John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting here to ask for help with a studio build. I hope to be able to contribute back to this awesome community one day.

Location

- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Residential apartment unit near the city centre
- Traffic flow in the area is not heavy, with motorcycle and cars with illegally modified exhaust pipes being the main source of noise that comes intermittently
- Another noise source is from the loudspeakers of about 3 mosques in the area, when they broadcast the Islamic prayers 5 times a day.


The Building

- The building's structure is made of a reinforced concrete frame, with the walls being a mixture of brick and reinforced concrete. (Got these straight off the condo's brochure factsheet)
- My apartment (2-bedroom unit) floor and roof are reinforced concrete as well.
- The living area's flooring is porcelain tiles, while my bedrooms have a wooden laminate flooring.
- My unit is on the top floor (17th storey), corner unit
- Impact noise is a pretty significant issue. I can hear/feel footsteps from my next-door neighbour, but the main issue for me is loud footsteps from my neighbour downstairs that translate into a deep rumble that seems to come from my ceiling!


What I do and what I need the room for

I am a music producer who composes for commercials and film. I produce and mix my own songs. I track acoustic and electric guitar, and occasionally I have guest singers over to track vocals as well. Essentially it will be both a control and recording room.


Budget

I'm looking at a cap of MYR5000 which is about $1200 for this DIY project.


Room Dimensions

283cm (W) x 280cm (L) x 312cm (H)

Basically I intend to construct a room within a room, with 4" 60kg density rockwool on all sides (I have consulted the building engineer and he's given the OK for floor load requirements), and my priority is insulating my studio against all airborne and especially impact noise. The rumble from footsteps seems to be around 100-200Hz, while the rumble from the water pump is at 65Hz.


Design

It's laughably small...but here it is: The vocal booth will be at the rear right corner of the room. I already have a booth made with 4" 60kg density rockwool on each side (not pictured here).

There is one window in the room which I intend to block out with rockwool before constructing the room-within-a-room to cover it permanently: And this is the placement of the door...in the corner of the room: Questions and Potential Issues

1. My main priority is the insulation against the impact noise, which is not just heard but can be felt at times when the door of another unit in the same building slams for instance. Would this setup accomplish that?

2. I'm quite unfamiliar with studio design/construction, but I've heard that a cube-shaped room is the worst for acoustics. What are the main issues I would face with 8-inch studio monitors in this room?

3. The wooden laminate floor in the bedroom seems to amplify impact/airborne noise from the unit downstairs, which of course has the same type of flooring. Should I remove the laminate before constructing the floating floor?


Thank you so much for your attention, and I am looking forward to hearing from some of you. Cheers.

given the bulk of work sounds like mixing rather than tracking a lot of live instruments, you might be better served by getting the mix room acoustically balanced, and then set up a high isolation booth for the vocals and acoustic guitars. maybe a high isolation amp box for electric instruments needing an amp. this will preserve what little room volume you have. the problem you would have with a M-A-M additional construct is - the building is not designed for isolation anyways. so all the sounds are mainly structural transfer which you can do little about. however, someone slamming a door during a mix is likely to not impact you like that door slammed during a great acoustic performance...

a square is will reinforce the main axial modes and if it were a cube, even worse - except in the case of small speakers which don't excite the room modes as much and actually benefit many times from the reinforcement esp harmonics. that said, since the axial modes will be easily tested and being roughly identical in 2 planes, you can use the room you were going to lose to (mostly) non-functional isolation, to build bass trapping which will reduce those modes.

Thank you for the reply Glenn!

Yes, I've decided against the room-within-a-room idea as after more research and doing the precise weight calculations, it'll be too heavy to build safely and will likely be too much work for a less than ideal treatment. I should've taken the preliminary floating floor warnings/guides in this forum seriously...

Right now, I'm set on building a floating floor (as I've decided that preventing the transmission of noise from my room to the neighbour downstairs is still a priority), and for the room treatment I'm taking a leaf out of Max Hodges' book https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... sound-good as the room in question is approximately the same size as mine (which is 2.8m x 2.8m). So it'll look something like this: For the 3 floor to ceiling bass traps (I can't build on on the 4th corner because the door is in the way), I'm thinking of either following Max's solution which consists of RW3, an MLV limp mass membrane, and then OC 703: OR if I fail to source OC703 in my country that's within my budget, then I'll opt for a trap with the same dimensions but instead it will be a superchunk of 40kg/m3 rockwool (which I will split into multiple traps stacked on top of each other so that the rockwool doesn't compress over time).

I'm planning for the wall panels to be 6" 40kg rockwool, and I'll add an acoustic cloud as well.

What do you think of this proposal? Thank you for your time.

the room-within-a-room will still be needed if you're trying to isolate from the neighbors since the sound hitting the walls and ceiling will still transfer via the structure. the floating floor would not be useful without that. if you're trying to reduce impact noise into the floor - there are ways to reduce that, and for amps, drums, etc isolation platforms to reduce the direct structural transmission.