Hello everyone! First off, I just want to say that I just discovered this forum last week and I have to say it seems like a great community. Thank you in advance to anyone who reads my post. I will try to be detailed but not ramble on haha!
Overview:
I’ve been recording music for a little over 12 years (my projects and others’ as well). I’ve had a few different setups but all really just your basic home setup. No soundproofing or acoustic treatment. Recently, I moved into my own house and I decided that I finally wanted to build what I’ll call a “glorified” home studio. I’ve done a lot of research, I've searched through the forums here, and I am finishing up the planning phase now. I believe I am ready to start ordering materials soon but I wanted to consult with others who have more experience in building than I do. I want to make sure I’m not missing something crucial, especially when it comes to soundproofing. I’m not worrying about acoustic treatment just yet (I'll get the foam, diffusors, and bass traps later) so for purposes of this post, I am mainly looking for help on soundproofing.
The space I am working with (CAD drawing below) is basically a rectangle room in my basement with a drop ceiling. It is all parallel walls, which I know is a big no-no in acoustics but I am not planning on restructuring the rooms to be non-parallel. I am planning on building a new wall to split it into two separate rooms and create a live room and a control room. My main concern is that I would like to limit the sound coming into and out of the control room. The live room will be between 100-120db at its loudest (I am assuming a worst case scenario of a really loud drummer here lol!). My target would be a 50-60db reduction from the live room to the control room. There is zero concern about noise level to neighbors. It would be nice to be able to listen to a drummer record a take through monitors (at a reasonable volume) rather than have to wear headphones, which is what I usually do to prevent the monitors bleeding into the recording.
I am trying to keep the budget at $5000 for the control room but I am flexible up to $6000. I plan to do all the labor myself so it is safe to say that the budget is just for materials. I will break out my current plan to as much detail as I can below but I want to say upfront that I am trying to avoid doing the floating floor. I realize that this is likely best practice for sound isolation but with the drop ceiling, it is already a low ceiling (~7ft) and if I am posting this to see if I can build an effective room without doing that.
Plan for Control Room Walls:
As you can see in the control room CAD drawing, the room will be nearly a square, measuring to be 9ft 10.75in x 11ft 10.75in. Right now, there are only wood studs (2x4s) in the basement over the concrete floor/cinderblock wall and nothing else. The wall that is shared with the live room is not there at all yet. For this, I plan to build the studs for that wall using 2x6s. That shared wall will be where I put the recessed wall boxes (scroll to bottom of link) for cable connections (XLRs, ¼”s etc), a window, and two doors (shown in the drawing). When all is said and done, that new wall will be 6.75in thick (counting the drywall on both sides) and the other 3 walls will be 4.125 in thick. I will be using GreenGlue Sealant for all the sealing needs.
Once all the studs are up and electrical/cabling is done, I plan to put Soundproofing Putty on the backs of all the outlets/cable boxes to prevent vibration and bleed. From there I will put Roxul Safe n Sound insulation in between all the studs on all four walls.
The window is 3’x4’ and will be purchased from Soundproofwindows.com . I’ve talked to a representative there and the window will be two windows separated by air, but neither of the windows will be slanted as the 6.75in wall thickness does not allow for that. I am not sure the exact space between the windows yet but it would be the max possible within the thickness of the wall. I was told the STC rating on the window would be in the high 50s/low 60s.
For the doors, I plan to use a two door system. I don’t have anything picked out here but it would be two solid wood doors with foam in between them. If anyone has a specific type of wood and/or foam I should look for, I am definitely open to suggestions here.
After all of that is installed, the main wall material will be QuietRock EZ Snap Drywall (5/8” thick), which is two slabs of drywall glued together with acoustic glue (similar to Green Glue). This drywall will be put on all four walls inside the control room and on the live room side of the shared wall. The STC rating for this is also in the 50s.
