Studio Design

[Phantom]

I am new to this forum and I am hoping that you can give me your feed back on a plan I have to build a home studio in the basement.

I plan on using the "room within a room" technique. The walls that ajoin other parts of the basement will be double walls. As will the wall between the control room and the recording booth.

The outer wall will be 3/4" MDF on one side of a 2x4 and 1/2" OSB on the other side. It will be filled with pink insulation.

The inner wall will be 5/8" Plywood on one side of a 2x4 and 1/2" Drywall on the other side. It will have 1" Blue foam insulation inside it. There will be 1 foot between the walls. The space between the front wall of the sound booth and the front wall of the control room will be 3 feet. These walls will have windows in them with 2 panes of different thicknesses in each window.

The ceiling (which is actually the living room floor above) will have pink insulation between the joists above. "Suspended" below the joists (I will use foam hockey pucks for spacers) will be a 2x2 frame with 3/4" MDF on one side and 5/8" Plywood on the other. it will be filled with the Blue foam insulation.

The other two walls of the control room and the recording booth are the outside walls of the basement. They will be standard contstruction 2x4 walls with pink insulation and 1/2" drywall.

Will this design give me decent isolation between the control room, recording booth and the rest of the house?

TIA
Phantom

[drstawl]

Any particular reason why you went with 12" between inner and outer walls? That seems like too much if you just want acoustic isolation and too little if you want access to this space if you plan on using it for cable runs, lighting or HVAC.

[Phantom]

I am going with 12" between the inner and outer walls because of how the plumbing and the telescoping support posts in the basement work. There will be some plumbing (drain only) in the outer wall, and the telescoping post will be in the inner wall.

Also, the more isolation between the studio and the rest of the house the better.

Phantom

[drstawl]

Ya know, I was gonna mention plumbing but I thought I was getting carried away. Thanks for straightening that out. With 12" to work with you might want to create separate compartments in the inner space and blow foam into the smaller part for additional acoustic effect.

[kristian]

i was under the impression that most of the problems with noise coming out of the studio or going in were cut by leaveing airspace since air carries soundwaves worse of all 3 types of material (and most people dont insulate with maple syrup). what about high frequencies, use foam? a little, 1/2", 2"? does caulking work as well as rubber sealer between the pieces and joints in the wood?

[PHATHEAD]

hey there!just a little sugestion, in your air space between the "two rooms" bolt sheets of peg board 1/2 an inch off the outside wall ,with rubber washers.this will trasfer sound energy into heat energy.Also if you put a second layer of drywall on ,use rezilliant channel to create a second air space.These are cost effective and work much better than a lot of other expensive junk.Make sure all air spaces are completely seperate ie:caulking taping......

[Phantom]

What is this rezilliant channel you mentioned? Where do you get it? Approximately how much is it? Also I dont quite understand about the pegboard thing. Are you suggeting this as a way to help heat the room, or is it just a way to help dissipate some of the sound energy? If it is to dissipate some of the sound energy, why pegboard in particular?

Thanx