No category for this but it is the same stuff

I have two rooms already build in a commercial building that has been renovated to house multible churches. There are two roms on the back where someone tried to constuct a control room and large vocal booth/drum room. They aleady have double walls and a triple wall inbetween the two rooms whith glass. There is insolation between te studs BUT, they thought that "wallboard" from the local home depot and carpet on all walls floors and ceilings would keep out noise. I ripped out all the carpet and now have the wall board exposed. I have included a basic design, but I don't ave a year or two of time to learn that sketchup program. I am hoping one of you can work off my bad sketchup and anser a few questions. The control room is 12'4" x 8'8" and 10 ft ceiling The ISO room is 8'4" x 12'4" and has 7'9" ceiling. Questions: I can raise the ceiling in the ISO both. SHould I? Is that better for drums or whatever? SHould I remove the "wallboard" and strart fresh with studs with insulation between them? Is my desing ok? The stupid looking thing in the control room is the desk. I don't know how people make things in that program. All I need to know is if my bass traps in in an ok place. Are they

Did I do something wrong? Is that why no one replies? I thought I followed the rules. Any help at all would be appreciated.

Aloha and welcome to the forum, Congrats on your studio build!

Did I do something wrong? Is that why no one replies? I thought I followed the rules. Any help at all would be appreciated.

No...but sometimes it takes awhile to get to each and every post, so if you could hang in there, someone will get a chance to help you out. For starters, do you have an access to the live room, and might that be? Aloha 8)

Aloha, For ease of reference... Aloha 8)

Aloha, Perhaps something like this? Aloha 8)

Thank you so much. What would be the measurements of those traps in the corners. And yes, there is a door to the live room. You go out the door of the control room and there is a room there, ( the sunday school room) and then enter a door the same position as in the control room. In the live room we will reocord everything from drums to vocals to horns to what ever. Do you have a design idea for that? The live room ceiling is 7'9" but I can raise it 2 more feet. Would that be better? Also on all the walls accept the north wall of the control room the leaves of the walls goes as follows: Gypsum - metal stud with insulation - gypsum - Some kinf of paper board two layers. And that is it. There use to be carpet but I took it down. On the ceilings there is only paper board and insulation above it. between the control room and the live room it is as follows: paper board - wood frame with insulation inside - gypsum - metal frame with insulation - gypsum - paper board - wood frame with insulation - paper board. I know that there should be space inside two frames. I don't know if I'll redue the intire thing or not.

could you post a simple drawing with detailed measurements including doors, windows, other fixtures, etc...? also, what type of sound isolation do you need to have? do you have neighbors? other tenants/users of the building? what is the floor and ceiling constructed of? could you post a couple of pictures as well? thanks! a taller ceiling would generally be nicer even if it may be filled up with some acoustic treatments...

thank you sir. I am going to work on that today. I can tell you that one main isue is blocking out street noise from the 4 lane main street out side the building. We are going to gut the old construction today and then I can give you some measurements and more detail. I sure do appreciate you guys time.

Aloha,

What would be the measurements of those traps in the corners.

L x W x H Floor to ceiling trap - 8'8" x 2'10" x 4" - cloth covered (Guilford of Maine - FR701/2100 http://www.silentsource.com/acousticore ... hart1.html) stud frame filled with 3" of OC 703 or Roxul AFB insulation @ 2.5 pcf density Wall to wall trap in ceiling corner - 8' x 2'10" x 4" - cloth covered (Guilford of Maine - FR701/2100 http://www.silentsource.com/acousticore ... hart1.html) stud frame filled with 3" of OC 703 or Roxul AFB insulation @ 2.5 pcf density

The live room ceiling is 7'9" but I can raise it 2 more feet. Would that be better?

Yes, even if as Glenn stated.

between the control room and the live room it is as follows: paper board - wood frame with insulation inside - gypsum - metal frame with insulation - gypsum - paper board - wood frame with insulation - paper board.

