Advise on Floor to put in my new studio

I

iwanarock

Rocking Member
First I want to say thank you to all of you for the advise you have already given me, this site is a fantasic resource thanks to all of you. I am building at home studio in my basement ....room within a room (4 inches apart), R-Channel, double installation with Foam and R-13, a insulated drywall ceiling with a drop ceiling below that, double door entrace to the sutdio (thanks for all the advise). The only thing I haven't done in float the floor being its in the basement.

1)What I would like advise on if I should put in a hardwood floor (if it is pergo does it matter) or carpet with heavy padding?

2)Also any door recommendations for the double doors , Solid pine 6 panel, solid Birch ,other, does it matter?

3) Also any advise on Auralex studio foam treatment of the walls once complete. I am not sure I understand what walls area I should use it on and how to determine that and how much is required.
 
I'm hoping someone answers your questions on the floor treatment issue.
I built a basement studio, rooms within a rooms, but I have not been able to decide what to do with the floor.
I currently have it carpeted, but looks wise, I would prefer wood or laminate (pergo).
I'm hesitant to pull up the carpet because the main room is 15 x 30 and it may cause more costs with needing more acoustic treatment for reverb.
People talk about how wood gives a warmer more natural room sound, which begs the question, does that also apply to laminate type flooring (pergo). Even real wood if heavily treated for a nice high gloss, would not that take away from any acoustical benefits, ie; your basically putting a layer of plastic over the floor.
Thanks
JJ
 
JimJoe Thanks for responding,yeah I was hoping somebody would come back with some advise. There seems to be alot of information on how to build the room but not as much on how to put the finishing touches to it. I am like you worried about the acoustic's in my studio, construction will be done tomorrow and next is painting and then the floor. Did you do any acoustic treatment on your room on the walls (accoutical wall panels), basstraps and such and if so how did you decide where to put them. The room sounds real lively now which is cool but I won't now the effects until its finished and I can start to record in it. John Sayers can you offer any advise?
 
Well if you have sharp corners, I had three, you will want some bass traps in the corners. I bought some through markertek and they work fine.
I am slowly treating the room as I see the need to deal with certain spots, as I go along so I don't end up overdoing it. I generally set up one or two "room mics" 15 or 20 feet away from the amp or drums I am recording to allow me to get a "bigger" sound in the mix. I have found that those are the only tracks that the sound of the room really comes into play other than my overheads on the drums.
I've read that you want reverb down to 1/2 second. I don't think you need to get too technical. Just cut down on reverb in your live room to where you would like it to be. After all it is supposed to be a live room, so I figure too much is going to end up sounding like a room in a house filled with furniture. Of course if you totally deaden the room you can use effects but, it is always better to get it to sound the way you want at the source.
I try to avoid manipulating the sound by effects or eq as much as possible by setting up differents types of mics in various locations.
If you use the room for rehearsal, you want the sound reflection/reverb to be brought down enough so that when you are playing with others, you hear whats coming out of the instrument and not whats bouncing off the walls.
Corner bass traps will take care of alot of this because it's the low frequencies that are usually the problem, but you may do more depending on your tastes and needs.
JJ
 
sorry for not getting back - I lost my phoneline in a thunder storm, just got back on today :)

a timber floor is acoustically neutral in that it won't absorb anything (except it will absorb lows as a panel absorber) and is reflective. If you put carpet on it the carpet will absorb the highs but only down to around 1Khz. Now that's OK if you absorb below 1Khz with wall treatment like slots and panel absorbers which also reflect/diffuse the highs.

You have to balance it all out. Some say that drums sound better on a piece of carpet on a timber floor than they do on straight carpet, similarly acc gtrs. If your room is big enough you can have both.

cheers
john
 
RT-60?

Do you have RT-60 goal. Your acoustic design schedule will show it. How many sabines absorsion do you need. Your wall construction analasis will help determine it.
Any diffusers in the picture. How much wall sq. footage of absorbers do you plan on and in what configuration. All these are determining factors in your floor specification.
If you really want to fly by the seat of your pants,(sounds like fun) when your construction is done(all calking, trim, base board, electrical wall plates, vent covers and the room is basicallly 6 blank surfaces, set up a stereo speaker system about 2 feet from one wall. up on chairs or something, sort of like a band, and setup a mic(not connected to the studio speakers)in the middle of the room(actually try different places during the test. You need to monitor the sound in your control room, while some one else temporarily hangs absorbers, diffusers, rugs, bass traps etc., and you will hear the actual room response change over your monitors as they move the affore mentioned items. After a couple of hours of trial and error, you will start to hear whats good where and with what sounds(i.e-percussion, vocal etc.0 You might want to consider movable gobos with foam on one side and a reflective surface on the other. Maybe, rolling or hinged panels made of same. theres lots of ideas Usually the cieling can be used to hang bass traps and absorbsion panels.Remember, absorbsion is like an open window. The larger the window, the more absorbsion. Reflection is actually diffusion. But how you reflect determines comb filtering. Broadband diffusion is avilable in different products, but I can show you how to build 5 different diffusers, easily, and cheap. And they really work. Your flooring is part of the overall acoustic equasion. email me for more.
rmfdesign@rcsis.com P.S: RT-60 is how long it takes for the sound in the room to decay 60db. This is the rooms reverb time!(RT-60)Echo is another related animal.
 
