One room basement combination room

Hello All, My second post. Originally I planned to use an odd shaped room for my basement studio, but after more thought, my wife and I are considering attempting to add a room (in a different space in our basement) that could possibly be considered a bedroom when we sell the house. If you'd like you are welcome to check out my previous post here. After thinking about all the musical situations I get involved in, I thought it might be good to have a little more room. I will go over the basics again here: Budget I would like to stay around $2,000 but I realize this may not be possible and if not, I'm willing to go beyond that, hopefully $4,000 would be reasonable cap. I do plan to do most of the work myself. Recording Environmet/Loudness I plan to build a combination room, as I mainly work alone. I currently record much of my stuff direct and/or MIDI. Currently my drums are MIDI. The instruments I generally record acoustically include congas, bongos, shakers, cabasa, mandolin (rarely), acoustic guitar (generally in combination with the pickup & Fishman Aura), mic’d guitar amp for electric guitar (although many times I go directly from an effectrs processor) and of course vocals (generally close mic’d). I’m hoping that when I’m done, the room will sound good enough as to inspire me to record more things acoustically. :) Although I play a reasonably large variety of music, most of my stuff could likely be best described as James Taylor-like. In regard to loudness, I cranked my studio monitors a touch louder than I would expect I would ever run them, and measured about 92 db in the listening position. My recording set up is pretty lightweight compared with most folks on this forum. Alesis Studio 32 board feeding Sonar PC setup via an Echo Mia Midi (audio & midi) card, and a set of Behringer Truth B2031A active monitors. Goals My goal is to create a space that I can quietly record in, while not bothering the rest of the household. I have currently been recording in the basement, although not in the exact space where I'm now planning to build the room. The issues I currently have in this space that I want to resolve as a part of this project are: 1) Noise from the utilities (furnace, water heater, water softener), the fan in my PC, and floor noise from upstairs being picked up excessively by my large condenser mic. I am currently thinking I would like to locate my CPU outside the room to remove that part of the problem. 2) Stop sound (notice it’s no longer “noise” :wink: ) from my recording/mixing from disturbing the rest of the house. My family is very supportive and have not complained, but I’ve noticed many times my wife moving to the bedroom to watch tv, rather than staying in the living room where it’s obvious my music heavily bleeds into. When I had my monitors running at 92 db, the reading in the living room (directly above) was around 72 db. My perception is that much of the sound was coming through the floor through the openings for the heat vents into the room from below. I should mention that the basement is on one end of our house, we have no backyard neighbors, and the closest neighbor on the “basement end” is 75 feet away. Although I have not taken db readings outside, I’ve never had any complaints, and when I go outside and listen with music loudly playing, even now, it doesn’t appear to be a problem, so I’m not concerned about reducing the sound leakage to the outside world. 3) The space is currently almost always chilly, so it should be much easier to quickly warm with the space enclosed and insulated. 4) Of course I’m hoping to ultimately have a much better space acoustically in which to work. Space Description The space I'm looking at is in the basement of our multi-level home. The space is currently unfinished, and mostly concrete walls. I’ve provided a sketchup file trying my best to describe the unfinished area and that is currently in place. Above this area is a living room with carpet on the floor. The living room has a 13 foot ceiling (not that I believe that has any bearing on anything). There is plywood above the floor joists. The joists as you can probably tell, are 2 X 10, 16” OC. There is plenty of existing ductwork and PVC pipe for the heating & cooling system as well as to vent the water heater to get in the way. I should mention that on the other side of the angled stud wall are the stairs that go up to the family room, which sits atop the half concrete wall (behind the furnace). Construction Plans for Isolation I hope to beef up the ceiling by adding two pieces of 5/8” sheetrock between the existing floor joists. Then R-13 insulation, then RC-2, then 2 more layers of 5/8” sheetrock. I haven’t contacted a structural engineer yet (although I'm in the process) but I’m assuming I will probably need to attempt to add another new set of joists sitting on top the new walls which will be tricky with all the ductwork, etc. For the walls, I’m looking at 2 layers of 5/8” sheetrock on the outside, 2 X 4 framing, filled with R-13 insulation, RC-1 on the inside with two more sheets of 5/8” sheet rock. Closet Possibilities As I said, my wife finds the idea of building this room much more palatable if we can build in a “closet” so that when we sell the house, this room could be considered another bedroom, so I have included a couple of drawings suggesting a couple of possible layouts for this space including a closet. Feel free to tell me I’m nuts! Questions I’m basically looking for reactions to this room shape and possible layout suggestions. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the “construction for isolation” aspect of the project, but am not nearly as comfortable with how to make this room shape work as well as possible for a combination room acoustically, so would truly appreciate any advice or suggestions. I am especially interested in where you would suggest locating the monitors, etc. Of course at this point I'm mainly interested in the basic functionality of the room, but would definitely welcome any input in regard to room treatment as well. Please let me know if there are any pictures that you would find helpful in picturing this space and it’s possibilities. Thanks so much for any help you are willing to give me! Oh-oh, I worked on this sketch all day, and now it's too big to upload to the sight, so I gues I'll just have to do a jpg of it. I hope you can see everything ok! Edit: Later on another post I noticed John's advice to use Window/Model info/statistics/purge to reduce file size of skp file, so have done that and got skp of unfinished space small enought to include, so I have done that. It's below the following 3 jpg's, just in case it's helpful to anyone.

