1 room studio in Belgium

stusiod · Post by **stusiod** » Tue May 16, 2017 9:44 pm

Hello, I’m a sound engineer and drummer from Luxembourg. I currently live in Belgium and I’m planing on building a home studio/practice room.
I used to have a studio in Luxembourg which I sold a few years ago.
I’ve been a member of this forum for several years now and read and learned a lot! Thank you all for that!

I mainly do live recordings outside of my studio with the occasional overdub happening at my house. If I have a big project I usually rent a studio for a week to do the tracking and I do the editing and mixing at home. Since I’m a drummer, I would like to have a space to practice without annoying everybody at home.
What I need is a good control room and a space to practice and overdub the odd guitar, drum or vocal track.

I bought a house in Bouillon Belgium 6 years ago and now is the time to plan and build my studio. The house is from late 1800 and build out of local stone (mix of limestone and slate) there is a little barn of 13,74m x 4,06m on the ground floor which will be transformed into a studio. The walls are like mentioned stone, behind the left wall are a bathroom and laundry room, the right wall is a outside wall. These 2 walls are about 60cm thick. The floor is on 2 levels and made out of concret, it was put in about 20 years ago. The 2 levels are just 0,65cm hight difference (there’s a step of 0,65cm height 4,49m into the barn) the hight is 3,71m on the bottom half and 3,45m on the second level. I was planing on leaving the back 3,81m of the barn for my wife to build an art & craft room. That would leave me with a length of 9,928m and the with of 4,06m.

Above the barn are the Kids bedrooms. The only thing between the barn and the bedrooms is a solid oak floor which is held up by 8cm x 23cm wood beams. I always thought the ceiling had some fibreglass insulation but I was mistaking, the previous owner being a carpenter had loosely filed bags of wood chips attached between the beams.

The front of the barn is a big barn door made out of oak without any insulation. I think the design of the studio is easier if I block the door of. Even though being able to use the door would make it easier to shift gear in and out of the studio.

The main fusebox of the house is in the bottom part of the barn. The fuses have to stay accessible. There are also 2 heater pipes sticking into the room, which I’ll try to get moved.

I attached a plan and photos to see more details.

I don’t have a sound level meter yet so I did tests with my SPLnFFT app on the iphone. I’m not a hard hitter so me playing at a pretty intense level was 95 dbc at 1m distance. In the bathroom (behind the left stone wall) we measured 63 dbc. In the kids rooms above the barn 80 dbc outside the barn door 86 dbc.
We don’t have Neighbours attached, they are about 10m away and where never bothered by me playing drums. The goal is to get to a point where the Kids can play in there room while I’m practicing. Or that the Kids could sleep when I’m mixing. I’m usually mixing at pretty low levels I find mixing at higher levels very exhausting and only turn up the volume to check from time to time if I can feel the snare drum etc…
There are not many outside noises, there might be the odd tractor passing. The street is about 20m from the house. Not much traffic in this village. So the concern is mainly the noise I create not leaking out to much!

When I sold my old studio I kept my sound booth (plans attached). The booth is build of OSB. Each element has a hole of 104cm x 220cm at the back they attached a plywood frame of 10cm hight around the hole. The frame has a plywood board of 2cm inside leaving a 1cm gap at the back. This 1 cm is filled with sand and sealed with a sheet of MDF. The sand helps get more mass without much extra space. The front of the wall panels where covered in some kind of a acoustic cloth. The booth sounded very neutral and dry which was great but I rather have a live sounding room this time! The floor was build of a OSB board which was standing on hight adjustable rubber feet, on top of that OSB where little 1 cm spacers in-between which was sand again, on top of the spacers was a second OSB board followed by a fake wood floor. The ceiling was the same as the walls. In one of the corners was a second small booth made out of glass and a wood frame.

Since I’m very limited in space I was thinking of building a 1 room studio. I rather have the extra volume to make the drums sound better then having a separate control room and tracking room. Although I thought to reuse the little glass corner booth from my old studio so I could put an amp or a singer in there if I need a little sound separation.
I figured out That John’s components.skp fits with a little resizing into the lower part of the barn, which would leave the top part for the drums.

