Small Studio/ Movie Theatre Combo room

[techrestore]

I am attempting to achieve the following:
1. tracking room, mainly for drums
2. media room, for some mixing and media equipment
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Here are the specs:
room is about 11x22
located in basement
walls are block
west wall has angled soffit at top
6 theatre seats/carpeted
1 love seat in room
1 stage area 6x6 (exact area of my drumset)
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here are the questions:

Floor: the stage will be the location of the drumkit/or any instrument that i will track. I will build a stage that sits 6 inches from the concrete floor. the stage will be framed with 2x6 pine and filled with sand in between the frame space (to isolate any low end vibrations)- any suggestions here would be great. Can i get by with a hard wood floor on the stage area?

Walls: I intend to do the following: cover all walls with a fiber wool and paint fiber wool - *does painting fiber wool take away from sound absorbing qualities? *is there a better material than fiber wool/cost effective *can you see in my design if any sound bouncing will be an issue? I will add the one bass trap near the center top, and then the hallway may also breakup sound waves...please analyze.

CEILING: (in bold becuase its a stumper for me) - My wife does not want to put a drop ceiling. the height is not very tall - about 7.6-8foot - dropping the ceiling could reduce it even more. * can i get by will putting any type of sound insulation material in between the joists and still have the more open look?

Control Room: Control room will be on a built up 2x4 floor with sand isolation. Now, i realize that the size of the room is small -- *any suggestions here? is there a good speaker set to use? can i keep sound bouncing with wall treatment? It may be a suggestions to mix out in the main room.

Equipment: We are a completely digital studio. I want to keep this to be a simple setup with computer/8 pack preamp/motu 8 track input etc. this will minimalize the need of space in the control room.

- The room will accomidate our home movie theatre. the chairs could help with sound deflection. The back wall to the left will have a movie screen on it. it will not be directly behind the drum kit and will be surrounded with curtains.

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Any suggesitons/help greatly appreciated.

[knightfly]

I cleaned up the extra stuff so your drawing wouldn't cause us to have to scroll horizontally to read the text - If we can keep drawings/pix down to around 700 pixels wide it's much easier to navigate.

Also, could you please update your profile with a location? Makes it easier to recommend materials, etc, if we know what area you're in. A first name always makes things friendlier too - Beats us having to call you "techie" or "hey you"...

Here's a thread that covers most of the subject of floating floors; I would NOT put sand in between your framing members - concrete tends to sweat, and the moisture will have nowhere to go so that keeps the frame damp. Anyway, read through the thread for ideas on floating a floor without using sand -

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=839

hardwood floor on the stage is fine - it's much easier to lay down a carpet over a wood floor if you want deader sound than it is to carpet the area, then try to put plywood down over the carpet. Doing that invites mold, etc, to live between the plywood and the subfloor, in the carpet and pad.

I'm not sure what you mean by "fiber wool", but painting ANY acoustic material will change its absorbency, and that's what acoustic material IS -

On the ceiling, it depends on whether you need isolation in that direction. IF not, don't bother. If, however, you're trying to keep things quiet upstairs, then you'll need to follow the basic sound proofing rules, which can be found in this thread -

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=598

There are a couple of drawings on the last page of that thread, but please read the first parts of the thread for a better understanding of what needs to be done for good soundproofing. The SHORT answer on your ceiling is NO - if you need good isolation, you need at least two layers of gypsum wallboard hung on resilient channel and SEALED with acoustic rated caulking. Total thickness from the bottom of the joists would run about 1.7 inches, or 43mm.

Control room - unless you have either really picky neighbors or train tracks close by, I don't think I'd try to float the control room floor. I definitely would NOT use sand, same reasons as above.

What I WOULD do, is get rid of the parallel walls in the CR and tracking/viewing room, as much as possible. The CR is small, and looks like two of the dimensions (height and width) may both be 8 feet. Not good for modal resonances. I marked up your drawing as I would consider doing this, the CR side walls should each end up being 6 degrees obtuse from 90 degrees. by splaying the front wall by 6 degrees and the door wall by 12 degrees, you have a symmetrical front - if you then put heavy fiberglas absorption on the rear wall of the CR, it will keep most reflections under control and sound tighter.

