Echo Studio Build, UK

Hello all, After much reading and a few stupid questions posted on this site, the time to start building has arrived..... My previous posts are here…. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= …regarding the layout here…. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= …and a few essential building tips here… http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight= …so I won’t bother to go over too much ground I’ve already covered. Basically, the space is being divided into three main sections, the live room (with booth), the control room and the small office / kitchen area. My original plans involved putting a toilet in but this will now have to wait – budget just won’t stretch to it and there’s one on site anyway. I’m leaving the space for it and the fully plumbed in kitchen with the plan of doing these as soon as I can reasonably afford it. The walls will all be wooden stud, 2.5 inches within the current walls with two layers of 12.5mm plasterboard and insulation inside. I’m building the control room and the live room walls as independent structures, nither connecting to the outer walls or to each others walls. The ceilings will again be totally independent, both resting on my new stud walls with a central steel joist carrying the main bulk of the weight for each space. There will be 12 inches space between my new inner ceilings and the current one (which you can see now in the pictures). The walls are being built directly onto the concrete floor, with this being the only solid connection between the inner structures. The floors will be laminate on top of celotex on the concrete. Work began two weeks ago and below are the first pictures. The first stage was to sort out the existing ceiling. This consists of one layer of plywood and a layer of plasterboard underneath, attached to the ceiling joists. After inspection this appeared in pretty good shape, with the plasterboard joins being in different places to the plywood, so we ‘mud and taped’ the joins in the plasterboard only, choosing not to take down the whole layer to do the same to the plywood layer. Was this my first mistake? We’ll see……. We also attached strips of wood to the edges of the ceiling to remedy a few small gaps and also to add extra support. We’ve yet to seal up all the holes from the old light fittings and to go around the edges of the ceiling with acoustic sealant (as this still hasn’t been delivered). There are a couple of pics of the ceiling as it is now. Then we started the stud framing. We’ve almost got to the stage where all the stud walls that go in front of existing wall are up, with gaps in for the doors / windows which we’re waiting on also. We’re putting together the stud walls that go ‘across’ the old space (which divide the control and live rooms) but we’re not fixing them in place just yet, otherwise we won’t be able to get the scaffolding around the room to finish off the old ceiling. What you can see in two of the pictures is the base plates for these walls, so you can see where they’ll be going. It looks pretty simple at the moment, but will look much better when the angled walls go in. We’ve got a plumber and electrician coming at the end of this week and the beginning of next, so next we’ve got to get all the noggins in place to fix the radiators and electrical sockets to, not to mention getting the windows and door spaces fitted. I do have a couple of questions and would welcome any comments from people regarding things so far. Firstly, I’m now well aware of the standard way of sealing the edges of the plasterboard walls by using back rod and acoustic sealant and I intend to do this. But can I just ask why it’s not acceptable to put the edges of the plasterboards firmly together and just seal it using the acoustic sealant? It seem like you’re just making a bigger gap to close if you do it the other way….. Secondly, Just want to ask your advice regarding sliding glass / patio doors.... My studio plan incorporates two of these in the independent walls between the control room and live room. Although I know these are not the best in terms of sound isolation, I thought that they would probably be best for my design, providing me with great communication between spaces and the necessary doorways. I have, however, been offered four double glazed units for free by a conservatory company who work on the site (and who are good friends of my Dad's). These units are 1980mm x 1350mm, all double glazed with 4mm toughened glass 12m gap and then another 4mm of glass, and are left over from a job that never happened. I know that if I used two of these in my walls then I would be putting together a four leaf section, which isn't good, and that 4mm glass is far from ideal for sound isolation. However, since I was going to build a very similar four leaf system by using double glazed doors instead (at quite a price) is this something that I could consider doing? Basically my questions are... Would the size of the glass units make them a major weak point in my walls (which are currently 2 x 12.5mm plasterboard on individual wooden stud walls 25cm apart)? As I can have four of the units would using all four in some ingenious manor help to improve their performance, or am I just ignoring the facts? I'm sure anyone who has built anything on a budget will understand how I'm feeling....it seems like a great opportunity, but is it just the easy way? Thirdly, the type of insulation between studs. I’m going to use 100mm batts between studs, but due to the length of my walls I’m going to need loads of it. If I can find something close in spec to Rockwool RWA45 (which is the British equivalent to 703 I believe) will this be suitable, or again, am I just looking for an easier (or cheaper!) option? Thanks for the advice so far everyone… I look forward to any comments you have. Jamie.

hey jamie, i've been wondering a very similar question... if you visit this post, you can see the discussion I had with knightfly... http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... light=door heres the thing, i might be ahead of you as I am planning on installing my dual glazed dual doors within a week or two... so, at that point, I can let you know directly how the isolation is... however, it won't necessarily be a scientific test... k