My wife has access to here room through our garden in case I have customers. But for normal days she should be able to get into here room through my studio without having to walk through the rain.

I currently have a budget of 5000€ for the studio build, I have to be able to buy all the material for the main structure and acoustic treatment! I won’t do any finishing touches like for example adding a wood floor yet, I think it’s better to invest the limited money I have into making sure I get the sound volume down as much as possible and get a decent acoustic in the room. I can then save up and add a nice floor later. My brother in law is a carpenter and will help me do the build, so I don’t need to hire a contractor.

My questions are:
1) What’s the best way of insulating the existing ceiling (Kids bedroom floor) without creating a 3 leave construction? It will be hard to attach something in-between the studs. If I ad OSB or Plasterboard underneath the studs I will end up with a 3 leave construction once the studio is build.

2) Shall I add a layer of OSB with green glue in-between to the barn door? As far as I understand that would be one leave. And the studio wall would then be the second leave.
How important is it to keep the relation between height and width/length of John’s components design? Since I could build the elements higher then John did.

3) I’m currently using B&W Nautilus 805 speakers which due to there shape can’t be soffit mounted. I want to keep them as near field monitors but I’m looking into buying some new speakers to soffit mount after I saved up some money. What shall I do for the time being just keep a big enough space free in the acoustic element and finish it once I have new speakers? I still have some Tannoy Reveal Active monitors which I never liked to much are they worth being soffit mounted, has somebody tried that before, would it improve the sound of these monitors?

4) I thought of adding a window into the wall where the fusebox is to be able to access it. Would that be the best idea or does somebody have a different suggestion? The fuse box is behind one of the acoustic elements so I would also have to build that on little wheels to be able to move it out of the way first.

5) Since I have the old sound booth standing around I was wondering if it makes sense to reuse the elements as much as possible? Otherwise I would have to try and sell it or bring it to the recycling center. Also Is it a problem if parts of the walls are build of these OSB elements and the rest of plasterboards? Would it make sense to add a extra layer of plasterboard or OSB onto the old OSB elements with green glue in-between? I’m a bit afraid of the parts which are just a 22mm OSB and nothing else. I googled a lot to find test results for OSB boards but couln’t find much. It would be great to know how much OSB reduces sound at different frequencies compared to 12,5 mm plasterboard.

6) An other big problem is the heating and ventilation. I have a ventilation element left from the old booth which is basically a 2m heigh box build of OSB, It has 4 fans on top pushing air into the booth. The air has to travel down, up, down and up again within the box before being let into the studio. A second similar box was attached on the opposite wall, with the fans mounted the other way, sucking the air out of the room. The problem was that I never managed to heat the booth properly and had to put an electric heater inside the booth. I looked at the Daikin Sarara Ururu but that alone would cost without installation almost 2000€ so roughly half my budget. Is there an alternative or am I best served with electric heaters? Also these Ventilation boxes where definitely the weak point of the sound insulation. I never measured the booth when it was up but I remember hearing most sound escaping through the ventilation units.

due to the size of the files I didn't manage to upload the Sketchup designs. I'm not very good at Sketchup, but I tried my best:
Studio Design File: https://goo.gl/fcDkaF
Old booth sizes: https://goo.gl/f4hK4N

I highly appreciate every comment and suggestion you might have. If I missed anything please let me know and I’ll try to provide the extra infos needed.

stusiod · Post by **stusiod** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 4:37 pm

Hello,
I was wondering if anybody has an idea, especially how to treat the existing ceiling and the barn door.

Thanks a lot
All advice is greatly appreciated.

stusiod · Post by **stusiod** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:00 pm

Anybody any ideas?

Soundman2020 · Post by **Soundman2020** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 11:03 am

Anybody any ideas?

I'm not sure how I missed your thread! Sorry about that!!

The walls are like mentioned stone,

Excellent! You should get reasonable isolation from that.

That would leave me with a length of 9,928m and the with of 4,06m.

