basement rehearsal studio

Hello, greetings to all readers! This is my first post on this forum. My name is Peter Tielemann and i come from Bocholt, a relatively small town in the western part of Germany. Me and my wife are looking for a place where to freely play our drums and guitar. Recording the stuff we do, should be an option in the future. For now, we would be satisfied with some kind of soundproof rehearsal studio. Fortunately we own a house with an unused rectangular room in the basement. It measures 9,01m x 4,62m. The downside of this relatively large room is the ceiling height: it’s only 2,25m. The room lies in the south-east corner of the building. So the south- and the eastwall are build of 37,5 cm thick concrete while the other two walls are made of 17,5 cm thick bricks. The 7cm concrete floating floor (it contains a floor heating) lies on a roughly 20 cm thick concrete foundation. The ceiling is also made of concrete. The south wall contains 2 windows sized 100cm x 50cm. The panes are not sound isolated at all, but the entrance door in the north wall actually is (i’ll post pictures of the room later)! The line that separates the floor is an expansion joint (i hope, that’s the right expression!?). In the western part of the room are two small areas where ducts enter and leave the room. I’ll photograph them too later. The 44cm x 43cm rectangular structure beside the entrance is a chimney. My first question is quite simple: Would the remaining ceiling height (after sound isolation and possible other treatment) still be sufficient to build a reasonable studio room? I’ve read quite some literature about the importance of adequate room ratios to achieve a good sound. But in all studio examples i discovered by now the ceiling height was always greater than mine. Cheers, Peter PS: Please excuse my bad english. School is long lost and forgotten... :wink:

Aloha and welcome to the forum, Congrats on your studio build. While the ceiling height is a little low, there are several forum members here that have similar ceiling heights and yet have built workable studios. Unless the means to rent/buy another location is an option, we often times have to "make do" with what we have. Perhaps a search might prove helpful to see what others have done. Looking forward to your build. Aloha 8)

Hello, thanx for the welcome! I followed your tip and found Lee Howards thread. Looking into his design at the moment. He has to cope with an even lower ceiling height. I've also taken some pictures to demonstrate the room features. Greetings, Peter

more pictures:

nice space. somethings to check would be - how much sound is getting in or out of the room? is it through the floors? windows? door? chimney? what is the sound level outside (play something on the drums while measuring)? this will help determine how much isolation you need. also, there's only one way in or out of that room. so you should probably check on codes regarding egress windows. I also don't see any ventilation.

Hi Glenn, thanx for your input. :D I'll buy a soundmeter soon, to verify sound levels outside the room when playing drums, etc. The windows will definately be a weak part. Because they are not practical as a light source anyway, i plan to make window plugs for them (although i may need one for connecting a ventilation system to the outside). So, as you already guessed, ventilation is an issue. The room can be heated (through the floor) but has no air condition system. Actually the whole building has no AC-unit. One family houses usually dont have such things over here. I don't think, there is the need to build an egress window, but i'll check local codes. I am thinking of some kind of soundlock around the door. The general partioning of the room should be something like the sketch. Greetings, Peter

you'll definitely want ventilation :-) maybe you can build a pair of window based vents to exchange air and if need be some cooling. I'd also swap the control room and tracking room so equipment comes in through the door into the tracking room plus the soundlock could be an iso booth.

Hi Glenn, thx again for your help. It's greatly appreciated. :) The soundmeter is ordered. It should arrive next week. I'm currently working on a Sketchup-Plan myself (due to the fact that i'm not a sketchup expert already and due to my limited time, its still in progress). I like the concept of the large slayed wall in your drawing (and the room ratios in general). But I do see potential problems in soundisolating the tracking room sufficiently. Especially the ducts produce flanking noise in the upper floors (and vice versa). The new basement sketch below contains now a placeholder for this ducts ( i don't know how to draw ducts with sketchup). Beside the chimney there is also a placeholder which represents the floor heating controls. This controls must be accessible all the time. This is also true for the revisioning door of the chimney. I should have pointed that out in the beginning; my fault :cry: Further i don't know, if its a good idea to ignore the expansion joint in the floor when designing the walls (i could imagine cracks to arise in the corresponding walls because of this). Greetings Peter

So, here is my first try. It is by no means perfect, just an idea. The coffin-shaped room is the control room. Notice, that i can reach all controls, windows and ducts. Any comments are welcome! Peter

I can see on Image00001.jpg that you have a corridor to this space, is this correct ? If that is so I would not use a soundlock (unless you really want a vocal both like gullfo suggested). Do you want a machine room in your studio ?

@andrebrito: Yes, there is a corridor. But it leads to 2 other basement rooms as well. It also leads to the hallway which connects the 2 upper floors with the basement. I don't quite get your second question. What exactly do you mean with "machine room"? Greetings Peter

A machine room is an equipment room. A separate room where you place all your noisy gear particularly your computer. :-)

Oh, that kind of "machine room". :lol: I should have guessed. :wink: I actually thought to put some noisy equipment in the small corrdior beyond the windows. Because i need an airconditioning system, it would be installed there anyway (the windows beeing the only source of fresh air in this room). Peter