC a better option? If I use RC, will I have 3 leaves - i.e. drywall, studs, parallel wall? 2. HVAC. I'd like to tie into the existing house furnace. Will I be ok just running insulated flex duct? Superduct seems like a bear to work with. What kind of registers should I use? 3. Lighting. I am most concerned with leakage through the ceiling. Is surface mounted track lighting compatible with a resilient ceiling? I don't have much headroom. 4. Short of a floating floor/total room within a room, have I done everything I could to isolate from upstairs? Thanks, Marc

"1. Is RC needed on walls since top plates are directly connected to ceiling joists? Are sway braces and no RC a better option? If I use RC, will I have 3 leaves - i.e. drywall, studs, parallel wall?" If you were to extend your inner frame so it bears on the joists, then you would need RC to decouple the room from the wall frame; but you're right, NOT using RC and instead using sway braces is a better way. And no, a leaf is defined as all the CONTINUOUS layers of mass in one location, with no division by air (or air-like material, such as insulation) - so, your frame would only count as an addition to the mass of the wall coverings - right now, your outer concrete is one leaf and your inner steel frame with layers of wallboard is the second leaf. The continuation of your outer leaf (in this case the concrete) should be your upper sheathing on those joists; as such, it should be one continuous sealed mass everywhere, with no hard contact to inner framing. If necessary for better isolation, you can help this outer leaf some by adding a couple of layers of wallboard between the joists - if you search on "between the joists" and look at the 2 or 3 latest posts that come up, you should find some description of this process. "2. HVAC. I'd like to tie into the existing house furnace. Will I be ok just running insulated flex duct? Superduct seems like a bear to work with. What kind of registers should I use?" I'm not very knowledgable on HVAC - I usually try to leave these questions to Rod Gervais, one of our members and a VERY knowledgable guy on anything involving construction - I do know that Rod doesn't like flex duct, because it tends to flatten and pinch off air flow - I do know that air noise caused by moving air is roughly proportional to somewhere between the 4th and 5th POWER of the velocity - so if you double the diameter of a round duct, you get 4 times the cross sectional area and therefore 1/4 the flow, which should lower your air noise to nil - this would leave you with finding good registers, which I've yet to research. I also know that there is a lot more to AC than just the above, but I've found that the HVAC community is very closed, not willing at all to be generous with information - I don't want to perpetrate any more "internet fact" here than I've already done. Rod's your man on this one... "3. Lighting. I am most concerned with leakage through the ceiling. Is surface mounted track lighting compatible with a resilient ceiling? I don't have much headroom." This would partially depend on the weight of the fixtures and track - to be safe, it would be better to include a layer of plywood behind the innermost layer of drywall, for the screws to bite into - I don't think most track lighting would be heavy enough to cause enough extra weight on the RSIC clips to worry about. You can gain a little bit of headroom by running your channel parallel to (and between) your joists, mounting the clips either on "L" brackets mounted to the sides of the joists (up in the cavity) or mounting them on short 2x4 blocking between the joists, with the blocks recessed up into the cavities enough so that your channel just clears the bottoms of the joists by 1/2" - I'm working on a re-do of your "EastLiveWallSection" that will improve your ceiling height by at least an inch, but need to get some sleep (4:30 am wake-up tomorrow) so I'll have to continue this tomorrow nite, along with #4 - "4. Short of a floating floor/total room within a room, have I done everything I could to isolate from upstairs? " More later... Steve

