John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi guys this is my first post....I'm Alex and I'm from Bologna (italy)...Sorry in advance for my english.....
So I'm just near at the end of my house and after that the beginning of construction of my new home studio....
I've attached the project on the paper for the monet in order to have your precious suggestions for any change to achieve the best results.
Some notice....
All the studio are at the floor -1 of my house so totally underground. I havo no neighbor around 100 mt.
The border's walls that you se on the map are not in contact with the ground, there are another one at the distance of 60 cm so the windows the you se on the map can be opened to take air from a grate ont the ground floor.
The high of all floor will be 320 cm and I think to lose another 8 cm for the folating floor to insulate control room from rec room.
I'd like to know from your experience if the design could be improved for best results.
The wall that separate control from rec room will be with special acoustic compressed clay brick that measures 20x20x25 cm, between the 2 wall I think to use rockwool panels. I don't know hao to make window in the best way....
Maybe the vocal box are too small...
So you are free to tell me anything ...it will be ever appreciated..thanx bye

Hi Alex, and welcome!

The basic layout looks OK, except that the vocal booth is way too small. You might want to look at some way to make it bigger.

lose another 8 cm for the folating floor to insulate control room from rec room.

You do not need a floating floor, based on what you described in your post. Floating a floor is not easy, and is very expensive. Read through this thread completely, to get an idea of what it takes to float a floor:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173

You have to do it perfectly right, or it wont work. If you make one mistake, then it wont work, and you waste a lot of time and money!

A concrete floor laid directly on the ground is actually a very GOOD floor, acoustically, and I'm guessing that that is what you have? If so then just leave it like that: bare concrete will work fine. Or if you don't like the look of concrete, then lay laminate floor directly on top of it.

The wall that separate control from rec room will be with special acoustic compressed clay brick that measures 20x20x25 cm, between the 2 wall I think to use rockwool panels.

You are talking about doing only ONE wall? That wont work very well. You need to do all four walls, in both rooms, plus both ceilings. In other words, if you want good isolation, then you have to build two independent rooms (control room and live room) inside the existing walls. What you show on your plan is that all the walls, floors and ceilings are connected, mechanically, and sound will therefore simply "flank" through those, to get between rooms. The sound will not even try to get through your divider wall: it will just go around it. If you want good isolation, you have to build it properly.

Maybe the vocal box are too small...

Yes! And if you build it the way the plan shows, then it will not isolate very well at all! It too must be fully decoupled from the other two rooms, and from the rest of the house.

- Stuart -

Hi Stuart and thanx for your reply....
So the rec room as you se on the plan will be isolated from the border wall, with an addictive wall of plasterboard that also eliminate the parallelism surfaces.
The wall between rec room and control room will be doubled like sandwich (with rockwool wood inside) and will be built with all the attentions to prevent all connections and the plasterboard will be detouched form border line to avoi contact.
I think this way should guarantee the isolations.
I'll read the post about floor and I'll try to enlarge the vocal both.
I've try to use sketchup but no good results by now
Thanx and bye

Hi guys, finally I've start to build my studio....after a lot of revisions and time spent to take the money .....I've start to build the last month. Here are some pics for documentation!
Bye

...will be continued....

I've start to build the last month. Here are some pics for documentation!

Why are you not decoupling your walls? I thought you wanted good isolation between your rooms, but your walls are coupled...

Please post your final complete design: it seems like there are serious problems with it....

- Stuart -

The walls are decoupled And the concrete is divided. The walls are 2 different walls and in in between there are 10 cm of air gap that maybe will be filled with wool.

Soundman2020 wrote:

I've start to build the last month. Here are some pics for documentation!

Why are you not decoupling your walls? I thought you wanted good isolation between your rooms, but your walls are coupled...

Please post your final complete design: it seems like there are serious problems with it....

- Stuart -

The walls are decoupled

No they are not:
They are coupled in several places.

The walls are 2 different walls and in in between there are 10 cm of air gap that maybe will be filled with wool.

Your inner leaf walls are also incomplete: some of the walls that should be there, are missing. So the rooms are not decoupled at all:
.

I did warn you about all of these issues six years ago, when you first came to the forum. See my first reply above, at the start of the thread.

You will get about the same amount of isolation from this design, as you would get from a typical single-framed wall. Just a bit more, but not much.

Here's a quick test for you: Put your ear right up against the concrete wall in the "booth", block your other ear with your finger, and ask someone to tap gently on the same concrete wall in the "control room", with a small hammer. You will hear the sound in the wall. Therefore, the rooms are not isolated.


- Stuart -

In the last pic the wall will be where you have signed the orange line.....I'm building and also another wall detached from the existant wall will be mounted in the live room. The window are made in 2 separate walls and the rounding wood that you see will not touch the other rounding wood that will be mounted on the other wall. For the wooden subfloor i don't understand what you mean?!?!? The concrete is without wooden at the moment in all the 3 ambient (the grey that you see is the concrete with no floor) and the pavement will be mounted when the construction will be finished. I will use a bamboo wood that will be glued

In the last pic the wall will be where you have signed the orange line...

Good, but you will also need to decouple the other two walls form the concrete block wall behind. If you leave that framing as it is, you will not get isolation, as you will still have major flanking paths. The same applies to decoupling ALL of your walls from the concrete ceiling above: unless you do that, you will have poor isolation, due to the flanking.

The window are made in 2 separate walls and the rounding wood that you see will not touch the other rounding wood that will be mounted on the other wall

That's not what this photo shows:
Clearly, the wood goes all the way through and contacts both walls. There is no way that such thin wood can support the weight of both windows if it does not rest on both frames.

