Hi Alex, and Welcome to the forum!
I've been looking for some pointers on youtube and I stumbled upon a video that suggested I come here.
That's excellent! Because there is almost nothing on YouTube that is correct about designing and building studios. It looks like you found the only video with good advice! Most of the stuff at YT is incorrect and would not work, a lot of it is dangerous, and some is illegal.
I took some time to read trough a few pointers on the website and I have to say I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the information and details
That's a normal reaction!
Acoustics is a very, very large subject, with many aspects, and some of it is not even intuitive.
I've provided some pictures of my room and a quick paint sketch of the dimensions bellow.
Is this room going to be used for rehearsal and tracking? Or is it going to be used for mixing? Those are two very different acoustic requirements.
It's 470cm long, 470cm wide and 240cm high. I understand that this is not ideal,
Right! The length and width are identical: it is a square room, and even worse, the height is almost exactly half of the length and width. It is going to be very hard to get good acoustics in there, since all of the dimensions are related.
I also have my neighboring bedroom, which COULD become my control room, however then I'd have nowhere to sleep
It MIGHT be possible to convert that into a control room and still have it usable as a bedroom, by installing a "Murphy Bed", that folds up into the wall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_bed . If done right, that could go into the middle of your rear wall, centered, and become part of the bass trap that is needed back there.
the walls are made from rock, clay and red soil. they're anywhere from 20cm to 60cm thick
Have you done a test to see how much isolation you are getting at present? And have you defined how much isolation you need?
The outsides are isolated with styrofoam
Styrofoam has no useful acoustic properties. It has good
thermal properties, but nothing that is any use for acoustics.
I'm planing to move out the furniture and create a room within a room
Before you do that, first determine the above two things: How much isolation you NEED (in decibels), and how much isolation you are getting right now (in decibels). There is no point in building anything until you know those two numbers, because those numbers are the basis for deciding what building materials and what building techniques you will need.
issue is dealing with all the windows and heat radiators, since I do not see a feasible way of building around them.
I don't see the radiators in your pictures, so it's hard to say how to deal with those, but windows are no problem at all. Just build a second window in your new inner-leaf wall, exactly opposite the existing window.
My floors are laminated
You will not be able to build the inner-leaf walls on top of that. You will have to remove the flooring before you start building, then put most of it back in again after you have finished.
This means the loudest element of my recording would be my drums
... and that is, indeed, your biggest problem. Isolating acoustic drums is very hard to do. It can be done, but it isn't easy.
I thought about having a raised floor that looks like a small stage made from those.
What you are talking about there is usually called a "drum riser", and yes it is possible, but not using pallets.
It can get pretty loud in here so making this room isolated would be fairly significant,
A drum riser will not isolate your room. If built correctly, it can help to prevent the impact noise produced by playing the drums from getting into the floor, but that's only a small part of isolating the room.
the outer styrofoam layer that isolates my house already does some small work.
Not for sound, it doesn't! Styrofoam is "closed cell" foam, and also has very low mass. Therefore does nothing at all acoustically. The only type of foam that has any acoustic uses, is "open cell" foam, and even then it does not isolate a room. Mass is what isolates (heavy, thick, dense, solid, rigid building materials). The Styrofoam insulation on your house is not doing anything to isolate. It is only helping as thermal insulation.
GOAL - Reduce wall reflections to a minimum to be able to record and produce music without backdraws.
So isolating the room is NOT a goal?
Also, "Reduce wall reflections to a minimum" is not a good idea, as that would make the room sound very dull, dead, and lifeless. Rather, you need to control the wall reflections to help produce the correct acoustic response for the room.
Again, sorry forr the poor sketch, I'm not well versed in this field.
Search for the free software that is called "SketchUp Make 2017", download that, learn it, and use it to design your room.
I'd like the room for my guitar cabinets and drums to be fairly dead,
That would be a mistake. Drums sound terrible in a dead room! To sound good, drums need a very large space, with a high ceiling, but they can still be recorded successfully in a smaller space, as long as it is reasonably live. Drums in a dead room sound... welll..... ummmm.... they sound DEAD! Dead is not nice.
Rather, design your room to be suitably live for recording drums. Your room is big enough that it should be possible, (although the ceiling is a bit low for good drum sounds). Try to get it sounding live but smooth.
I'd like to stick a vocal booth in there somewhere.
You don't have enough space for that. Sorry. And you don't nee one either. Use the bedroom as your vocal booth (even if it is also your control room).
This is the biggest thing I've been planing for a while now and I'm very excited to see if anyone has any layout ideas and acoustic treatment suggestions
Once again, it seems like isolation is NOT something that you need, because you don't mention it at all, so I'm assuming that you have no problems in that area? Your family and neighbors are not annoyed by your loud music? There are no loud sounds in the house, or outside it, that could create problems with your recordings if they are picked up by your mics? Things like wind, rain, hail, thunder, aircraft flying over, traffic in the street, dogs barking, people mowing their lawns, radios, TVs, people taking, walking around, doors opening and closing, telephones ringing, water running in pipes, toilets flushing, microwave, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, etc. etc. etc.... So you do not have a problem with any of that, and therefore do not need to isolate your room? The ONLY problem you have is that you want to put up acoustic treatment so that your rooms is usable to track instruments and vocals?
I'm asking this, because it isn't clear from your post what it is that you want. In some places it appears that you do need isolation, but you don't mention it as a goal, and all you talk about is acoustic treatment. Isolation and treatment are two very, very different things. If you only need treatment, no isolation, then you do NOT need any "room-in-a-room". That is only necessary for isolation.
So please clarify what you are wanting to do here, and if you DO need isolation, then please determine how much you need, in decibels. That's the starting point.
- Stuart -
