John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi


I'm writing this while I work through the "read this before you post" thread, to make sure I keep as close as possible to all the rules.
I will recap the questions at the very end, so it makes it easier for anyone reading.

I'm from South Africa. I live with my parents, I'm 22, I have been jamming guitar for about 7-8 years now, and I've always been interested in sound engineering, recording, and studio work.
I understand music quite well and I catch on pretty quickly and so I started giving guitar lessons a couple of years ago.
I also got quite a bit of equipment and I'm getting digital desk, pro tools, a eleven rack and a MIDI controller soonas an upgrade from my current pro tools setup. I've got electric drums, guitars, amps, etc. so all this got me into the craving to start a studio about 2 years ago.

My brother is moving out of the flat/apartment at home and I'm moving in there.
I want to start a small home studio. It's nothing fancy, it's just a simple layout with a small soundproof room for tracking drums, amps, vocals, and then the front area will be like a lounge/control room area.
Keeping in mind that i have to keep a small bedroom, and there's a door in the bedroom leading to the bathroom

I'll do the soundproofing in the front area a little later. Main priority is the recording room.

My recording room isn't very big, but it'll have to do. This isn't for any commercial recordings and not anything pro level, it's just to do some band demos etc.
I do in fact have plans to build n music school/studio, but I thought I can do the home studio now, in order to make some extra cash from small recording projects, and giving guitar lessons.

Soundproofing wise, I need to do as much soundproofing as possible in as little space as possible, so if it means buying more expensive materials, I'll rather save up to get them.
Currently I thought that about 200mm's worth of space for soundproofing could do, so that's my current plans.
I do understand that the rooms aren't ideal sizes, but most unfortunately i cannot change more than I already plan to, but I only have a "take it or leave it" choice and this is better than nothing.

Planning, Layout Design

I'm quite limited on size unfortunately. So my current layout is the best i can fit into the space. The recording room is in the only corner of the building that doesn't have windows or doors.



The recording room is 2710mm x 3400m x +-2800mm
The control/lounge room is 2620 x 5140xx x +-2800mm

The wall between the recording room and the bedroom can also not be moved because of a little outside laundry room (RED block) that's already built and cannot be changed.

There's also a window to the left (YELLOW block) but no need to worry, I'm going to cover it up with a soundproof kind of "plug".


Ok here comes the tricky part and please don't freak out. hehe
Please excuse me for this part. It's really hard for me to explain this.





The front wall...
There are currently custom built frames with small glass windows inside the frames as in the picture.
It's curved alongside the top with the bricks.
From the glass to the inside wall, It's about 70mm deep. (The Blue block in 2nd Pic)
The BLUE block in the 2nd attached pic is where I'm going to fill the whole thing with isolation materials.
The door as you can see is also glass in frames.
But i'm gonna build a door frame from wood and then put a couple of layers of soundproofing material on the inside of the door so that when it closes it seal against the frame.
It will be the same principal as when soundproofing a normal door.




I'm also not bothered about the floor, It used to be a garage, and this floor was built quite thick and solid.
There are also no low frequency noises that i need to be worried about.

The ceiling is going to be soundproofed, and I'm not planning on putting in a cooling system in the recording room. So it's gonna be quite straight forward. I THINK the roof can be raised a little, and if possible, I am going to raise it.
I was thinking raising it to about 3200mm.
In the left wall in the lounge/control room, there will be a air conditioner installed. But just a normal one, no air ducts or anything huge.

The neighbours aren't too close to us, its about 20meters if I would guess.
And we used to have band practice here when it was still a garage.
If the neighbours do in fact complain about noises I'll take it from there and do more soundproofing through the rest of the place.
The MAIN thing is to soundproof the recording room as much as possible but still having enough space to put in the drums and stuff.

The walls are parallel and I know it's bad but I'll put in angled walls once it comes to soundproofing and acoustics.
Only question is, how much should a angle the walls?

Lastly the budget.
Well, as anyone would want, you want to spend as little as possible on construction because it means you can spend more money on buying more equipment hehe but seriously, I would spend as much as it takes.
If it takes me a couple of months to save up for an extra layer of soundproofing, then i'll do it. But I don't want to build cheap and then quality suffers as a consequence.
I'm thinking i'm gonna buy a Auralex roominator kit for acoustics later after soundproofing.

My parents will help out with the construction of the brick walls and concrete blocks are quite cheap here.
So let's say about $2000 for soundproofing would be acceptable. Would that do?
(If I need more, no problem, I'll spend more)
Point is, I'll spend what it takes.


Questions:
1. What do you guys think of the layout and idea? I think it could have a nice vibe to it when finished, small but fun.

2. Most importantly. The front wall with glass door.
I can unfortunately not change it or put it another door, seeing that the whole thing is a custom built frame.
Do you think the soundproofing for the door as in the pic would work.

3. How much should a wall be angled to break the parallelism of the walls. (I hope i said that right)

4. The soundproofing
I was wondering, what material would be most efficient for soundproofing.
I need to save as much as possible space so when it comes to layering the walls what is most efficient
Drywall, plasterboard, plywood, etc?
In South Africa we don't build with wood much, so I'm not very clued up on the different kinds of wood or "soundproof wall building materials". We pretty much only ever build with bricks and concrete.