if your making a studio out of a room that already has a thick hardwood floor i wonder if would be best to leave it and use pieces of carpet ...or carpet the whole thing?

a "floating" floor is out of my budget....this year anyway
 
Hi, Rick here again, well this is hard stuff to determine over the net. O.k I'm going to stick my neck out. And you guys with machete's, remember, nothing risked, nothing gained. Heres the thing, hardwood floors are cool. Not only are they a nice looking floor, they are wood, which is an absorber and reflector. Pine responds differently than
maple. Not much. Not like carpet or foam, but every porous material absorbs differently. Theres a chart I have showing the amount of absorbsion of each material in the list in sabines. Look, acoustics is a science,but home studios are not a lab, or a space shuttle, (although mine looks like a nasa control room,lol) and EVERY studio has its own sound, bad or good! Here's the skinny.
Place a speaker in the BEST absorber there is. Outside. With nothing around, there are no reflections(except from the ground and we won't go there). Place a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood 50 ft. away directly in the path of the sound, and you get a reflection. (Echo). When the reflection arrives, it gives your brain information about the space around you. Reflections in a room are complex. They cancel, add, decay, etc. and as they do, they either reinforce some freq or cancel. Are you a musician. If you play music, I'm sure you had places you LOVED the sound. WHY! This is a very subjective
subject and in the ear of the beholder. Usually, a good room is usually defined as one that the difficult modes (reinforced frequencys) have been tamed, and reflections have been diffused equally My suggestion is leave the wood floor, use a variety of throw rugs, leave exposed areas of wood floor,(the floor now becomes a diffuser-some reflections, some absorbsion)use broadband differsers on the walls(I'll post a drawing of diffusers you can build later) and if you need them, absorbers. I don't have enough info here to give you proper advice, I don't even know if were talking about a control room or studio. Hell, I'm no acoustician, but I think I know enough to help, but real troublesome sound artifacts, take real analysis to tame them. Best advice for the floor is above. Best advice in general-try things. But only things you can change in one hour. When you start hearing things you like over the monitors, use them in that context the next time.(i.e.) set things up to be flexible, but repeatable Thats why gobo's are so cool. You create the acoustic space around the mic and performer. Thats all I can do for now. Fitz
 
Its been my preference to make rooms reasonably dead through a combination of diffusers and acoustical foam. Auralex is good stuff, but very pricey. Bass traps in the corners, diffusers in front and behind you, and foam on the sides and ceilings. The quantities and types of products you will need to use depends on the your space and its construction.

Regarding floors - I LOVE the liveness of hardwood floors. It looks good, it sounds good, it reflects nicely and adds a nice balance to heavily absorbing rooms.

In fact, in my flip-floor vocal booth we're epoxying down a dark mahogony pergo floor. I prefer "real" hardwood of course, however because the floor of the vocal booth flips up (covering a stairwell) a thick-wood floor has been deemed impractical.
 
carpet or not?

I built a studio in an already exiting area with concrete floors. So carpet was the only answer for me. But my walls are in 2" very dense foam (90 lb) . I was able to find sheets of this foam 90" by 80". So at the corners I just let it form a curve around naturally. No bass traps needed at all. Made the live room seem almost round. This, along with the carpet sounds great.
 
IMHO

The floor is the one surface in the room that has serious functional considerations other than accoustic. It will have gear rolled in and around. It will need to be cleaned more often than any other surface in the room. Eventually food and beverages are going to get spilled on it. Footsteps will make noise on it. It is a route to transmit sound into a mic stand. Really hard surfaces can be a pain to stand on for long periods. The main thing to remember is that what you do to the floor and what you do to the ceiling affect each other.

Here is my thoughts on some of the more popular choices:

Laminate flooring (pergo, etc.) Looks good, very low maintenance, equipment rolls and slides easily across it (be carefull of scratches though). Non-name brands are inexpensive and installation is easily in DIY territory. However it is very reflective so particularly if you have a hard surface ceiling you can wind up with slap echoes. Also with hard-soled shoes will make distinctive footstep noices.

Linoleum or vinyl tile: All the same advantages and disadvantages or laminate except cheaper and does not look as good. Also if on concrete is hard to stand on for a long period of time.

Carpet: Usually carpet used in studios will be a short closed-loop carpet like a berber and not a shag or plush carpet. The reason is to make it easier to roll or slide equipment. Will absorb mids and highs from the room and will have fewer problems with slap echoes if the ceiling is also reflective. Highest maintenance, gets stained relatively easily, generally quiet when walked on. Not generally a DIY material if you care about the quality of the finished installation.

Interlocking rubber floor tiles: Doesn't look quite as nice as the others but presents an easy surface to walk on and move equipment around. Low maintenance, easy to clean and hard to stain. Slightly more absorbtive than hard surfaces but less than carpet. Definity a DIY material.
 
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