You'll need quite a bit more acoustic treatment than just one bass trap in one corner - however, ceiling corners work just as well for this, so no lost floor space. For the two parallel walls that are left, you could cut 2' x 4' panels of 2" rigid fiberglas, cover with nice looking cloth, and mount them on different places on opposite walls (if there's a panel on one wall, don't put one on the opposite wall directly across from it) - to make more of a "decorator" statement, you can mount the panels with corners at top and bottom (diamond pattern) or some of each, etc -

Gotta go for now, see what you think... Steve

[frederic]

How about something like this, more or less. Sorry I did this in powerpoint, then printscreend it. I don't have any drawing software at all (not even ms paint) on this laptop:

[knightfly]

Frederic, I cleaned up your drawing so we wouldn't have to scroll around so much -

You've cleaned up the acoustics in the live room,but the CR would be really assymetrical that way - Also, I assumed that tech would want to sometimes leave the drum kit set up and watch a movie, that's why I moved the stage up and the seating down - I'm not sure if he wants to lose that much floor space, or just deal with the parallel walls with absorption as best he can -

Tech, what do you think? And what should we call you? And what part of the world do you hail from? Enquiring minds want to know... Steve

[techrestore]

Name=Brian -

Thanks so much for the input:
the room dimensions do prohibit a few things. Here is one good thing: it doesnt have to be 'perfect' - this studio will be for a quick demo. We have another studio that can produce the quality. However, I do want to have fun with it. The ceiling: Thinking about how joists work- wouldnt the breakup reduce sound bouncing a bit? - Would it reduce noise travel to the upstairs at all if their was 'some' material in between joists rather than none at all? Basically, what is the material that would accomplish this without filling all the space. Reason: as stated, its not a tall basement...my wife says that any drop ceiling would hurt the feeling.

I will post pictures as soon as the project begins. There are a few elements that could act naturally as acoustical agents. I will post more info later.

Thanks

[knightfly]

On your open joist ceiling, yes that will break up some sound reflections. Sound isolation to upstairs - no. Two layers of 1/2" sheet rock will cut sound by 33 dB @ 500 hZ, but only 15 dB @ 50 hZ (drums??!?) 4 layers all together would get you STC 39, with 22 dB loss @ 50 hZ. Much more weight than that and you'll need deeper joists to support it. Plus, the only way you'll actually GET that much isolation is if all 4 layers are UNBROKEN - meaning they would have to go on TOP of the joists, not cut into strips and put against the bottoms of the joists, where the joists themselves would penetrate thru all but the subfloor - flanking noise travels along framing members, so would travel thru the joists to the subfloor and upstairs using this method.

Taking those SAME 4 layers of 1/2" sheet rock and putting two above (a close substitute for your existing upper floor, most likely) and two layers UNDER the joists, gets you STC 46 with 19 dB isolation at 50 hZ, assuming no Resilient Channel under the bottom layers of sheet rock. Adding RC increases STC to 59 dB, but low end only goes up 1 dB to 20 dB @ 50 hZ.

A THIRD layer, still on RC, gets you STC 61, TL @ 50 hZ goes up to 23 dB.

What this all means, is you have to decide which is more important to you - living with lower ceilings, or living with a LOT more noise upstairs.

I'd still appreciate it if you would edit your profile - we don't need or want your street address, just a general location. I hate suggesting things that aren't even available to someone in their area... Steve

[techrestore]

ok, i think i have a possible solution.
I am aware that it may not eliminate all sound, but it should decrease sound travel to the upstairs quite a bit! -

explanation:

I have read several articles about a metal channel that is mounted to walls. I would use this channel on the joists to create a gap preventing sound to be absorbed in the wood. there will be a air/insulation gap between the layer of dry wall and the subfloor above. i would use the a thicker channel there to give it enough gap to compare to a floating room.

Benefits:
1. should decrease amount of sound travel to upstairs significantly.
2. will preserve the 'feeling' of more height
3. joists will act as sound deflectors

Negatives:
1. will take extra time (each joist will be walled in, could stucco the finish to decrease finishing time).
2. will decrease amount of headroom/space a bit
3. will still have some sound travel upwards.

please note, we are likely talking 10 sections of joist that are 10feet long. materials will not be an enourmous expense.

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any notes greatly appreciated.

thanks

[knightfly]

That might work, although for best isolation EACH PLANE of the paneling needs to be free to vibrate without coupling to the adjacent plane. So, you'd be better having the horizontal sections between the joists on independly mounted Resilient Channel that does NOT touch the vertical wallboard "sheath" that's mounted on RC over the sides of the joist.

Overall, this could be a pretty tricky way to go. Personally, I'd just put RC across the bottom of the joists and a couple layers of drywall. For one thing, all those cavities may give you a bunch of early reflections back toward the drum kit and make micing with overheads problematical. (Phasing problems)

That's my take on this - What you end up doing is obviously up to you... Steve