John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello folks. My name is Darrell. I'm a full time high tech product designer and a part time session musician, with a young family. My background is in audio engineering and music production. However, this season of life is not primarily about music production, its about enjoying playing music together with family and friends. In our current home we have a 20'X14' jam space that we use for weekly jams, band rehearsals and part time session work.

We have just purchased a home, and have budgeted for a studio addition. I am in the planning stages of this project.
This new room will be used for:
- Rehearsals / Jams
- Keyboard session work
- Vocal Lessons
- And my BHAG dream - live streaming of concerts - ala. KCRW's Morning becomes eclectic

Requirements/Constraints:
Size range: 20'X22' ~ 22'X26' - A Frame construction
Isolation: enough to keep the neighbors happy - we're not near any highways
Foundation: Poured Concrete
HVAC: Central Air
- No need for bath or kitchen or hang out areas
- Some closet space for one or two guitar amps would be a nice bonus
Noise: So we get loud. Probably 120 dB SPL. I'd like to get it down 60 dB....
Budget: 50K

Perhaps unrealistic desires:
1. There is a large patio off the back of the home that the studio will butt up against. I would love to be able to open up some big doors and get a 8'X8' ~ 16'X8' opening out to the patio for times when we're not making a lot of noise.
2. I would like to retain as much of a open space feel as possible with high ceilings.
3. I would like to treat the room acoustically like a tracking room, with an area that might be appropriate to setup a temporary laptop based mix station.
4. I love natural light. I would like to incorporate as much as possible.
5. I don't need to achieve much isolation between instruments. I can get all the isolation I need with some portable baffles.
6. I want to be able to setup in the round and feel connected to the other musicians. Sharing space, time and music.

I am looking for recommendations for overall shape, ways to achieve the feel of natural light, ways to open up one wall as much as possible to the patio.
How to find the right balance between STC and windows...etc.

There is a ton of great info here on how to construct a room.
So far, I'm thinking 2 leaf, staggered stud, I think I'm indifferent on the floating floor.
I'm planning on building at least one slat resonator wall, I'm up for acoustic clouds, false ceilings, bass traps. Let's do it!

And I'm open to any great advise. The way I see it there are infinite paths to happiness. With the collective experience here I believe I'll find one for this project!

QUESTIONS:
1. Has anyone had success with large sliding glass windows that open up to the outdoors? If I do 2 matching sets of pre-fab double glass windows with a STC of 49 ea, how will that add up for total STC? Ideally I'd like a 16' opening, but I'll take an 8' opening on behalf of noise control.
2. What's the best way to treat the A frame roof? I's like something that vibes wood paneling up there. Could I go slat wall for the entire ceiling structure or would that be too much?
3. A question about Exterior windows. What's a recipe for an exterior window with 2X6 staggered stud construction. I'm up to double up on windows, but how can I finish it nice without compromising the independence of each leaf?
4. Do I need anymore angles to make this room work?


Thanks,

D

Hi Darrell, and Welcome!!!!

Size range: 20'X22' ~ 22'X26' - A Frame construction
Foundation: Poured Concrete
HVAC: Central Air
Noise: So we get loud. Probably 120 dB SPL. I'd like to get it down 60 dB....
Budget: 50K

Great! It sounds like you have a pretty realistic set of goals, and you did you homework already on loudness issues, so that's an excellent start.

1. There is a large patio off the back of the home that the studio will butt up against. I would love to be able to open up some big doors and get a 8'X8' ~ 16'X8' opening out to the patio for times when we're not making a lot of noise.

I'm glad you listed that under "probably unrealistic"! If you were aiming for 40-something dB of isolation then that might be on the cards, even low 50's could possibly happen, with very, very careful detail and some amazing expensive doors. But 60 dB? mmmm... I'd say that's the first item to cross off. You COULD have great fixed windows looking out into the deck and still retain 60 dB. And you could also have a door next to those windows, for getting in and out while still keeping 60 dB. But having a movable piece of glass 16' wide that can still give you 60 dB of isolation is a really tall order. It would be massively heavy, massively expensive, and might even need to be motorized in order to move it. Then there's the issue of seals....

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm saying it would probably take your entire budget, just to do that sliding glass door.

2. I would like to retain as much of a open space feel as possible with high ceilings.

Done! not a problem.

3. I would like to treat the room acoustically like a tracking room, with an area that might be appropriate to setup a temporary laptop based mix station.

Also done! You might want to consider some variable acoustic panels, since CR acoustics are different from LR acoustics. So you could have a few panels that slide, tilt, swing or otherwise open/close to reveal a different type of treatment, depending on whether you are tracking or mixing.

4. I love natural light. I would like to incorporate as much as possible.

Done! But it starts getting expensive if you want lots of glass and also high levels of isolation. Thick laminated glass ain't cheap.

5. I don't need to achieve much isolation between instruments. I can get all the isolation I need with some portable baffles.

Done! One set of nice gobos on wheels, and you are all set.

6. I want to be able to setup in the round and feel connected to the other musicians. Sharing space, time and music.

Done! Not a problem.

So it seems your only really unrealistic wish, is the huge sliding doors to the patio. Everything else can be achieved, to some extent or other, with some caveats.

I am looking for recommendations for overall shape, ways to achieve the feel of natural light, ways to open up one wall as much as possible to the patio.
How to find the right balance between STC and windows...etc.

Photos of the area you have to work with would really help to get a feel for what's there and what can be done.

