New Project Studio Build - Need some advise and direction.

[ZedsHoll]

Hi there, thanks for any help in advance.

Im in the process of renovating a room behind my garage as a office/control/mix room. I am keen to use some of the existing garage space as a iso booth/live room to track drums, vocals and guitar cabs etc. I intend accessing this space from the proposed mix/control room. Please see floor plan attached with dims and notes.

NEW PROJECT STUDIO BUILD.jpg

Status quo of Proposed Mix room:

- Existing 6mm ceiling board, no insulation.
- Plastered, 230mm Double skin walls with a 100mm-150mm rock cladding on the outside face.
- Steel door frame to existing bathroom and passage that can allow a double door system, due to rebates on both sides of the frame.
- 2400mm thoroughfare been created between mix room and garage space.
- Neighbours are about 12 000mm to 15 000mm from top exterior wall.
- Main house about 6 000mm from Main House.

Status quo of Proposed Iso Booth/Live space:

- Existing open garage. (Can only use half)
- No ceiling, open trusses to waterproofing/roof tiles.

Goals (more so for the iso booth than the mix room/office):

- Reduce sound leakage into the booth from residential road running parallel to left hand side outer wall, approximately 8000mm -10 000mm away.
- Block out (if possible) residential sounds ie. dogs barking, lawn mowers, birds etc.
- Reduce sound transmission from Iso booth, in order to track/ practise drums and electric guitar without it being an annoyance to main house or neighbours.
- Accommodate a storage area within the booth where I can store amps, guitars etc. possibly with a leaky wall between the store and booth, acting as a bass trap. Only if it will complement the performance of the room. Saw something like this in an interview with Mitch Galllager from Sweetwater http://youtu.be/FuRiqoNRDmc.
- Achieve reasonable isolation between iso booth and mix/office space to accurately hear through my monitors, what my mics are capturing in the iso booth.


Q1: I need to maximize the space, and therefore have shown the extent of the spaces I have to use. Is there a better layout that could be constructed that would help with the performance of the room?

Q2: I would like an OSB finish on the interior of the booth and a face brick feature wall behind my desk for aesthetic reasons, is there a way to achieve this without affecting the rooms performance, or better can I use these materials to increase performance.

Q3: I'm thinking of incorporating down lights into a ceiling absorption cloud structures for both spaces, to minimize excess holes in my ceiling. Is this a good idea and if so, any helpful specs and how far off the ceiling should they be hung, given the specific spaces.

Q4: The floor is common in both areas and is a concrete slab on compacted earth. I intend keeping the floor as is and throwing down a couple rugs. Is this going to be problematic, and is there a need to decouple both floor spaces.

Q5: Given the fact that the iso booth will be constructed within an existing brick structure, what approach should I take regarding mass and isolation of the stud walls, given the fact that various stud walls interface with different elements of the existing room. ie. right against a wall, standing in middle of the existing room, and interfacing with the mix room.

Any help is appreciated!!! Im really good creatively and using my hands, but lack on the technical side, so would love some help.

Thanks

Zayne

[Soundman2020]

Hi Zayne. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

- Plastered, 230mm Double skin walls with a 100mm-150mm rock cladding on the outside face.

That's some pretty major mass there! You should be getting reasonable isolation from that. Do you need more isolation?

- Steel door frame to existing bathroom and passage that can allow a double door system, due to rebates on both sides of the frame.

If you are talking about double doors, then it seems you do need additional isolation. How much? Have you figured that out yet? It is key to designing the isolation system.

- Neighbours are about 12 000mm to 15 000mm from top exterior wall.

There seems to be a window in that wall? Have you measured how much isolation you are getting from that window currently, and how much extra you need? If not, now is the time to do that.

- No ceiling, open trusses to waterproofing/roof tiles.

More info needed to be sure, but that probably isn't going to be much use as your outer leaf. You will likely need a 3-leaf system, unfortunately, if you want high levels of isolation.

- Reduce sound leakage into the booth from residential road running parallel to left hand side outer wall, approximately 8000mm -10 000mm away.

What are the typical sound levels (in dB) right now, just outside the building, and also in the location where the booth will be? What levels do you need in order for your booth to be successful?

Once again, identifying these levels, in decibels, is the key to being able to design the isolation system correctly.

- Block out (if possible) residential sounds ie. dogs barking, lawn mowers, birds etc.

