Control room window

Nate,
I understand what you're saying now about your control room. How much can you hear from your live room when you're in your control room if you're listening to drums? If you can't hear them, then I probably won't be able to.

The thing about the "chain is only as strong as it's weakest link" is an analogy I've used when talking with my friends about my studio. The only thing is, it can be a bit mis-leading. Think of this... A wall made entirely out of glass will have a piss poor STC, and the smaller that window gets the better the STC. And, if you make it so where the glass isn't, there's a 50 foot thick block of earth blocking the sound, so the only part of the wall that will let sound through is the glass. It may not be the best analogy for what I've done, but you can get my point I'm sure. The better we make the wall the glass is in, the better the entire wall will be at blocking sound. By making the wall as big as we have we're making the glass the only weak point.

Proveras, STC is Sound Transmission Class, a numerical rating of how effective a material is at blocking the transmission of sound through itself. This rating generally applies to hard materials like rubberized sound barriers, concrete, brick and drywall but also applies to a much lesser degree to softer materials. Virtually every material filters out some of the sound that travels through it, but dense materials are much better at this than are spongy materials.
I copied that directly out of Acoustics 101 since they put it so nicely.
A single wood stud wall, 16" o.c., with 3½" R11 insulation and a single layer of ½" drywall on each side: STC 38
The STC's just keep getting better the more layers you add. The target I go for is about 75. If I only get in the 50's I'm still happy.

Later
 
Just not gettin' it......

Brian,

Judging by your response, I'm afraid you're still not understanding my point.

You said--

"The better we make the wall the glass is in, the better the entire wall will be at blocking sound. By making the wall as big as we have we're making the glass the only weak point"

Using the "chain link" analogy, that's like saying--

"as long as I have a strong chain, it's OK that only one of the links is weak."

WRONG.

THE CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS WEAKEST LINK.

Read that a few times and apply it to your control room...

You are absolutely incorrect in your analogy of your 50 foot earth wall, and only one small window.

Did you know that a ONE SQUARE INCH hole or crack is big enough to completely abolish the integrity of a soundproof room?

It doesn't matter how big or small your window is, your room will get the net STC of the weakest link.....the window.

Picture sound as water...

You could fill a bucket with water, and have a gaping hole in the side....the water will get out. You could alternatively have a tiny hole in the side...the water will still get out. If your objective was to keep the water in the bucket, you would have failed...no matter how big the hole.

Sound is the same way....

It will find the easiest way to get into the room, and that's the path it will take.

No matter how thick your wall is, if you put the window in, your room will only be as "soundproof" as your window configuration and the STC of your glass panes.
 
Re: Just not gettin' it......

Thank you for yet another completely condisending reply. You're assuming I don't know the "treat sound like water" thing, I've used that MANY times when talking with people about this stuff. You assume I don't know that a hole in a wall will destroy the sound proofing of the wall. I guess the hundreds of dollars we've spent on caulk and many hours of work we've put into sealing every crack, every seam, every hole, was all in vein because you don't think I know about it. We've done more caulking than most people will do in a lifetime. I've got the stains all over my clothes to show for it... unfortunately...

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying about my window. I didn't know anything about studio construction before I started. So now I'm just trying to band-aid the situation. It's not like I would have designed it this way knowing what I know now, but at least I can make the best out of what I have. You can say what you want about the size of my window, but just look at ANY proffesional first class studio. They have HUGE windows and yet the still seem to acheive a VERY high STC. So why don't you e-mail them and let them know they're doing it all wrong? Let them know they can hear sound through their window, I'm sure they'll all redesign their studios.

In "homerecording" I think too many times people under estimate what their capable of. Why can't we do as good of a job as the professionals? We can. They're not using magic to do what they're doing. We all have access to the same info and materials.
 
Brian,

I apologize if I'm coming across as condescending.

It's probably because I'm getting tired of repeating the same things, only to have you reply the same way.

I'm really a very cool guy!

You're still saying things like--

"You can say what you want about the size of my window, but just look at ANY proffesional first class studio. They have HUGE windows and yet the still seem to acheive a VERY high STC. So why don't you e-mail them and let them know they're doing it all wrong? Let them know they can hear sound through their window, I'm sure they'll all redesign their studios."


Again, that's so far from my point it's not funny. As I told you, we have two BIGGG windows in the control room of our facility....(which most would actually consider a "professional" studio.)

The bottom line, is that we didn't attempt to build walls with an STC of 70, because we knew that our windows would be in the low 50's at best....so we planned around that...because the low 50's is still pretty damn good.

Happy Recording, Brian.
 
What would the STC be of two peices of glass, one 5/8" and one 1"? Since we've saved so much money on wood we can afford to get really thick glass. If anyone knows what that would be please let me know. And yeah I know they'll be REALLY heavy, but we've got a bunch of guys working on this.
 
what we're talking about here is two things - STC and person to person communication. The glass is for the latter and I believe is more important than the STC. If you look at my plans I use large glass sliding doors which we all know can't be made with a high STC even with 1/2" glass - but the p to p communication is great and that's why I do it.

