Studio Build - The Sound Lab

Hello All. I have undertaken the creation of a mini sound studio based on the John L. Sayers Studio in a Container design. Here is the link to the thread: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4168 Here is the link to the finished studio: http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/Pages/Container.htm Here is the design. I am modifying it slightly so the tracking room is the larger room and the mix room is the smaller room. The mix position will be turned so that I'm looking to my right into the tracking room. Hear is my layout: Primarily I am a musician, but I have always loved the engineering side of things. With this studio my intention is to get the growing assortment of gear out of the bedroom and have a space to call my own and create. This will be my first studio build, so I hope to learn a lot about the process in preparation for the day I build something more ambitious. Mostly this space will be used for the creation of my new album and perhaps some occasional project work on the weekends. I have a non-music job at an advertising company, so any money made will probably go back into gear, and/or paying off the build cost. I do very much want for my recordings to sound good, but balanced with keeping the budget reasonable. Currently I have a 1000 square foot loft that I converted from a soap factory two years ago. Fortunately that project taught me everything I needed to know about basic construction, and I still have all the tools and many of the materials to get the project moving. I still needed to research the John L. Sayer site for approximately 40-50 hours to get a handle on sound proofing and sound treatment. There will be some compromises due to the smaller space and budget, so I wanted to be informed so I can feel comfortable with some of the limiting decisions. I will be building a box in the loft. Sound proofing needs to be somewhat reasonable, but I am in an industrial area with no residential neighbors and no noise restriction, that is fairly quiet at night and weekends. I'm shooting for an STC of about 45. I am doing this project in two phases. Phase 1. will be rough build out. Then a brief break for a minor knee operation after which I will build the computer and solder all the cables. Then I'm going to do the finish work and extensive treatment. Due to the small size of the space I'll be going for a moderately dead space. I'll be relying on a combination of a Lexicon PCM60 and Kurtzweil Rumour for verb. Although now that I think of it I will have room on top for a plate, hmmm... The space is nine feet wide and 15 feet long. I have 10' 6" ceilings, but I need more storage space in the loft, so I'm going for a height of 8' 9". I'm using basic 2x4 construction, with double layered 1/2" drywall, and 2x6 ceiling beams with a roof of 1/2" drywall and 1/2" mdf. Interior height will be 8"4" which should give me enough height for treatment clouds and overheads. Here is the space: Shot of the tools: I'm going with a faux floating floor. Currently the floor in the area is concrete. My plan is to lay down 1/2" mdf, then a layer of 1/2" sound block which is like compressed fibres, then a layer of 1/8" luan which is a hardwood laminate. Everything is in 4'x8' sheets. This should will be like a poormans hardwood floor. Luan is prone to denting, but I figure this will add to the character of the floor. I picked out sheets that had a definite redwood tinge, so it should look great after some clear polyurethane. Here is the cut layered wood: Here are the tools needed for the floor, I used a #8 countersink bit (I intentionally broke off the drill part and just used the countersink part), and #10 screws so that they would countersink, but not pull through the thin luan. I will cover the screws and seams with some redwood tinted wood filler. I used a lot of construction glue on the luan when placing on the soundblock. Here is the finished floor: Here I'm putting up an additional sheetrock layer against the two existing walls. Not completely necessary because when I'm done, those will essentially be double walls. Once the sheetrock was up, I sealed all the seams with OSI acoustic caulk.

Here are the cut base and cap plates. Here is the initial framing. At this point I was going to leave it one big room, but after seeing the size I realized it was big enough to split into a tracking room and a control room. I struggled with the decision, but went with the two room design because it was closer to the original design, and because I wanted to be able to track others without headphones. BTW, I am building this almost completely by myself using a volvo wagon to transport the materials, I did need one day of help with the ceiling drywall though. Here the cross beams are in, and the center wall is framed in. Here the doors are hung. I ended up re-hanging the outside door after this pic so that it swings out instead of into the tracking room, essentially giving me more usable space. I used exterior fibreglass filled steel doors from the Home Depot. Nice seal on these and good bang for the buck. I'm using a glass door between the mix and control room to keep the sight lines. Hanging the doors was tough grrr , but now that I know how to do it it will be easier if I ever do it again. In most constuction jobs you hang the doors last, but for a sound studio I recommend doing it first so you can properly insulate around the door frame. Also most doors are meant for a stardard width wall, and with double sheetrock, you need to make some modification. You can't use expanding foam sealant around doors, because it will swell the jams and the door won't close properly, but I was able to find some at ACE Hardward by Dap that specifically doesn't overexpand and it worked great! Here is another shot with the doors hung, next up the roof. Here are some snacks I suprised my girlfriend with for being so supportive in living in a construction zone for 2 months as well as my incessant talk of all things gear and Gearslutz related. These types of things mid-project will lead to a successful completion and yet still have a significant other when everything is complete