Plan for Control Room Floor:
As I mentioned before, I am trying to avoid the floating floor strategy here. The floor is currently just the concrete slab. My plan is to lay down the Iso-Step Floor Underlayment (STC rating in the 50s) first to deal with vibrations through the floor, followed by porcelain tile. I don’t have a specific tile picked yet. Area rugs will also be used on top in the end.
Plan for Control Room Ceiling:
There is currently a drop ceiling with the standard 2’x4’ tiles hung up (see above picture). Above the tiles is 2.5in of space followed by the joists for the floor above (which are ~8.5in tall).
I plan on laying the Roxul Safe n Sound insulation on top of the tiles and if needed, I will replace the ceiling tiles with soundproofing ones which have an STC of 26. I originally thought about putting the insulation in the joists but figured that would not help my goal. I don’t care about sound going up to the 1st floor. I just want to avoid sound going over to the live room. Maybe putting the insulation in between the joists is better?
Like I mentioned above, the shared wall will be built in line with the crossbeam. There is a space between the top of this crossbeam (shown in picture above) and the floor joists. In other words if you put your hand through the ceiling tile and insulation and over the crossbeam, you could touch the wall on the live room side. So I am a little concerned about sound getting through the ceiling tiles and going right up and over into the live room and vice versa. My solution here is to close that gap between the crossbeam and joists by propping up more Roxul insulation in there. Is that sufficient?
----------------------
So that’s my plan right now. Other than that shared wall, I don’t plan to use the same sound proofing materials on the live room unless absolutely needed because this would increase my budget quite a bit. I will be using standard ½” dry wall and insulation for the remaining walls in that room. The floor will not have the Iso-Step Floor Underlayment and the ceiling will not have the soundproof tiles or Roxul insulation. My thinking here is if I at least seal the control room and the wall that it shares with the live room, I won’t need to seal the live room. Maybe that is wrong? Should I use some or all of those same soundproofing materials for the live room?
Any input or thoughts you have to help me reach my goal of keeping the control room isolated would be greatly appreciated. This seems like it should work but then again I have never built something like this so I really wanted to get some second opinions before I start buying everything and find out I missed a critical step that makes it all worthless lol! If there is anything that I didn’t share or could better display or describe, please feel free to ask any questions!
Just for summary purposes, here are my main questions.
1) Do the materials I picked for this project make sense and will they be sufficient to reach my goal?
2) Is skipping the floating floor and just putting the Iso-Step floor underlayment before tile ok? Will my soundproofing be completely ruined without a floating floor?
3) For the ceiling, is Roxul Safe n Sound isolation on top of the existing ceiling tiles enough or do I need to replace the tiles as well?
4) Will filling the space between the crossbeam and 1st floor with isolation be enough to prevent any leakage of the soundproofing?
5) This might be a dumb question. Is soundproofing just the control room sufficient or do I need to seriously consider adding these materials to the live room? Or hell… am I thinking of this backwards? Should I just soundproof the live room?
Thank you very much!
Jon
Home Studio in Basement Build (Soundproofing Methods)
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Re: Home Studio in Basement Build (Soundproofing Methods)
Hi Jon, and Welcome! 
Sorry about the delay.... For some reason I had missed your original post...
Splaying your walls will, indeed, get rid of flutter echo.... provided that you splay them by a total of 12° or greater! If the angle is less than that, then you does not work. Splaying a wall by 12° in a small room eats up a LOT of space (room volume), and room volume is far more important. Flutter echo can be dealt with much more easily with simple treatment on the walls, which you will need anyway...
The only other time you might want to angle parts of your walls is if you are using a design concept that requires it, such as RFZ, CID, NER and other similar ones.
To isolate a room, you need to isolate all sides of it: All four walls and the ceiling, plus the door, any windows, the HVAC system (yes you need one), the electrical system, etc. They all have to be isolated to the same level. Isolation is only as good as the weakest link. If you isolate all the walls to 60 dB but only isolate the ceiling to 30 dB, then your total is about 30 dB and you wasted a hell of a lot of time and money on those walls!
