John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

We are considering buying a tiny house or bus and creating a soundproof room inside. The vehicle will be parked primarily at Camping sites. As you can imagine there are a ton of sound challenges that will arise from site to site. Dogs, other vehicles, neighbors, kids, the ocean etc. For my work, i need 100% complete silence (I voice commercials and connect to other studios, so it's as if I am standing in their studio). Currently I have a 4x4 Whisper room double walled sound booth at my home. http://www.whisperroom.com/pdf/specs/MDL4848E.pdf I am open to either using this one in the vehicle or buying another smaller one. I know that this alone will not stop the sounds from entering so I'm looking for idea I maybe a room inside of a room, floating floor etc.) Overkill is the goal, so NO sound enters the booth. My computer will be outside and I'm also concerned about how to eliminate vibrations from A/C units etc. I will not be parking near airports or train tracks naturally. I appreciate your time!!!!!

We are considering buying a tiny house or bus and creating a soundproof room inside. The vehicle will be parked primarily at Camping sites. As you can imagine there are a ton of sound challenges that will arise from site to site. Dogs, other vehicles, neighbors, kids, the ocean etc. For my work, i need 100% complete silence

High levels of acoustic isolation imply lots of mass: you need heavy materials to stop sound. If you want VERY high levels of isolation, then you need materials such as brick, concrete, steel, several layers of thick drywall, or thick plywood. The problem with that is that you'd need to modify the vehicle suspension to be able to support such a huge amount of mass, and you'd probably need to modify the engine/transmission to be able to move it.

The only other option is to lower your expectations a bit, and be prepared to work with a small amount of noise.

Also, there's no such thing as "100% silence" on planet earth: any sufficiently loud sound will penetrate any conceivable barrier. The loudest sound ever heard on this planet cracked concrete 300 miles away....

overkill is the goal, so NO sound enters the booth.

Galaxy Studios in Belgium is currently the best isolated studio in the world. They get slightly better than 100dB of isolation. If you were to fire a gun inside one of the rooms in Galaxy, it would still be faintly audible in the next room. There's no such thing as "no sound getting through". In order to get that extreme 100dB isolation, Galaxy is built in the form of a massive concrete bunker that is floated on carefully engineered isolation springs inside another massive concrete bunker. And even then, they don't get "no sound".

It would be better if you first determine how much isolation you need, in decibels, then that can lead to the construction method and materials the will produce that level of isolation.

- Stuart -

Stuart! Great insight, I greatly appreciate your reply.

I'm going to use your approach

determine how much isolation you need, in decibels, then that can lead to the construction method and materials the will produce that level of isolation.

. Any idea how to determine this? I currently have a booth, in a house, that works well. I'd love to use this as a baseline and increase it a bit but am unsure how to actually measure this...

You'll need a sound level meter, and a music system set up outside the booth. Play music outside the booth with the door closed, and turn the level of the music up and down until you can just faintly hear it inside. Use the meter to measure the level inside and outside. The difference between those two readings is how much isolation you are getting from the booth right now. Set your meter to "C" weighting and "Slow" response for this.

Also measure the level inside your exisitng booth when everything outside is as quiet as possible, such as late at night when everyone is sleeping and there's no outside noise. That's the target level that you will be aiming for with your new "bus" or "mobile home". (You might find that this level is too quiet for the meter to measure: if so, just note down the lowest level that the meter is capable of measuring). Now go to a typical location where you expect that you'd be using the studio one day, and measure the level there. You mentioned camping sites, so go to a busy camping site when there's lots of noise going on, and measure that level. Try to measure at the loudest moments (vehicles driving, music playing, kids screaming, animals, etc.), and measure at several places around the campsite, to make sure you get a good peak reading. The difference between those two numbers is how much isolation you will need for your new bus/mobile home, to stop outside sound getting in.

Now you have two measurements of sound isolation: one tells you how much isolation your existing booth is giving you, the other tells you how much isolation your new bus/mobile home will need. I'm betting that the second number will be bigger than the first number, which means that your new studio will need more isolation than your existing booth.


- Stuart -

billysurf wrote:We are considering buying a tiny house or bus and creating a soundproof room inside. The vehicle will be parked primarily at Camping sites. As you can imagine there are a ton of sound challenges that will arise from site to site. Dogs, other vehicles, neighbors, kids, the ocean etc. For my work, i need 100% complete silence (I voice commercials and connect to other studios, so it's as if I am standing in their studio). Currently I have a 4x4 Whisper room double walled sound booth at my home. http://www.whisperroom.com/pdf/specs/MDL4848E.pdf I am open to either using this one in the vehicle or buying another smaller one. I know that this alone will not stop the sounds from entering so I'm looking for idea I maybe a room inside of a room, floating floor etc.) Overkill is the goal, so NO sound enters the booth. My computer will be outside and I'm also concerned about how to eliminate vibrations from A/C units etc. I will not be parking near airports or train tracks naturally. I appreciate your time!!!!!

Wow. Sounds awesome. One thing you have to promise us though and that is once you are done, you will definitely share the pics

YES! Will do!!!!!!

music4lyfe wrote:Wow. Sounds awesome. One thing you have to promise us though and that is once you are done, you will definitely share the pics

Hi there "music4lyfe". Welcome to the forum. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing something important...

- Stuart -

Update: We bought the bus! The goal is to soundproof the entire back room by removing existing ceiling putting rock wool against the aluminum roof to stop rain noise and then maybe some blocking material over that then have a custom double walled booth built by Gretch-Ken. I know I would save a ton of money by having someone local build the booth for me but I'm so concerned that it won't be done right and air tight. Are there any plans available to build something as rock solid as a double walled MDF booth? What about the door?