Here is a detail of some temporary spacers I hung around the top of the roofline so that I knew how far to hang the roof layers to end up with the wall flush once the sheetrock was hung. Every seam of sheetrock on the wall corners, ceiling corners and roof corners are overlapping as well as the seams of the sheetrock. Here I'm sanding and adding polyurethane to the tops of the desk for the console desk the computer desk, and the autolocator/wireless DAW controller stand. Insulation going up. Because I used standard width walls and ceiling spaces, I could use the plastic wrapped insulation without creating a three leaf situation. So nice to work with! I left space on the inner and outer wall uninsulated until the last minute so I could slip the inner sheet rock through. Sheetrock up. I went with all surface mounted utilities to keep things airtight and used copius amounts of acoustic caulk and backer rod. I ran the dimmer on the outside to reduce rf interference. I mounted 3" pvc pipe through the walls on both sides of the door between the rooms for running the snake and the autolocator cable so I can use my tape machine when tracking myself. After the cables are fed through I wrap them with pipe insulation and tie everything off with cable ties so that the pipes are airtight. Notice also the surface mounted outlet. I went with single outlets to save cost, and because I'm using Isobar power strips on each outlet. I installed two outlets on opposite walls in the tracking room, and one outlet in the mix room. I use Rolls ProMatch boxes to convert the unbalanced computer signal to balanced. I used one 20 amp circuit for all outlets and a seperate circuit for the track lights. The outlets are on an isolated ground that is connected to a cold water pipe with a grounding pipe connector. I ran some amp tests and the power is exceptionally clean, and 20 amps should suffice, so long as I don't run the Air Conditioner and the Mackie 1400i at the same time. Here is a pic of the tube for the Air Conditioner vent, I'm using a portable A/C on casters. I will turn it on to cool the room down when not tracking. The A/C gets no fresh air feed so I will need to introduce fresh air occasionally as well. The tube has a dryer plug on the roof that seals when not in use. Once the tube is connected to the A/C the room will be airtight. It rarely gets very hot in Santa Barbara, and my loft stay's cool when it does, so A/C shouldn't be much of a problem. Notice also the surface mount for the track lighting. I used a romex connector in the box and sealed the hole around the romex with fireproof caulk. I used a conduit box, to conduit connector, to 2" piece of conduit to conduit connector to track light conduit connector. Whew... Here is a pic of the junction box on the roof that runs to the panel. All of the romex was run to this box and labeled. All of the outlets are currently on one circuit, but I left open the option for one of the outlets to be run on an additional circuit if I need more juice. I was running out of time before the knee surgery, so this is fine for now. Here is the last pic of this phase. Recovering from the knee surgery about two weeks ago so I soldered custom wiring for the monitor system using nice quality shielded cable and neutrix connectors. The monitor system will be a Hafler amp, NS10's and a 8" 100watt powered sub. The sub has adjustable crossover, so I'll just be using it a bit for below 100Hz. I wanted a small punchy sub, and this one is perfect, but it is unbalanced, so I'm using a Rolls ProMatch to keep everything in balance. You can also see the Mackie SRM450 powered 12" that I will be using for the playback monitor in the tracking room and my modified 600W 1x15 SWR Bass Cab. Thats all for now. I'm able to do some low impact work so I'll be taping and floating the drywall this weekend, then painting, then I can start on the room treatments. Stay tuned for Phase 2. coming soon...

Wow, so much progress in seemingly so little time -- in that you posted all the photos at once! Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing everything in great detail... Even the "thanks for being a tolerant girlfriend" snack tray! 8) Trancetones, it seems that your isolation requirements ("shooting for an STC of about 45") are pretty low. I'm wondering if they're too low... :roll: Your 9x15 dimensions are very similar to those in my project... Although the purpose of my room is to be loud without disturbing anyone. You're obviously more focused on the quality of acoustics inside the room, whereas my project's focus is on isolation with acoustic treatments being a mere afterthought, just to make the room not sound like an oversized Pepsi bottle. Your "faux floating floor" will likely not add any isolation benefit. In fact, I have concerns that you're doing some actual harm. It is true that laminate floors "float" in the sense that they're not firmly attached to the subfloor or slab... But a floating floor in the context of studio construction refers to having the floor (or, ideally, the entire room) floating on elastomers such as Neoprene or Sylomar. I'm not a fan of how you've attached your framing to your "faux floating floor" as that is a tremendous amount of disportionate weight around the perimeter. How exactly did you attach your sole plates? Are they firmly attached to the slab? It doesn't appear that they are. If that is the case, I can almost certainly guarantee that's not to code. California has some strict building regulations due to it being prone to earthquakes. You being in Santa Barbara are in an especially risky area... See the attached images that I fetched from the California Geological Survey's Seismic Hazards Zonation Program site. The images portray the reality that you must be diligent in this area. Did you pull permits for your project? I'm assuming you didn't, else you wouldn't be this far along without some inspections going awry. If you haven't seen it already (or, to be honest, even if you have), please carefully read the "Permits, Codes, Licenses -- and WHY YOU SHOULD CARE!" thread. There are some extremely important points made in that thread, many of which are further down (thou shalt not skim! ;-)). In closing, you mention that your property is a "loft," but it's not immediatley clear to me whether or not your room is being built on the ground floor or upstairs. I sure hope it's on the ground floor, because even with the "relatively" lightweight room you're building, it's probably too much weight to assume is safe for the upstairs. Safety concerns aside (and, really, they should never be put aside), have you done anything to decouple that 3" PVC pipe and the other penetrations you have made between your leaves? --Keith :mrgreen:

