I have been reading the forum for quite some time now but this is my first post: I will try to make it as comprehensive as I can, but please accept my apologies in advance for any shortcomings which I’ll be more than happy to fix quickly. Please also excuse any misuse of technical terms on my side, especially with reference to construction materials and techniques: I’m based in Italy and my understanding from my readings so far is that there are quite some differences between how buildings are constructed and materials are available from country to country, so there will be some things that people based in the US or the UK will take for granted which are not here, and vice versa: hopefully we’ll sort these out along the way
But let’s get started: I’ve followed the Why -> How -> What structure, hopefully it makes sense. I’ve also highlighted key facts in bold so they can quickly be skimmed through, and put all questions at the end as per the instructions. I've also attempted to compile a summarized version of this post, to make it easier on those with less time, but I realized it was becoming either very long as well or incomplete, so I gave up on the idea. To compensate, I tried to organize the information in as structured a way as I could devise: I hope it helps!
1. WHY: The context and the objectives
1.1 The context
I am a 45yo amateur singer/songwriter/musician/producer based in Milan, Italy, currently making music out of a very light mobile setup in my flat, using the very few monthly hours spared by a fulltime job, a very demanding 3yo kid, and seemingly never ending home renovation. This will gradually change over the years though: kid will grow up, renovation will eventually transition into maintenance, and later on (some 12-15 years down the road) I’ll finally retire and spend most of my time away from the city, so this project – while initially targeting some specific short term needs – has a long term perspective.
My main genre is alternative rock, but I enjoy exploring most types of music, from world to classical, metal to jazz, really anything except EDM, hip-hop, etc. I work mostly by myself, recording keys and drums via MIDI/VSTi, electric bass/guitars via DI and amp sims, everything else via microphone; occasionally, I would involve some fellow musician/singer, recording their performance in the same manner when they don’t have or use their own facilities.
Other relevant information: I have a background in electronic engineering and quite some experience with DIY and interior design, so getting hands-on with the project will be part of the fun, the main issue being – as usual – spare time.
1.2 The objectives
My main short-term objective from this project, which is just about to start, is to create a dedicated space to fill the main gap of my current setup, i.e. being able to practice and track vocals and acoustic instruments (essentially guitars, percussions, harmonica, flutes) and mix with speakers even at night without disturbance to neighbours and from external noises, in an acoustically controlled environment. For all other tasks (composing, arranging, tracking keyboards and electric guitars, editing, etc.), in the short term I will still use my mobile setup at home.
Over time, additional longer term objectives (that I want to take into account from the start) will be:
- making it my main space also for composing, arranging, recording keys & guitars, etc.
- being able to practice and track acoustic drums and possibly even live-track a small band
- being able to share the space with few trusted people, without having them mess up with my stuff; this includes my son, who seems to be musically gifted: I want to make sure that if he keeps this passion as he grows up, he can benefit from the project too, together with me or independently, but to a point, i.e. not smash gear worth thousands with his friends, etc.
2. HOW: The location, the building, the plan, the budget
2.1 The location
The building I will use for the project is part of a small group of old houses located in the mountains less than an hour drive from where I live. It is just across the alley from the house where I plan to spend most of my retirement, and where I already spend most of the Summertime courtesy of remote working. The location is about 700 m (2300 ft) above sea level. Outside temperatures range from -5/+5° C (20-40° F) in the Winter to 15-25 °C (60-80° F) in the Summer. Relative humidity ranges from 50% to 90%.
The only permanent residents in the nearby houses are a 93yo nearly deaf lady and an 75+yo semi-deaf couple farther away; in the Summer months, one more nearly deaf lady and two more couples in their 60s join the party, one of which is a hippy couple blasting 70s rock most of the time
So, there is definitely not an issue with sound leaking OUT of the building, although of course I’d still want to keep it to an acceptable level considering I’ll mostly be working at night.However, there is an issue with sound leaking INTO the building. I will add actual dB measurements once I get a decent sound level meter, but the main offenders – other than crickets at night and cicadas and chirping birds in the daytime – are:
- two churches ringing their bells every half hour, the closest one being 430 m (about a quarter of a mile) away as the crow flies: this is the softest (approx. 45 dBA near the building) and most predictable of the noises I’ll have to deal with, yet the most annoying one because it won’t stop even at night and it’s 365 days a year, so this will have to be kept out at all costs;
- tractors and other machines in the fields below in some periods of the year: this noise would be nice to eliminate as well, because it can last for hours on end especially in late Spring and Summer, although of course just during the daytime (approx. 55 dBA near the building);
- said ladies shouting at each other in their nearby yards, in an attempt to have a conversation (approx. 60 dBA near the building): this is a daily thing in the Summer months, but of course quite short-lasting, so I might decide that I can live with it;
- the occasional lawnmower/chainsaw in the nearby yards, the closest one being about 10 m (30 ft) away, and the occasional motorcycle/truck passing by in the alley just in front of the building: I think these noises are almost impossible to isolate from (can be as much as 100 dBA near the building), but I can live with them given their occasional nature.