To increase isolation between rooms, you may want to add 1-2 layers of drywall to the following attached diagram on each side - "windows" cloth covered frame filled with insulation - 2-3 layers of drywall (staggered seams & each layer caulked) stud frame filled with insulation - 2"- 4" gap - stud frame filled with insulation - 2-3 layers of drywall (staggered seams & each layer caulked) - cloth covered frame filled with insulation Note - no paper board used in construction Other notes: - side wall slat absorbers angled 6-12 degrees each (in your case, perhaps 6 degrees due to the limited amount of space) - rear corner traps wall to wall at ceiling & floor to ceiling trap - speaker soffits or speakers on stands angled 30 degrees (avoid placing speakers in midpoint of floor to ceiling) - speaker woofer height at ear level (avoid midpoint floor to ceiling - sit higher or lower to adjust) - mix position roughly 38% from front wall to start with; adjust as necessary to avoid null/peaks - hardwood floors - no carpet on walls

In the live room we will reocord everything from drums to vocals to horns to what ever. Do you have a design idea for that?

Will get back to you & post. :wink: If you are planning on gutting the rooms, is it possible to center your doors so that you can add another bass trap? Aloha 8)

To increase isolation between rooms, you may want to add 1-2 layers of drywall to the following attached diagram on each side - "windows"

I don't think the owner will let us gut the walls between the two rooms in order to do your above suggestion. After what demolition that was allowed we currently we have the following: between control room to live room there is; barewood frame - metal frame with gypsum on each side - bare wood frame There is no air space betwween those three frames. The glass is cut into the middle metal framing. I understand the principal of mass air mass but I am afraid we can not achieve that ideal here as depicted in your drawings. (Of which I appreaciate sooooo much) Therefore, what is my best bet? I seems to me that adding two layes of gypsom on either side with grren glue in the middle will be the most effective. WOuld you agree? Believe it or not, I am not as concerned about sound leakage between control room and live room as I am with blocking out street noise from outside. I will be posting a diagram and pictures of our building so you can see our set up. I am hoping that the rooms that separate our studio from the outside wall of the building will be enough to block out street noise once we put two layers of gypsum inside each studio room and make it air tight. After all, if the princible is mass air mass works, wouldn't a room between our studio and the outside world constitute mass and airspace?

gullfo wrote:

could you post a simple drawing with detailed measurements including doors, windows, other fixtures, etc...? also, what type of sound isolation do you need to have? do you have neighbors? other tenants/users of the building? what is the floor and ceiling constructed of? could you post a couple of pictures as well? thanks! a taller ceiling would generally be nicer even if it may be filled up with some acoustic treatments...

THis is why I titled this thread as I did because it is hard to describe. Most people who post here are converting a garage or basement or wanting to practice drums in the condo without desturbing the neighbors. We are a little different. Our two studio rooms are but two rooms in a large commercial building that houses churches. Our church is one of those churches. For the most part we will be recording when the other churches are not having services BUT, sometimes we will. Those services will not disturb us as they are in the other part of this 50,000 sqft building separated but other emty rooms. We have already tested for that. My main concern is the street noise as our two rooms are near the front wall of this large building where the street is outside. There is one room between our studio and the outside wall of the building BUT you can here the street noise. The people who constructed the studio previously heard the street noise in there recording. I DO NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO US!! Their contruction was horible. They simply put up wood framing inside the two rooms with paper board and insulation. I am hoping and yes, praying, that doubling up on 5/8 gypsum maybe with Grren Glue in the middle combined with proper caulking will do the trick of blocking the street noise. I will be Posting some pictures and a diagram of our building a little later tonight I hope as my partner is working on them as I type this. If one of you guys live in the USA, I will pay you a consultation fee if you call me on the phone. (Or I'll call you) I can pay you by pay pal.

here is a diagram of the building set up and some pictures. The street is on the other side of the brick wall in the sunday school room. Where the paintings of Mary Josheph and baby Jesus are. (hopefully you know who they are. If not, then we need to talk about things more important than building a studio. :D ) The blue doors are three rooms that can be entered once you are in the sunday school room. The door closest to the brick wall is an office that no one uses. The next door with the blue chair inside is the live room. There is one more door you can't see in the picture and that is the door to the control room. The picture of the wood stud frame with wires hanging down is the inside of the live room after we tore out the paper board and insulation. you can see the painted gypsum which is the origanal wall between the live room and the office. The floor is concrete with a layer of thin carpet and no padding in all those rooms. Do we have to float the floor to get isolation? If so then we will have to tear down those wood frames and start all over.

Aloha,

My main concern is the street noise as our two rooms are near the front wall of this large building where the street is outside. There is one room between our studio and the outside wall of the building BUT you can here the street noise. The people who constructed the studio previously heard the street noise in there recording. I DO NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO US!! Their contruction was horible. They simply put up wood framing inside the two rooms with paper board and insulation. I am hoping and yes, praying, that doubling up on 5/8 gypsum maybe with Grren Glue in the middle combined with proper caulking will do the trick of blocking the street noise.

