John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi all, I'm Glen.

The family and I will be moving into a new flat in the next few weeks and one of the storage cupboards / rooms in the flat seems to be big enough and suitable for a studio build.

I dont have any pictures of the actual room yet but it is similar in size to the one ive put in this thread only difference being mine is slightly bigger. (not much)

So my main concerns are how im going to block sound from leaking into the flat which would disturb my little boy when he goes to bed and also I dont want to piss off the neighbours.

The room has a heavy solid door fitted and no windows so im assuming thats a good thing already.

So... can anyone guide me into the right direction on what would need to be done to soundproof this room?

Also consider my budget is minimal at the moment.

Equipment:

iMac
MPC
Midi Keyboard
HS80m x2
Audio Technica ATH-M50
Technics 1210 Turntable
DJM Pioneer 500 Mixer

Thanks

Welcome!

Size of your room will affect the quality of the sound in the room but has nothing to do with isolation which seems to be your biggest concern right now.

Sadly, isolation comes at a cost. You have two options.

- single leaf relying entirely upon the mass law equation meaning there is a maximum amount of feasible isolation
- a "room in a room" which is a lot more work and money but yields excellent results

What you need to do is figure out how much isolation you need because there is no point in trying to get too much isolation and vise versa. Play your speakers or instruments (whichever is louder) and measure the SPL inside your room using an SPL meter set to slow and C weighting. Then go to your kids room and your neighbours place and measure the SPL with and with your music playing. This will show you how much isolation you're currently getting and what you will need in order to not bother people in those areas. We can go from there. But realize that this will take work and money to achieve. Also, remember that you can't have good isolation without taking things like HVAC into consideration. You need a sealed room to have isolation. But to get air in/out of the room you need to cut holes in your sheathing. That would destroy any isolation you fought to get. So, you then need HVAC silencer boxes to introduce insertion loss and maintain your isolation. This forum is here with all the information you need to do this yourself

Greg