John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

HI all.

I live in the UK and have just bought a detached house with an integrated garage which I intend to turn into my recording studio. All the walls in the garage are brickwork and the floor is finished concrete. There is a full width metal up and over door to the front of the garage. As I have not yet moved in, I do not have accurate dimensions, but I have included estimated dimensions further down this post.

I am planning on making the existing single skin wall to the external side of the house into a double skin, and also building a double skin wall behind the garage door (so it still looks like a garage from the outside), and I am going to add plasterboards to the ceiling joists, with insulation packed between the joists. I am not planning on floating a room within this space, as it is cost prohibitive, but I am planning on putting a wooden floor down, which I will place rugs on around the mixing desk area/sweet spot to dampen reflections down. I am planning on installing a range of acoustic treatment (bass traps, tiles etc) once the basic internal construction is complete

Loudness – control room only, its for electronic music only and dj practice, so may get loud on dj jam days, but no idea of actual loudness

Dimensions - approximately 5m long x 2.5m wide x 2.3m high

Budget - prefer to keep it under £2,000 but can go more if necessary

I would like to know the following:

1 - What type of plasterboard and insulation should I get for the ceiling to best contain the sound? (There will be a bedroom above)

2 - Should I stud the wall and plasterboard it out for best sound containment? (this will also allow easier installation of the electrical power supply where needed around the room)

3 - Or am I best off leaving the brickwork exposed and working on further acoustically treating the room instead?


All or any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I need to get it right first time. Thanks for reading.

Welcome JayDub!

I am planning on making the existing single skin wall to the external side of the house into a double skin, and also building a double skin wall behind the garage door

By skin do you mean drywall? Or leaf? Or....... ? Sorry, I'm Canadian, eh. We have different terms for things here I suppose!

Loudness – control room only, its for electronic music only and dj practice, so may get loud on dj jam days, but no idea of actual loudness

Sadly, I would suggest doing nothing until you buy a proper sound level meter, set up your gear in the existing room, as is, and crank it as loud as you will ever have it and take measurements inside your room, outside your room, and in the bedroom above. From there, you will know how many dB you must reduce. And with that calculation, you can make an informed decision on what sort of construction techniques to use, providing you with your necessary sound reduction. Without this number, you will either build in such a way that either provides too little isolation, or the opposite - spend way too much time and money building in a such a way that provides too much isolation for your needs.

1 - What type of plasterboard and insulation should I get for the ceiling to best contain the sound? (There will be a bedroom above)

You're a DJ. DJ's love their bass. Bass is very very difficult to stop from penetrating walls and ceilings. You will need much more than just plasterboard on the existing joists if you want to isolate more than just people talking. You could use RSIC clips and channel, but those are famous for not providing great low frequency isolation. They're great (when installed perfectly) for higher frequencies. Unless you build a room in a room (probably not going to happy on the budget you posted), RSIC + channel might be your only other solution. But, to more directly answer your question regarding plasterboard and insulation, you want plasterboard that is as heavy as possible. That probably means fire rated 5/8", and at least 2 layers of it with Green Glue compound between them. For insulation, if it's fiberglass, something around 20-25 kg/cubic meter. If it's mineral wool, something around30-45 kg/cubic meter.

2 - Should I stud the wall and plasterboard it out for best sound containment? (this will also allow easier installation of the electrical power supply where needed around the room)

Do sound measurements and figure out what construction methods will provide you with the isolation values you need. Maybe you need to build another wall. Maybe you don't. The measurements will tell.

3 - Or am I best off leaving the brickwork exposed and working on further acoustically treating the room instead?

Same answer as question #2.

I need to get it right first time.

Yes. So, move your stuff in, measure, then go from there!

Greg