It's no use at all, acoustically, and the only thing it is doing is limiting your head room and the volume of the room. Get rid of it.
That shows 3 rooms, and you will only have two, but the concept is the same. You need to complete an "outer-leaf" isolation shell around the two rooms that you will be building, using part of the existing garage walls if possible, then you need to build each room separately inside that "shell", with each being a stand-alone, isolated structure that has drywall on only ONE side of the frame.
And your windows do NOT need to be slanted anyway. Yet another myth.
The size of the air gap between your leaves is what governs the amount of isolation you will get, and the frequency range where you will get it. The air gap needs to be planned, not happen by accident! The two factors that control isolation are the mass of each leaf (surface density: how much each square foot of the wall or glass weighs) and the distance between the inner and outer leaf. That's basically it. Unless you intentionally choose those to match your NEEDS, you won't get the outcome you are expecting.
And I was told that I could be a millionaire by the time I was 30, but that didn't work out either! Don't believe everything "they" tell you. To start with, don't believe that STC is useful for measuring studio isolation either! Here's why:
Forget STC. It is no use at all for telling you how well your studio will be isolated. STC was never meant to measure such things. Here's an excerpt from the actual ASTM test procedure (E413) that explains the use of STC.
“These single-number ratings correlate in a general way with subjective impressions of sound transmission for speech, radio, television and similar sources of noise in offices and buildings. This classification method is not appropriate for sound sources with spectra significantly different from those sources listed above. Such sources include machinery, industrial processes, bowling alleys, power transformers, musical instruments, many music systems and transportation noises such as motor vehicles, aircraft and trains. For these sources, accurate assessment of sound transmission requires a detailed analysis in frequency bands.”
It's a common misconception that you can use STC ratings to decide if a particular wall, window, door, or building material will be of any use in a studio. As you can see above, in the statement from the people who designed the STC rating system and the method for calculating it, STC is simply not applicable.
Here's how it works:
To determine the STC rating for a wall, door, window, or whatever, you start by measuring the actual transmission loss at 16 specific frequencies between 125 Hz and 4kHz. You do not measure anything above or below that range, and you do not measure anything in between those 16 points. Just those 16, and nothing else. Then you plot those 16 points on a graph, and do some fudging and nudging with the numbers and the curve, until it fits in below one of the standard STC curves. Then you read off the number of that specific curve, and that number is your STC rating. There is no relationship to real-world decibels: it is just the index number of the reference curve that is closest to your curve.
When you measure the isolation of a studio wall, you want to be sure that it is isolating ALL frequencies, across the entire spectrum from 20 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, not just 16 specific points that somebody chose 50 years ago, because he thought they were a good representation of human speech. STC does not take into account the bottom two and a half octaves of the musical spectrum (nothing below 125Hz), nor does it take into account the top two and a quarter octaves (nothing above 4k). Of the ten octaves that our hearing range covers, STC ignores five of them (or nearly five). So STC tells you nothing useful about how well a wall, door or window will work in a studio. The ONLY way to determine that, is by look at the Transmission Loss curve for it, or by estimating with a sound level meter set to "C" weighting (or even "Z"), and slow response, then measuring the levels on each side. That will give you a true indication of the number of decibels that the wall/door/window is blocking, across the full audible range.
Consider this: It is quite possible to have a window rated at STC-30 that does not provide even 20 decibels of actual isolation, and I can build you a wall rated at STC-20 that provides much better than 30 dB of isolation. There simply is no relationship between STC rating and the ability of a barrier to stop full-spectrum sound, such as music. STC was never designed for that, and cannot be used for that.
Then there's the issue of installation. You can buy a window that really does provide 40 dB of isolation, but unless you install it correctly, it will not provide that level! If you install it in a wall that provides only 20 dB, then the total isolation of that wall+window is 20 dB: isolation is only as good as the worst part. Even if you put a window rated at 90 dB in that wall, it would STILL only give you 20 dB. The total is only as good as the weakest part of the system.
