the new room -- THANKS to all who helped!

Wanted to show off my new room, which is finally completed, including bass trapping! For those not familiar with my history here, I needed to find a way to make my shallow-ceilinged basement work for my new mastering room. John gave me the brilliant idea of a cloth ceiling. We modified his original idea and came up with something that has impressed all who've seen it. We nailed 2 layers of 1/2" plywood into the subfloor (to keep sound from going up as much as possible), then strung wire between the joists, onto which we laid fiberglass insulation. Then we stapled black polyester quilt batting to the bottom of the joists (to keep out fiberglass shed) and then stretched black vinyl insect netting over that. The result is a skin-tight, black ceiling with virtually no "staple dimples". The entire ceiling is a gigantic absorption zone, so sonically, the ceilings are higher than their measured <7' height, and the ceiling also appears to be further away than it is (as it is a sea of black). The room is a trapezoidal shape, to minimzie side reflections, which it does, quite effectively. The trapping I've done is only in the corners and on the rear wall behind myself and my clients. I used $7 bathroom wall lights for lighting, and everyone thinks they look great! An excellent wall lighting solution without exorbitant expense. They're not so bright you can't look at them, but they're not as dim as most sconce lighting. Thanks again to all who's input made this room a reality! It sounds phenomenal!

Looks great! Well done on the ceiling, I might just check into that design, my biggest fear is noise from footsteps above, how is it in your place? also, how is the sound transfer from your room to the rest of the house? jef

Thanks for the kind words! Footsteps above... I'll admit, they're definitely there, but since I do the bulk of my work either before my kid is awake or after he's asleep, it's not too bad. :) Also, the area immediately above the studio is not high traffic -- it's currently my kid's room, but will eventually be my wife's "studio" (project room). My wife is considerably quieter than my jumping, rambunctious toddler. Keep in mind, I'm not tracking almost at all, so such noises are more of a distraction than a serious audio issue. As for bleed into the rest of the house... we did a great job of keeping the bass bleed (which is really all there is) out of the first floor bedrooms (crucial!), but immediately above the room (in my wife's project room and the entryway to our house), there's a fair ammount of low end thump. But it's not even enough to be annoying to someone watching TV. If we'd gone whole hog on the plywood (say, 2 or more inches instead of .5-1 inch) and caulked between layers, I'll bet that we'd have even less interference between floors. As it stands, I'm thrilled with the ceiling. We did a quick job on it, and it was still a huge chunk of the 5-week construction -- even with an air nailer, getting all of that wood up there was not easy, nor a one-man job. Lots of sawing, measuring, re-cutting, working around pipes, etc.

BTW, this is the bathroom light I used (5 of them), available at any Home Depot for ~$7:

Thanks for the report, I also have a toddler! But same as you, I'm doing more composing than tracking, and the live room will be underneath a room that isn't used at all. The nice thing about our setup is that there is one floor in between the basement and the bedrooms... now I just need to work on the actual shape of the studio!