Newbies trying to build a studio

L

lifewasted

New member
Hello everyone. I've been following the forum for some time but never really posted much. I'm asking for your help because with everything that I read here I gathered a lot of information but the ideas are still very mixed in my head :P
Me and my band we're building some kind of studio / playing room. Our objectives are not to record professionally (at least in the near future) but we'd like to be able to record our songs at least decently so we could give them to our friends and some CDs at the concerts and have them for ourselves :)
The problem nº1 is that we are big newbies :) the problem nº2 is that we have a very limited budget. We just want to keep improving and buying stuff slowly (we have no other chance actually :))

ok this is what we have now:
studioxt.jpg


It's about 23 square meters, in a garage, and we built this division made of plaster (we call it pladur here) and it's insulated with mineral wool. Now the next steps are: The floor and the walls.

For the floor we were thinking of floating wood (I'm not sure if this is the correct name) it's wood boards with foam underneath. like this:
http://forumdacasa.com/extensions/InlineImages/image.php?AttachmentID=608

and for the walls: they are in plaster as I told before - We have a lot of like 1cm cork squares that someone gave to us. I was thinking of now putting them in only 1 wall or something, and later when we had more money, buying some of that acoustic fome (like Sonex) and put some in the other walls. What do you think ? If you think it is appropriate we could even put cork in all of the walls, but I'm not sure if it would be good.

Thank you for everything!
 
First it will help everyone if you throw up a layout of your room. Second, throw some specifics out there. Equipment you have, budget, materials, etc. You have come to the right place for good info.

We may be able to help a bit more once we get those things.
 
please give me some help
Click to expand...
You betcha we can. But ya gotta give us something too. INFORMATION. Heres the real deal. Yea, we can tell ya, but we can't do diddly squat without knowin a whole lot about everything.:D So, to begin with...

1. Draw a layout of your spaces. TO SCALE. That means measuring your spaces. This means the height too. Then post a jpg or a .skp(sketchup if you can) or even a bitmap.

2. Take pictures of each space. From all 4 directions.

3. Tell us EVERYTHING.

Do you rent, own, or is it your parents?

What kind of HVAC is involved, if any?

Are you trying to "soundproof" this space from an adjacent space in the same building, or from neighbors? Note where they are on your plan. And the distance and circumstances of adjacency.

What kind of music do you play? And what are the instruments?


Well, that should keep you busy for a few days.:D Were here to help. But like I said, we need YOUR full co-operation to do so.

cheers
fitZ
 
ok sorry for the delay but I needed some time to gather all of the information :)

so here is the sketch of the space. The Height is 287 cm
estudio1.jpg



So now we have put cork in the floor to put the wood over it.

studiohx.jpg


and here's the view of the missing wall:

std2.jpg


I know that the pictures arent very good, so here's the view before any modifications but you can see better the space

estudio2.jpg




The place belongs to my parents and it's in a the garage of a house. The nearest house is in the other side of the road so there's no big problem. I wanted to minimize the sound that goes to the adjacent places (over the 2 ceilings - first of wood as you can see in the picture and the other of concrete))

I dont know what is HVAC sorry :P

We play rock - guitars, bass, drums and eventually some electro (synths)

Thanks a lot and sorry for the lack of information in the other post, if you need any adicional info just ask

Thanks again
 
HVAC would be any government agency - county/town/state that has some rules and regulations about building.(where are you located for a country?)
Believe me a neighbor 1/2 mile away is going to hear rock music and call the authorities! Then all your hard work will be wasted you have to shield against this!



:cool:
 
moresound said:
HVAC would be any government agency - county/town/state that has some rules and regulations about building.(where are you located for a country?)
Believe me a neighbor 1/2 mile away is going to hear rock music and call the authorities! Then all your hard work will be wasted you have to shield against this!



:cool:
Click to expand...


lol. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning.
 
lol ok I'm in portugal and this is a private space. So I dont think there is any HVAC that I should care about. ok Now I'd apreciate suggestions for the walls and eventually the ceiling? Thanks
 
lifewasted said:
so here is the sketch of the space. The Height is 287 cm
estudio1.jpg
Click to expand...

Here's all the general stuff. Once you get this done you can work on refining it:

Make sure you setup so that you’re firing down the longest dimension of the room.
Your head should be placed 38% of the way into the room, centered between the left and right walls
Your head should also be located at the tip of an equilateral triangle with your speakers. Start at a 5’ width and go from there.
Use at least 4” bass trapping in all the corners, floor to ceiling if possible.
Use 4” or 6” bass traps on the back wall; the thicker the better basically.
Use 4” panels behind the speakers on the front wall
The reflection points to the right, left and above your head can be treated with either 2” or 4” panels. I prefer 4” panels personally; you can never really overdo bass trapping.


Frank
 
Ok now we've painted the walls. We'll make the bass traps soon. But now I need some advice on the ceiling. We were thinking of possibly putting tissue/cloth there? What do you think? In the picture below you can see how our ceiling is. We could attach the tissue to the collumns (i'm not sure if this is the correct name) and that would leave a gap between the tissue and the ceiling. Would it be good for the acoustic ? Should we use it ? or should we just paint it ? Thanks a lot

imagem2342.jpg
 
Tissue isn't going to do anything for you, but I'm not sure if tissue is what you meant to say. Either way you will probably just need a cloud for first reflections on the ceiling, if you have drums, a cloud for them, and possibly bass traps for the wall to ceiling corners.
 
hmmm well I wanted to mean the material that clothes / sheets are made of :P
Also I'm not sure of what you mean by clouds?
 
Please check out the education page of our website. You need to do a lot more research before you do anything else. This is a complex topic and much of it is not intuitive. You absolutely, positively WILL screw something up unless you make some plans based on research. For example, putting cloth on the columns will do literally nothing.

Frank
 
ok, thanks Weasel, I'm reading it now, after I'm more informed I'll ask some more questions :) meanwhile if you have any suggestions feel free to shoot :) thanks again
 
.

This is what I would do if I were you, should sound ok. Won't cost too much
 

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