Our Space

Dear Mr. Sayers We would like to start by telling you how impressed we are with your site. It has been great fun referencing the work of so many likeminded individuals so easily (and we haven’t even started building yet!). Here’s a little background about who exactly we are: We are Dan-David Spielman, Alex Osadichiy and Asaf Shanzer. We all studied recording and sound engineering together at Rimon, which is a school for jazz and contemporary music. Upon finishing school and after about three years of working together on pretty much anything imaginable in a musical universe we decided to take the plunge and rent some space together with the intention of building a studio (that’s where you come in).Thanks in advance (for building this awesome site, and generally caring about people as obviously demented as audiophiles can be)| First of all let me give you the basics. We are building our studio in Israel. Ramat gan to be exact. The total amount of space we have to work with is 9.3 meters by 3.8 meters with a height of 3.2 meters. The space we have allocated for the control and recording rooms is 6 meters by 3.8 meters with the same height (We are totally flexible regarding the dividing of space). It is about 5 kilometers from Tel-Aviv and the amount of urban clutter is almost endless (this is important since we are working with a limited and sometimes non-existent budget). Despite our limited funds we have made substantial progress. Donations from various factories have given us an almost unlimited supply of pinewood, mdf and insulating rubber. Our space is located on the second floor of a large industrial building. We are attaching a sketch we built using the sketchup program (thanks for the link by the way). As per your request we are categorizing our general questions. I would like to make clear that we are determined to produce an end result of the highest quality. We would appreciate any help you might be able to give us as there are three of us and to tell you the truth I’m just sick of arguing. Many many thanks. Questions: Supplies: 1)As we said we have access to a wide variety of materials, however we haven’t been too sure exactly which ones to focus our efforts on (up until now it’s been a grab what you can and run kind of basis). Is there anything besides wood we should be stockpiling? 2)Will pinewood be sufficient? In general wood is very expensive in Israel however pinewood is in abundance. Hw far can we go with pinewood and will we be needing any other type of wood? 3)Insulating material. We have heard many opinions regarding the best and most cost effective way to insulate against outside noise. What materials would you recommend? Design: 1) In the sketch we have attached you will see we have a large window which faces an area full of some very noisy places (automobile garages, glass factories and pretty much any other workshop you can imagine). Please take into account that despite the fact that at night we’re alone for miles we would like the option to operate the studio during the day without having to suffer from outside noise. Will we have to close the window off and what would be the best way to do that? (During the day the outside leakage is between 70 and 80 dbspl roughly) 2) As we have already mentioned there are three of us so the opinions on how to divide the space are numerous to say the least. Basically the only thing we can agree upon is that the emphasis should be on the control room. On everything else we’re open to suggestion. 3)How should we design the electrical layout? How should we layout the air conditioning? We have all had bad experiences with studios where the electrical system was planned poorly resulting in leakage from the lighting system into the sound setup. What would be the best way to avoid this happening at the design level? We are also worried about high sound levels coming from the ventilation system. How can this be avoided? 4) Is a floating floor possible? (we’d like one) If so how high should it be? Will we need to build two separate frames (for the control and recording room) or can they both be put on the same frame? Is stone wool the best way to go under the floor? Does the insulation above the first wood layer need to be one piece? Please take into account the fact that we have access to large amounts of surplus rubber. Is there a way to effectively bind them together?

since mass will be important, and support that mass will be important, and having materials to create slat resonators etc will also be important, i'd say, grab all the framing, MDF, and pine wood you can. if you can also get rigid fiberglass/mineral/rock wool or recycled cotton batt insulation, you'll also be in good shape. for the window, build a nice isolating wall in front of it, then add a couple of really good quality exterior grade windows to allow some light in. these can be placed on the angled treatment walls which are build "inside-out". electrical and HVAC - read up on this site. plenty of info to be had. floating floor - why do you need it? read up on this site. plenty of info to be had.

Really. We mean it. you rock. Now back to buisness. We read up on the whole floating floor buisness and we were ready to give up on the whole thing. Then we put our ear to the floor and felt just how much vibration the surrounding buisnesses actually generate. We realize that for a home or basement operation wouldn't need to go this extra mile but we're on the 2nd floor (2 above ground that is), smack dab in the middle of an industrial area. In short we're at the point where we'd rather not build it but we kinda feel there's no choice. We really liked your sketch by the way (We were killing ourselves trying to think where to find the glass for the control room window).We only have one revision regarding the placement of the door and office(we built them right after we posted. Thats why they aren't in our sketch. We're attaching a new one) We would really like some schematic for the insulating wall facing the window (Sasha and me have exchanged words regarding the dimensions and he still hasn't fully recovered). Sasha also kindly requests specifications of the angles between walls and basically as much detail as you feel may be essential at this point. Thanks Dan, Sasha, Asaf

Hi Guys, Being two floors up, be sure that the existing floor will be able to support the weight of your studio. Inner walls, ceilings, gear, people etc. can get seriously heavy! It was mentioned on the forum somewhere, imagine a couple of cars parked in there, would you feel safe? Best to have a structural engineer take a look... Geoff

We're definetly going to have an engineer look at the place to make sure we're on the safe side (Israel has known it's share of disasters caused by improper building techniques) but from looking at the buisnesses around us we're pretty sure the building is well built(or at least thats what we tell ourselves at night when we crash there). We do however, have a new problem. One of our fellow tennants just happens to be the biggest cosmetics factory in the area(we know, our bad. Please lets just leave it at that). The noise leakage really isn't that bad but the vibration at certain times feels like it's going to turn into an issue. We'd really appreciate any graphic materials or references you might have regarding the whole floating issue and as always any advice in general. Thanks Sasha, Dan, Asaf

no legal precedence for having the violator (cosmetics factory) being made to reduce the amount of noise and vibration being transmitted to other tenants? :wink:

We wish it was that easy. Unfortunately it would be difficult to try and bring any kind of law into effect against a factory of this size. Luckily it isn't as bad as it could be and for most of the time they are fairly quiet however, we don't want to depend on their silence when we need to record. Are there any options other than floating you would recomend? How do we measure the vibration level and how bad can it be before floating is a must?

read up on the construction forum here (theres a stickie to get started on floating floors) but in general, floating a floor properly can get expensive fairly quickly... if you have large quantities of lumber, you may be able to use multiple layers of MDF over some isolation material such as the Kinetics isolation pad (http://www.kineticsnoise.com/hvac/kip.html & http://www.kineticsnoise.com/arch/rimwood.aspx) you'd need to compute the load of the walls and inner ceiling and equipment, people, etc as part of determining the compression on the pads to determine the right amount to ensure stability and spring.

We asked around and found out the floor can hold up to half a ton per square meter. Is it really possible our studio might be heavier? To tell the truth we haven't the slightest on this one and for fear of sounding incredibly stupid: is half a ton a little or a lot? Thanks Asaf,Dan,Sasha

newspice wrote:

We asked around and found out the floor can hold up to half a ton per square meter. Is it really possible our studio might be heavier? To tell the truth we haven't the slightest on this one and for fear of sounding incredibly stupid: is half a ton a little or a lot? Thanks Asaf,Dan,Sasha

Told by whom? Rod

We had a little sit down with the owner of the cosmetics factory. He has all the info on file.

We haven't posted for a while because we've been busy building the floor (pictures will soon follow... we promise). We did however want to pop in and thank gulfo for his awesome design. We are currently building the frame for the floor and would like to know if you could clarify just what the angle between the control and record room should be (again words have been exchanged and sasha is still crying and it's been 3 weeks and well... you know how it is). Again we thank you in advance. Cheers Asaf, Dan, Sasha