you could try something like this which gives you a small booth backed by the closet.

Hi Glen, Thank you so much for your idea. It's amazing to me how quickly you're able to come up with something usable. In my particular situation, at this point anyway, I'm thinking I would rather stay with one room, since I work alone so often. Also my wife is natually not keen on adding another wall to the area that she's hoping to eventually bill as a bedroom when we sell the house. Although I should draw this out, (and will if I need to when I have a little more time than I do at the moment) I'll mention a couple of possibilities and hopefully get your reaction (and the reaction of others as well): 1) Put the mixing position against the wall where you have the closet in your drawing Glen (of course the closet would need to be moved to perhaps where I had located it my last drawing). 2) Put the mixing position against the corner, that is to simply rotate it from where you have it Glen. As I mentioned I am weak in analyzing the best acoustic set up, but for a one man studio, I could then line up gear along each wall to the left and right of the mixing position. I assume some treatment in the corner behind the monitors would then be approproiate. Thanks again Glen for your layout. I will continue to consider it and invite further input from you and any others. Thanks!! :D :D :D

Also my wife is natually not keen on adding another wall to the area that she's hoping to eventually bill as a bedroom when we sell the house.

I'd suggest to your wife that a Home Theater wil have a higher resale value than a basement bedroom. Just call the booth a DVD library. ;) cheers john

Great idea John!!! :lol: The only problem is our plan is to add the home theatre/bar in the remaining space of the basement once the studio is complete. We're actually hoping to use some of the isolation/treatment techniques we are successful in using in the studio room in the home theatre as well. When I got ready to draw (please excuse my simplistic drawing) I decided to pursue the idea of the mixing position in the corner. As I mentioned, I work alone much of the time (recording myself), and having the DAW centrally located seems would be the most functional for me. Would I be better off acoustically from a mixing perspective to turn the mixing desk 45 degrees one way or the other? Would sitting as it is (shown here) be the best for minimizing early refections?? I appologize for my lack of knowledge in this area.

Hello All, For better or for worse, below is the current rough plan for layout of my room. By that I mean, it should give me a place to record, that will also satisfy my wife's desire to be a space that can reasonably pass as a bedroom when we sell the house. I'm currently looking at placing the mixing desk as shown. If anyone has any advice on better positioning given the rough size and layout of the room, please let me know. On the advice of a structural engineer, the layout below should let me do the layers of sheetrock I want to do on the ceiling with the addition of a couple of well-placed headers. Much of the placement of the walls has to do with a drain in the floor in front of the water heater, and the window that is in the wall to the right as you look at the drawing. But again, I am open to any suggestions for a better layout of this room, with the understanding that I'm looking at a single room space, and don't desire an isolation area or any other seperate space at this time (and of course my wife's desire for the basic structure to pass as a bedroom when we sell the house). I have started installing beef-up strips between the floor joists (that is, in the studio ceiling), and unless I get some good advice for a modified design shortly, I hope to start a new thread on the construction forum and start to document my progress over there. Thanks again for the wonderful resource of this site!!