Thanks a lot for the reply. Best to think on good rest, so don't overextend yourself. Just a couple of replies to your comments: 1. I'm trying to get someone from Kinetics to respond to me about CWCA sway braces but so far no luck. Too small a fish I guess. I at least wanted to get a price before looking into a custom metal fab. My concern about the 3 leaf was that the drywall was the 1st leaf, its 2x4 framing is the second leaf, and the RC between them is the air or more literally a spring. Then if you had a parallel wall it would be a third leaf. However, it seems like I see this done all the time so I shouldn't worry about it. I think you missed that I did include 2 layers of 5/8" drywall between the joists on EastWallSection. That is a great idea and I've read your posts on the subject. I think I'm ready to start this. 2. If I could just call an HVAC person and say "make me a quiet system with isolation from the rest of the house", I would do that. However, I feel like I need to become the expert as with all other aspects of this project so I can explain exactly what I want. Arthur Rice had a good idea (I think) with using load boxes and flex duct, but it sounded like it was untested. I don't really have headroom for anything exotic, only the spaces between the joists. Sometimes I wonder if I'm worrying too much about this. The trouble is I don't want to start framing until I understand what I'll need. 3. Good point on checking the weight. I don't know why I don't think of these things sometimes. You can get track lighting that is very lightweight. I can look at the allowable dead loads for RSIC or ISOMAX and figure it out. I had track lighting installed with plastic anchors in my old house drywall ceiling and never worried about them falling. 4. Anything you can do would be most appreciated. I'm anxious to get going, but don't want to make major mistakes. Please let me know if there is anything else I can provide. I plan to post pictures as I go. Thanks, Marc

1. I'm trying to get someone from Kinetics to respond to me about CWCA sway braces but so far no luck. Too small a fish I guess. I at least wanted to get a price before looking into a custom metal fab.

Mason Industries, Vibro-Acoustics and VMC make similar products.

However, I feel like I need to become the expert as with all other aspects of this project so I can explain exactly what I want.

Look over Vibro-acoustics website for excellent examples of HVAC design concepts. It is of geared to selling their product, but the field has relatively standard design concepts across the various manufacturers. Andre

If there is currently HVAC supply to (and return from) the basement space you'll be building in, you can probably just set up a group of transfer grilles to move air in and out of the studio. The existing HVAC system was sized and balanced to provide air for that space- you're just enclosing some of it. Just make sure the intake and exhaust are sound-protected at the studio walls and their outlets are far enough away from each other that you're not getting exhaust air coming back into the intake vent, etc. There's a couple posts around here about plenums and duct silencers, but you might need to dig a little to get to them. And as Knightfly said above, Rod Gervais is the man when it comes to HVAC.

Kase, Simply transferring the air between the studio rooms and the remaining open basement space is a very intriguing idea. I definitely understand your reasoning. I really like not tying directly into the ductwork, but wonder if it would actually work with all the heat from equipment and sweaty old rockers enclosed in the space. Does anyone have a second opinion on this? Cheers, Marc

I inquired about www.asc-soundproof.com stuff. They're working up a quote for me and my guess is it will be too expensive but they brought up an interesting point. Their claim is that if I resiliently mount the drywall on the north and east walls (the ones running parallel to the concrete foundation walls), that I should directly connect the new wall framing to the concrete walls such that it becomes a single very rigid frame. Since their products really just provide damping of the drywall, I would think that this point would apply whether I use their stuff or not. Thoughts?

This comes back to whether your inner wall frame will bear under the existing ceiling joists - if so, it will be a flanking path and you WILL need resilient mounting of the inner wall layers. That being the case, there would be no reason (other than increased air gap for more isolation) to isolate your frame from the concrete (I'd never use non-PT wood for the frame in that case though) Since your dwgs are already in jpg form, it would make things easier if you were to post them here - if you need help on this, let me know... Steve

OK, I'm going to attempt to post my pictures and drawings here. This picture shows what will be the live room looking into the northeast corner. The drums will end up in the same position when construction is finished.

Looking southeast into what will be the control room.

Looking north at the dwv and water pipes. I will need to build a closet around the cleanout and water meter and either build a soffit or space the new wall far enough from the concrete wall to accomodate the piping.

This is the layout of the two rooms together.

