John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Gotcha - pee breaks probably happen more often than clumsy drummers passing through

You got it

Plus this space is 90% for my own use only.

I'm excited to get building on it... especially to see how
good of STC I can get and what my 20/20's will sound like
in a soffit mount.

btw - your site is looking good... but PLEASE put a
"return to home page" button on your construction page

Velvet Elvis

There is a "return" button off the construction section...

< goes back a picture, > goes forward a picture, and X returns to the main flash garbage

I did notice that I forgot to do the hovers for those, maybe thats why it wasn't obvious.

Sorry about that!

Yeah... I'm a guitarist by trait... so I can read... only drummers look at little pictures ;P

Hehehehehehe.

You're as bad as me

John,

If you get a chance, can you take a look at the drawing I included with the HVAC and let me know if your studio design mastermind has any ideas for how I can build the wall around those (since the control room is shifted at an angle to the HVAC run).

Also... right now the outer walls are solid concrete (no windows) with 2x4 framing attached on the inside with insulation and a vapor barrier. The floor for the room above sits on top of the concrete using structural I-beams.

Will I have to build the outer walls (left wall) for the control room over, or should I be able to treat the existing wall as the inside member of a double leaf wall (given the concrete on the outside)??

Thanks,
Velvet Elvis

I agree it's better to walk through the control room to get to the studio than the other way around.

I don't quite see your porblem with the HVAC - as I understand it you have ducts running underthe ceiling across the back wall, surely you can build around it - see attached pic.

cheers
john

John,

Yeah I can build around them... but they are parallel agaist the existing wall... and the new back wall that you have drawn in the control room is at an angle to that... so, would I build just the section that needs to be lowered or would I ideally want to lower the entire back angled wall of the control room so that it looks/sounds symetrical etc.?

Am I making sense? Its early

(IE- I would only HAVE to drop the extreme southwest corner of the control room to clear the HVAC, but would it be better to drop the southwest AND southeast corners just to make it look better etc?)

Also what do you think about the outer wall construction?

Thanks!

Velvet Elvis

Yeah - just make the rear ceiling symetrical to the room shape. As for the pipes you'll have to build access doors that seal up totally for access.

Also what do you think about the outer wall construction?

what is the outer wall construction??

cheers
john

John,

As it stands, the room is solid concrete walls... (no windows)... with a header on top of that and the I-beams mounted directly to that.

The contractor then put 2x4s up against the concrete around the entire perimeter of the room. He insolated those and then put a vapor barrier over it (to hold it in place). These 2x4 walls do not hold the floor above, they are just to meet code.... but it is one wall system all the way around the perimeter of the room.

My idea was to use this existing wall for the west (non slanted) wall of the control room... drywalling (multi layer) the outside of it... and then to build double wall construction for the isolation rooms. I am worried about having too many airgaps etc.

Would the concrete act as one leaf of a double leaf wall?

Velvet Elvis

Yup - and, if there's earth backfilled outside, one HELL of a leaf. Still, the insulated 2x's are your one air gap - so for those walls, just 2-3 layers of different thickness wallboard should do fine. Maybe use celotex over the existing layer, then 5/8 wallboard.

I'm gonna write another simple spreadsheet that will figure this out for me, since I keep forgetting how to convert the right way - but basically, a 1/2" air space will have a Coincident frequency of around 2 kHz, right in the enunciation area of speech/singing - so, if you were to add Resilient Channel over the existing wallboard and THEN put a couple more layers on the RC, it would weaken the wall for that frequency range. I may be off by a bit so don't quote me on the frequency - still, multiple air gaps don't work well, which is the bottom line here... Steve

Steve,

Yes... only the top foot of the 8 foot high cement wall is exposed on the outside... the rest is against solid earth ONE whole wall is even under the garage... which has another 8 inch cement cap on top of it.

Will I have issues because of the wall being shared all the way around the room? Should I cut the header/footer the seperate out rooms and maintain a break in the walls between rooms that way?

I'll take some better pictures this weekend.

Thanks,
Velvet Elvis

Yeah, the best case would probably be to REMOVE that layer of wallboard, put up RC, and put the wallboard back (or new stuff, more likely) - then, at the corners, keep the RC about 1/2" short, run the first board to reach the corner within 1/8" of the intersecting frame, then butt the second, intersecting, piece of wallboard ALMOST against the first (leave a 1/8" gap here too) and caulk the joint. This lets each wall diaphragm operate independently.

considering the heft of your outer walls, if you just put a single layer of 1/2" or 5/8" wallboard over RC, you'd end up with panel traps at around 60 hZ, given the 3.5" depth. The formula for this is Fo= 170/sqrt(m)(d), where Fo = frequency, m=surface density of the panel in pounds/square foot, and d= depth of air space. The insulation would broaden the response which is a good idea.

Doing it this way would probably save you building several bass traps, and I doubt it would hurt isolation because of your heavy concrete walls.

Ceilings are another matter... Steve

Steve,

Yeah... right now there isn't any wallboard of any sort... just the 2x4s with insulation and a vapor barrier (plastic) over it... the ceiling I am concerned about... its NOT very well isolated from the outside world, so the majority of my concentration will be on keeping the ceiling quiet.

Its all I-beam construction so I should be able to add mass between each Ibeam... then insulate... then resilient channel and then hang 2 or 3 different masses of drywal below that (which will make the finished ceiling slightly lower than the top edge of where the concrete stops.

I'm hoping to make it quiet enough to do drums.

Am I being foolish in thinking that?

Velvet Elvis

Your basement sounds like it's built like Bruce's basement ??



cheers
john