John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi Everyone. I have a new Tri-level design townhouse that is currently under construction. I've decided to convert the 3rd floor attic into a studio (see diagram). I plan on having a few keyboards, drum kit, hammond organ, guitars, and a full digital rig. My PRIMARY concern is soundproofing this room so as to reduce noise from hitting my neighbors. I would also like to prevent vibrations from bleeding into the 2nd floor as much as possible. I have met with the constuction guys and have instructed them to install Resilient channel materials in the walls adjacent to my "neighbors". The thing is...I haven't told them to put RC:

1. In the walls to the "front" and "rear" of the house. You can see that the ceilings drop to 6' because of the design of the townhouse. There are no persons above me...neither are there any persons to the front and rear. There are a couple of windows too. My assumption is that the RC is needed on the neighboring sides. I could be wrong here. Do you think that I NEED RC materials in the "front" and "back"?

2. In the floors. Do you think that I need RC materials in the floor so as to prevent bleeding into the 2nd floor? Is carpet sufficient? If I do need RC under my feet...then should it be installed in the floor...or should it be installed in the 2nd floor ceiling?

I am paying these guys a lot of coin to get this done...so I want to make sure that its done right. I don't know too much about RC so if you have any other suggestions that would be great.

Thanks for your help!

You need to STOP construction til you get more info - your words, "Drum Kit" makes it necessary to make a few choices between being able to use this space (but a bit smaller) or to NOT use this space (and not have your neighbors take out a contract on you

For what you want to do, you WILL need a full room-in-room construction - resilient stuff won't get the job done. Only fully de-coupled high mass, properly designed floor, walls and ceiling can get you there.

All this means more weight on your floor; so the first thing I'd need to know is, what are your floor joists - overall unsupported span, joist size, spacing between them (centers), all the material that's on top of those joists, what's between them (insulation?), what's under them (gypsum directly on the joists, or?)

Walls - you would need to have bare frames visible on your side to start, pull out any insulation, add 1 or 2 layers of gypsum between each stud, seal that, re-insulate, then move inward 2-4 inches and put up a second frame, fill with insulation, two more layers of gypsum, caulk, tape and texture (or whatever finish you wanted; at least part of it will end up with absorbent materials over it anyway)

Ceiling - same thing. for a better idea of good isolation practices, check out the "complete section" part, located in the REFERENCE section link at the top of the page.

I'm short on time ATM, but please do NOT let your crew put up what THEY think will work - unless they've built several studios, they very likely will SCREW IT UP and have to tear it all back out - there's very little room to do things wrong and still get decent isolation... Steve