Humble Beginner Seeks Help (With A Deadline!)

Hey there. My name is Dietrich, and I’m making my studio in sunny Minneapolis, Minnesota. My bandmate and I just rented a house, and I have been researching what it will take to make a satisfactory basement studio, with an upstairs control room. Thankfully I’ve hit the jackpot and found this forum, and it has already helped me immensely. For that I already thank you all. Everyone seems friendly and ready to help. Basically, I’m looking to put a drum isolation booth in a finished basement, and take as many steps as I can to acoustically treat/soundproof the rest of the space with the remainder of my budget. We’re mostly making the space for ourselves, with no plans to professionally record other groups in this location. I’ve been trying to give myself time to do more research, and do as much by myself as I can, allowing me to learn more about what I’m doing, but a problem came up: I’m having a surgery to fix my broken collarbone, which was recently bumped up to July 20th. After this I will be unable to use my right arm for anything for at least three months, and I will be abstaining from anything more physically demanding than using a mouse and keyboard for another six months after that. (This is my fourth and hopefully final surgery, and I’m leaving no room to screw this one up.) So not only do I have to have my studio completed by this date, but my bandmate and I need to record enough material to keep me perfectly content sitting in the control room and mixing for about nine months, without pushing myself to play any instruments before my collarbone is ready. We’ve finally been able to move to the same town and get our band running full time, and I’d prefer to not let the surgery keep us from consistently releasing material, so getting enough mileage out of the studio before July 20th is paramount. With that in mind, I’d like to get a free-standing drum isolation booth built and the tracking room acoustically treated quickly and properly, so we can begin recording, while I continue to soundproof and treat the rest of the space. Is this possible? Here’s the stats: Current budget: $2,000, with a little bit of flexibility. How loud?: We cover the spectrum of styles, but rarely will we have several people jamming away loudly. That said, we’d like to be able to record drums anytime of the day or night (And we work best over night). As far as neighbors go, we’ve only just met our neighbors to the South, who’s house is about 20 feet away from ours. They’ve assured me not to worry about how loud our instruments get. That said, I would hate to wake them at 4:00am with loud drumming. The house to the North is currently empty, so I’d like to be prepared for picky, sensitive neighbors if that situation should arise. I will definitely be picking up a Sound Level Meter this next week. Existing Construction: Concrete floor covered with carpet. North and South walls are exposed concrete, with the East wall being the same, with drywall (1/2” I believe) over studs, spaced every 16”. The West wall is your basic 2x4 stud wall with drywall over it, though since it’s a recently unfinished-to-finished basement, there is a lot of leakage along the ceiling. The ceiling is a semi-permanent suspended ceiling with 2x4 tiles, which the landlord would prefer were not removed. Besides that and a couple other things, he’s very open to us making a studio in the basement, and will even be installing a door at the base of the steps just for these purposes. Above the tiles are 8” joists to the floor above. I don’t know the type of wood used, nor do I know if the concrete walls are hollow bricks, or solid, etc. Hopefully my landlord will call me with answers soon. I am aware that it’ll be impossible to adequately soundproof a space like this without gutting a lot of the stuff my landlord just spent so much time and money putting up. Hence my desire for the free-standing drum booth, and doing the best I can with the rest. The room that stores the HVAC, water softener, etc. is still unfinished, so I can seal that room pretty well from the inside and keep that noise out of the main room. Main room dimensions: 27’11”long x 10’wide x 6’9” tall (to semi-permanent suspended ceiling, attached to 8” joists). Other dimensions: The SE corner is where I’d like to put the drum booth. There’s a small outcropping that contains some plumbing. It doesn’t make any noise, and only goes up about three feet, and covers roughly 4 square feet of floor space. It’s 7’10” from the corner, so I’d like to fit the drums between the South wall and the plumbing box. Here’s a picture. I don’t have access to Vector Works or any other descent CAD program right now, so I did my best in Photoshop. The dimensions are close to accurate. The measurements listed are accurate. The only obvious thing I forgot to put on this ground plan were the two small windows in the middle of the North and South walls of the tracking room (Primary Studio). They’re at ceiling level, and can/will be plugged and covered up. I’ll post some pictures soon. Again, we’re only planning on treating the “Primary Studio” The “Bedroom/Extra Isolation” doesn’t need to be very isolated. Just someplace to set up another instrument while cutting down on most leakage. However, the “Control Room” will be directly above that room. I’m sure there’s already a ton of suggestions that could be made, but here’s the specific questions I can come up with right now: 1) Is it possible to build a freestanding Drum booth of roughly those dimensions, on carpet? 2) How can I best compensate for the carpeted tracking room? 3) Are there designs available for lightweight acoustic treatment that can be suspended from the already-suspended ceiling? 4) Is there a relatively inexpensive door that I should suggest the landlord put in at the base of the stairs, rather than some hollow-core door. I know there are expensive doors built for such a purpose, but if there’s something I can suggest and offer to split the difference, I’d like to know. 5) Are there any obvious instances of “You’re going to need to build this, so you might as well start on that while we go over the rest of the details?” I would think this would be the most efficient use of my time. 6) We’d like to have our instruments hanging up around the studio as well, boutique-style. How much of an effect would a dozen guitars have if hung in front of absorbers, etc., or six or so brass instruments on stands mounted over a bass trap? We really want to have all of our “toys” in plain view, and cluttering up the floor as little as possible, as we’re amassing quite the collection. But will this spoil the acoustic treatment? Or could I actually use them to my advantage? So there’s a start. Thanks in advance for any assistance anybody has to offer. I hope my post wasn’t too long-winded and provided the right information. And I’m aware of the free-time situation everyone operates in. I’m not expecting any specially expedient replies due to my predicament, but if anybody has time to tell me whether or not I’m even on the right track, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks again, Dietr

