attic studio in south jersey

Hello everyone. I originally started a thread over in the Construction Forum but I have since spent some more time browsing and decided that the Design Forum would be an appropriate place to begin. I must say that in the few days I have spent looking around here I am amazed at how much I have learned. This is all fairly new to me. I have purchased Rod's book but I have not gotten through much of it yet. Let me introduce myself. My name is Kevin. I live in South Jersey right outside of Philadelphia. I have been a musician for many years. Mostly piano/keyboard and a lot of midi work. I been in a few bands and the last year or two I began teaching myself the ins and outs of digital recording. I recently purchased a house with two of my buddies, one of which is a fellow musician/bandmate. It has a finished attic. Half of the attic will be my friends bedroom. The other half we plan to make into a studio. It is a fairly small area so I am assuming it will be a one room studio acting as both a live room and a control room. I have not taken any measurements but I plan to do that soon. Im hoping to get rolling on this project this fall. I want to spend as much time as possible designing it so I get it right. My main concern will be isolation; particularly from the outside world. We want to be able to jam/record whenever we want without worring about the neighbors. I also hope to isolate the sound from the downstairs of the house as to not bother our other roomate but I have a feeling that will be tricky and is not as high of a priority. He wont call the cops on us. My neighbor, without a doubt, will. Of course acoustics will also be someting I will need to address. I am very early in my design phase but here are a few issues/thoughts floating around at the moment: 2 windows An open staircase. possibly closing this off and adding a door? Doorway to bedroom Hardwood floors 2 closets. One possibility is to get rid of the doorways and the dividing wall to open it up for some studio real estate or turning them into iso boths maybe? I will post some pictures and I am going to start working with sketchup and see if I cant get some basic sketchs together to have a starting point. Thanks for all the info so far! -Kevin

openings will definitely lead to sound getting out or in. once you have an accurate floor plan and some photos it will be easier to discuss. Rod's book has a lot of info on testing your space. also details on neighbor proxity, music played + # of people, etc... all will help. another thought is if you have a basement you can use... lots of time its easier to get more isolation in the basement than the attic...

one window faces the front of the house. the other window is on the side of the house facing the side of our neighbors house at a fairly close proximity. the majority of time it will just be two of us (keyboard or piano + electric or acoustic guitar + vocals). we will also have full band practice from time to time (electric guitar and bass + drums + keyboard + vocals). we will also be tracking each individually at times. fortunately/unfortunately we have a basement which would be an ideal spot for the studio..however it has a pool table and a bar and there will be a lot of partying down there so we decided the attic is our only option. i also forgot to mention that there are no HVAC vents to deal with, which is good, at least from an isolation standpoint. but it does get hot as balls in the summer so i may have to consider a portable air conditioner of some sort. thanks for the reply. more info and sketches will hopefully be up soon. -Kevin

actually ventilation is critical so think about air exchange as well as cooling and/or any heating.

here is a rough sketch with dimensions and some photos. i am still trying to figure out how to use sketchup. im having some trouble cutting out the steps and slanting the walls. any suggestion? -Kevin

more photos

fakesounds wrote:

here is a rough sketch with dimensions and some photos. i am still trying to figure out how to use sketchup. im having some trouble cutting out the steps and slanting the walls. any suggestion? -Kevin

practice practice practice :-) check out midimonkey's studio http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/Pages/Monkey1.htm - he had to deal with a number of similar issues.

heres what i got so far. not perfect but its a start. still having trouble slanting the walls but i think you get the idea from the photos.

heres an updated sketch. also forgot to mention that the ceiling height is about 6'10"

maybe something like this?

hey glenn, thanks for the design. my roomate and i have been talking and we are considering pushing the wall that is shared with the bedroom (left of your design) back into the bedroom 4 or 5 feet. if we do i think think we might be able to throw up another wall and close in a control room in that part of the room which may be roughly 8'x8' or 9'x8'. i think we want to avoid making it a square room right? Do you think that would be good dimensions for a control room? ill get the exact measurements this weekend and update the sketch and see how it looks. do you have any suggestions as to how to approach the ventilation/heating/cooling issue? ive been thinking about the isolation. from what i have read so far it seems that a double wall two leaf system would gain me the most in isolation, but do you think this would cut into my dimensions too much? im thinking i might have to settle with a two leaf single wall system with maybe two different layers on each leaf... i am still reading through the board and rods book so i am still trying to come up to speed.

perhaps something like this?

on the side window where i have the inside-out wall - you ould put in a window AC unit and then add some holes in the inside-wall to supply-return air. use that space as an "AC room". as far as good dimensions - you have what you have - if adding the wall helps in what you're trying to do, then its good. not having the room square or 2 similar dimensions is good. if isolation is critical - using the additional walls may be necessary. perhaps add another layer of drywall on them? or add some rc and 1" insulation and 5/8" x2 layers drywall on that - cheap second interior wall - it may help without adding another framed wall. the wall between the two rooms can be either doubled or use a single frame with rc on it. i'd just use a door with a window in it or slider door between the rooms - no sense have both a door and window in that small a space.

what exactly do you mean by an inside-out wall?

the adjacent bedroom has vents for the central air/heating of the house. do you think connecting some sort of duct between this bedroom and the control room might work? or maybe even from the bedroom into the control room and then the live room via tha ceiling? or, do you think tapping into the houses central air providing new vents in each room of the studio would be a better way to go?