John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello everyone. Thanks for all the great information on the site. This is my first post here. I am trying to sift through it all and my head is starting to hurt. I want to do this right, but at the same time, I do not want to break the bank or my sanity, so if you would be as so kind to offer some adive I would be most appriciative.
I live in Pennsylvannia and I am attempting to split my basment into to halves, one side for my daughter's play room and one side for a recording studio. My main concern is to keep the sound from overly distrubing the rest of the house (right now it is as if you are in the basement no matter where you are.)
The room is roughly 12 X 20 with about 7 ft cellings. The walls are currrently poured concrete and are extreme hard. In the corner I have a 5 X 6 X 7 sound booth framed out. I used 2X4 metal studs (or whatever the measurement is to equal that) with pressure treated on the floor.
This is want I have gathered so far form the board.

1) I want to use a 2 leaf barrier on the walls. I was planning on either 5/8 - 1/2 MDF - 5/8 or RC - 5/8 - 5/8 on the inside studio wall, insullation, and 5/8 - 1/2 MDF - 1/2 on the oustide wall. If I am using metal studs, do I need RC?

2) On the Ceiling I will use insulation RC - 5/8 - 5/8. I need to make sure that the sheetrock only goes into the RC and not the studs themselves. Whatever lighting I use, it should be surface mounted to keep the ceiling in tack. I have a big return vent (about 16" by 2') along side of the inside studio wall and the heat \ cool vent on the other side of the wall. I don't know what to do with the vent. If I frame the entire vent the door won't open. (allready put the doors in). I was thinking of framing most of the vent and only leaves a little where the door opens. But what do I put there? Do I wrap in in something.

3) The ceiling sheetrock and wall sheet rock should not meet and should be sealed with acoustical sealant

4) I will probally float a pergo type floor. It won't help alot but it is better than carpet, correct?

5) Should the inside walls of my sound booth be insulation > RC > 5/8 > 5/8 and 5/8 > 1/2 MDF > 1/2 on the oustside? Again there metal studs.

6) How should I treat the heat vent coming into the room?

7) What are good seals for the door? It is a solid pine slab.

Can I use recessed oulets and just caulk them realy tight?

Thanks for your help.

1 - this depends on the gauge of your steel studs; if they are structural, or 20 gauge, they aren’t flexible enough to eliminate the need for either separate frames or at least RC - if they are the lighter weight, 25 gauge, NON-load bearing steel studs, then they are flexible enough to decouple inner and outer leaf without the use of RC.

2 - I’m not picturing this very well; can you post either a drawing or a picture or two to clarify?

3 - Correct.

4 - Correct.

5 - Same as #1.

6 - This is too vague a question - if you have a typical heat vent dumping into the room, odds are the ducting is metal, the duct cross-section is too small, and the register isn’t designed for quietest possible air flow. Plus, there’s a good chance the run is too short (and not lined with absorbent, such as Super Duct, to kill noise) - you may need to find a way to run longer, larger ducting to/from the studio - this lowers the air velocity near the studio, and noise caused by moving air is roughly proportional to the 4th or 5th power of the air velocity; so cutting the velocity by increasing duct cross section makes a BIG difference in the noise level.

7 - See the REFERENCE section, there’s a thread on doors/door seals; don’t remember everything that’s there, I’m writing this on the road with no internet connection - you might do a search on “zero”, “drop seal”, you should get some hits on both of those.

8 - Outlets - caulking helps some, as does insulation fill; but it’s better to find some intumescent putty packs (search the site for “putty pack”, it’s here somewhere) - these add mass to the outside of the electrical box and seal the holes/cracks - Also, don’t put outlet boxes that feed opposite sides of the wall into the same stud cavity; try to offset at least one cavity, preferably two, so the insulation can minimize any sound leakage.

Hope this helps; I’m trying to utilize available free time, so need to do part of this from the road; as such, I don’t have access to quite all the info I would normally have, so you’ll need to search a bit; if you can’t find what you’re looking for, I’ll mark this one so I can answer while I’ve got net access… Steve