John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi pros ,

I'm scouring the forums and wondering what is the best and most proper way to attach treatments(such as slat resonators, bass traps, and absorbers) to studio/CR walls. I realize that absorbers, like fabric covered baffles, often have their own clip system or use velcro or such, but for soffits and the large wooden treatments, how do you nail or screw these to the walls without destroying your isolation?

Do you secure things to the floor? If so, what about lighting, such as track or can lights?

Thanks for your help. This issue is stumping me.

So I guess my real question is: how to you attach things to wall without screwing or nailing things in?

Hi Sam,

What exactly are you trying to attach? What is your current construction or have you built yet? What type of isolation do the walls & ceiling have?

Hey, Thanks for the reply.

So far construction is flat earth. Hopefully construction will begin in March. The plan is based on this design i have cobbled together. It's not my studio, I'm helping a friend with a dream and all that stuff. Apparently, he looks to me for info on this sort of thing, so I get to do the specifying. The small budget scares me, but I'm going to try to help him do the best that he can.

10 foot ceilings everywhere but the specified "live" side of the studio in which we'll raise the ceiling to nearly the top of the truss and gain an extra 3 feet or so of volume.

i'm looking to lower the ceiling height in the CR from the producer's desk to the back wall and planning on having square soffits running around the perimeter of the room along with vertically square soffits on either side of the sliding glass door at the front of the room for farfields. The soffits are not drawn in yet. When they're done, the sliding glass door will look like it's recessed into the wall.

On the walls in the control room and some studio walls, I'm wanting to put up some fabric covered acoustic panels and in other places i'm going to leave void and install bass traps then stretch fabric over that opening, using my own fabric stretching system or the stretched fabric wall systems. Either of these wall coverings require mounting to either 2x2's or some type of wood block, unless screwed directly into the wall.

In other places, especially the studio, I'll be using diffusion, or something like RPG's flutter free on some possibly near parrallel areas.

The planned wall construction is the standard dual layer gypsum board over all in-room wall surfaces. Due to budget limitations, the ceiling will have to attach directly to the truss and I know that that will hurt isolation, but the studio owner A. probably can't afford the extra costs of detachtment and B. he is fearful of isolation systems that hang things over your head. If anybody has any ideas for floating the ceiling better, I'd love to hear them.

Also due to cost restrictions, I'm going to use RC on the CR walls only since it's a smaller space to cover.

So that's the basics of the plan. Now I just have to figure out how to safely mount the soffits without hurting my isolation.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

As far as isolating the ceiling, it's not that much more. I used RC on my ceiling and hung 2 layers of 5/8" drywall. That will help w/ some isolation.

Where about in Nashville are you building? I'm in Nashville, so if you want to get together sometime or see my current construction in progress, drop me an email.



Aaron

The studio will be in Western KY actually. I just live in Nashville and send my ideas northwest.

On your ceiling, when you hung the drywall on the RC, did you use sealant of some kind where the ceiling met the walls? Did you double up the RC or anything just to make sure it was sturdy?

Thanks for the help and I very well might contact you sometime in the future, I'd love to look at your place. Did you use soffiting in your construction?

I used acoustical sealant where the ceiling meets the walls. Left a 1/4" gap all the way around to fill w/ sealant.

The only thing I did w/ the RC, was plan where the joints would be and added an extra piece of RC so each board would have it's own to mount to. Here's the pics...

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... &start=258

And I don't believe that ceiling is going to go anywhere. It's very sturdy.

The soffits, I am building a soffit wall (the starting pictures of it are on the same link above) I still have a long way to finish them and waiting on my hand to heal.

The soffit wall I'm building is being built on top of the floating floor. It is completely isolated from the walls and ceiling. Basically free standing, and mounted only to the floor. I probably would have done things slightly different if I had gotten the info earlier before I built the floor. But I don't think it'll be a problem.