Hi Sharwood, thanks for your reply. The progress isn't quite as fast as it seems about 3 months with me working mostly on weekends. Still pretty fast by most standards though. I purchased a disposable digital camera that you can't develop until you use all 25 pics, so I'm doing this build diary in two sections. I'll try to answer the questions best I can. Now that the sheet rock is up, and I've done some initial testing, the sound isolation is fine although there is some minor leakage of drums and very loud guitars between the two rooms, but almost no leakage for vocals or acoustic guitar. I can live with the little bit of leakage. As far as outside noises getting in, it's totally quiet at night when I track. You can't hear anything outside the loft, not even drums. The next phase will be treating, and it's going to be tough to eliminate the pepsi bottle thing, so It will be treated with lots of compressed fibreglass and superchunks in the corners more dead than I would prefer, but hey compromises have to be made in such a small space. I may put in one big angled resonator on the back wall to make it nonparallel and change the reflections of the tracking room and liven it while still getting some bass trapping. I did pull permits, but since I recently pulled permits for the initial build-out of the space I knew the drill, and what to expect, and I only had one 2x4 that he wasn't happy with and I had to put a second story on the roof junction box as I had the wires packed too tighly in there. I'm with you on the seismic thing. The sole plates are attached to the concrete a number of ways. The bottom mdf is heavily glued down and then 2" ram-set nailed into the concrete. Then the sole plates are screwed into the mdf. Then 4 1/4" ram set nails go through the plates throught the soundblock and throught the mdf into the concrete. This way the earthquake would not only have to displace the plates, but the glued and ram-set sheets of mdf as well. (Note to mother nature, this is not a challenge.) The whole box is wayyyyy overbuilt. Let's just say that if the big one hits I'm running for the studio. The idea with the floor was to reduce bass vibration from my cabinet to the other rooms in the loft. The studio is on the ground floor. The loft is essentially a big warehouse. No second story.

Whew! Needsless to say, you had me quite worried there. I'm glad you posted those extra details as it shows you did do you homework and you are following protocols. There are too many examples here (and elsewhere) of that not being the case... :roll: Anyway, lookin' good! Thanks again for sharing. It makes all of us smarter. 8) --Keith :mrgreen:

Trancetones wrote:

I had to put a second story on the roof junction box as I had the wires packed too tighly in there.

I was going to reply earlier to this thread but got sidetracked. That junction box and mass of wire was the only thing I was going to comment on from pics above, and my instinct was right. :D I'm wondering why you didn't post or ask anything earlier? Not to say that's a bad thing. I'm just not that brave to proceed without the critics looking on. :oops: Suppose haveing a decent digital camera help though. I too studied the studio in container carefully as well as John's Paddy design. I'm kinda off that path now though. I look forward to seeing more off your work. Marc

Thanks, guys. Yeah, only my second post on this site, my first was in the Studio in a Container thread, wondering about the ceiling treatment. I did though lurk this site for literally 40-50 hours checking out the different build threads and FAQ, so my hat's off to all those who posted before, it was such great info. I also need to give my proper respects to my father and brother who was/is general contractors and showed me how to do all this stuff. Also thanks to John for setting up this forum. Small token of my appreciation sent via paypal. I just busted out the second camera, and the knee is healed enough to start round two. I can't wait to sand and poly the floor, I think it's going to look incredible. Lots of painting and baseboard work to do, still need to tape and float the outside. I also need to order and build the recording computer. And of course all the treatment to do, but I think I've got the plan in my head for that, so onward. Having trouble getting the compressed fibreglass in my area, but I have some leads. Hopefully I'll win the realtraps contest :D

I went so far beyond code with my wiring it's almost funny. :) I soldered every spot wires are junctioned with a wire nut. I don't even do that where I work... but then again I'm working in brick buildings at work, not wood like my home. Electrical fires is something I'm extremely paranoid about, hence the solder. It gives me peace of mind though. I guess I never saw the container studio idea before. That's kind of neat. You could make a mobile studio in a semi trailer I guess if you really wanted to, that'd be pretty cool. Good luck with your building. Be safe.

Hey Trancetones, congrats on your build. If you are having trouble finding rigid fiberglass in your area, and if you are building superchunks, one thing to consider is to build them using Ultratouch Acoustic Cotton. According to their website, Hayward Lumber in Santa Barbara carries it. You should be able to get a pack of 4 batts of this stuff, 5.5" thick, 2' wide, and just under 8' long for about $60. This material specs out well, and supposedly works well for superchunks applications. I just made some broadband absorbers and gobos with it, and I'm extremely happy with the performance. Just a thought, one that could save you some money as well, since you have a local dealer in your area you won't have to pay shipping.

Thanks for that reply, I actually am having trouble getting compressed fibreglass. I know where Hayward is, I'll check it out.