Final note: as with every rural environment, dust and bugs are everywhere, and I hate both
, so I want to make sure I keep them out as much as possible as well.2.2 The building
(Note: all measurements below are indicated as “about” not because they are estimated, but because they are averaged: the building is very old, with no straight lines and no square angles, so most dimensions can vary up to +/- 5 cm (2’’) depending on where they’re measured.)
The building is this one:
It’s a two-storey former cowshed/barn with 60 cm (2 ft) thick walls made mostly of stones, in places held together with some kind of mortar and in other places just laid dry on top of one another, and partly of full and hollow bricks where changes were made or damages were repaired over the decades (see picture on this later).
All of the openings are on the West wall, because the East and North walls adjoin two other buildings (both unused, for decades), and the South wall used to (or was intended to) as well: the sloping wall in the foreground is the only surviving trace of that further building to the South.
The building has electricity and water, but no gas and no heating system (nor cooling, but it would not be needed given the temperatures in the area).
The ground floor is a single room of about 30 sq m (325 sq ft) with a concrete slab as floor and about 2.65 m (8’8’’) ceiling height. The ceiling looks like some sort of concrete slabs in between 5 iron beams, with a single further iron beam across for support (that one beam is about 12 cm (5’’) high, so the room height under that beam is actually lower by as much):
(In the back right corner of the ceiling, there is a large hole, probably made intentionally at some point to create a passage to the upper floor. As a matter of fact, originally, the ground floor was used as a cowshed, and the upper floor was used for hay storage and accessed from the outside, through the large opening you can see in the first picture, so the two levels were disconnected and there are still no stairs between them.)
The upper floor (don’t be misled by the two rows of “windows”, it’s just one upper floor) is about 4.30 m (14’1’’) high at the eaves and about 5.20 m (17’1’’) high at the ridge. In this picture of the interior of the West wall, you can see the different building materials in the places where the plaster has fallen (or has never been there):
The roof is made of classic Italian-style roof tiles laid over a grid of wooden beams of increasing sizes. It is in relatively good shape and almost completely rainproof, but definitely not airtight:
2.3 The plan
So here’s how I’m planning to use the building in the end state, considering the context and objectives above. I don’t see very different alternatives to the below, but I’m here first and foremost to learn and to challenge my ideas, so I’m totally open to different suggestions if there are any: it’s actually one of the main reasons for this post.
The upper floor, with its high ceiling, should make a nice live room for tracking acoustic drums as well as acoustic guitars, percussions and other acoustic instruments, potentially even small bands, so I’m planning to use it that way. This is also the room I plan to share with others as I may see fit in the future.
The ground floor would host my regular working and mixing space. It would include all the usual suspects such as a couple pairs of monitor speakers, one or more large monitor screens, a desk with a few controllers, computer with DAW and various software, audio interface, some outboard gear, etc., but also keyboards and guitars, and potentially a small electronic drum kit, so that anything not requiring a microphone could be recorded directly in there. This room I want to keep to myself: this is where all my gear will be, and when someone else gets in there, it will always be with me and under my supervision, so the upper floor room will have to have an independent access.
I’ve tried for quite some time to fit a vocal booth in the mix, but I finally gave up on the idea and embraced the approach that no vocal booth is much more desirable than a boxy-sounding vocal booth and a sacrificed main room. So I plan to also use the ground floor room to track vocals and anything needing a dry sound, possibly with some movable panels or other device to better control reflections.
The two floors would be connected by a compact staircase, and there would also need to be a tiny entrance to provide independent access to the two rooms, and to leave wet jackets/umbrellas and dusty shoes out: unfortunately the West wall directly faces a narrow alley where vehicles must be able to pass, so I can’t add a porch or anything like that on the outside. Nor can I open a door in the South wall (see reasons later), where a small porch could be built. On the other hand, I won’t need any toilet or kitchen facilities in the building because I have them in the house across the alley, and this would force me to take pauses every now and then, which we all know is a good thing.