1) Is it possible to build a freestanding Drum booth of roughly those dimensions, on carpet? NO. this is the best way to invite all the mold, mites, dust, etc, in the world to live with you and help rot out your construction. When building ANY add-on in a basement, think VENTILATION and HUMIDITY - you want as much of the first as you can get, and less than 42% of the second. 2) How can I best compensate for the carpeted tracking room? I don't know that you can; carpet only absorbs highs and high mids, so you'd need to find something for the rest of the surfaces that only absorbs lows and low mids in order to balance the room. I don't know of such a material. You could SOMEWHAT compensate by NOT absorbing the ceiling, any more than the existing tiles; but flutter isn't always directly audible, just parts of it (like the "boing" you hear when you clap your hands betwee two parallel, hard walls) - there are other frequency components of flutter that will make your recordings sound bad and unintelligible, but that you can't directly hear. And carpet doesn't cover those frequencies much. Much better if you can ditch the carpet, either staining the concrete (if it's smooth already) or adding a wood tile flooring. 3) Are there designs available for lightweight acoustic treatment that can be suspended from the already-suspended ceiling? See (2); plus, your acoustic tiles are already doing some bass trapping and a bit of high freqency absorbing. They're also limiting the amount of isolation you can get by quite a bit; low mass, no hermetic seal... 4) Is there a relatively inexpensive door that I should suggest the landlord put in at the base of the stairs, rather than some hollow-core door. I know there are expensive doors built for such a purpose, but if there’s something I can suggest and offer to split the difference, I’d like to know. A heavy, SLAB type (not raised panel) SOLID core EXTERIOR door with good seals. 5) Are there any obvious instances of “You’re going to need to build this, so you might as well start on that while we go over the rest of the details?” I would think this would be the most efficient use of my time. With those concrete walls, you're gonna want as many corner absorbers as you have corners. IF you search here you should come up with several links; if not, ask and someone will help you out. 6) We’d like to have our instruments hanging up around the studio as well, boutique-style. How much of an effect would a dozen guitars have if hung in front of absorbers, etc., or six or so brass instruments on stands mounted over a bass trap? We really want to have all of our “toys” in plain view, and cluttering up the floor as little as possible, as we’re amassing quite the collection. But will this spoil the acoustic treatment? Or could I actually use them to my advantage? Probably not much advantage; but I'd get some strips of foam (like bed foam, or packing foam) and place them under the strings (NOT at the 12th fret :? ) to damp the strings; otherwise, your room's gonna buzz at all fundamental and harmonic frequencies of your instruments. HTH... Steve

Thank you very much for the quick reply. I just met with the landlord and he's checking to see if taking out the carpet will be an option, so hopefully I'll have a verdict on that soon. And we're working to ensure a well ventilated, low-humidity environment. How effective are your basic dehumidifiers? We were already planning on having one down there, and have looked into getting a top notch air purifier (Like that fancy Ionic Breeze Quadra thingy you see on the informercials!) that is supposed to control mold, mildew, dust, etc. Would those actually help considerably, or is the mere consideration laughable? And also, I've seen/found a number of DIY acoustic treatments on this forum, but everything I've found looks like it's meant for control rooms, and I haven't seen anything specifically for a tracking room. Are they the same thing, or did I miss an important "read this first" post somewhere? I'd hate to start building some corner absorbers only to find out later that they're meant for my control room and aren't doing me much good in my tracking room. I can't wait until I'm not a newbie anymore! Thanks again. I have a feeling this forum will soon become my homepage.

Okay. I might have a not-ideal, but better than nothing solution. My landlord spent around $1500 on the carpet, so I'd feel really bad to tear up the whole thing. Would it make an improvement if I 1) only removed the carpet under the location for the drum booth and put down wood flooring, then the drum booth over that, and 2) built some removable floor panels roughly 6'x8' made from 1/4"plywood with some sort of floor paneling over that, which could be placed in the storage room when we're not recording? They could also be rearranged periodically throughout a session to allow the carpet underneath to breath/ cater to specific recording needs. Can anybody tell me if this is a reasonable solution? If so, I can call my landlord and get the flooring in sooner than later. I'm sorry. I hate sounding/acting impatient. Thanks again, Dietr