John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello all. I am a French Canadian from Montreal area (lived in Montreal for a while, now have a house in Longueuil south shore)

This post is a "long shot"... I just bought my first house 4 months ago and it has been years living on a small space where I had to work on music on my laptop with headphones, and I still rent a practice space to jam with a rock band. I did read some of the build from here and some of the builds are pretty awesome.

The house have an attached garage that I would like to be usable as a multi-usage room (I do not plan to condemn the garage, I still want to use it for the car on the winter, I put bikes and other crap there as well) but I want the end of it to be well organized with home recording equipment. The plan for now is to verify what could be the options, verify what kind of budget would be necessary to soundproof it enough so I can play/record acoustic drums in it and that it is at an "acceptable" level outside and inside the house.

The good part is that Garage is about 4 feet under the ground, so lots of mass around. The floor is concrete slab. The not so good part is that the rooms are just on top of the Garage.

There are air ducts already that goes to the Garage.

I didn't take the exact mesures yet, and I do not plan to change the size of the garage, hopefully not losing too much space if/when I go for adding walls.

I did calculate how loud I am when I play acoustic drums in the garage close to the drums. It is about 104-105 db. With the current garage door closed, meter close to my right neighbour, it reads to about 82-85 db which is not that bad... I didn't verify yet on the rooms on top of the Garage, will do soon and Add the information here.

Added photo of the house and one photo from the inside garage.

When I can find some money (I just put pretty much all of my savings into the house...) what I was thinking of is to probably add mass to the actual walls (maybe one more layer of gypse), then add another wall/ceiling. Try to put all of that as much "air sealed" as I can.

The weak link will be the garage door. I don't know how bad it would be to leave it as it is, but for sure the rails on the roof gives is more complicated if I want to build another ceiling. I was thinking at some point to build maybe custom heavy folding doors (added a random internet photo as example, if anybody did that I am curious about how tough it was to do it).

You guys are awesome, I have read loads of super useful information already. Hope I can start this project "soonish" and it will be my pleasure to show you guys the progress. Please tell me if you think that I forgot to think about important stuff...

I would suggest checking your local bylaws for noise regulations. If you need to have better isolation than you already have in order to meet your bylaws, you might be out of luck. In order to achieve more isolation, you would have to address the weakest points. Those are your garage door, your windows and your HVAC (as those are literally big holes in your walls/ceiling. The HVAC and windows are pretty easy to address. But your garage door is going to be very hard to address. The only way to achieve good transmission loss is with a lot of mass (surface density to be exact) and having it air tight. These are both things that are damned near impossible to achieve with a functioning residential garage door.

Greg

Thanks Greg!

Pretty appreciated. I don't think it will be too much of a problem for the outside noise. I'll verify local noise regulation but there is a little space between my neighbour and even as it is now, I can play without excessive noise, like I said about 85db which is not that bad when I am alone playing acoustic drums. I would have to try with the band... As you can see, I have the electronic drums, but it is very nice to move air...

The idea of heavy folding doors, maybe 4 or 5 heavy pannels with heavy duty hinges and seals sounds doable, however not sure about how difficult it would be. I don't mind not having a motorized system to open the doors...

I'll come back with more precise dimensions and db measurement from the rooms upstairs of the garage so I can know about how much isolation could be "enough".

*Edit: Just read that 53 dB(A) should not be exceeded for AC systems... So about another 30 dbs to be cut. Tough.

https://www.longueuil.quebec/en/main-by-laws/noise

If your neighbor is cool now, everything is fine. But what happens when they decide to move and you get a grumpy person next door who calls the cops on you? That's the decision you have to make in terms of isolation.

Greg

Was looking into doing the same thing in terms of the garage door; however, the hardware for the hanging and sliding system can cost about 1600 by itself on top of doors and a motorized unit, it's going to be near 5-6k alone and as mentioned will not be very soundproof.

What I was planning on doing is building the 4 doors and only allowing two of them two open for a single car. This will allow me to seal and isolate the other doors as if they were a wall. As everyone keeps mentioning "the weakest link is your biggest problem," the two doors that open in a carriage style, I plan to build them like a super door. I am still deciding on what the material and construction this will be, but this will be custom built and hopefully have the same characteristics as any other door that would be in a studio (the biggest issue being the weight). I plan to weather seal them which I'm still looking for, but I think car weather sealing may be the way to go here.

Since I'm also doing a double-wall construction I will be building a section of the wall that will be on hinges that will operate similarly to a door. the plan is to seal this the same as the door when closed. Not sure if this is realistic, haven't run it by anyone yet. If anyone doesn't think this will work please let me know.