And here is my high level plan for the project:
- Phase 0: cleanup, consolidation and any major construction work.
Before even starting to build the studio inside the building, the building itself clearly needs some work. To start with, after getting rid of all the garbage inside, I’ll have a structural engineer friend assess the situation and tell me what can/can’t and what must/mustn’t be done. For instance, is the ground floor ceiling robust enough for whatever use I want to make of the upper floor or does it need to be strengthened/rebuilt? are walls all ok or do they need to be strengthened and where? is the ground floor flat or slightly sloping as it looks?, etc. Then I will call in a local construction company to do the needed work.
In this phase I’ll also build/buy the staircase to connect the two floors and take care of anything else requiring heavy masonry work (e.g. windows to be walled up or enlarged, etc.) so that it can all be done by the same company as part of a single contract.
- Phase 1: overall basics and ground floor.
Once all major construction work is done, I’ll focus on the ground floor with the aim of getting it up and running as early as possible. This will include building the main room and the other tiny service spaces around it, but also some overall basics for the whole building including electrical system, heating system, ducts for cables travelling between ground floor and upper floor, etc.
- Phase 2: upper floor basics.
Once the ground floor is finished, I will work to make the upper floor usable to a certain extent, putting up windows, rainproofing and airproofing the roof, etc., but without the ambition to make it soundproof or to finish it in any way, just the bare minimum to be able to start practicing during the daytime.
- Phase 3: upper floor completion.
This is the final stage where I will work to soundproof and finish the upper floor, thus completing the project.
2.4 The budget
Considering the project will take years to complete in its entirety and doesn’t have a fixed deadline, and some objectives or constraints might even change in the process, defining a fixed budget upfront is very difficult and also makes little sense: if something needs to be done and I have not enough money for it today, I can just wait (within certain limits) until I’ve saved enough rather than compromise. But of course this doesn’t mean I have unlimited funds to pour into this (who does anyway?), otherwise I could just tear the building down and build it all over from scratch, which could cost as much as 200 K€ here. Generally speaking, my approach would be (it always is) to make the wisest possible use of money, meaning I don’t want to overdo it but I’d rather spend a little more today and be done with something for some time, than save today and have to deal with an issue tomorrow.
Also, on all work that can be classified as building renovation (basically all of Phase 0 and most of the other phases as well), I’ll get back 50% of whatever I spend (within a limit of 96 K€ of expenditure, which I plan to keep very far from anyway) from the government as part of a national renovation incentive plan, so this will make things a lot easier budget-wise.
Having said all this, I can certainly provide some indications of what would make sense for me to spend (and could be approved by my better half…) at least on the first 2-3 phases.
Phase 0 is the easiest one because there’s no compromising on safety: for sake of discussion, we can assume the budget is unlimited; then of course I’m not going to pave the floor with gold or make unnecessarily expensive choices when there are good cheaper alternatives, but who does anyway? My expectation would be to stay within 10 K€ including the fees of the structural engineer and the professional required to do the papers for getting the government incentives, but if more is really required for safety reasons then so be it.
Phase 1 is going to be wooden studs and insulation and gypsum I guess, plus the electrical and heating systems, insulating doors (but no windows, more on that later), acoustic treatment as needed, finishing, etc. My idea would be to stay within another 10 K€ here considering I’ll do most of the work myself, so I mainly need to budget for the cost of the materials. Again, if then 10 has to become 15 for a good reason, it will mean just an extra 2.5 K thanks to the incentives, and maybe some more waiting time to save that extra money, so I guess it will be ok; it certainly can’t become 30 or even 25. Of course I’m not counting the gear here: I have most of what I need to start already, and I’ll get the rest over time, but that’s outside of this discussion anyway.
Phase 2 I want to keep as cheap as possible given its interim nature: let’s say 2-3 K€. Phase 3 is really too far away in time to bother with at this stage: let’s resume the discussion further on down the road.
3. WHAT: overall design, acoustics, HVAC
3.1 Overall design
At last we get to the point! This is how the ground floor currently looks like:
In the 3D view you can see the approximate position of the iron beams in the ceiling: the 5 of them which are drowned in the ceiling are roughly parallel to the South wall and equally spaced by about 1 m (40’’) starting from the South wall itself.
