John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Any response to my last questions?

Not trying to be rude, but how we can we answer the first question without the size, planned areas, etc of the facility? Are "sacrificing" area by putting offices, etc up front, or are you looking at the best possible layout?

How can we answer the second question without knowing the size, area of the floor? And none can say if you can or can not without knowing if the current floor can even carry the weight.

More information please.

Size and layout are somewhat secondary at this early stage. I'm trying to get advice as to whether to automatically pass up this space or not.

I have seen many posts about floating floors over concrete, but none about whether one can successfully float a floor a) on a second level or b) on top of wood as opposed to cement.

First, using 1.5" leaves in a double frame wall an air gap of 28" lowers your mass-air-mass resonance to 20 hZ, with an STC around 71 dB - using only 1" of gypsum each side instead of 1.5" requires an air gap of about 44" instead. More mass = less air gap for the same m-a-m resonance - it's impractical to worry about getting the m-a-m much lower than audible frequency range.

2 - you can float a floor over wood construction, provided the support is there - 2x10's over steel means nothing if the span is long enough, so we DO need more info - also, you'd need to know EXACTLY where your floor is supported, and place your isolators on those spots so that the point loading isn't pressing on unsupported sheathing.

If you have a decent amount of ceiling height and strong enough floors, doing a room-in-room is feasible. Whether it's actually DO-able depends on more info, such as spans, existing wall construction, ceiling height available, etc... Andre is right, we'd need more info - I'd hate for you to go ahead on a "maybe", that's why we're not just saying "sure, do it"... Steve