We drew out the floor plan of the new studio on the bare concrete floor last night and all got drunk and stoned and pretented to be recording in it - it was a great buzz. On Monday the guys start sealing the outer stud walls with 16mm (5/8) firecheck plasterboard and we are away - I'll try to keep you all posted with progressive photos of the construction and you can all post your comments here at the BBS

:D
Cheers
 
John Sayers said:
We drew out the floor plan of the new studio on the bare concrete floor last night and all got drunk and stoned and pretented to be recording in it - it was a great buzz.
Click to expand...

Heheh ... that's hilarious, John ... I did exactly the same thing I did when I built this place! :D
 
John Sayers said:
what we're talking about here is two things - STC and person to person communication. The glass is for the latter and I believe is more important than the STC. If you look at my plans I use large glass sliding doors which we all know can't be made with a high STC even with 1/2" glass - but the p to p communication is great and that's why I do it.

We drew out the floor plan of the new studio on the bare concrete floor last night and all got drunk and stoned and pretented to be recording in it - it was a great buzz. On Monday the guys start sealing the outer stud walls with 16mm (5/8) firecheck plasterboard and we are away - I'll try to keep you all posted with progressive photos of the construction and you can all post your comments here at the BBS

:D
Cheers
Click to expand...

Two things to reply to on this one...

I do very much agree that the person to person communication is key on a good studio. Before we had a real studio to record in my band used a camcorder and a TV in the control room to see the drummer in the other room. When he felt he had a good take he'd give thumbs up or thumbs down for a bad take. And the crappy thing about my camcorder was that you couldn't just leave it running, so we'd have to press record and every hour and a half go rewind the tape and press record again. So we've got about an hour and a half of, what we call, Jake TV. :) A window is going to be pure bliss using.

Now for the other part... Man, I thought my friends and I were the only dorks who ran around our studio, screaming and drinking beer and imagining walls and pretending like I'm running the board from the imaginary control room while my friend plays bass on a broom! It's good to know that other people are just like us... It's probably pretty much because musicians are just a weird breed. Now we're putting up finals layers of drywall so we can't run around anymore and jump into the walls to test their strenth.
Speaking of posting pictures of progress I have to scan in some of the pictures we've taken of our studio to show everyone what we're doing. I won't scan them all because we have about 300 so far.

-Later
 
I'd love to see the pictures Brian - please post them - I've got to learn your US terms - drywall is plasterboard?

Coincidence is a funny thing (hey no religious posts here please) My last girlfriend did a particular kind of cloth dyeing that I thought would be appropriate for this studio walls but when we broke up she went to Italy. Yesterday I asked my clients wife if she knew anyone who did cloth dyeing and she said there was a lady nextdoor who did it. I went over and introduced myself and it turns out that she is the other person who does this distictive kind of dye work!!

So we will have colourful wall treatment anyway

Cheers
John
 
Yeah, drywall is plasterboard. Other names for it are sheetrock, and gypsome. There are so many names for it. Same with particle wood, I think it goes by about 3 names. Speaking of drywall, we just put up about 13 sheets tonight and mudded. We're all ready for the second layer :) In the live room at least. we've got 3 other rooms to do... grr... It is all so much fun though, we don't mind.

So you're doing a colorfull kind of mix on the walls? I don't think I'd like that in my studio :) We're going for a very neutral scheme. We don't want to be destracted while recording parts. We had real plain walls in our last studio and that worked out great. Except the room we had the drums in... there was excersize equipment, a TV, flowery wall paper... tons of things to distract the drummer. But yeah, we're going to have dark blues on most of the walls.
 
Yeah, me too Brian ... I'd love to see some pictures of your place!
I can't wait to see pictures of your new project, either, John!
 
Back to the window ...

I used 1" insulated glass in mine (two panes each in it's own frame)... seems to work ok so far. I figured insulated is better because of the extra air space? ... dunno. I suppose the glass in these is pretty thin though.
What are the advantages to using plate glass ... and why the two different thinknesses?
 
the colour is to break up the monotony of continuous plain colour. I just want to have a little bit of colour variation every now and then but I think it will be predominately blue like yours - that's all. Where did you get the 1" laminated glass. A studio I did called cloud studios had 1" laminated smoked glass that the owner got from someone who said it feel off the back of a truck! They gave it to a glass cutter who tried everything including hitting it with a heavy mallet but couldn't even dent it!!

The reason for the differing thickness is that each sheet will then have a different resonate frequency so they won't resonate together like top and bottom snare skins.


We aren't getting into multiple sheets of plaster as we are on a 5 acre block in the country and our nearest neighbours don't warrant the expense - so we are just using 1 layer of 16mm(5/8)on double stud walls. The building is like the typical American Barn with a flat upstairs which is where I'm living now with my Red Kelpie dog.

Cheers guys
 
Hey John,

You're right about the STC of sliding glass doors. They suck.

We ended up having to double them up...otherwise we would have completely wasted time and $$ building our walls so well.

