Whether to Float a Basement Floor

[phyl]

I'm in the embryonic stages of planning a basement home studio. The studio will consist of a control room, live room, drum room, vocal booth, and a separate room for amps. The basement has concrete walls, floors and a 8' ceiling which is already sheetrocked.

I don't want to cut any corners when it comes to sound islolation but I don't want to do something if it doesn't make sense either.

My question concerns the concrete floor in the basement. I used the search function and read a number of posts on the topic, but still don't understand why it's important to do anything other than put down some tile or carpet. I've seen posts describing floating a new floor using pucks, underlayment, etc.

What are the reasons behind doing this?

1- Is it related to room reverberation?

2 - Does it affect sound isolation between the various rooms in the studio?

Thanks.

[Sword9]

The key word is flanking. Sound can travel between rooms by the floor and isolation is drastically cut down.

[phyl]

I think I understand now why some folks talk about building a drum riser instead of floating the whole floor; they're essentially building a floating floor under the drums.

[Dan Fitzpatrick]

floating is for isolation (keeping sound inside), not room reverberation. the floor can provide a direct path for sound to travel from inside the room, under the wall to the outside (flanking).

I think I understand now why some folks talk about building a drum riser instead of floating the whole floor; they're essentially building a floating floor under the drums.

I've seen this too, but i find it confusing. maybe someone can explain. if you build a drum riser you block some of the sound that goes straight down perhaps but plenty of sound energy still hits the floor around the riser which theoretically would pass under your wall through the floor. a riser doesn't seem like it would be that effective.

the riser would block mechanical energy going through the drumset to the floor but i think the main problem is sound energy not mechanical.

dan

[sharward]

Greetings phyl, and welcome to the form.

You'll definitely want to set aside a few hours* to go through the "Before You Post" Post, which links to the almighty "Reference Area" Post. There are gobs of great information and guidelines in those threads.

*I'm not kidding -- hours is what it will probably take, but it's hours well spent.

By the way, you'll want to thoroughly research drum risers here before going in that direction. There are circumstances (multiple leaves, for example) that a drum riser could in theory worsen isolation.

Good luck...

[knightfly]

"the riser would block mechanical energy going through the drumset to the floor but i think the main problem is sound energy not mechanical. "

Actually, this would depend on your main floor; concrete, for example, transmits impact noise VERY efficiently; so mechanical coupling can flank to other parts of the building very easily, up thru concrete basement walls, into wood framing, then re-radiating from gypsum or other panels attached to the framing.

A riser won't stop much of the airborne sound, so if you're REALLY loud or want NO sound heard outside, then a fully contained inner leaf (floated room) would be necessary.

Either way, doing this without calculations is a crapshoot; if you inadvertantly pick a combination of materials/spacing that AUGMENTS one aspect of your drum kit, you'll AMPLIFY things instead of isolate... Steve

[phyl]

Thanks all.

I'm crawling through the FAQ threads and learning a lot. I'll probably have a few odd questions now and then to clarify what I read. Thanks for your patience.