Hi Kevin, Thanks for the reply. I had already checked out your glass questions while trying to sort out my own! I'd be very interested to hear how you get on and what you eventually decide upon. I have to say that I'm leaning towards using the double glazed units that have been given to me. I figure that the sliding glass doors I was going to get were probably the same thickness or possibly only slightly thicker anyway. I've also been thinking that adding more leaves of glass to a window is obviously not ideal, and a two leaf system is clearly the most cost effective way to build a isolated structure, but there must be a point when just adding more layers does begin to help. This may well be another example of me coming up with theories to suit my decisions, but once you get past the 'using the same amount of material in a two leaf as you would in a four gives you much better isolation for the same money' argument, there must be a point when just adding more leaves does start to improve isolation. In other words, if you've got extra leaves for free then the cost element is made redundant, meaning all you have is....how many leaves might make this a bit better? I'm not entirely sure what I've just written makes any sense, but it's late at night and my head hurts. If anyone has any other random theories about this then I'd certainly like to hear them, as well as the odd proven one of course. :) Jamie.

Hi Guys, I've been pretty poor in keeping things updated since we started building...it's really been hard work so far but I'm beginning to see a studio at the end of the tunnel. Firstly, here is a pic of the latest plan (I say latest as we keep making minor changes along the way) just so you can try to make sense of the photo's I've taken.

Ok. Now here are some pictures from a couple of weeks ago. The first is how things look from the main entrance when you enter...

This is the ceiling frame work. After much discussion we decided upon a 10 x 2 inch central beam for the control and live rooms which would support the 6 x 2 and 4 x 2 joists. You can also see a line of the extra noggins we had to put in, in preparation for the double layers of plasterboard.

Here is a close up of the sealing we used to tighten up the existing ceiling. We ran lengths of MDF around the edges as some gaps were too big to seal, and then we sealed the top and bottom of the MDF like so....

Below are three pics of the doors we 'inherited' from the previous studio I was working in. They were as close to solid core doors as we could find and -they were free - so we decided to take the time and strip them down. They were covered with carpet both sides and there were four of them, so it was an afternoons work to sort them out. We then passed them onto a friend who will face them all with rubber matting (the closest thing I could find to lead) and 3/4 inch plywood - as Rod's design in his book.

These pictures are us working out the window frame design and size. The first pic is us trialling the design on the floor - we're again using Rod's design - sorrounding the glass with neoprene - the only difference being that we're using double glazed units. I know, I know.... not ideal, but it was a corner we had to cut. The second pic is a close up of the design and the third is us putting the frame in it's place.

Now these are from a week ago and show a bit more progress. The electricians have been in and completed the first fix so we got on with insulating and plasterboarding. This picture is of the layers we're doing on the ceiling. Basically rolls of 100mm Rockwool lying on top of the joists (originally thought this would be enough for the ceiling but as soon as it arrived I realised how rubbish it was), the 100mm Rocksilk RS45 stuffed between the joists and then the two layers of plasterboard (one in the picture so far).

Here's one of the wall insulation so far...

This is from the rear doors towards the front of the building, looking through the viewing glass between the live room and control room, with the door on the right hand side.

And here is the window wall of the live room with layer one of plasterboard on it...

Well that's it for the updates, but I do need a bit of advice if possible.... Firstly, ventilation. My plan for it is below, along with the room dimensions. I'm planning on building my own 'silencer' boxes which will sit as close to the vents into the rooms as possible. All the ducting will be 150mm flexible aluminium and the fan that I'm thinking of using is this one http://www.vent-axia.com/products/vacas/hre350.asp I know this is a basic plan, but can anyone see any fundamental problems with this setup? Secondly, acoustics. I want to build corner traps for all four corners of the control room and put a rear wall absorber on the .....rear wall, but I'm concerned about the size they'll need to be. If I followed John's designs on this site would that suffice? I read Rod's book again for this section and he mentions that the bigger the rooms the bigger the trapping may need to be. So how big do I go? I know I'll need plenty more absorption on the rest of the walls, but I'm just thinking about the bigger bits at the moment I'll need to build before we start making the place look too pretty! Also, I'm undecided about whether to soffit mount my monitors or not. Can anyone persuade me one way or the other? Thanks, Jamie.

marvelous job :)

seems like you've done a good bit of prep work... like sealing the holes with MDF... looks good so far... i think there were some articles on here that I found for using rubber or (maybe mass loaded vinyl) as a sound stop (on your door instead of the lead)... not sure if you saw any of those posts, but might be worht a gander! keep up the work, and post pix ! kevin

Hi guys, thanks for the comments and encouragement! I didn't see those posts Kevin, but I just took it upon myself to replace the lead with this http://www.customaudiodesigns.co.uk/sou ... ng/t50.htm It's almost like plasticine, quite pliable and very heavy, but I just passed it onto the chap who's making the doors so I don't know how easy it was to work with. I'll let you know how well it work out - I'm hoping that the first door may arrive tomorrow! Thanks again, Jamie.