By the way, forget about STC. It is not a useful rating system for studio isolation, since it does not measure ANY low frequencies at all. It was never meant to measure attenuation of loud music: it was meant to measure attenuation of typical speech levels, and other general home / office noises, such as phones, TV's radios, typewriters, washing machines, and that kind of stuff. When it was first developed, Woodstock had not even happened yet, and loud rock music with deep bass was not on anybody's radar as being something you'd have in a typical house. So the frequencies that are most prominent in modern music, just aren't even tested for STC rating. In other words, you can have a wall with a fantastic STC rating that is really lousy at isolating drums, bass, keyboards, and the low end of electric guitars. And you can have another wall with a much worse STC rating that actually does a very good job of isolating all of those! This is due to the strange way that STC is calculated, and most of all to the fact that it does not consider anything below 125 Hz: the bottom two and a half octaves of the music scale don't even figure in STC at all.

So we normally talk about "Transmission Loss" or "TL". You can think of that as referring to the TOTAL reduction in ALL frequency bands, that you would see when measuring on each side of a wall, using a sound level meter set up the right way, to mimic the way people perceive loud sounds.

There is a ton of great info here on how to construct a room.
So far, I'm thinking 2 leaf, staggered stud,

2-leaf is spot-on, and your only real choice, but staggered-stud probably won't get you to 60 dB of isolation. The simple fact of having both the sole plate and top plate tying the two leaves together pretty much limits what can be accomplished. You need to fully decouple your leaves to get high levels of isolation.

I think I'm indifferent on the floating floor.

You shouldn't be! Have you read this? : http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173

Conclusion: you don't need one, and you don't have the budget for one either. Or at least, not enough budget to float and also so everything else you want.

1. Has anyone had success with large sliding glass windows that open up to the outdoors? If I do 2 matching sets of pre-fab double glass windows with a STC of 49 ea, how will that add up for total STC?

Probably around STC-53 or some such, but that's just a guess: there's no way that you can sum the STC ratings of two barriers and come up with a valid prediction of how they will perform together, based only on the STC numbers. If you know exactly how each barrier is made, in terms of materials, thickness, mass, etc. then you can predict the total isolation, but not just based on STC numbers.

2. What's the best way to treat the A frame roof? I's like something that vibes wood paneling up there. Could I go slat wall for the entire ceiling structure or would that be too much?

Hard to say without seeing photos of what you have, and also knowing exactly how it was built. Based on that knowledge, you can then design your inner-leaf ceiling to match the angles while adding the isolation you need.

3. A question about Exterior windows. What's a recipe for an exterior window with 2X6 staggered stud construction. I'm up to double up on windows, but how can I finish it nice without compromising the independence of each leaf?

Windows are always done in the exact same way as the walls: 2-leaf fully decoupled MSM. In other words, you have one pane of laminated glass in your inner-leaf, and another pane of laminated glass in your outer-leaf, with a large air gap between. The thickness of the glass is calculated to match the surface density of the leaf it sits in, plus a bit extra, and the air gap is made a little larger than the air gap between the two leaves of the actual wall, to compensate for the missing damping (insulation). The math is fairly simple.

4. Do I need anymore angles to make this room work?

Not really. It's a live room, basically, that will have an area in it that can act sort of like a control room when needed, and it has pretty much what you need to be able to do that.

Questions:

1) Is there anything at all of this built yet? Or are you going to design and build from the ground up?

2) when you say "A-frame", do you literally mean it has to be A-frame construction, or are you just talking about having a gabled rood with a peaked ceiling?

3) Does it have to be that exact shape that you show, or could it change? There's some strange angles in there...

4) Will you build this yourself, or do you plan to hire a contractor to do it all for you?

- Stuart -

Hey folks. I'll start with an apology. I 'feel of the earth' 3 months ago, and didn't follow up to your reply Stuart.

Let's start there:

1) Is there anything at all of this built yet? Or are you going to design and build from the ground up?
Ground up. We break ground in 30 days.

2) when you say "A-frame", do you literally mean it has to be A-frame construction, or are you just talking about having a gabled rood with a peaked ceiling?

Gabled roof - peaked ceiling.

3) Does it have to be that exact shape that you show, or could it change? There's some strange angles in there...
That plan was submitted to the city. So I think we're mostly locked in now.

4) Will you build this yourself, or do you plan to hire a contractor to do it all for you?
I am going to sub contract as much of the work I can: Foundation, framing, roofing, stucco and drywall.
And do what ever's left over myself...

Now for a new development:
I found an interesting product and I'd like to enquire if anyone has experience with it. It's called the Kinetics ISOMax Sound Isolation Clips
You can find details here: http://westcoastsoundsolutions.com/isomax-clips. It looks like an interesting way to get a 1' back...

Anyway. Thanks for this wonderful place to learn. I'm going to dig into the content and figure out how to build the slat absorber now...

I found an interesting product and I'd like to enquire if anyone has experience with it. It's called the Kinetics ISOMax Sound Isolation Clips

Yup. Those are just one of several types of isolation clips. RSICs are also very good. So is plain old resilient channel (RC-1) if you can find it locally. In that case you don't need clips. But do make sure it really is RC: hat channel looks very similar, and they can be easily confused... but they are very different, acoustically.

It looks like an interesting way to get a 1' back...

I'm not sure I understand: How would using clips and channel help you to get one foot back? All they do is to decouple the drywall from the studs in situations where separate framing is not needed (or not possible) for the inner leaf, and isolation is not a big issue. If your inner-leaf stud frame is already decoupled from the outer leaf, then you don't need clips, or RC. I don't see how using clips and hat channel can gain you 12 inches....

- Stuart -