So forget STC as a useful indicator, and just use the actual TL graphs to judge if a wall, door, window, floor, roof, or whatever will meet your needs.
If there is adhesive inside that product, then it is nothing at all like Green Glue, which is NOT glue at all (despite the name). Green glue is not adhesive, and does not "stick things together". Green Glue is a visco-elastic polymer that never hardens, and indeed is designed specifically to NOT harden, because if it did harden the it would not be able to do its job. The job it is supposed to do, is to be a constrained layer damping compound, that keeps the layers apart (by NOT binding them together), such that it can act as an acoustic damper on several different types of resonance that would happen in the wall if it was not there. It works by acting on surface waves, bending waves, etc. to eliminate problems such as the coincidence dip. If it were an adhesive, it would not be able to do that: So any product that contains an adhesive that bonds layers together is not at all like Green Glue, and won't work like Green Glue does.
Your drywall has about as much chance of reaching isolation in the 50's, as does my car of reaching 190 MPH...
WHY???? What purpose could that possibly serve, if you already have a perfectly good studio floor?
Firstly, as I mentioned before, STC is useless as a measure of studio isolation, and secondly NO product by itself is going to give you 50 dB of isolation. The only building material that will consistently get you 50 dB of isolation is a 12" thick reinforced concrete wall. Period. That's the plain, solid, cold, hard truth, as defined by the laws of physics. Here's the actual law:
TL = 14.5 log (Ms * 0.205) + 23 dB (where: Ms = Surface Mass in kg/m2 )
Any solid product that promises isolation better than that... well, draw your own conclusions...
And my car is able to tow a trailer weighing 20 tons....
Contrary to popular belief, insulation does NOT stop sound. It is great for acoustic treatment, but does nothing at all to isolate sound.
Think of it this way: A sponge is a wonderful way of mopping up water that splashed some place in your kitchen where you didn't want it, but if you hold that same sponge over the end of your tap and turn the tap on, the sponge will do nothing at all to stop the water getting through. The water will flow through very well. Even though sponges are excellent absorbers of water!
Ditto with insulation: It's an excellent sound absorber, perfect for "mopping up sound that splashed where you didn't want it", but lousy at stopping sound from getting through.
Insulation can do wonders when used as part of an isolation system, but does pretty much nothing when used on it's own.
Floating a floor incorrectly will trash your room, so don't. You don't need it in your situation, it's very complex and very expensive, so it's a wise decision on your part to not do it.
- Stuart -
Sorry about the delay.... For some reason I had missed your original post...They go together. The design of your room will have a large influence on the final acoustic outcome. Isolation is not treatment, but it does affect the treatment. The shape and dimensions of your room are important for how it will sound, and the isolation all has an effect, so they need to be planned together. Think of it this way: isolating your room stops the sound from getting out. If it can't get out, where does it go? Obviously, it stays in, bouncing around, making the room sound terrible. So the higher the isolation, the more treatment you will need...I want to make sure I’m not missing something crucial, especially when it comes to soundproofing. I’m not worrying about acoustic treatment just yet
Nope! No diffusers. Your room is too small to be able to use most types of diffuser. They can only be used in rooms that are large enough.I'll get the foam, diffusors, and bass traps later
The drop ceiling has to go, of course.a rectangle room in my basement with a drop ceiling.
Not really: that's a myth, actually. A rather well perpetrated and perpetuated myth, but a myth nevertheless. After all, everyone "knows" that you have to angle the walls in a studio, just like you have to float your floor and tilt the glass in the windows to make it sound good, right? Wrong. All are myths...It is all parallel walls, which I know is a big no-no in acoustics
Splaying your walls will, indeed, get rid of flutter echo.... provided that you splay them by a total of 12° or greater! If the angle is less than that, then you does not work. Splaying a wall by 12° in a small room eats up a LOT of space (room volume), and room volume is far more important. Flutter echo can be dealt with much more easily with simple treatment on the walls, which you will need anyway...