The shallow recess in the middle of the West wall is just a placeholder to mark where an old entrance door used to be; this is a relevant aspect when thinking about heavy renovation: with such a building, if you want to open a door or a window in any of the four walls, it’s a very delicate and expensive job (10 K€ order of magnitude) as you have to border it with a thick steel frame to compensate for the missing side strength and to hold the huge weight of the stone above (e.g., if I wanted to open a 3’ wide door in the South wall, there could be as much as 8 tons of stone directly above it!), and you also want to do that carefully, so that the entire building doesn’t collapse in the process. Clearly this is not something I want to deal with, so I’ll have to make do with existing (or pre-existing) openings, which is why I thought representing an old, walled-up opening in the model was a good idea; I haven’t actually ended up using it in my design, but someone else might come up with different ideas.
The best design I could come up with, instead, requires walling up the current entrance door and exploiting the existing window to create a new entrance door; here is how it looks like:
In my view, this design would have the following pros:
- main room with symmetrical shape and small but usable RFZ around the listening position (see next picture), soffit-mounted monitors with easy access to the back for connection/setting and ventilation (if needed)
- enough storage space for my needs, very limited wasted space (white areas)
- tiny entrance for jackets/umbrellas/shoes, providing independent access to ground floor and upper floor rooms
- straight staircase (easy to buy prefabricated) exploiting (at least partially) the existing hole in the ceiling, and, more importantly, not requiring modifications to the iron beam structure of the ceiling itself
and the following cons:
- no windows (not a big issue for me as most of my time in there would be at night anyway, at least until I retire)
- a certain amount of masonry work required to wall-up the current entrance door and convert the existing window into a new entrance door (awaiting confirmation from the structural engineer that this can be done, but I don’t see why it couldn’t, considering the lintel above the window already holds the weight of everything above it).
To add a window, I could exploit the above-mentioned pre-existing door and create a window in the front wall between the speakers, but:
- it would be just behind my main monitor screen(s) and we all know it’s not good to place a screen right in front of a window
- due to the narrow alley in front of the building, the thickness of the walls and the limited width, it would never provide enough natural light to the room to keep artificial light off
- it wouldn’t be centered on the wall unless I make it unreasonably narrow; not sure if it would be an issue sound-wise but I’m also not sure I would like it aesthetically
so I don’t really think it makes sense, but objections are welcome of course.
3.2 Acoustics
Here’s a sketch of the RFZ as I worked it out based on my best understanding of how it works (green beams are from the right speaker, red beams from the left one, when facing the speaker wall):
Unless I’m missing something or getting the maths wrong – which I may well be as I’m very much a beginner in the intricate world of acoustics, who hasn’t used his college trigonometry for about 25 years – this would leave a 60+ cm (2+ ft) reflection-free space to the sides and to the back of the listening position, which is way more than I typically move around when at the desk. I’m also planning to have the obligatory cloud above and diffusors + couch on the back wall, besides as-large-as-needed bass traps in the back corners.
As mentioned above, sound isolation is not a critical factor for this room: I just need around 45-50 dB of it to make sure I can mix at night without too much sound leaking out and record vocals keeping out the most common external noises. Space is a critical factor though, so I don’t really want to overdo it and unnecessarily burn room space just to be on the safe side isolation-wise. But I also need quite some thermal isolation (see HVAC section later on), so I have to find a decent balance. Having said this, my thinking is that the perimeter of the main room could be built using a staggered stud structure:
I haven’t calculated how many gypsum layers or how thick a cavity should I have to achieve the required isolation yet, but hopefully it won’t be much, considering the outside walls are 60 cm (2 ft) thick stone and will provide good isolation in the low end.
The floor would be wood or laminate with an insulation layer under it (see also HVAC section below), and I was thinking of lowering the ceiling up to the base of the central iron beam, and fill the resulting cavity with insulation; however, I haven’t looked extensively into floor and ceiling insulation yet, so I will get back with more details and any question once I have done some homework.
Doors are also a topic I haven’t delved deep enough into yet. If at all possible and not unreasonably expensive, I’d welcome the idea of single doors properly insulated and sealed, as opposed to the typical inside/outside door scheme, for obvious practicality reasons. Maybe the main room door could be an exception, as two doors could help keep out the dust coming from the entrance. I have to study a bit more the door insulation topic before I am able to ask meaningful questions here anyway.
3.3 HVAC
This is one of the key challenges of the whole project, because it could make maintenance costs unreasonably high.