And regardless of that, even if you could keep it from touching, you are still destroying your isolation because you do not have the necessary gap between the frames for installing the necessary deep porous absorbers around the edges of the frame. Without that, you have no acoustic damping in the cavity, which has a major effect on both the MSM resonance and the coincidence dip. Take the equation that you used to calculate the MSM resonance, and change the constant from 43 to 60, and you will see what I mean. 43 is for damped cavity, 60 is for undamped. Actually, you should probably use something more like 70, since you are also sealing the cavity edges with substantial rigid mass.

the grey that you see is the concrete with no floor

OK, but that makes no difference: there is still no benefit to that, and it is only wasting room height. If you leave that out, you would have several extra centimeters of height in your room, which is very important for such small rooms.

What is the original floor made of, under the concrete that you added on top?

I will use a bamboo wood that will be glued

Do not glue it! Instead, use a thin acoustic underlay, and just put it on top of that, which is the way laminated flooring is supposed to be installed.

It seems to me that there are a lot of problems with the concepts behind what you are doing, and I would urge you to stop and fix all off those before you proceed. There are several mistakes, and they can all be corrected at this stage, but it will be difficult and expensive to correct them later. If you don't correct them, you will end up with poor isolation for low frequencies.


- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Good, but you will also need to decouple the other two walls form the concrete block wall behind. If you leave that framing as it is, you will not get isolation, as you will still have major flanking paths. The same applies to decoupling ALL of your walls from the concrete ceiling above: unless you do that, you will have poor isolation, due to the flanking.

Yes sure, I know

The window are made in 2 separate walls and the rounding wood that you see will not touch the other rounding wood that will be mounted on the other wall.
That's not what this photo shows:

Coupled-walls-04b.jpg

Clearly, the wood goes all the way through and contacts both walls. There is no way that such thin wood can support the weight of both windows if it does not rest on both frames.

And regardless of that, even if you could keep it from touching, you are still destroying your isolation because you do not have the necessary gap between the frames for installing the necessary deep porous absorbers around the edges of the frame. Without that, you have no acoustic damping in the cavity, which has a major effect on both the MSM resonance and the coincidence dip. Take the equation that you used to calculate the MSM resonance, and change the constant from 43 to 60, and you will see what I mean. 43 is for damped cavity, 60 is for undamped. Actually, you should probably use something more like 70, since you are also sealing the cavity edges with substantial rigid mass.

No....maybe I can't explain by words as you can see the windows structure and the wall will remain separated and the weight will be supported by the future structure of the cr by one side and the live room by other side. The wood is 2cm multilayer wood and the structure are 10x4,5 cm. No thin wood. But I think that I can't explain well cause my bad english

the grey that you see is the concrete with no floorOK, but that makes no difference: there is still no benefit to that, and it is only wasting room height. If you leave that out, you would have several extra centimeters of height in your room, which is very important for such small rooms.

What is the original floor made of, under the concrete that you added on top?

I don't have added any concrete!!! No original floor used!! This is the screed. (if the name is correct)
I can't leave as is, I will have a lot of dust is not a floor!

I will use a bamboo wood that will be glued
Do not glue it! Instead, use a thin acoustic underlay, and just put it on top of that, which is the way laminated flooring is supposed to be installed.

Why? The concrete is separated to avoid transmission.

It seems to me that there are a lot of problems with the concepts behind what you are doing, and I would urge you to stop and fix all off those before you proceed. There are several mistakes, and they can all be corrected at this stage, but it will be difficult and expensive to correct them later. If you don't correct them, you will end up with poor isolation for low frequencies.


- Stuart -

I think I don't explain right the things

I don't have added any concrete!!!

Then why did you say "the grey that you see is the concrete"? So is it concrete, or is it NOT concrete? What is that grey stuff???? And why is it touching the outer-leaf wall?
You say that you are going to build a new inner-leaf wall on top of the "gray stuff", where the orange line is, but if that is the case then why is the "gray stuff" still touching the outer-leaf wall?

Yes sure, I know

Then why are all your walls still coupled to the walls and the ceiling? If you KNOW that this is the wrong way to do it, then why is it still like that? Are you going to change that? Are you going to cut the studs shorter, to decouple them from the ceiling?

No original floor used!!

So you are building this in space? Your new "gray stuff" floor is just floating up in the air, with nothing underneath to keep it up? You use magic to do that?

If there is no original floor, then what is that under the "gray stuff" in the picture above? There MUST be some type of original floor down there. It is clearly, obviously visible in the photos! What is that made of?

Why? The concrete is separated to avoid transmission.

You are not making any sense! First you say that there is no concrete, and now you say that the concrete is separated! So is that concrete, or is it not concrete? And if it is concrete, then how is it separated from the original floor underneath? What material, or substance, or object did you use to separate it?

- Stuart -

Ok....we are misunderstanding...I'm sorry it's my fault, maybe I don't use the correct word to divide floor from background.
This is my original post
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =1&t=15088
here are some pics for clear my situations.
In the last pic that You have post the dark grey are the floor....if you zoom in you can find the lane of the tiles, this is the only part of all the space that are floored. All the 'light' grey is with no kind of floor (wood, tiles, or anything else) and I called it concrete. Maybe I'm wrong but I mean all the space ready for floor but not now covered by anything. I've read a word screed on the dictionary.
The screed are phisically separeted when I've built a house (in my link above You can see the pics of that) so the C.R. the Live room, the boot and the part floored with tiles are separeted.
Hope this is much clear and sorry for my bad description, I've used a translate for some tecnical word and maybe this is the fault!
Thanx