John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

This is what I'm thinking at this point about the construction. The more I read the info from this forum, the more I realize how much I would've spent unecessarily had I began construction WITHOUT reading it. I was under the impressiont that my control room AND live room needed to be on a floating floor. Now I realize that I really only need to isolate the live room and TREAT the control room. That cuts construction cost dramatically. Not to mention time.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but is this basically correct? Since I don't listen at very loud levels, I don't need to go overboard on insulating the crap out of the control room to isolate!?

What would you think about building walls using 2x10 or 2x12 as top and bottom plates using a staggered stud pattern. Would that have more effect than using 2x6?

Thanks,
ARCG

If isolation is not an issue then yeah you can get away with not cramming the heck out of the walls with insulation although the insulation we recommend may only cost you around $75 for the average sized (small) control room.

Just put more of your resources into the acoustical treatments in the control room and live room.

You are cool with your synopsis of the floated floor.

Using one piece of wood for all the studs is ineffective as the top and bottom plates will be conductors so the isolation you were trying to get will go bye bye. Why not just use 2x4's for your studs/top and bottom plates instead of 2x6?

Bryan Giles

ARCG - any chance of a drawing of what you intend to build??

Bryan is right - money spent on proper acoustics in the rooms is probably better than spending it on floating floors. YOu really only need floating floors if you have an external noise problem - like underground railways, or sensitive neighbours etc.

cheers
john

John,
It'll take me a while but I'll get a drawing one way or another. I'm much better at using tools to build then I am at the computer!

I'll post it asap....
Thanks

John/Bryan:

My situation is similar to ARCG, but I'd rather NOT float my floors in my live room 'cause I want to preserve ceiling height...I'd rather float the control room, because I can sacrifice ceiling height there...if I have a double wall between my CR and LR, is this a reasonable approach?

Jeff

That approach will work fine - John's right about the need for floating floors, you're out far enough that your only REAL reason for floating either floor is drum and bass isolation so you can set mics using your speakers instead of cans... Steve

I second that notion as well.

Bryan Giles