And the height?

the previous owner being a carpenter had loosely filed bags of wood chips attached between the beams.

I'm not even sure if that would be legal! Sounds like a fire hazard to me.

The front of the barn is a big barn door made out of oak without any insulation. I think the design of the studio is easier if I block the door of.

Definitely.

Even though being able to use the door would make it easier to shift gear in and out of the studio.

Do the barn doors open outwards, or inwards? If the open outwards (or if you could easily modify them to open outwards), then you could build an isolation wall just behind the door, and put smaller doors in there, properly sealed, to still give you access.

I don’t have a sound level meter yet so I did tests with my SPLnFFT app on the iphone. I’m not a hard hitter so me playing at a pretty intense level was 95 dbc at 1m distance.

I would suspect that there's something wrong with your app! That's incredibly quiet for a drum kit, even played gently. Normal level is more like 105 to 110, with 115 when played medium hard, and even 120 when played very hard.

In the bathroom (behind the left stone wall) we measured 63 dbc. In the kids rooms above the barn 80 dbc outside the barn door 86 dbc.

So you were getting roughly 30 dB of isolation "through" the stone walls, which implies that the sound you heard was NOT coming through the walls at all: it was sound that came around the walls in some fashion, "flanking" them. Stone would have blocked a lot more than just 30 dB. And you are getting basically no isolation at all through to the rooms above: 15 dB is nothing.

1) What’s the best way of insulating the existing ceiling (Kids bedroom floor) without creating a 3 leave construction? It will be hard to attach something in-between the studs. If I ad OSB or Plasterboard underneath the studs I will end up with a 3 leave construction once the studio is build.

You are asking for the impossible!

If you do not "beef up" in between the joists, then you will have to put mass on the bottom of the joists, and therefore you WILL have a 3-leaf problem. So your options are 1) Either you beef up between the joists, or 2) you have a 3-leaf system. There are no other options! You cannot have it both ways at once. (The only other possibility is to add extra mass on top of the room floors above you, but that's even more problematic)

So you get to choose one of those options: Beef up, or three-leaf.

2) Shall I add a layer of OSB with green glue in-between to the barn door? As far as I understand that would be one leave.

That would still be one leaf, yes, but I'm assuming that the barn door does not seal absolutely air-tight when you close it! A leaf doesn't just need mass: It also needs to be sealed, air-tight. From the photos, there are clearly huge gaps through those doors, and around them.... no use at all like that.

How important is it to keep the relation between height and width/length of John’s components design?

Use one of these Room Ratio calculators to figure out the best dimensions for your room:

http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

http://amroc.andymel.eu/

Both of those are very good, and will help you to decide how best to build your room. They give you tons of information that is really useful to help figure out the best dimensions.

3) I’m currently using B&W Nautilus 805 speakers which due to there shape can’t be soffit mounted.

Well, they COULD be soffit mounted, but it would not be easy to do that. It would need some fancy carpentry work to build the baffles. Not impossible, but probably not worthwhile, as those are just audiophile speakers anyway, not studio reference monitors.

I want to keep them as near field monitors

Don't get me started on my rant about "near field monitors"! There's actually no such thing, technically and acoustically: only in the world of marketing to such things exist. But be that as it may, I would not use audiophile speakers as "near field" monitors. They are not really designed for close-up work.

I’m looking into buying some new speakers to soffit mount after I saved up some money.

When you get to that point, take a close look at both Adam and also Eve. They have some pretty good speakers. I used Eve SC-407's in this room: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=20471 and you can see the results.

I still have some Tannoy Reveal Active monitors which I never liked to much are they worth being soffit mounted, has somebody tried that before, would it improve the sound of these monitors?

You could use those temporarily, yes, but they aren't that fantastic. As long as you are certain you'll upgrade to something decent within a few months, you could use those in the meantime. You could design your soffits such that it is easy to replace the speakers without tearing down and rebuilding the entire soffit. That's what I did originally for the studio in the link above ("Studio 3"). Originally, they had Genelec 1032A's in there, but the owner asked me to take into account that he'd want to change them later, so I designed the soffits to be able to do that easily. A couple of years later he then replaced those with the Eve SC-407's in just a couple of hours of actually studio down-time. You could do the same.