Here are some thoughts after considering your posts. - You have mentioned "street noise" several times in your posts. What exactly are you hearing? Rumble, horns? - Which of the two rooms are you hearing the street noise? Live room/control room? If the previous occupants heard the street noise in their recordings, chances are beefing up the dividing wall between your control room & live room (while possibly improving isolation between them) will not eliminate the street noise in the live room, which is where your mics are picking them up. Perhaps you need to better insulate and beef up the walls & ceilings of your live room/empty office. - Are you by any chance on the ground floor? If so, you may be hearing noise transmitted through the ground/flooring and/or walls. - A properly floating floor is only one of the pieces of the puzzle, not to mention proper wall construction of both exterior & interior walls, ceilings and the $$$ of constructing one. Here's an informative post on floating floors - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8173 - In both your initial and latest drawings, your control room is oriented facing the control room window. Typically, you want your speakers firing down the length of your room.

Because you don't want rear reflections to interfere it is better to start with a longer front to back dimension than the side to side dimension. - John Sayers http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

Here's a pic that may be helpful as we cogitate further. :D Aloha 8)

kendale wrote:

Here are some thoughts after considering your posts. - You have mentioned "street noise" several times in your posts. What exactly are you hearing? Rumble, horns?

Rumble

- Which of the two rooms are you hearing the street noise? Live room/control room?

Live room.

If the previous occupants heard the street noise in their recordings, chances are beefing up the dividing wall between your control room & live room (while possibly improving isolation between them) will not eliminate the street noise in the live room, which is where your mics are picking them up. Perhaps you need to better insulate and beef up the walls of your live room/empty office.

I was going to beef up all the walls in the live room and the control room, not just the wall between the control room and live room. I could probably beef up the office as well. Remember, The people before did not install ANY sheet rock at all!. They mearly put up wood frames inside the existing walls and put insulation inside with two layers of paper board. Surely sheet rock is WAY more effective than paper board, isn't it? They did not caulk and there was no sheet rock at all on the ceiling. The ceiling was wide open up top between the edge of the building and the top of the control room. The building is about 40 or 50 feet high. There is another 30 feet of open space above the control room and live room, and all the rooms for that matter! Does Green Glue help at all?

- Are you by any chance on the ground floor? If so, you may be hearing noise transmitted through the ground/flooring and/or walls.

That was the first thing we had in mind but I read so many times here that raised floors were not needed. Do the walls HAVE to be on TOP of the floating floor? Or can we build the floor in front of the existing wall? How much space needs to be beteew the two walls in order to get an STC of 50 as in the diagram you posted? WHich has more effect on lowering STC, mass or air?

Typically, you want your speakers firing down the length of your room

. YEs, we are going to change that as your design idea suggested. Thank you for that. What do I owe you so far? You have been very helpfull.

by the way Kendal, Do you have a design for the live room? Also, I do not get exactly how to constuct the side panals in the sketch you gave me. Corner bass traps I think I get, but the angled walls or what ever they are, I still don't understand. DOes this explain all the walls in your scetch, or is ther more? http://johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm

Aloha,

You have mentioned "street noise" several times in your posts. What exactly are you hearing? Rumble, horns? Rumble Which of the two rooms are you hearing the street noise? Live room/control room? Live room.

Okay. That helps. Now to figure out the best way to go about treating your situation. Let me try a few PM's and I'll get back to you with more info.

What do I owe you so far? You have been very helpfull.

I am glad to hear that the info shared has been helpful to you. As for me, you owe me nothing. Those that offer help on this forum do so freely. If you would like contribute to help in keeping this platform available for the benefit of others, though, you may do so here - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=460 Thank you for asking. :D

by the way Kendal, Do you have a design for the live room?

I'll start working on that. :wink:

Also, I do not get exactly how to constuct the side panals in the sketch you gave me. Corner bass traps I think I get, but the angled walls or what ever they are, I still don't understand. DOes this explain all the walls in your scetch, or is ther more? http://johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm

Perhaps this might help to start with. (see attached) Here's another very helpful resource you may want to pick up - Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros (Paperback) by Rod Gervais http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5670 Aloha 8)

Hi guys I'm working with Eruss on that studio. I guess he asked all the right questions, I would just like to clarify some things. Should we have floating floors both in the ISO booth, and the control room. If so, some dimensions would be greatly appreciated (how high off off the ground). Also, how should the ISO booth, and the Control Room be arranged for optimum results. I am going to post a picture of the studio that we have though of. Please post any suggestions.