As a matter of fact, I have measured the interior Winter temperatures in the house across the alley when not heated, and they reach the freezing point at night: it’s basically like being outside. This means that, even though I won’t be using the place much in the Winter months, I’ll have to keep it heated all the time, at least to a point – I’m assuming around 15° C (60° F) – to avoid thermal shock to instruments and other gear, and keep humidity in check to avoid condensation.
After studying quite extensively, an under-floor electrical heating system seems the best solution for my case: it is energetically efficient, distributes heat homogeneously, doesn’t require piping and an external energy source, is totally silent, and doesn’t move air (and therefore dust) or create vibrations, plus it can be easily installed DIY. This also makes especially sense considering that cooling is not needed even in the hottest days of Summer, so I can avoid an AC system altogether. I’ve done sizing calculations for the system based on a quite comprehensive model that takes into account building structure and sunlight exposure, historical seasonal weather data, etc. but not the insulation, so it’s a pretty conservative approach and I’m quite confident about it. I hope I’m not mistaken though
Ventilation is another story though, and I haven’t studied the matter very deeply yet. Considering my limited isolation requirements and the fact that it will be mostly myself and mostly for few hours in a row, I don’t see this as being a challenge in itself. However, I’m once again concerned about the dust factor, so I want to find a ventilation solution that minimizes air movement and dust sneaking into the room, and that I suspect will be the real challenge.
Back to the heating system, here is the one I’m talking about:
Fenix - Ecofilm Set
It seems they use it to heat huge stone churches and castles in Italy, so it should be ok for my little barn. They recommend to install it on a layer of 6 mm (1/4’’) extruded polystyrene which provides thermal and acoustic isolation:
Fenix - Starlon®
This layer would be placed directly above the concrete slab and under the heating wires, with the wood/laminate floor on top. The specifications say it will cut 17 dB out of the footsteps noise, but I’m not sure how this relates to actual sound isolation across the frequency range, maybe I will enquire with them. Such as for the doors, I also have to study a bit more the floor (and ceiling) insulation topic before I am able to ask meaningful questions here.
Of course insulating the main room for sound will help a great deal to insulate for temperature as well. However, the storage closets will still be ice cold in the Winter if I don’t do anything to them. So what I’m planning to do is to have the under-stair storage closet insulated and heated in the same way as the main room, basically making it an extension of it, so I can use it to store instruments, microphones and other gear without exposing it to thermal shock/condensation as I pick it up; the corner storage closet instead, I could keep unheated and use to store non-sensitive, non-music material such as mop, vacuum cleaner and other cleaning stuff, a foldable ladder, spare lightbulbs, basic DIY tools, etc. Same for the entrance and the stairs, I don’t think they need to have a permanent heating system: should I ever need to go up and down a lot during the Winter for a specific session and suffer the temperature difference, I can always get a cheap portable electric heater and place it in the entrance and be done with it.
***
And that should be about it for the ground floor. The upper floor room I haven’t sketched yet, but there’s not much to sketch until Phase 3 doesn’t get closer anyway: other than putting up windows where the current openings are, rainproofing and airproofing the roof and building the staircase landing area, I’m not planning to do anything else to it in the short term.
And now my main questions/doubts:
a. Are there any major or minor flaws in the design, and/or suggestions for a more convenient one (from any standpoint: not only in terms of acoustics, but also ergonomics, financials, futureproof-ness, anything really)?
b. Is my RFZ sketch correct?
c. Would the treatment I’m planning (cloud above desk, diffusors + couch + bass traps at the back) be enough, or is there anything more I should think of, especially to control the low end?
d. Does the staggered studs wall structure make sense for my isolation requirements in the main room?
e. If so (or even if not...), where the room perimeter touches the outside walls such as in the North-East corner, should I stick the exterior leaf to the stone walls or leave some air in between? I read that 3 leaves is not good, so I guess I have to make the outside walls part of the exterior leaf, but then what do I do where the room perimeter is far from the outside walls, such as in the West corners?
f. Ventilation: any ideas on how I could minimize air movement and dust sneaking into the room while still avoiding to suffocate?
g. Is there any reason why I should think about installing the heating system in all the ground floor as opposed to just the main room and the under-stair closet? I’m thinking about condensation, rising damp (very common issue in the area), etc.
I’m sure I’ll come up with many more as I go along and study deeper, but answers to these basic ones will get me a long way forward already.
Many thanks in advance to those who will bother to read through such a long post and provide their contribution: being conscious of how precious a resource time is these days, I will appreciate it immensely.
no need to extend this conversion as to avoid hijacking your thread...