4) I thought of adding a window into the wall where the fusebox is to be able to access it. Would that be the best idea or does somebody have a different suggestion?

Simple: Move the fusebox! It's not as hard as it sounds. You are imagining that it's a major big job, but it really isn't All you need to do is to relocate it to a position on the inner leaf where it won't be a problem, and extend the wiring. A good electrician can do that in a day or so. Not a big deal.

The fuse box is behind one of the acoustic elements so I would also have to build that on little wheels to be able to move it out of the way first.

By the time you add up the cost and complexity and tome of building a window that can both be opened and also seal air-tight, and designing and building and acoustic panel on wheels, you could have paid your electrician to move that panel several ties already!

5) Since I have the old sound booth standing around I was wondering if it makes sense to reuse the elements as much as possible? Otherwise I would have to try and sell it or bring it to the recycling center.

You say it is made of OSB, and you will certainly need OSB in building your new place, so I would take it apart and re-use the OSB as much as possible. There's probably other parts that you could re-use too. You are on a very, very tight budget, so saving money any way you can will be critically important.

I’m a bit afraid of the parts which are just a 22mm OSB and nothing else.

22mm OSB would be excellent for building some parts of your soffits. That's nice and thick, and quite heavy, so it could be used for the speaker enclosure boxes, or maybe one layer of the front baffle, or the shelf. I use OSB a lot in my designs.

I googled a lot to find test results for OSB boards but couln’t find much. It would be great to know how much OSB reduces sound at different frequencies compared to 12,5 mm plasterboard.

Here's your answer:

TL(dB)= 20log(W) + 20log(f) -47.2

Where:
W is the surface density of the panel (mass per unit area (kg/m²) ),
f is the center frequency of the third-octave measurement band

That works for any solid material. That equation is referred to as "mass law".

So all you need to figure out is the density of drywall and the density of OSB: The density of OSB is around 610 kg/m3, and the density of drywall is around 685 kg/m3. But your drywall is only 12.5mm, and your OSB is 22mm, so the surface density of your drywall panels is around 8.5 kg/m2m while the surface density of the OSB is around 13.4 kg/m2. Do the math, and you'll see that the OSB is superior, since it is nearly twice as thick.

6) An other big problem is the heating and ventilation. I have a ventilation element left from the old booth which is basically a 2m heigh box build of OSB, It has 4 fans on top pushing air into the booth. The air has to travel down, up, down and up again within the box before being let into the studio. A second similar box was attached on the opposite wall, with the fans mounted the other way, sucking the air out of the room. The problem was that I never managed to heat the booth properly and had to put an electric heater inside the booth. I looked at the Daikin Sarara Ururu but that alone would cost without installation almost 2000€ so roughly half my budget. Is there an alternative or am I best served with electric heaters? Also these Ventilation boxes where definitely the weak point of the sound insulation. I never measured the booth when it was up but I remember hearing most sound escaping through the ventilation units.

), for the extra mass. But there's a LOT more to it than that! HVAC design for studios is a big issue. I often spend as much time on designing just the HVAC system, as I do on the entire rest of the studio! It's a big deal.

I looked at the Daikin Sarara Ururu but that alone would cost without installation almost 2000€ so roughly half my budget. Is there an alternative or am I best served with electric heaters?

There's no alternative, and a heater is not an option. In addition to heating and cooling your studio, you also need to control the humidity. A mini-split system will do that, but a heater won't. You need to keep the humidity at around 40% in your room at all times, for many reasons.

- Stuart -

stusiod · Post by **stusiod** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 1:40 am

Hello Stuart!
thank you for your detailed reply I really apreciat all the effort you put into it! I'll study all of the above do the maths and get back to you asap!
Great idea to move the fusebox into the studio. It's such a simple solution and it didn't even cross my mind!

Thanks
Yves

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