5. I'm looking to find a way of getting as much isolation as possible in the least amount of space.
I was thinking 50mm joists with mineral wool inside.
Then 2 layers of either drywall, plasterboard, or something similar, attached to resilient bars
Another 50mm layer of mineral wool between the 50mm wood joists
and then another 2 layers of drywall or something attached to resilient bars.
Would this be sufficient to bring down the levels of drums enough so that its acceptable to neighbours inside their houses, hopefully enough so that I can jam at 2am hehehe


Well, I'm looking forward to any input, guidance and help.
I'm very excited about this and I'm looking to hopefully start somewhere in March otherwise April.

Thanks for everything, and especially the great forum.
Enjoy
Cheers cheers
Ruvann

Hi Ruvann, and welcome!

What part of RSA did you say you live in? I used to live there (many years ago) and I can't think of any place cold enough that you can have a small hermetically sealed room with MAJOR insulation all around, and not cook yourself in short order.... You might want to re-think that part of your plan! You will, a the very least, need ventilation in there (people have this bad habit called "breathing" that we need to do several times per minute in order to stay alive... ), and most likely you WILL need some type of air conditioning in there.

By "normal one" do you mean a split system, or a normal window or wall unit? If you are talking about a window or wall unit, then you are in trouble already.... If so, skip that idea and go for a proper mini-split system, and while you are at it, get one that allows you to connect two inside units to the one (outside) heat pump unit, so that you can also cool your live room. Or jsut get two independent min-splits.

Tell us more about that wall you plan to build, and also about how much isolation you need.... Are you planning a full 2-leaf MSM structure?

sorry to say, but it will be too late at that stage. If you are going to need good isolation, or even suspect that you might maybe possible perhaps could be need it at some point, then the time to plan for that is NOW: Once you have built your room, it will be too late to do anything for additional isolation. Unless, of course, you don't mind tearing down your room and re-building it...

One comment and one question: First the comment: I guess you know that there is no such things as "soundproof"? There are different levels of isolation that you can achieve, but totally "sound proof" is practically impossible on planet Earth: A sufficiently loud sound can always be detected through any conceivable barrier. (Sorry, I'm just splitting hairs here, but it's important to realize the truth: you can only isolate sound to a certain extent, never 100%).

Now the question: Your drums will only ever be electric, or is there a possibility that you will want to record real acoustic drum kits? Those are two very different scenarios...

Well, it sounds like you are a little confused about these two. Isolating your room ("soundproofing"), and treating your room acoustically are two totally different and exactly opposite things. The best treatment you can possibly have is no room at all: just open space. But your isolation will be zero in that case. the best isolation you can possibly have is massive concrete bunker with 2 foot thick high density reinforced concrete walls. But it will sound like crap inside. The two are mutually exclusive. The materials you use to isolate are really lousy for treating, and the materials you use for treating are really lousy at isolating. That said, there are things you can do on both sides to help the other. One thing that helps the acoustic treatment is to have your isolating walls angled (not parallel), which you already know. But those walls are part of the initial build, not something you add on later. They are part of your isolation plan, not part of your treatment plan (even though they help with the treatment). So when you design your 2-leaf MSM isolation system, you will need to angle your inner-leaf to help reduce flutter echo. If you tried to install ANOTHER wall later, to deal with the flutter echo, that would create a three-leaf system, which is a really bad idea.

You could do that, but seeing that you want to save money and still get good quality, it would be much better to build your own treatment, and to design that at the same time as you design your isolation. Although they are two different things, you absolutely do need to design them together, to work well with each other, and not fight each other. Otherwise you will end up chasing your tail as you try to continuously patch isolation problems that then cause treatment problems which also need patching but that causes more isolation issues, so you have to patch those, but in turn they cause additional treatment problems, etc.... Spend the time to design both so that they work together.

It's not the material that matters, but rather how you build it. The best (and cheapest) way of isolating sound effectively is with 2-leaf MSM construction, sometimes called "room-in-a-room" construction. Search the forum to learn all about it. Basically your room needs to be built as an outer leaf that is simply "mass", then you leave an "air-gap-filled-with-insulation" which acts as a "spring", then you build the inner-leaf which is also "mass". So you have "Mass-Spring-Mass", or MSM. (also incorrectly called MAM sometimes). The secret is to have enough mass on each "M", then to totally decouple the inner leaf form the outer leaf, such that NOTHING touches, mechanically (not even a single nail), then to seal both leaves hermetically air-tight. Bingo! You have a fantastically isolated room. (That sounds like crap inside. So now you have to treat it..)

The best materials for doing this are heavy, dense massive construction materials, such as brick, concrete, drywall, wood, etc. Despite what you might read on the internet, the are no magical materials for doing this. All materials obey the same laws of physics.

So do some research on 2-leaf MSM walls, and you will be able to build your room properly.

No! If I understand you correctly, you are talking about a four leaf wall! Bad idea. Repeat after me the studio builder's mantra: "Two-leaf good, four-leaf bad. Three leaf-bad. All other leaf bad: Only two leaf good. Seal! Decouple! Mass! Mass! Mass!" Repeat fifty time per day until you are fully indoctrinated!!!

Seriously, the best advice I can give is that you buy Rod Gervais's book, and spend a few weeks (yes weeks) reading it and reading over this forum to understand the concepts, then start planning, carefully. And only then build-

- Stuart -

_________________
I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.

Ruvann,

Hi. An important link is those stickies should not be overlooked. It is the cumulative education from years of experience that the host here, John Sayers, makes available, gratis, for our benefit.

http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/index.htm

It should not go unnoticed

_________________
Brien Holcombe
_____________________________________________
Sound: You can't stop it, you can only try to contain it.