John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi,
Thanks for all the wonderful information on this forum! You guys are very very knowledgeable, and I am grateful that you choose to share that knowledge I have read the rules and hope I've done enough to comply.

I just bought my first house, which includes a partially finished basement. I want to build a mixing room in the unfinished space, and mostly have free reign of what to do. I will be using the room as an office also, but I want to optimize it as much as possible for mixing/listening, and tracking vocals. I am a hobby musician only, so this is just for personal use.

Here is the before (these are not precise measurements but they are close): - note the "I" on the left side of the unfinished area, this is a sewage pipe we can't move. I want to construct a wall around it.

- ceiling is unfinished, with exposed joists, about 7'5" to the bottom of the joists
- floor is concrete
- the finished section has finished walls only on the finished sides (i.e. they are open everywhere else)

Here is what I'm thinking for the after: - rectangle room with dimensions not within 5%
- closet A = vocal booth
- hardwood (edit: laminate, not hardwood) floor
- ceilings: mass loaded vinyl attached to joists (I don't want to mess with the floor above), then drywall finish
- standard drywall walls?
- considering adding walls around the water heater (bottom left of mockup) and furnace (center of mockup) to block noise

My questions (Ideal budget would be $10,000, but I have flexibility)
- Are there optimizations I can make in the room sizing and/or materials?
- Is MLV the best way to reduce impact noise from above?
- Is it worth boxing in the furnace and water heater?
- What would you do?


Thank you!

i would add an inner frame w 1 layer of 5/8" drywall (you could add more later if more mass isolation is needed) and finish the ceiling using decoupled hat channel and same on drywall. this is a simple room within a room without losing too much space and will still function as a normal room. an additional door if desired as well as inner wall windows to complete the isolation. you'd cap off the end with a wall to form the enclosing "exterior" wall. R30 insulation all around (compressed on walls, loose on ceiling). skip the MLV unless building limp mass pressure trapping.

remember oxygen is your friend. plan well in advance for fresh air and temperature/humidity/filtering.

see attached for idea.

oops - i forgot the waste pipe... so flip the location of the desk to the single window wall, and add a soffit around the pipe and use the rest to the right side of that soffit to be a closet. skip a building vocal booth. remove window adjacent to pipe.

Glenn, thank you so much for the guidance! I'm going to digest this and may come back with follow up questions.

Edit: omg you included a sketchup file, THANK YOU!!!

as mentioned - wall around pipe - space for closet.

Glenn,
We started construction today using your plan. I truly can't thank you enough!! I will share photos when I have them.

no worries! cheers!

remember you need to make a brass plaque with my name on it to hang on the door when its done