John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi everyone!

I'm currently building a small studio space inside of a shed. I know that sentence alone set off some alarms, but hang tight. The studio is just a simple 10x14 space for doing in the box production work and mixing. Yes i know, small rooms are less than ideal, but were not building ocean way here, just a simple home setup.

Anyhow, I'm currently debating whether or not i should drywall the inside of my shed, or opt for another much less reflective material, like AWA fabric walls (http://www.acousticwallalternatives.com/), or some other similar cloth/fiber kind of wall that could just go over the rockwool insulation between the studs. Usually i'm absolutely fine with drywall, but in larger spaces. A smaller space like this may have a lot more reflective problems with drywall, at least in my thinking. Then again, no drywall may certainly effect the isolation of the shed. Anyone have any thoughts/advice for a novice like me?

The shed looks like this in case anyone is curious. https://www.icreatables.com//sheds/14x1 ... plans.html it has an angled roof, which i am also wondering whether i should drywall or not.

Hi there "skycaptain". Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

You don't say what you are trying to accomplish here, so it's hard to give any advice!

Are you trying to isolate your room, so that outside sounds won't bother you as you are working (traffic, wind, rain, thunder, hail, aircraft, dogs, lawnmowers, etc.) and also so that your noise does not bother the neighbors, or are you just trying to treat the room to make it usable as a control room for mixing? Isolation and treatment are two entirely different aspects of acoustics, and are accomplished in very different ways, using very different materials.

If you need to improve the isolation (sometimes incorrectly called "soundproofing"), then yes, adding drywall would indeed be advisable, but you would not just nail up the drywall directly on the studs as you would for a normal house! Rather, you need to "decouple" the drywall from the studs by using isolation clips and hat channel (or by using proper resilient channel, if you can find it). You would also need to put acoustically suitable insulation in the cavity, and seal everything air-tight. You might need more than one layer of drywall, depending on how much isolation you need. And you would need to do all four walls and the ceiling to gain any benefit. If you just did the walls and not the ceiling, then that's the same as doing nothing at all...

On the other hand if you do NOT need isolation but you DO need treatment, then you could just put insulation in the stud bays and cover it with fabric in the places where that is needed, and with slats in the places where that is needed, or perhaps with perforated panel in the places where that is needed. Just doing treatment like that would NOT add any isolation to the room. In fact, it could make the isolation worse, under some circumstances.

On the other-other hand, if you want both isolation AND treatment, which is what most home studio builders want, then you'd need to first isolate your room with drywall on resilient mounts, then place suitable treatment devices at each of the key acoustic locations in the room. For example, bass traps in the corners (very large, deep bass traps, since it is a small room), an angled, hard-backed cloud above the mix position, thick porous absorption at the first reflection points, deep absorption across the rear wall, additional absorption panels on the side walls or ceiling to get the correct number of sabins for that room, and perhaps some diffusive or reflective devices if needed (but probably not, since the room is small).

The type, size and location of each treatment device needs to be carefully calculated to make the room sound as even and neutral as possible at the mix position.

i should drywall the inside of my shed, or opt for another much less reflective material,

They key to a successful control room is balance. First and foremost, you need symmetry: the left half of the room must be the mirror-image of the right half, in order to ensure that your left ear hears exactly the same acoustics as your right ear, so that you have a good, balanced stereo image, and a clear soundstage. Then the frequency response of the room needs to be balanced so that it is as flat as possible (within the limitations imposed by the room dimensions) but slightly tilted to the low end. And finally the time-domain response needs to be controlled such that the decay time is roughly the same for each adjacent 1/3 octave frequency band, and the over decay rate is correct for the room volume.

You cannot attain that by throwing up some type of unknown wall panels all around the room! The website that you linked to has some very nice looking products, but zero acoustic data. There is no technical information at all on the absorption profile, or the isolation profile, or any other acoustic data of any kind. Therefore those panels would be totally useless for a studio. The website carries no acoustic test reports from independent acoustic analysis laboratories, so the actual acoustic properties are unknown, and therefore it would be a grave mistake to try to use those products in a space that needs to be correctly balanced acoustically as a control room. They might look nice, and they might help to make a typical basement sound better, but they would be no use for what you want, since the manufacturer does not say what they actually do!

So after you check the forum rules again, please let us know what exactly it is that you are trying to accomplish, then we can help you figure out how to do that, in terms of materials, techniques, and locations.


- Stuart -

Thanks for the friendly and forgiving welcome! I'll be sure to read the rules and post properly, thanks!