The only other time you might want to angle parts of your walls is if you are using a design concept that requires it, such as RFZ, CID, NER and other similar ones.
Good! Because you don't need to.but I am not planning on restructuring the rooms to be non-parallel.
Here too, it is all related and interconnected. You cannot just isolate one wall of a room, and neither can you isolate just one room of a studio (well, you could, but it would be expensive and silly). Trying to isolate a room by "soundproofing" just one wall, is about the same as trying to build an aquarium with just one piece of glass on only one side.... your room will be "soundproofed" about as well as the fishtank will be "waterproofed"...My main concern is that I would like to limit the sound coming into and out of the control room. The live room will be between 100-120db at its loudest (I am assuming a worst case scenario of a really loud drummer here lol!). My target would be a 50-60db reduction from the live room to the control room. There is zero concern about noise level to neighbors.
To isolate a room, you need to isolate all sides of it: All four walls and the ceiling, plus the door, any windows, the HVAC system (yes you need one), the electrical system, etc. They all have to be isolated to the same level. Isolation is only as good as the weakest link. If you isolate all the walls to 60 dB but only isolate the ceiling to 30 dB, then your total is about 30 dB and you wasted a hell of a lot of time and money on those walls! Good! Because you don't need that either! Another myth. Here's why: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173I want to say upfront that I am trying to avoid doing the floating floor.
Nope! Not at all. You would only need to float your floor if you have a need for VERY high isolation, and only if you have a budget about ten times what you mentioned.... Floating a floor correctly is expensive, complicated, and not necessary. It CANNOT be done with a bunch of 2x4s and a few sheets of plywood, sitting on rubber pucks. Contrary to popular belief...I realize that this is likely best practice for sound isolation
... which will be removed!but with the drop ceiling
It's no use at all, acoustically, and the only thing it is doing is limiting your head room and the volume of the room. Get rid of it.That's only two dimensions! Rooms are 3D. Sound is 3D. YOu need to know all 3 dimensions, measured to the hard, solid, massive, rigid acoustic boundary of the room, and you need to check that in a room mode calculator to make sure it's a good ratio....the room will be nearly a square, measuring to be 9ft 10.75in x 11ft 10.75in
Nope. That would be wasting your money, and would not produce much isolation. Here's the concept you need to be following:. Right now, there are only wood studs (2x4s) in the basement over the concrete floor/cinderblock wall and nothing else. The wall that is shared with the live room is not there at all yet. For this, I plan to build the studs for that wall using 2x6s. That shared wall will be where I put the recessed wall boxes (scroll to bottom of link) for cable connections (XLRs, ¼”s etc), a window, and two doors (shown in the drawing). When all is said and done, that new wall will be 6.75in thick (counting the drywall on both sides) and the other 3 walls will be 4.125 in thick.
That shows 3 rooms, and you will only have two, but the concept is the same. You need to complete an "outer-leaf" isolation shell around the two rooms that you will be building, using part of the existing garage walls if possible, then you need to build each room separately inside that "shell", with each being a stand-alone, isolated structure that has drywall on only ONE side of the frame.
Once all the studs are up and electrical/cabling is done, I plan to put Soundproofing Putty on the backs of all the outlets/cable boxes to prevent vibration and bleed. From there I will put Roxul Safe n Sound insulation in between all the studs on all four walls.
Right!I’ve talked to a representative there and the window will be two windows separated by air, but neither of the windows will be slanted as the 6.75in wall thickness does not allow for that.
And your windows do NOT need to be slanted anyway. Yet another myth.Actually, that's going about things backwards! That's like saying: "I'll decide how much to eat based on the size of the fork I get"...I am not sure the exact space between the windows yet but it would be the max possible within the thickness of the wall.