Aloha Danny, Welcome to the forum! Hey, nice skps. :D Had to resize them to eliminate scrolling, though. If you could keep them down to about 700 pixels wide, that woul dbe great. Thanks! :wink:

Should we have floating floors both in the ISO booth, and the control room.

Regarding floating your floors - I have a couple of inquiries going so hang on for a bit. Working on the live room layout. Here are a few excerpts from the SAE website to consider -

The first thing you must do is eradicate all the parallel walls in a studio design. I believe that a wall must be at least 12 degrees off parallel to stop parallel wall standing wave interference. That's either one wall at 12 degrees or two walls at 6 degrees each. If you can afford to make the angle bigger, do so. Also you can create angled walls within a rectangular room by adding acoustic treatment. (I'll demonstrate that in the pages on wall treatment). (Note: having non parallel walls doesn't entirely stop standing waves - they still form within a room but along different lines of repetition). The main reason for having angled walls in a control room is because of reflection control of the high frequencies for true imaging from your speakers. This effect also happens between the floor and the ceiling so to stop the effect you must angle one! well it's not going to be the floor is it. I must state here that putting angles into the ceiling is expensive so I would recommend that for the home studio you use the acoustic treatment to break up the ceiling. (See wall and ceiling treatment pages) - John Sayers - http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

For an instrument to sound good you must hear a balance of its high and low frequencies. If your room is too dead in the high frequencies the instrument sounds lifeless and tubby, whereas if it's too live in the high frequencies the instrument sounds distant and has no presence. To balance a room you must have a true balance of the high frequencies and the low frequencies with the right amount of deadness to liveness.

If you look at the brick figures you will see that a brick wall will reflect almost all the incident sound energy whilst a wall covered with 25mm(1") Rockwool will absorb fro 80 - 90% of the high frequencies but only 35 - 60% of the low frequencies. Whilst most people think that heavy curtains are a good deadener according to the chart they work only reasonably (45%) at high frequencies and not much at all at low frequencies. This is the major problem experienced by studios who treat their rooms by putting drapes, carpet or egg cartons on the walls. Basically they are lowering the reflections (reverberation time) of the room BUT ONLY MARGINALLY IN THE HIGH FREQUENCY RANGE! The lows are still humming around the room and the resultant reverberation field creates what we call a muddy - woofy sound. The solution is always to add highs to the recorded signal to return the top end yet really what needs to happen is the low end (100 - 1000Hz) reverberation time needs to be lowered in the recording room and probably in the control room for you to even hear the difference.

By far, most of the acoustic treatment described on this forum recommend one (or both) of the following - - 2"- 4" Owens Corning 703 @ 2.5 pcf - 2"- 4" Roxul AFB Mineral Wool @ 2.5 pcf - or equivalents by other manufacturers More later, Aloha 8)

Moved to Construction per request. eruss, I've yet to see a budget for your project, and (unless I'm reading too quickly) only a couple of comments about what the owner will and will NOT let you do - if you're gonna kill traffic rumble, this is one of the times when a floated floor MAY be necessary. It's not cheap, but super-low frequencies can't be stopped by wimpy means - hence, the questions about budget and allowable modifications. Here's another - what's the floor in your space - concrete, or? And even if it's concrete, you will need to find an ultrasonic testing service in your area to verify thickness, etc, before much of a floated floor can be considered. Probably the least painful way to do this is to contact either Mason industries or Kineticsnoise.com and tell them what you want - part of their service is to present a workable design. Anyway, one way or the other we need more info on your end... Steve

knightfly wrote:

Moved to Construction per request. eruss, I've yet to see a budget for your project, and (unless I'm reading too quickly) only a couple of comments about what the owner will and will NOT let you do - if you're gonna kill traffic rumble, this is one of the times when a floated floor MAY be necessary. It's not cheap, but super-low frequencies can't be stopped by wimpy means - hence, the questions about budget and allowable modifications. Here's another - what's the floor in your space - concrete, or? And even if it's concrete, you will need to find an ultrasonic testing service in your area to verify thickness, etc, before much of a floated floor can be considered. Probably the least painful way to do this is to contact either Mason industries or Kineticsnoise.com and tell them what you want - part of their service is to present a workable design. Anyway, one way or the other we need more info on your end... Steve

