John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello!

I received some excellent advice from the forum a while back, regarding a room I'd been using to mix in. As it turns out, we ended up buying a different house, which is fortunate, since the room I was mixing in was 10' x 10' x 8'. Yeah… ugly.

In our new house, we have a 3 car garage with a decked attic above it, which I get to convert to my new mix room. I'm super happy about this, because I'll have a good deal more space to work with. It has a pitched roof, which is less than ideal, but it has a reasonably high apex, and with any luck, will allow me enough headroom to make a nice space.

I've included a very bad SketchUp of the space as it currently sits. This is done as a sort of cross section, because my SketchUp skills are severely lacking. The lines you see illustrate where how the framing lays out. To help make sense of it all, I've included a picture of the space.

Some particulars. (Measurements are in feet and inches):

1. The dimensions of the floor space is 20' long x 15' 4" wide, and the hight is 11' 2" at the apex of the roof.

2. As you can see there are cross members between the sides of the room. These are a concern, as I'm pretty sure they can't be removed. The bottom of the cross members are 8' 6" from the floor.

3. The floor sits on 2x12 joists, and the floor is decked with 1/2" chip board.

4. There are 2x4s about 21 inches high from the floor, that connect to the 2x6's that support the roof. Hopefully I've illustrated them.

5. Though I haven't figured out how to illustrate it in SketchUp, there is a full staircase that leads up to this room from the garage. As it is now, when you go up the stairwell, then step to your right into the space. There will need to be a wall at the top of the stairs with a door. This door will be hard to negotiate, because of the pitched roof, so that will be a challenge.

The main focus of the room is mixing/mastering, but I would like to occasionally record drums in the room too. I do some TV music, and have to track drums occasionally. The drumming is secondary, but I'd like to provide for it. I'm a guitarist first and foremost, and will likely build an isolation cabinet for tracking occasional guitars.

I'm fairly close to my neighbors, so some amount of isolation is desirable. I won't be tracking drums constantly, and It's just me doing it during the day, so I don't have to go super far with it, but I'd like to do what I can. It's a fairly quiet neighborhood, and I don't want to make enemies. Most of the time I'll be mixing, and there won't be a problem, as I don't mix that loud to begin with.

I'm located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. USA.

I should have about $10,000 to work with for construction, HVAC (I'm thinking mini-split), and acoustic treatments. I can build basic bass traps, etc, so that might save some money. My first thought is to use resilient channel, and 2 layers of sheetrock for the walls, but I'd love to hear some suggestions. It'd be nice if I could find a way to de-couple the floor as much as possible, and install hardwoods. Again, opinions and suggestions are appreciated. I've spent hours reading, but still don't feel confident about how to approach this.

I should also mention that since this is above the garage as opposed to the house itself, and I'm mixing for the most part, I'm not as concerned about disturbing my family. I do the loud stuff when they're not around.

Many thanks in advance for any help in getting me started!!

Stephen

" It'd be nice if I could find a way to de-couple the floor as much as possible, and install hardwoods."

Yes Sir, decoupling the floor in an elevated environment is your first concern. But you have a few things to do before even that can be approached. You have to make the floor structurally sound to support you and your stuff...1/2 inch sheathing will not do.

You would want to consider 3/4 inch tongue and groove to help continue to stabilize the structure (lateral shear) once it becomes active with movement. This should be installed with glue and screws or ring shank nails. You could place what is still termed as 15 # felt in between the existing plywood and the new, but I would attempt to take the vibration away at the onset, which is why I would use glue and screws.

The decoupling procedure has been around for years but you may have forgotten or not thought that it could work for you:
The following link is a Skectchup Gullfo did, the idea is the same but you will be covering more space in your area.
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... 541410f02a

This is a bout the only way you can decouple an upper floor space with conservative monies.

As far as HVAC goes...it doesn't matter what you install you have some difficult choices to make first. A roof system was never designed to be considered a source of anything but hot as fire in the hot months and not as hot as fire but still hot in the other months.

I know you are thinking that you will insulate the rafters and be done with it, but not quite. I assume, based on only my 30 plus years of construction that you have ridge vents on the roofing system. So you have a few choices here as well.

You must not impede the air floor process when you insulate with batt products, so you either:
Install a venting system above the insulation, easily obtained from big box construction stores
or you
you have the rafters sprayed to create a conditioned air space.

Closed cell foam is recommended forthis procedure should you move forward with it.