Here to you need to measure those levels to determine how loud they are, in decibels, then also decide how quite you want them to be inside your rooms. All of the process for designing studio isolation is based around that single number: "I need xx dB of isolation". If you don't know that, then you can't design the system, and if it isn't designed, then you can't build it!

- Reduce sound transmission from Iso booth, in order to track/ practise drums and electric guitar without it being an annoyance to main house or neighbours.

Once again, you need to measure those levels: How loud will a typical session be? How quite do you want that to be at the neighbor's property line? The difference between the two is how much isolation you need.

- Accommodate a storage area within the booth where I can store amps, guitars etc. possibly with a leaky wall between the store and booth, acting as a bass trap.

IT is possible, yes. I have done that before in a couple of studio designs. You can even change the acoustics of the booth by recording with the storage room door open, or closed, if you design it that way.

- Achieve reasonable isolation between iso booth and mix/office space to accurately hear through my monitors, what my mics are capturing in the iso booth.

You need to put a number to "reasonable isolation". That's a very, very different scenario for different people with different needs.

Q1: I need to maximize the space, and therefore have shown the extent of the spaces I have to use.

Then why are you wasting space with a nearly 15cm thick, nearly 4m long aesthetic wall in the CR that will take up a half a square meter, and most of which won't be visible anyway, once you put in the necessary and crucial acoustic treatment that you absolutely must have on that wall? Right there, you are wasting a lot of space that could be put to better use.

Is there a better layout that could be constructed that would help with the performance of the room?

The room is very nearly square. There are 3 "pass/fail" tests that the BBC uses to determine if a room is suitable for use as a control room. Yours fails 2 out of 3. If you want to use that room exactly as it is, then it is going to need major treatment to make it usable as a high-quality control room.

However, you did say that you need isolation, so the dimensions you gave are not the final interior dimensions of your inner leaf. Those are the dimensions that matter, so after you have the isolation walls figured out, you can adjust their positions to get a much better room ratio. That would be a good idea.

Q2: I would like an OSB finish on the interior of the booth

You can do that for sure! But it will not be visible, as the acoustic treatment will cover it almost entirely. Small booth like that need major treatment, so practically all of your wall area will be covered by that, with one type or another.

a face brick feature wall behind my desk for aesthetic reasons,

Same here: that would be nice, but most of it wont be visible, as it will be covered with acoustic treatment.

Q3: I'm thinking of incorporating down lights into a ceiling absorption cloud structures for both spaces, to minimize excess holes in my ceiling.

That's an excellent idea. Many people do that, and it can look really nice. You have a reasonably high ceiling too, so your cloud can be done with a good size and angle.

any helpful specs and how far off the ceiling should they be hung, given the specific spaces.

If you do a hard-backed cloud, then it needs to be angled sufficiently that the first reflections are directed away form your ears. The actual angle you need to accomplish that is different for every room. You have to figure it out, using ray tracing, to make sure you get it right.

Q4: The floor is common in both areas and is a concrete slab on compacted earth

Concrete slab on grade is about the best darn acoustic floor you could ask for! Plenty of mass, and well damped, so good for isolation; hard, rigid, solid, reflective, so good for acoustics.

If you are concerned about impact noise from drums and bass cabs, then build a "drum riser" type platform for each of those. Problem solved!

I intend keeping the floor as is and throwing down a couple rugs.

Throw rugs are probably fine, but be careful with carpet in general: It's a really lousy acoustic treatment, as it does the opposite of what is needed in most rooms. A small piece for the drums is obligatory, of course, and probably another small pieces under your chair in the CR, but do not carpet the entire floor. Bad.

Q5: Given the fact that the iso booth will be constructed within an existing brick structure, what approach should I take regarding mass and isolation of the stud walls, given the fact that various stud walls interface with different elements of the existing room. ie. right against a wall, standing in middle of the existing room, and interfacing with the mix room.

Assuming you want high isolation for your booth, the only way to do it at reasonable cost is by using the "fully decoupled 2-leaf MSM system", often called "room-in-a-room" construction. To do that, you start with an "outer leaf", which consists of four walls, a ceiling and a floor, then you build another room inside of that, consisting of four walls and a ceiling. The new "inner-leaf" room cannot, under any circumstances, touch any part of the outer-leaf. There has to be an air gap between the two, and no mechanical linkage at all is allowed to cross that air gap. Not even a single nail.

- Stuart -








- Stuart -