John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hey all. I will be doing a comprehensive "first post" on my build that I'm planning inside a 35x56 barn in Auburn Maine, but I had a question that I was hoping for advice on, before I can even "locate" the studio to collect the rest of my info:

The studio will be in a post and beam barn. The maximum distance between any structural post is about 11 feet. So unless I want the skinniest little hallway studio ever, at least one of the posts will need to run down through at least one of the rooms. The options as I see them are:

A) Box around the post with both shells of my two shell design, completely isolating the studio from the beam. I will lose a solid amount of space on this, over a foot on all sides, meaning between 3-4' cube. Doing this once would give me a width of 22' to work with. Would this create a weird sound tunnel that makes isolation tougher?

B) Try to seal the post to one or both of the shells? This would blow all my isolation though, because it would connect the building to my mass layers, yes?

C) Another creative idea that you all have?

I don't know how much isolation I need yet, doing those tests soon. But the plan is wood framed floor joists, with 2x4 floating floor on top of neoprene pads, two shell design using John's inside-out construction on both shells. Separate control room and live room, each roughly 13'x16' with 11.5' ceilings.

Thanks, and more soon!

Roy in Auburn, ME

roygoodale wrote:Hey all. I will be doing a comprehensive "first post" on my build that I'm planning inside a 35x56 barn in Auburn Maine, but I had a question that I was hoping for advice on, before I can even "locate" the studio to collect the rest of my info:

The studio will be in a post and beam barn. The maximum distance between any structural post is about 11 feet. So unless I want the skinniest little hallway studio ever, at least one of the posts will need to run down through at least one of the rooms. The options as I see them are:

A) Box around the post with both shells of my two shell design, completely isolating the studio from the beam. I will lose a solid amount of space on this, over a foot on all sides, meaning between 3-4' cube. Doing this once would give me a width of 22' to work with. Would this create a weird sound tunnel that makes isolation tougher?

B) Try to seal the post to one or both of the shells? This would blow all my isolation though, because it would connect the building to my mass layers, yes?

C) Another creative idea that you all have?

I don't know how much isolation I need yet, doing those tests soon. But the plan is wood framed floor joists, with 2x4 floating floor on top of neoprene pads, two shell design using John's inside-out construction on both shells. Separate control room and live room, each roughly 13'x16' with 11.5' ceilings.

Thanks, and more soon!

Roy in Auburn, ME

Can you sketch out a floor plan and draw where the posts are located?

Can you sketch out a floor plan and draw where the posts are located?[/quote]

Here's the barn and posts (I'm struggling with SketchUp, sorry for for the hand drawing. I don't know why it's so difficult for me, I learn new software programs for recording all the time, but SketchUp just feels absolutely counter-intuitive). Barn is roughly 35x56', with posts 12' spaced on all sides (I know that math doesn't add up, but it checks out in the areas with the biggest spacing, where I will likely be building the studio. The barn is going to be WIDE open. blank canvas, with basically unlimited ceiling height. Which is nice. The posts are the obstacle.

There is no studio floor plan yet, because that depends on the suggestions I get from my original question about the posts/beams! With one post right in the center of a square, that would give me 24x24 total to work with. Add in a second post and we now have 24x36' to work with (which would allow for the aforementioned control room and live room dimensions).

I know this isn't enough information for comprehensive advice (that post is coming later), I'm just trying to figure out how much real estate it will eat up to have these posts run through the rooms. Thanks!

can the "purity" of the post-beam construction be altered to use metal posts and steel girders to reduce the number of posts on the floor? for example if you had 4 posts in the middle section and steel girders length wise for truss support, then you would remove part of the isolation from structure in the lower parts and open up the space for other floor plans.

that said, how much isolation do you need? besides room-to-room? if you check out some of the studios-in-a-barn, many don't have great isolation and instead focus on acoustics of the live room, proper critical listening in the control room, and the aesthetics and workflow to make usage much more practical and keep costs down somewhat.

for isolating the posts, you would build a frame around it (not touching it) and fill it with insulation and cover with mass equiv to the rest of your isolation walls. these parts would marry up to the rest of the isolation structure to form a complete and contiguous isolation barrier (which presumably is also separate from the structure using isolating sway bracing).

to go further - divide up the floor - each room has it's own slab (earth damped, rubber joint compound in gaps) and each post it's own footing (gap filled with joint compound). this will further reduce structure transfers caused by sharing floors.

if the upper part of the barn is closed off to ensure isolation, then run ducts and conduits there. if running conduit in the floor ensure decoupled joins between slabs.

Thanks! I will see how much isolation I need (it is a farmhouse and barn, but it is located in a neighborhood with neighbors across the street and on one side. I plan to set up a drum kit in the barn and test with an SPL meter this weekend. I'm nervous about the results, as when yell to my dog in the field next to my house, I can hear my voice bouncing off the ugly development about 500 feet away across the field. Doesn't bode well.

Thanks for the tips, I think I can look at those two options and come up with a plan. More to come once I have all the details. Thanks Glenn.

maybe demand the contractor/owner/town build a green wall to hide the ugly and the noise (ahem, wink wink) from the housing area