Marc, am I seeing half-height block walls in the pix, and is that why you refer to “top half” in your drawing? If so, can you do a detail showing your lower half-wall, whether the cavities are filled (and with what), and how the upper wall is mated to the lower? Also, I’m not a steel-framing expert but I don’t think you can do staggered stud framing with steel like you do with wood; part of the strength comes from having studs screwed into the channel on floor and ceiling on BOTH sides of the frame if I’m not mistaken. For isolation, you would be much better off using separate frames anyway, even if they’re only separated by an inch or so. Is the duct shown in the CR side going to remain there? How do you intend to isolate it from the studio? I’m working from a Compact Flash copy of questions off the site, so don’t have access to my usual array of tools - however, the Kinetics outfit normally contacts their local distributor who then is expected to contact the customer - if this hasn’t happened, you should re-contact Kinetics and “bump” them a bit. One of the problems of flex duct is that it’s pretty easy for it to partially collapse, restricting air flow and increasing noise - this is one of the reasons Rod Gervais doesn’t recommend using it at all. You’re wise not to rush things; it only takes one missed detail in this type construction to make the whole thing an exercise in futility… Steve

Steve, Here is a detail of the half wall. In the live room area the poured concrete walls are full height but in the control room they stagger down to half height. I don't know what the house sheathing is without doing some destruction, but it could be plywood, closed cell insul, tyvek, cedar siding. There is a large window to the outdoors in the back of the control room that I was planning on covering with an absorber. I'm not too concerned with isolation to the outside, just to the upstairs. I'm not sure whether to build new parallel walls or just cover the existing half walls with RC and drywall. In general, isolation is less of a concern in the control room than the live room where there will be loud drums. After some thought, I think I may be able to have a floated ceiling in the live room. I'll post some drawings for this as well. All the span tables I've seen show that a 2x6 can span 13+ ft., and this will leave me nearly the same headroom as RSIC+Hat channel. The only problem I found was with the bracing between the two joists housing some hvac and plumbing. I wonder if I could get away with removing it in that section and replacing it with one cross brace on each end (see dwgs). I'd do the floated ceiling in the control room as well, but I have that plenum in the way. Yes, I think it has to stay unless someone has an idea of what to do with it. It supplies two 6" ducts to the upstairs. I guess I thought I'd soffit around it and add RC and drywall. You are probably right about the staggered metal studs. I'm not committed to metal at all. BTW, I've begun mounting drywall between the joists to beef up the subfloor. Thanks again for all your input. Marc

The picture is the cross bracing I referred to in the previous message. I think I can fit a 2x6 ceiling joist under it and still get enough headroom (~7'-2"). The electrical conduit in the pic can be removed, so don't worry about that. In the area where there is a duct and pipe there is enough room to put a floated joist, but a thin metal horizontal brace would have to be removed. I was thinking of replacing the single brace in the middle of the room with one one each end, thus putting them outside the floated joist area. I hope the drawings do a better job describing this.

Looks to me like the horizontal brace was used for lack of space where the duct is; these are mainly to avoid squeaks in the floor, and the cavities to each side both have x braces - I don't see a problem with putting two braces spaced apart instead of one in the middle. I'd be more concerned that your duct is between the two masses of your sound barrier, and as such will transmit some sound up into the living space... Steve

Yeah, the ductwork in general is my biggest head-scratcher. There is really no place I can put the studio without having some overhead ductwork. I figured I'd wrap insulate the existing ducts, and put fill their joist cavities with two layers of 5/8" drywall the same as everywhere else. Do you think it would be worthwhile to replace the existing overhead round ducts with insulated flex or lined ducts? That's probably all I can do. I have yet to inquire with an HVAC person about installing lined ducts so I have no clue what that would cost. I could probably manage the insulated flex myself. Also, does my plan for installing a floated ceiling look ok? According to the span tables I have (one from Steve), a 2x6 is within the limits by at least 2 ft. Is it worth it to do this over RC? I really like the idea of not using RC so I can mount guitars to the wall and don't need to worry about RC failure. BTW, installing the two layers of 5/8" drywall between ceiling joists is nontrivial. I'd recommend to anyone doing it to work with sections no longer than 4 ft. because of its weight. I've been laminating two ~4 ft. pieces together and holding them up while a helper screws in the 1x2 supports. Since the joists aren't perfectly straight, the width between them can vary so you have to be careful cutting the drywall. I've had to do a lot of trimming off the original pieces I had cut because they were too wide. I thought about using some type of jack or t-brace for supporting them, but it doesn't seem too practical now because of all the adjusting required to get it in position. My shoulders hurt! :)

Here's a picture of the two layers of 5/8" drywall supported by 1"x2" cleats. I'm very nearly done with this process, just some more caulking to do.