The size of the air gap between your leaves is what governs the amount of isolation you will get, and the frequency range where you will get it. The air gap needs to be planned, not happen by accident! The two factors that control isolation are the mass of each leaf (surface density: how much each square foot of the wall or glass weighs) and the distance between the inner and outer leaf. That's basically it. Unless you intentionally choose those to match your NEEDS, you won't get the outcome you are expecting.
...I was told the STC rating on the window would be in the high 50s/low 60s.
And I was told that I could be a millionaire by the time I was 30, but that didn't work out either! Don't believe everything "they" tell you. To start with, don't believe that STC is useful for measuring studio isolation either! Here's why: Forget STC. It is no use at all for telling you how well your studio will be isolated. STC was never meant to measure such things. Here's an excerpt from the actual ASTM test procedure (E413) that explains the use of STC.
“These single-number ratings correlate in a general way with subjective impressions of sound transmission for speech, radio, television and similar sources of noise in offices and buildings. This classification method is not appropriate for sound sources with spectra significantly different from those sources listed above. Such sources include machinery, industrial processes, bowling alleys, power transformers, musical instruments, many music systems and transportation noises such as motor vehicles, aircraft and trains. For these sources, accurate assessment of sound transmission requires a detailed analysis in frequency bands.”
It's a common misconception that you can use STC ratings to decide if a particular wall, window, door, or building material will be of any use in a studio. As you can see above, in the statement from the people who designed the STC rating system and the method for calculating it, STC is simply not applicable.
Here's how it works:
To determine the STC rating for a wall, door, window, or whatever, you start by measuring the actual transmission loss at 16 specific frequencies between 125 Hz and 4kHz. You do not measure anything above or below that range, and you do not measure anything in between those 16 points. Just those 16, and nothing else. Then you plot those 16 points on a graph, and do some fudging and nudging with the numbers and the curve, until it fits in below one of the standard STC curves. Then you read off the number of that specific curve, and that number is your STC rating. There is no relationship to real-world decibels: it is just the index number of the reference curve that is closest to your curve.
When you measure the isolation of a studio wall, you want to be sure that it is isolating ALL frequencies, across the entire spectrum from 20 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, not just 16 specific points that somebody chose 50 years ago, because he thought they were a good representation of human speech. STC does not take into account the bottom two and a half octaves of the musical spectrum (nothing below 125Hz), nor does it take into account the top two and a quarter octaves (nothing above 4k). Of the ten octaves that our hearing range covers, STC ignores five of them (or nearly five). So STC tells you nothing useful about how well a wall, door or window will work in a studio. The ONLY way to determine that, is by look at the Transmission Loss curve for it, or by estimating with a sound level meter set to "C" weighting (or even "Z"), and slow response, then measuring the levels on each side. That will give you a true indication of the number of decibels that the wall/door/window is blocking, across the full audible range.
Consider this: It is quite possible to have a window rated at STC-30 that does not provide even 20 decibels of actual isolation, and I can build you a wall rated at STC-20 that provides much better than 30 dB of isolation. There simply is no relationship between STC rating and the ability of a barrier to stop full-spectrum sound, such as music. STC was never designed for that, and cannot be used for that.
Then there's the issue of installation. You can buy a window that really does provide 40 dB of isolation, but unless you install it correctly, it will not provide that level! If you install it in a wall that provides only 20 dB, then the total isolation of that wall+window is 20 dB: isolation is only as good as the worst part. Even if you put a window rated at 90 dB in that wall, it would STILL only give you 20 dB. The total is only as good as the weakest part of the system.
So forget STC as a useful indicator, and just use the actual TL graphs to judge if a wall, door, window, floor, roof, or whatever will meet your needs.
