Glass doors anyone??

[xSpace]

Spammer....

[donal_finn]

still plotting !!!!

[Barish]

Yeah, my joiner calls them "Volkswagen doors", referring to the VW van/people carrier door systems. They do not come cheap, though. And if you really want a sound isolation with them, you should do double double-glazed doors with very thick glasses and at least 7-8 inches of air space between them, or even more if you want to go further down on the frequency spectrum. Just one so-called "airtight" sliding door unfortunately falls way short of the clients expectations in terms of isolation. They can't even cut man voice good enough.

B.

[Soundman2020]

This is a really old thread, but there's a lot of misinformed commentary in it that needs correcting. I came across it while searching for something else, and felt the need to update it with correct info:

I'm not sure why you'd want glass doors or why you'd want them sliding?

Sliding glass doors are very common in studios, and can indeed be built to provide good isolation, as John points out. People want them because the provide wonderful sight lines, which are important for musicians, and simply for nice aesthetics.

You need big mass

Glass is more than three times the density of drywall. It is plenty massive to do the job. The glass can be just one third the total thickness of your drywall and still provide roughly the same level of isolation.

doing glass doors yourself and expecting good results is IMHO, nearly impossible.

On the other hand, John has done it, and so have others. In fact, even a pair of typical "Home Depot" style patio sliding doors can get you good isolation, if you beef up the seals a bit.

You watch the video and tell me if it's worth it.

How do you know that the doors are the problem here? It seems far more likely that there's another issue, not the doors. For example, just to the left of the doors I see an HVAC register...

There is really no cheap way to do this.

Yes there is. (As John pointed out) As long as you do the calculations right, and take proper precautions, you can indeed DIY studio doors with very good isolation.

Right, but they don't do SOUNDPROOF sliding glass doors all the time.

That's probably because there's no such thing as "soundproof" anyway. Studio designers, acousticians, and others tend to avoid that word, because it is misleading at best, and means different things to different people. We tend to talk about "isolation" and "transmission loss", not "soundproofing".

Finding someone to do ordinary sliding glass doors is no problem, but telling someone who has no acoustical training to design one for you to block a substantial amount of sound with proper sealing/closure around the door will be next to impossible.

I don't agree. Adding the seals that John mentioned is not a big deal. Anyone who builds similar doors already, can easily add those.

Doing it yourself and getting good results (like an STC of over 60-70)

I'm not sure where you are getting your information from, but an isolation level of 70 dB is way out of the league of home studio builders anyway. It's pretty much at the flanking limit for a concrete slab on grade! Most home studio builders aim for isolation in the 50-something range, which is already very good.

The best pre-made Overly sliding door gets STC 51,

... which would be more than good for a typical home studio. Plenty.

which is sliding METAL door, not glass

Irrelevant. Mass is mass. Using metal instead of glass simply allows the door to be thinner, that's all. The critical factor in any sliding door is the seals, not how you made up the mass. You could put a quarter inch of steel, or an inch of glass, or 4 inches of drywall, and the door would weight the same and perform the same. It's the mass that matters.

and on low frequencies, the performance is not that great (like 39 STC).

Well, that statement indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of what STC is: There is no such things as measuring "39 STC in the low end". STC is a single-number rating system that refers to how well a barrier attenuates sound overall. There is no such thing as "STC for the mid range" and "STC for the low end " and "STC for the high end". STC simply refers to a set of pre-defined curves on graph paper. 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. STC numbers refer to isolation curves, and ONLY cover the range from 125 Hz t0 4 kHz. There is no such things as "39 STC for low frequencies", because STC does not measure low frequencies at all! And it is just the index number of a graph, not a measure of how well a wall isolates a specific frequency.

So if you want to block lots of low frequencies, these are not what you want.

Yes they are. Their low frequency performance is quite acceptable. Of course, you'd have to look at the actual TL curves to understand that, not the STC rating, which tells you nothing at all about low frequency performance.

Maybe if you put two of these together you can get a better STC, but you'd have to contact Overly about this

No you would not. You would just need to use the standard equations and the data they publish for their doors, and you can calculate for yourself how well a pair of those would work. It's not rocket science, and there's no mystery or secrecy.

You could do the sliding glass doors, but they will be a weak point in your whole assembly,

No they wont, if you build them correctly. Many studios do exactly that, and get good isolation.

(a) You have still have not told us WHY you want glass doors? (Do you absolutely need the glass or would a heavy solid core wood door with lead on the outside suffice)?

Because musicians do tend to perform much better when they can see each other, and tracking sessions go a lot more smoothly when the engineer and musicians can see each other, and because studio aesthetics and "vibe" are nearly as important as studio acoustics.

(b) WHY do you need a sliding door and not a regular door?

See above. Same answer. Plus regular hinged doors take up a LOT of space, since they swing open over a wide area: you cannot have any instruments, people, equipment, mic stands, or even storage close to regular doors. You can with sliding doors. They make much more efficient use of space.

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Conclusion: you can, indeed, get good isolation from sliding glass doors, they are, indeed, a good idea, and they are, in fact, rather common in studios. And you can, in fact, DIY them.


- Stuart -