I'm almost ready to give the go ahead to a carpenter to start framing. He gave me a decent price and it will take forever for me to do it myself. I still have a few questions regarding framing. Does anyone have an opinion of spanning a new ceiling in the live room with new 2x6 joists as shown in the previous postings? This is better than just mounting RC to the existing joists right? Is there a specific type of wood that needs to be used for the new joists, e.g. laminated beam, douglas fir? Will I need to use something like rafter ties or angle brackets for mounting the new joists to the top plates? My carpenter may know the answer to this, but I want to be prepared just in case. My plan is similar to Ted White's home theater: http://www.tedwhite.homestead.com/files ... ose_up.jpg http://www.tedwhite.homestead.com/files ... ling_1.htm And this one: http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.p ... 67&start=0 Because of the ductwork and the longer spans, I won't be able to do this in the control room. I plan to use RSIC and hat channel on the existing joists in the control room. Thanks

Your live room span is the 11 foot one shown in the cad drawing? If so, then 24" centers using 2x6's won't quite give you 10# dead load, which is minimum for hanging two layers of 5/8 rock with insulation - you'll need to go with 16" centers which will span up to 13 feet, using Doug fir #2 and better, 2x6. If you have the headroom, you could go to 2x8's; all else being equal, they would span 13'6" with 24" centers. Yes, this would be better from an isolation standpoint; however, if you're limited in headroom then using RSIC clips and hat channel would likely give the best results with minimum headroom loss. Room to room isolation within the studio would be better if using separate ceilings, with wall extending up above the ceiling and sealed... Steve

Room to room isolation within the studio would be better if using separate ceilings, with wall extending up above the ceiling and sealed

Steve, Thanks for your reply. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by this, especially the wall extending above the ceiling. My plan was to support the new ceiling joists on top of the wall. Are you referring to the drywall? Sorry about my confusion. Yes, the span is the 11 ft. shown in the cad drawing and I did plan on having the new joists on 16" centers so hopefully the ceiling won't collapse! As it turns out, the headroom I will have using 2x6 joists + 2 layers of 5/8" drywall is very nearly the same as using RSIC+hat channel+2 layers 5/8" drywall. If I needed to use 2x8s I'd lose too much headroom. This is the reason I was asking if the isolation would be better using a false ceiling.

Yeah, I was referring to the ceilng drywall - this sketch is for another member, so has one frame load bearing; but the drywall hangs down below the wall frame as shown, on RC - that way, you don't get flanking through a continuous drywall leaf between rooms... Steve

OK thanks again, I understand your point now. I will not have a continuous ceiling leaf since the live room will have the floated ceiling on new joists and the control room will have resilient mounted drywall on existing joists. Any thoughts on using something like rafter ties or angle brackets for fastening the new joists to the top plates?

Yeah, something like these http://www.strongtie.com/products/conne ... -THAC.html more comments on the sketch... Steve

Steve, Thanks again for your reply. Man, this forum sure keeps you hoppin'. If I am interpreting your suggestion correctly, I think that it won't quite work for me. The problem is that I won't have a perimeter joist. The new joists that span the room will be run in between the existing joists as in: http://www.tedwhite.homestead.com/files ... ose_up.jpg and http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.p ... 67&start=0 The idea is to take advantage of the vertical space available in between the existing joists. The new joists will only rest on top of the new top plates. The top plates are the only stucture available to fasten the new joists to. I hope this makes sense. Thanks again