John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I've built numerous studios within existing structures and have always employed room within a room construction. However this time I'm building a detached one room studio that shares no walls (or anything else) with any other structure. It will be in Silverlake, Los Angeles CA. I need a room to mix, edit, compose, sing loudly, track instruments that aren't drums. The neighborhood is not quiet.

So my question is does it still need to be room within a room construction or would 3 layers of 5x8 drywall with green glue in between each & insulation be sufficient to cut out most outside noise? THANK YOU

Basic issue: If you have only one single wall (single leaf isolation), then you are stuck with "Mass Law". That's the principle of physics that applies to a single wall, and describes how well it can isolate. The answer is: Not Very Well! You can get good isolation with single-leaf, but you need huge amounts of mass to do it: Very thick concrete walls will do it, or very thick brick walls (a couple of feet thick). But a sheet of drywall on a stud frame will fall way, way, short.

You should start by defining how much isolation you need, then see if it is possible to attain that under Mass Law, with a reasonable amount of mass. I suspect that you won't like the answer you come up with!

Two-leaf walls are much better: It's a whole different principle of physics, with different equations, that are a lot more interesting. A two-leaf "room-in-a-room" structure is not just about decoupling (although that is an important part of it): Rather, it is about "tuning" the wall system to get you the isolation you need, at the lowest cost.

So, start be measuring with a sound level meter, to see what type of levels you a e dealing with, how much isolation you need, how much you can get from mass law, how much you can get from "room-in-a-room", and then decide which path to take. But I'm pretty sure you'll be doing "room-in-a-room", in one form or another (there are different ways of doing it....)



- Stuart -

thank you for the thorough advice. the more I've been reading the more I'm seeing it as the only way.