Once again, unless you first now how much isolation you need, and the frequency range where you need it, and then specifically design for that, you wont get it. If you don't plan, you wont get there. If you decide you want to go on action in Aruba but then get in you car and just sort of drive around aimlessly, in any old direction that looks nice, with no map and no direction, your chances of getting to Aruba are pretty slim! So to the chances of getting a studio that does what you want, without a carefully design plan, are also "slim to none".For the doors, I plan to use a two door system. I don’t have anything picked out here but it would be two solid wood doors with foam in between them. If anyone has a specific type of wood and/or foam I should look for, I am definitely open to suggestions here.
Why? Will you use that because you did the math, and the design, and the equations revealed that this product has the correct density for what you need, along with the air gap that you designed, and the damping material that you took into account, and also presents the best cost/benefit.... Or did you choose it because you believed the marketing hype? By honest now...the main wall material will be QuietRock EZ Snap Drywall
Wrong!which is two slabs of drywall glued together with acoustic glue (similar to Green Glue)
If there is adhesive inside that product, then it is nothing at all like Green Glue, which is NOT glue at all (despite the name). Green glue is not adhesive, and does not "stick things together". Green Glue is a visco-elastic polymer that never hardens, and indeed is designed specifically to NOT harden, because if it did harden the it would not be able to do its job. The job it is supposed to do, is to be a constrained layer damping compound, that keeps the layers apart (by NOT binding them together), such that it can act as an acoustic damper on several different types of resonance that would happen in the wall if it was not there. It works by acting on surface waves, bending waves, etc. to eliminate problems such as the coincidence dip. If it were an adhesive, it would not be able to do that: So any product that contains an adhesive that bonds layers together is not at all like Green Glue, and won't work like Green Glue does.You have not mentioned how you intened to decouple the drywall from the framing....This drywall will be put on all four walls inside the control room and on the live room side of the shared wall.
Yep! And my car is also rated to go 190 MPH!The STC rating for this is also in the 50s.
Your drywall has about as much chance of reaching isolation in the 50's, as does my car of reaching 190 MPH...Then your floor is done! Finished. Complete. Nothing else needed. You already have the best possible studio floor.The floor is currently just the concrete slab
My plan is to lay down the Iso-Step Floor Underlayment
WHY???? What purpose could that possibly serve, if you already have a perfectly good studio floor? ... and they promised me my car's mileage would be 40 MPG, too! Yup. Sure. Right. . . .(STC rating in the 50s)
Firstly, as I mentioned before, STC is useless as a measure of studio isolation, and secondly NO product by itself is going to give you 50 dB of isolation. The only building material that will consistently get you 50 dB of isolation is a 12" thick reinforced concrete wall. Period. That's the plain, solid, cold, hard truth, as defined by the laws of physics. Here's the actual law:
TL = 14.5 log (Ms * 0.205) + 23 dB (where: Ms = Surface Mass in kg/m2 )
Any solid product that promises isolation better than that... well, draw your own conclusions...
Carpets? In a control room? Surely you jest.... Carpet does the exact opposite of what small rooms need.Area rugs will also be used on top in the end.
... which will be removed, if you want good isolation and good acoustics.Plan for Control Room Ceiling:
There is currently a drop ceiling with the standard 2’x4’ tiles hung up
In other words, you have an extra 11 inches of extremely valuable acoustic volume up there, that you are throwing away right now...Above the tiles is 2.5in of space followed by the joists for the floor above (which are ~8.5in tall).
I will replace the ceiling tiles with soundproofing ones which have an STC of 26.
And my car is able to tow a trailer weighing 20 tons.... Why not? How did you arrive at that conclusion?I originally thought about putting the insulation in the joists but figured that would not help my goal.
Let me give you another water analogy. What you are saying is basically this: "When I pour a bucket of water straight down on the floor, I don't care if my left foot gets sopping wet, but my right foot must stay dry, and I will accomplish that by putting plastic over my head."I don’t care about sound going up to the 1st floor. I just want to avoid sound going over to the live room.