looks like a reasonable trade off. if you are considering it a "bedroom" for future sale, you want to pay very close attention to building codes that may require additional egress windows/doors, ventilation, fire suppression, and increased property taxes (as you'd likely have to disclose the "bedroom" on your plans/permits in order to qualify it as such during a sale...)

Thanks Glen. I think we've got most of the bedroom requirement bases covered. This is not our first time around in the "finishing off basement" (including a bedroom) venture, just the first attempt at building a recording room. Little old South Dakota codes are fairly easy to comply with in these areas, relatively speaking. It's good to hear someone say that it appears to be a reasonable space for recording. It will definitely be a big step up from where my space was previously with bare concrete walls! Right now I'm trying to firm up my plans for how to handle ventilation. I'm planning to tap into the existing HVAC that handles the rest of the house, but would like to feel more comfortable on exactly to handle the ductwork. The furnace is obviously right next door in the utility room, so I'm thinking heat and return runs directly to the furnace from the room, oversided, with a couple of 90 degree turns if possible. Does that sound adequate? If you know of any threads that might help me in these decisions, I would very much appreciate the direction. Maybe I'll have more luck asking for this advice once I start a thread on the construction forum??

ok... i think you should check in the construction forum wrt the hvac questions or check with a local contractor to be sure you have enough capacity although you already may... as far as the room, just consider the possiblity for sound absorbers to be placed around to tame the room modes - in each corner, behind the desk and on the wall behind the desk as well as an overhead cloud.

Sadly, we had to replace our central AC system last week (in 95 degree heat), so I took that opportunity to consult with the HVAC people about capacity, and they assured me the heating/cooling system will be capable of the extra load. I also have one of the guys coming back next week to consult with me about a ductwork plan. I was hoping to get a little more educated (via this site) on the best way to do that to preserve isolation, and minimize blower noise, before meeting with him. In regard to acoustic treatment; As I'm perceiving is common, it's not always easy to get your hands on rigid insulation around here, so I grabbed some mineral wool while it was available a couple of weeks ago. I got 20 pieces of 2' X 4', 4" panels with a 4 lb density that I'm hoping I'll be able to build all the acoustic treatment I need for the room. I understand it's nasty stuff to work with. I hope I'm headed down the right road.

you should be able to build some treatments with that. build traps across your room corners and put in absorbers on first reflection points and a cloud overhead. if you have some left, put some behind the monitors and the back wall to control reflections even more.

Thanks Glen - With all the doors (4 with the closet, 2 into the utility room, and one entry door), the window, and the ductwork overhead, placing the treatment, might be a challenge. I'm also trying to come up with the best way to hang the treatment without messing up the sheetrock too much.

the simpliest is heavy picture hooks and wires. if you need them to stand off, you could put some foam or 2x blocks to keep the absorber off the wall by several inches and hang them off the blocks or put in a rail to hang them on - a rail lets you slide them around.

Thanks Glen. I'm planning to use RC on the walls/ceiling. I assume using sheetrock anchors or something like that might be the best for actual attachment to the walls, rather than driving anything into the studs?

actually if you could connect with the studs, you'd likely need fewer supports, since that's not sounding like an option, then using drywall anchors should work.

I assume I'd be able to drive a nail or a screw into the studs, but I'm assuming that would compromise the isolation functionality of the RC. I guess some of these questions are a way down the road at this point - good to think about them though. Maybe as I firm up exact construction plans regarding the RC, it will become more clear how some of these issues need to be handled. For example, maybe it would make sense to put the RC on the utility room side of the wall rather than the studio side. That would also make it easier to put cornerbead on the outside sheetrock corner where the wall jogs out from the closet to the utilitiy room.

I've started a thread over on the construction forum for my project here.