John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Its now the time to start designing the studio with the intention of beginning the build once the Covid-19 lock down has been lifted.

However I would like the input and guidance of a professional throughout the design and build stages. How do I find someone who is amazing to chat to over email, Skype, exchanging SketchUp’s etc?

I would also like the option to play a drum kit.

To complete the below measurements I setup a 2x d&b E8 loudspeakers and 1x d&b E12-x sub. I run broadband pink noise at 99.5dBc inside the room.

2x6” joists with 1/2” Plywood on bedroom floor and plasterboard and plaster on studio ceiling. The cavity is unfilled.

My initial thought is to board the windows up from the inside and use a frosted film on the glass. Could this cause further resonant issues?

I’m playing with the idea of building a porch inside the entrance of the room. This would conceal the existing electrical consumer unit and make space for a heavy doors on each leaf. It also creates space for hvac silencers. Is this sensible from an acoustics perspective?

Am I right in thinking that its okay to bolt the the inner leaf framing directly to the concrete without risk of flanking?

Considering that the existing ceiling is an empty cavity, if I were to build my inner room in front of the existing ceiling, would that create further leafs? Do I need to remove the existing plaster board and open the cavity?

I’m making contact with a UK company to help specify the necessary equipment. I need to figure out the design for the silencer boxes and placement.

I am planning to document the design and build process on this forum if you are interested!

What is your budget?

This forum is a self help place where you can probably find answers to 99% of your questions if you are willing to spend some time reading and taking notes (I find Google Drive is a great way to keep information you gather). If you want to pay someone to design your place or have a more 1 on 1 relationship, I can't stress enough that you should directly contact John Sayers via PM. If he can't do it, he will recommend someone who can. I would ignore any other people that reach out to you offering to help.

Thumbs up to the d&b rig. I have never mixed on a d&b rig that didn't slay.

I believe you're going to have to beef up the underside of that floor a LOT.

If you put insulation in the cavity and ensure that your MSM design is not compromised, you should be fine. You may have to have a 3 leaf type design here as the existing glass may have little surface density. If this is the case, you just have to have an extra beefy "middle" leaf.

I totally get why you wanted to do that, however, I dislike how it eats into valuable bass trapping real estate and makes your room asymmetrical. I would toy with the idea of chopping off that entire end of your room and use it for storage and HVAC. I'm just not sure if it will make your room more of a square which is a bad idea. I'm sure some other cats will chime in with some ideas for layout as well.

Building directly on the slab will limit your isolation to ~70dB but I'm sure that's no big deal in your situation.

I can tell you from personal experience that run of the mill HVAC people simply do not understand studio design/construction. This one is up to you/us/your designer to nail down and then you just go and buy the supplies from them. Are you thinking a ducted forced air design or a ductless mini split design?

My plan is to build two sets of super doors. Is it over the top to screw and glue two of these together? They are 30kg solid plywood fire doors.

make sure there is a little overlap of your baffles inside your silencer boxes, so there is not a direct path straight through the box.

The silencers will be built with 2 layers of 18mm plywood with green glue in-between.

It looks good so far, I would make your door framing a lot more beefy, especially if you're going to have 60kg+ doors hanging from them. Use 2 king studs, 1 jack stud each side and make the header bigger, maybe 2x 6x2 with a thin ply packer between. Also, use horizontal cripples either side of the door framing - 2 on the left evenly spaced and then just 1 on the right below your silencer box.

Eventhough you're planning to go 400mm OC for your ceiling joists, I would still use at least 6x2, 8x2 if you can. You can use the depth of the joists as part of an inside out ceiling if you're worried about losing height. That way you maintain your maximum height and you have a nice lot of depth for your treatment, without needing to add lots of extra framing. 2 birds, 1 stone...

I would also make your framing at the corners more solid, bolt the two end 4x2 of each frame together. You can use fat structural timber screws.

Your ventilation box locations look fine and should work fine like that, but Is there a reason you need to use ducting for your ventilation at all? I don't know what's on the other side of your external walls but with a bit of fiddling around it looks like you could just move your inlet silencer boxers to just above the mini split on the rear wall. Maybe your outer leaf box could go on the outside of the external wall and the inner leaf box could go in between your ceiling joists. Depending on what's on the other side of the front end of the room, you could do something similar with the outlet boxes. It would save messing around with lots of ducting.

Also, it's not clear in the image so sorry if this is already the case, but make sure there is a little overlap of your baffles inside your silencer boxes, so there is not a direct path straight through the box.

Other than that, looks like it's going to be a nice straight forward build.

Do you actually need that much mass in the doors? A 44mm solid core door blank has a surface density of approx 25 - 28 kg/m2 give or take and looking at your T/L goals I'd be surprised if you'd need to double up. Unless I've missed something, your doors only need to match the surface density of the partition that you're going to block up your window with. The door needs to be double or triple sealed in order to make it air tight

There is a problem I'm seeing with your silencers. You don't have "sleeves" on them to penetrate through the leaf sheathing. Feel free to use duct work to route the air wherever you need it but you should have a square or rectangular wooden sleeve that punches through the sheathing and then your duct work can connect to that.

lastly, in order to obtain our desired low velocity air, the cross sectional area of your sleeve that I mentioned above, along with any duct work run inside of your room, needs to be the same (or bigger) cross sectional area of the path inside your silencer box. That was the one calculation I didn't see you document (air velocity).

I'm glad to see your progress and excitement. You're doing great

Few more questions

What if I remove the duct work from within the room and mount the send and return diffusers on the wall. The A/C split will sit 1.37m from the fresh air diffuser.

I'm still unsure about how to route cables between the control room and machine room. Whats the best way to penetrate the leafs?