What about brick?

Hey. This is the first time I've been on this site and my knowledge of studio construction is very limited. I googled "music studio construction" and read all that I could. However most of what was offered was discussion building under ideal situations and my situation is about as far away from ideal as you can get. I live in an apartment in Manhattan and I need to be able to record in my bedroom. Sadly my bedroom is overlooking the street and the noise created makes it impossible to record. I therefore need to build a small recording booth inside of my bedroom. My bedroom isn't that big so the room will have to be about 4x8. I know... TINY. But all I’ll be recording in it will be acoustic guitar and vocals. I have a couple of obvious problems. For example I can't really attach anything to the floor because it would ruin the hardwood and they'd charge me and arm and a leg when I moved out. I thought I could put a layer of double side stick foam and them maybe some type of insulating foam around it. My main problem though is the limited amount of construction I'll be able to do. Walls and ceiling can't be done with dry wall. In fact the only material I could think of that I could build them out of was wood and fiberglass. But then I thought of brick. I could build the wall with a cavity in between the wood that's the size of a brick and stack brick inside my walls. But is that really worth it? Does brick absorb a lot of sound. If this question is ridiculous then I apologies and any advice you could give on the construction in general would be extremely appreciated. But I HAVE to make this work someway. I can't not record!!! And you know what they say, when life gives you a lemon... check it's sound isolation property's. :wink:

Josh, i don't think you want to build something as heavy as brick in your manhattan apartment. how do you know it won't crash through the floor? if you're just worried about street noise coiming in, you should be able to build yourself a decent booth out of wood and drywall. why can't you use drywall? can't get it upstairs without someone seeing? :wink: what were you going to do, carry a few bricks at a time in your backpack? :lol: you don't need to attach it to the floor, maybe you can put down some kind of pad (to protect the floor) and then plywood, and build your booth on the plywood? neither brick nor drywall will absorb sound, but they will block sound. the absorbing is a separate issue, to make it sound good inside. that's done with exposed (but fabric covered) insulation after your walls are done. Dan :)

Josh, first of all please read (and do) as many of the items here http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3231 as you can; the two you may have missed are about editing your profile to include a location (I know you told us, but if you hang around that will "fall off the page" and no one will remember) - the other part is to read as much of the REFERENCE section as you can; there are a lot of answers already there. The more you study the better ideas you may come up with for your problem (and we all agree it's a problem :cry: ) If you build a booth for vox and ac. guitar, you should try to stay away from even dimensions - first of all, when you follow the above link you'll see a statement about acoustic spaces NOT being only two dimensional. A small room needs to have its dimensions NOT be evenly divisible by each other, so 4x6x8 is bad; 4x8x8 is even worse. Amazingly, just changing the sizes to 3x5x7 or 5x7x9 feet will improve the sound inside the booth quite a bit. This has to do with modes causing uneven frequency response. Another thing you'll see in the upper link is a request for BUDGET - we can't possibly know what you might be able to build unless we know WHERE YOU ARE and HOW MUCH $$$ you can drop on your project - those two things are major deciding factors. So, check out the link, study a while, and come back with a bunch more info; there are ways around your dilemma, so don't slit your wrists just yet (or EVER) :wink: Steve