So you have zero isolation there...In other words if you put your hand through the ceiling tile and insulation and over the crossbeam, you could touch the wall on the live room side.
As you should be! Drop ceiling tiles do not isolate. Not even the "acoustic" ones.So I am a little concerned about sound getting through the ceiling tiles and going right up and over into the live room and vice versa.
... analogy: "My solution to stop water splashing on my right foot is to spread a piece of toilet paper over my foot".My solution here is to close that gap between the crossbeam and joists by propping up more Roxul insulation in there.
Contrary to popular belief, insulation does NOT stop sound. It is great for acoustic treatment, but does nothing at all to isolate sound.
Think of it this way: A sponge is a wonderful way of mopping up water that splashed some place in your kitchen where you didn't want it, but if you hold that same sponge over the end of your tap and turn the tap on, the sponge will do nothing at all to stop the water getting through. The water will flow through very well. Even though sponges are excellent absorbers of water!
Ditto with insulation: It's an excellent sound absorber, perfect for "mopping up sound that splashed where you didn't want it", but lousy at stopping sound from getting through.
Insulation can do wonders when used as part of an isolation system, but does pretty much nothing when used on it's own.
Nope!Is that sufficient?
Water analogy: "Other than the glass on the front of my fish tank, I don’t plan to use anything on the other sides of the tank..."Other than that shared wall, I don’t plan to use the same sound proofing materials on the live room
Bingo!unless absolutely needed
"If I put glass on the other sides of my fish tank, this would increase my budget quite a bit."...because this would increase my budget quite a bit.
Once again, that won't get you much isolation.I will be using standard ½” dry wall and insulation for the remaining walls in that room.
" My thinking here is if I at least seal the edges of the glass on the front of my fish tank, I won’t need to seal the rest of the frame"...My thinking here is if I at least seal the control room and the wall that it shares with the live room, I won’t need to seal the live room.
You should definitely use some "soundproofing" materials, yes, but not those ones, and not in the manner you described either.Should I use some or all of those same soundproofing materials for the live room?
I'm still not understanding why you want to isolate only the control room, when all of the really loud noise will be coming from the live room, and all of the mics will be in the live room! It's the LIVE ROOM that needs the isolation. For two reasons: sound going out, and sound coming in. You can't record successfully in a noisy room: rain, wind, thunder, aircraft, helicopters, sirens, dogs barking, cars passing, people talking outside, water running in pipes, phones ringing, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher running, doors closing, footsteps... all of that will get into your mics, for sure, if you don't isolate the live room.Any input or thoughts you have to help me reach my goal of keeping the control room isolated would be greatly appreciated.
Not really, no.Just for summary purposes, here are my main questions.
1) Do the materials I picked for this project make sense and will they be sufficient to reach my goal?
Yes! Absolutely! But to be honest, I'd skip the tile and just leave the concrete. Maybe polish it or stain it to look good. Or if you really hate the idea of concrete, and want a room that looks warmer, more attractive, then lay laminate flooring over a suitable underlay. Tile is fine too, though, from the acoustic point of view. It's a great floor2) Is skipping the floating floor ... before tile ok?
No, that's not OK, and not needed at all. Concrete is the best studio floor you can get, tile is also good, so is laminate flooring.and just putting the Iso-Step floor underlayment
Nope! It will be completely NOT ruined.Will my soundproofing be completely ruined without a floating floor?
Floating a floor incorrectly will trash your room, so don't. You don't need it in your situation, it's very complex and very expensive, so it's a wise decision on your part to not do it.No.3) For the ceiling, is Roxul Safe n Sound isolation on top of the existing ceiling tiles enough
No.4) Will filling the space between the crossbeam and 1st floor with isolation be enough to prevent any leakage of the soundproofing?
No.5) .... Is soundproofing just the control room sufficient
Yup!Or hell… am I thinking of this backwards? Should I just soundproof the live room?
- Stuart -