We were hoping to complete this for between 5 and 6 thousand. If we have to spend more then .......... we will consider it. I just know I don't want to pull up my mics and here the street noise. I would have to spend the money if needed to not have that. I would like a floated floor anyway. I originaly planed for it. The question I have is can I build it BETWEEN the existing walls. In other words do I have to float the walls on top of the floor? Or can the walls be beside the floating floor? Do you know what I mean here? I don't understand why you say a floating floor is not cheap. You need neoprene, (which I can get cheap) and wood studs and plywood and hard wood flooring right? What is so expensive about that? Am I suppose to move this thread to constuction?

THis thread DID move to construction. Hmmm. Ok. Sorry for posting in the wrong section. My bad. I appologize. :oops:

Hey KnightFly, I’m working with Eruss on this studio projects. The budget is not really clear yet between us and the owner. We may not have too much money to spend, hence we keep the "on a budget" status. We may be able to raise the floor; actually I think we are going to. We got the go ahead and the design is up to us. As far as the skeleton flooring, it is all concrete throughout the whole building. What we also need to consider is that there will be church services a few days a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mondays and Tuesdays are pretty quiet and our current walls will do fine for those, but for all the rest bleeding is an issue. I think Eruss emphasized how important it is for us NOT to have road noise in, around our ISO booth, and Control Room. It seems that the ceiling is all practically free for about 4 feet from its current position in the ISO booth, and we are going to try to raise it as much as we can. So our main concerns from what I understand are; 1. Bleed in from street 2. Bleed in from within the building 3. Acoustics in both rooms 4. Esthetic (Design) We have a few more questions regarding our room. The one that really sticks in my mind is how should or walls be built, with what material (and most of that has been answered), how thick, and how can we do all that and keep as much space as possible :D . It seems the design that was posted earlier by one of the members would work great, but we have many questions regarding it's details; what do we make the walls of, and what should and should we not compromise on for budget sakes. So to summarize it all, we want a well made room that blocks out unwanted noises, that sounds nice, and that looks professional, where space and most likely budget come into play. Note: The .SKP file can be made available upon request. I actually encourage it.

Aloha Eruss & Danny, Good news! I've found the skp file I was looking for that will help explain the details of the wall construction. It is a design by John and you can find it here - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5457 After downloading the file click on the row of tabs indicating "floor plan, floor plan 2, section, framing, speaker frame, etc" at the top of the drawing. If no tabs are visible, look to the right of page for an arrow and click. This should open up the above described scenes. This should explain visually what you'll need to do for your room design. Hope this helps, Aloha 8)

Thank you for that kendale. I have already seen that. It is very similar to what we will do. I think we should work of your design. Can you give us the skp file of the design you posted earlier? That studio does not have a street running next to it though. Do you think that studio cost less then 6 thousand to build?

eruss wrote:

That was the first thing we had in mind but I read so many times here that raised floors were not needed.

eruss, not really - what you have read is that properly floated concrete slabs are generaly not really needed for home studios constructed in basements or in residential garages......... In commercial ventures it's a different story altogether. In new construction you can always use isolated slabs - giving you seperation from direct contact with the foundation and other interior spaces. But - in your case I will bet you a dozen donuts against a dollar that this isn't the case. You have a case where the roadway sits about 30' from your building - and not isolation form the low frequency road sounds (125 to 250 Hz roughly) might very well be bringing sound in through the slab. Personally- your best bet would be to hire a local acoustic engineer to visit your site and take some readings to determine exactly where your sound is coming from. Everything on our end would be wild guess work to say the least.......... and we might well lead you in a bad direction without even knowing it.... BTW - the green glue is great - but only if it's airborn transmissions you're dealing with and not flanking problems through the structure and slab.

Do the walls HAVE to be on TOP of the floating floor? Or can we build the floor in front of the existing wall?

They should be - this in order to maintain continunity in the isolation assembly.

WHich has more effect on lowering STC, mass or air?

They're basically equal - each doubling of air space grants an additional 6dB of iso - Each doubling of mass grants about that same 6db of iso. BUT for all practical purposes - it's generally cheaper to give up the space required for drywall than the real estate required for the other. Sincerely, Rod