Jamie M wrote:

Hi guys, thanks for the comments and encouragement! I didn't see those posts Kevin, but I just took it upon myself to replace the lead with this http://www.customaudiodesigns.co.uk/sou ... ng/t50.htm It's almost like plasticine, quite pliable and very heavy, but I just passed it onto the chap who's making the doors so I don't know how easy it was to work with. I'll let you know how well it work out - I'm hoping that the first door may arrive tomorrow!

Jamie, It will help you a little - it does add mass.... but at just over a pound per square foot versus 8 pounds per square foot - it won't isolate as low a frequency - nor the same TL values at each frequency.. It might be enough for what you need. Rod

Hi all, We've now almost completed the first layer of plasterboard, including all the tape and jointing and sealing round the edges, and I'm getting really paranoid about whether the second layer should be glued to the first....not to keep it up but so that the two layers act as one single leaf which has more mass.... I may have read this in a different context somewhere so I could well be mistaken, but can anyone clear this up for me? By the way, I'm not reffering to Green Glue or any special substance like this, but just a regular glue that will bond both layers together... More pics to come! Cheers, Jamie.

I just read a post referring to this topic.I cant find it now to link it for you.It said that the second layer of drywall should not be glued to the first.Screw only.This applies to ordinary construction/wallboard adhesive.

Hey there, Thanks for the reply.... that's good news as I've already started work on the second layers and I'm not gluing! I think I may have read the topic you refer to a while ago, but it's good to get someone else's input. Cheers, Jamie.

Hi there everyone, Sorry for the lack of any further updates but things have just been crazy here for the last couple of months. Echo studios is now fully up and running and I've been doing plenty of (recording, not building - yeah!) work over the past month. The studio is looking great and sounding pretty good too - no nasty surprises - but there are still a few more things I need to do to improve the acoustics a little. I've got a ton of pictures to post but it's just a question of time I'm afraid. To top it all off I became a Dad a month ago...my wife gave birth to a little baby girl called Neve (no mixing desk jokes please) so the studio has had to take a bit of a back seat recently. If you're interested you can here the first recording and mix from the studio at http://www.myspace.com/roystonjonesband Both the songs on there were recorded in a couple of days last month. I'll be back to post the pics soon! All the best, Jamie.

hi i have a few questions did you take any pics of the ventilation system? how did it work out? did you need air con? how much was the hrv ? thanks for your time joey ps looks like a nice space.would love to see more pics when you get the time.

Hi Joey, Below is a picture of the unit I put in when we were first testing it.... How has it worked out? Well, I'm now a firm believer in 'you get what you pay for'. I was quoted a silent air con and ventilation system for the space at around £6000 which was obviously way over my budget. I spent about £1000 on this unit plus maybe £200 on piping and connectors etc. It works fine, but slowly, exchanging the air. You'd need to have it running constantly to really feel the effect, but alas it is noisy. Not a problem in the live room if you're recording any thing loud (guitars, drums) but a definite no no for vocals, acoustic etc. One very bad design fault is that you can't have the unit just pumping air from one room, so even if you don't mind the small amount of noise in the control room you can't have it on if you're recording anything quiet next door. Very silly on my behalf, but you learn from your mistakes... On the plus side, I needed a ventilation system to pass building regs and this did the job, and I’m planning to install some air con next year for the control room. The live room is less urgent as it maintains a pretty even temperature in there. I think the lights in the control room are the worse culprits for the heat, but it’s perfectly fine on an average day. One of the first sessions I did in there was with six people in the control room (most playing guide parts) with both doors shut in the peak of (british!) summer and that got pretty warm. By complete accident though, I have double doors at either end of the building so all you need to do is open them up for five mins and the air just shoots through and freshens it up. Hope this helps a bit. I’m also going to post a few pictures of the (mostly) finished studio, but looking back I realise I’ve missed out a whole load of work from the pics I’ve posted, so if anyone really wants to see more details of stuff then just drop me a note. All the best, Jamie.

Here are the pictures from July / August time, when I was doing the first sessions. Since then I've put in more acoustic treatment and done some room tests, and got a few more bits of gear in...