enough mass?

hey what you guys reckon to my plan for the walls. the yellow stuff is rock wool.. will my nieghbours 20 feet away hear me enough to moan! thanks sam

Sam, did you miss this? http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 Oh, and what's on the studs? More mass of some kind? What kind of "mud" is that between concrete? Steve

ive read all the threads, been researching my butt off, im a bit slow.... I was kinda hoping that would be enough mass, but heres the diagram again a bit more despecriptive.. Thankyou.

Hey Sam, if you read that SPECIFIC link (just the first post is fine) you'll see that we need things like your general location (you need to edit your profile to include this), along with as specific details as you can give; you don't mention whether the blocks are solid or hollow, what the thickness is for the chipboard, plaster, etc - Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, in that first post is IMPORTANT if I'm to figure out how to help you - if I were psychic, I would have already won a huge lottery and would be in my own multi-million $tudio instead of trying to find time to work on my own projects. All through this board, I've made reference to "2-leaf walls", "mass-air-mass" construction, etc - the REFERENCE section's first link covers that pretty thoroughly. I bring this up because your construction has chipboard and cladding (one leaf) air(insulation), 200mm block (at least one leaf, more if it's hollow block) , insulation (air), 100mm block (yet another leaf), insulation, and plaster board (still ANOTHER leaf) - Each combination of mass-air-mass as sound travels through the wall will have its own resonant frequency, plus the resonant product of all those separate resonances; at each resonance, the wall will be weak. About the only range of frequencies that might be blocked better with this construction would be midrange and highs; for lows (drums) you want a simple but effective 2-leaf wall system, with as much mass and space between masses as you can get. Please, study what's here some more; and if you've not already built that room, please DON'T... Steve

ive read all about but when youve been reading and reading some of it doesnt soak in. I have'nt found a good enough explaination, or at least one i can understand why using multi leaf doesnt work, bassicaly i dont understand what your trying to explain, i thought it was bad cause it decreases airspace, so if you have a big enough airspace then it doesnt make a much of a differnce. For me more is more, the more the better, also ive been to pro studio, where they used four airspaces conctrete blocks seperated by air, and that worked,it was pretty much silent a few meters away. so i need, more of explanation, if you could. cheers

I agree with Sam to some respect - I have also been in plenty of studios that have three leaf walls, four leaf walls, etc and the isolation is just fine. I was in a studio just two weeks ago that had one single stud wall with only one layer of 1/2 board on each side between the control room and drum room and the isolation was fine - I think sometimes people get a bit to anal about isolation and construction methods - Remember your heighbours that are 20feet away will also have there own STC. There no way you are going to upset them!! If you follow Steve's basic principles and seal evrything well you will be fine.

I have also been in plenty of studios that have three leaf walls, four leaf walls, etc and the isolation is just fine.

For any given amount of sound isolation, a MSM is the cheapest. Triple, quadruple etc will work, but will be more expensive for the same amount of isolation. The question then becomes, "what are you gaining with the aditional leafs?" Andre

Spot on Andre, just follow the basic rules and you will be fine Sam - not that I can talk!! JG

thats a bit more reasuring...sadly i have to build a shed to avoid planning permision, where i am if you have a big garden you can build a big shed, so i need to have this shell... the shed. Im having to rooms inside the shed one for live stuff, suposed to be hevily sound proofed then the control room not so hevily sound proofed, so to make the whole 24' by 16' a realy big shell would be more expensive if you see what i mean... but returning to my origional question?........... do you guys think that those concrete walls combined with air space all built on seprate foundation 8" dense block and 4" not so dense both solid concrete block, with a 12-16" airspace in between is enough mass for the walls? thanks

The way you describe your requiremnts, probably. For a bterr idea at what the combinastion you described will do read through (warning, lots of test data): http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/fulltext/ir586.pdf Good luck! Andre

Bear in mind that if you condition the air in the space (i.e., A/C), then it will probably become "habitable" and, thus, require building permits and strict adherence to building codes.