Bass traps, angled walls, floating floors

[Bulls Hit]

I'm wondering if I need to concern my self about these things when I build my closet/studio.

From the research I've done here and elsewhere, it seems that bass traps in the corners of the room are essential to cut down on excessive bass freqs which are hard to absorb, and angled walls help prevent standing waves/phase issues by reflecting the sound in different directions.

I'm not sure of the benefit of the floating floor.

The studio I'm building is part of a rumpus room we're putting on the back of the house and will be very small, 6'8"x12'8" with parallel walls, and a ceiling curving from 8' on one side to 10' on the other.
The floor will be concrete with a timber overlay.

I will be close mic recording drums and guitar. And vocals, but no bass.

My main concern is isolation to/from the rest of the house, and I think I've got this reasonably well covered using suspended double sheeted plasterboard, laminated glass on the external wall and a heavy accoustically sealed door.

In terms of accoustics, I'm quite happy with a live sound, particularly for drums.

Do I need to worry about bass traps if the bassiest sound will be the kick drum?

Do I need to worry about the parallel walls if I'm close micing the guitar? Will they adversely the vocals?

Will a few stratgecially placed cushions, rugs, bookshelves give me enough control if reflections start getting out of hand?

Do I need to consider a floating floor? What does this actually do?

You guys who have been there before have any advice I should heed?

Thanks in advance

 

[DDev]

I don't have answers to all your questions, but I'll chip in a couple.

First off, the floating floor concept is meant to provide a means of isolating the tranmsission of sound through the floor to other rooms. The typical culprits are drums and bass amps that have a lot of bass energy which tranmits through every available surface quite easily. A floating floor isolates these sounds from the floor beneath it to minimize the transmission of those offending frequencies.

As far as the parallel walls go, you can do some things that can help that don't take much effort to implement. For instance, a piece of plywood that is placed across a corner effectively changes the wall angles at that corner. If you go to John Sayers site (www.johnlsayers.com) you can find lots of options for dealing with these issues.

I'm sure someone else will chime in with some other suggestions.

Darryl.....

 

[wheelema]

So, a floating floor isn't essential for the acoustics?

 

[DDev]

The acoustical effect of a floating floor is that it de-couples the floor from the walls and any other nearby rooms, thereby reducing the transmission of low frequencies between those surfaces. If you are familiar with the Auralex MoPads that get placed under monitor speakers, you can kind of visualize the relationships involved (the MoPads de-couple the resonance of the speaker cabinet from what it sits on thereby improving the clarity of the speaker; basically the same thing for a floating floor).

Darryl.....