Doubling up the sliders did a really good job of getting the STC up where we wanted it to be, without having to sacrifice the huge advantages of inter-studio visual communication.

Is that what you did with yours??

I was wondering....how do you post pictures of studio stuff on the newsgroup??

I'd love to see the progress of Brian and your studio...and would be happy to share photos of ours.

Photos are very educational for up and coming studio builders...

Wish I would have had some to look at when we started ours.

Nate
 
Nate Tyler said:

I was wondering....how do you post pictures of studio stuff on the newsgroup??

I'd love to see the progress of Brian and your studio...and would be happy to share photos of ours.

Photos are very educational for up and coming studio builders...

Wish I would have had some to look at when we started ours.

Nate
Click to expand...

I don't know how to post pictures either... I was just planning on uploading the pictures into my band's webspace and putting links on here.

So you'd like to see a picture of me(?) and my studio? I wasn't really planning on putting a picture of me on here :)

Fortunately I was able to find pictures of others' studio projects before I started to build mine, and reading acoustics101 really helped too.
 
Brian,

Before starting our studio, I read 2 or 3 books, and looked at as many studio pictures as I could find on the web. Helped quite a bit.

I read 101 after I was just about done with the construction process. It was pretty good...just a little basic and slightly biased towards using Auralex products.

What I didn't find were pictures of studios in the construction process. That would have been cool.


As for the pictures...I meant your studio, and John's studio. Not pictures of you. :)

How to post them???
 
Nate Tyler said:
Brian,

Before starting our studio, I read 2 or 3 books, and looked at as many studio pictures as I could find on the web. Helped quite a bit.

I read 101 after I was just about done with the construction process. It was pretty good...just a little basic and slightly biased towards using Auralex products.

What I didn't find were pictures of studios in the construction process. That would have been cool.


As for the pictures...I meant your studio, and John's studio. Not pictures of you. :)

How to post them???
Click to expand...

Well I already knew how to do regular construcion, so I think that got a lot of reading out of the way.

Yeah, A101 is a little biased, but I think the theory was the most important thing to grasp. If you get the theory you can use whatever products you want.

I'd have to say that finding the pictures of a world class studio in the contstruction process was KEY in giving me the knowledge I needed to start construction. It put images with the words I read. The site isn't there anymore, which is surprising since some BIG name bands recorded there. The site WAS http://www.treesound.com. I don't know what happened to it.

As for posing my pictures... I'm just going to make a section of my bands website devoted to the construction pictures. Right now the site is down because it wasn't what we wanted, but I'll reopen it and post all the pictures.

I think it's neet that all of us can get completely off on looking at pictures of a studio in the works, and about 95% of the people in the world won't even care, and they probably think we're dorks. The thing they don't see when looking at the pictures is that recording studios is where the music they love is created. This lady I used to work with is a prime example of this. I told her we were going to record our songs in our studio and she said, "Oh, you mean you have to record your songs before they can be played on the radio?" Enough said. :)
 
Posting pictures

take the spaces out of the img tags and substitute the url for your graphic ...


[ img ]http://www.yoursite.com/yourpic.gif[ /img ]
 
yeah we doubled the sliding doors and today we decided to go with aluminium doors instead of timber as timber takes up so much of the visual area.

Today Ameril (my client) produced a digital video camera that will take stills that you can load into a computer so I can take photos and will put them up on my site in the next couple of days.

Had to deal with the chippies today(carpenters to you in the US) - I don't know, you spend weeks and days drawing all the plans in detail but they reckon they know it all and you say - "you are supposed to have insulation in the cavity between the upper flat and the plasterboard" Oh they say! we thought you didn't - It's in the F...K.. Plan - why don't you look at it once in a awhile!!!!! they don't seem to realise how complex a studio is - do have this problem Brian and BigKahuna??

Got a very good joinery team today who will make up all the wall treatment - they make nice work.

We are still trying to figure out the gear - it's really hard today with so much choice and so many systems operating - sent an email to ED but it appears he's working his ass off and I don't expect a reply - shit I should be able to work it out and we will eventually.

cheers guys
:D
 
Let's see if this picture works... It was the cover of my band's demo "Gimpse." Our bass player/singer does our graphic design, he's going to college for it. What a fun job he'll have when he graduates!

logo.gif


Ok, it worked. Now I know how to post pictures.

John, You ask if I have the same problem as you with carpenters? Well, I'm sure if I had to work with them I would, but we've done everything ourselves. That's why it has taken us 6 1/2 months so far. Just 3 guys, and my brother helps sometimes, so at most we'll have 4 guys working on it. But I completely understand what you mean about regular construction guys not understanding what goes into a studio. Just remember, they're most interested in how a wall looks than how it sounds. Just give a regular wall a small pound with the palm of your hand and listen to how much it shakes and rattles... then do the same to a studio wall, you then realize why studios are a bit different. But hey, if they were easy to build then everyone would have one. :)

[Edited by Brian Grey on 09-11-2000 at 05:49]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top