Building a pro studio on an amateur budget - triple leaf and other fun

  • Thread starter Thread starter conan
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Wow, I never expected such lengthy and considered responses - thanks guys!

Okay, while you have answered some questions you've also thrown up some new ones. I always knew that bass transmission was going to be my main problem, but I don't think it will be quite as bad as you may think. I don't believe in using subs and despite being a dance producer I don't like working with ear-splitting volumes. The studio will be in what you would call a, err, 'dodgy area' where rent is cheap and people will put up with some degree of noise as long as it's not ridiculous. I've done some measurements and calculations, and if I can get an STC of 57-60db with a good degree of ~100hz isolation, I will be a very happy chap. What I don't know is how realistic this is, or how much work will be involved.

Okay, now to the specifics..

1) as it stands the existing outer wall is a brick and mortar construction where I have no access to the outer layer. This is mass one, correct? Should I add more mass to the internal side of this leaf, and if so, how?

2) Knightfly suggested that John Sayers' inside-out construction isn't the best method for isolation. Which IS the best method that doesn't involve techniques that the average competent DIY enthusiast couldn't complete themselves? The diagram on his site for 'normal' isolating construction confused me a little because it seemed to suggest building two interior frames instead of one. Is this correct? In which case, where does the gypsum board go?

3) if I rip out the floorboards and install the floating floor directly onto the joists, is this dangerous considering that for isolation purposes I can't secure the new floor to those joists?

4) what kind of timber should I be using for the floating floor? Is 2x4 going to be okay?

5) I have access to the ceiling below - I'm building offices there. Does this make things easier?

6) I'm a bit confused about the transfer of weight to the existing joists. Do you mean that I'm going to have to isolate the existing joists as well as isolating the new joists from the existing ones?

Whew, so many questions!
 
OK, let's see how we do on these;

1 - If you have access to at least one side of the brick wall, you can have it "rendered" with about 1/2" thick layer of mortar;

http://ourhouse.ninemsn.com.au/ourhouse/diyclub/faqs/faq47.asp

http://www.australbrick.com.au/techinfo/sound.htm

This improves STC typically by around 4-6 dB, based on just that ONE mass; it also improves m-a-m for the same reason.

2 - on walls; this page says it better than I could, there are diagrams that will explain the double frames, etc -

http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk/tloss.htm

Also, take a look at the drawing I'm posting for a brief explanation of different elements in a sound room.

It would also help if you could specify your existing floor area, and how much of that you can stand to lose for sound proofing and acoustic treatment - What I'd need here is all three dimensions of the room and where any openings are located; a simple sketch should do for this.

3,4,5,6 - I'll need more exact info on what is already there before I could get into this; things like floor, subfloor, and framing; is the frame steel or wood or reinforced concrete, what's on top of that, how thick, if wood or steel joists what is the spacing and vertical depth of the framing, how far apart are the supports for this framing and what are they, etc; basically, if I'm to come close on this I need to "see" the building as if I were building it myself.

Easiest way to do this is to make a drawing, layer by layer, and label EVERYTHING - then post it here so we can discuss the details... Steve
 

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Chimney?

I'm really curious about the effects of the chimney, is that going to carry sound straight through all floors? If so would it be better to have the chimney and one window be in the vocal booth?

OTOH that would mean more sound going into the street from the control room!
(from the second window)

Maybe you can just insulate around the chimney a lot?

How do people deal with chimneys? Maybe it's not as big a problem as I imagine?
 
Freya, you have a VERY valid point; not only is this chimney almost guaranteed to be one continuous, FLANKING, masonry construction - it's also one continuous AIR SHAFT, likely with no turns or offsets from end to end and with (originally) some type of opening at EACH FLOOR (regardless of HOW you count 'em :=)

As such, the ONLY way I know of to combat this would be to clean up the parts of the chimney that are in your own space, render with 13-15mm thick coat, then build a second wall frame around this chimney and insulate it heavily, then a double layer of gypsum wallboard or MDF around the whole thing - even so, there will likely be structural connections to the chimney that may cause flanking noise thru the floors via the connection from each floor to the chimney.

Fixing this would take a floating floor in conjunction with floating walls and suspended ceilings; in other words, a full room-in-room construction... Steve
 
I posted a floor plan and information about the building's contruction on the first page of this thread. Do you need something more detailed? Like most old building in this area, the construction is wood.

I just finished gutting the room down to exposed brick and have someone coming later in the week to help with rendering.. ahead of you there :)

BTW, as I intend to build a fully floating room, I didn't see the chimney stack as an issue.

knightfly said:
OK, let's see how we do on these;

1 - If you have access to at least one side of the brick wall, you can have it "rendered" with about 1/2" thick layer of mortar;

http://ourhouse.ninemsn.com.au/ourhouse/diyclub/faqs/faq47.asp

http://www.australbrick.com.au/techinfo/sound.htm

This improves STC typically by around 4-6 dB, based on just that ONE mass; it also improves m-a-m for the same reason.

2 - on walls; this page says it better than I could, there are diagrams that will explain the double frames, etc -

http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk/tloss.htm

Also, take a look at the drawing I'm posting for a brief explanation of different elements in a sound room.

It would also help if you could specify your existing floor area, and how much of that you can stand to lose for sound proofing and acoustic treatment - What I'd need here is all three dimensions of the room and where any openings are located; a simple sketch should do for this.

3,4,5,6 - I'll need more exact info on what is already there before I could get into this; things like floor, subfloor, and framing; is the frame steel or wood or reinforced concrete, what's on top of that, how thick, if wood or steel joists what is the spacing and vertical depth of the framing, how far apart are the supports for this framing and what are they, etc; basically, if I'm to come close on this I need to "see" the building as if I were building it myself.

Easiest way to do this is to make a drawing, layer by layer, and label EVERYTHING - then post it here so we can discuss the details... Steve
Click to expand...
 
Yes, I saw your floor plan and comments on construction; but comments like "Floor is softwood planks nailed into the timbers" aren't accurate enough to ensure that dozens of laws of physics aren't ignored, resulting in anything from unsatisfactory isolation performance up to the entire building collapsing.

Here is a text example of the level of detail I was looking for -

Floor frames are fir 2x10's, spaced on 16 inch centers and let into the brick walls by way of 4 inch deep pockets - these are sheathed on top with 3/4 inch softwood planks (fir, I think) which are approximately 8 inches wide - they are nailed with 3 nails per plank at each joist, and have an old funky linoleum covering that is coming off. The floor joists span the width between the brick walls for a distance of 15 feet, with no other supports between walls. The brick walls are continuous from the ground floor up, and appear to be 12 inches thick - some of the mortar between bricks is crumbling slightly, and I intend to have them re-pointed and rendered 1/2 inch thick on the side toward the studio.

Now, with detail like that I could tell you that your floor is only rated for a live/dead load of 40/10 pounds per square foot, and that you should NOT attempt to build a floated floor/walls on top unless there is a way to either double up the joists or add a cross-beam and a lolly column under not only that floor, but centered under each floor to the ground, where the lower most concrete slab would need to be cut and a large, deep footing poured to support all the extra weight.

These are the kinds of details which are necessary to prevent death; there are other details involved in the actual construction of isolated rooms that, if ignored, will waste most (if not all) the time, money and effort expended on the project.

I don't have time to draw an example drawing of the above explanation, but hopefully you get the idea; you can't tell a carpenter to build you a "wood house with brick walls" and expect him to know how to proceed, or even how many bedrooms you wanted; when you also expect that house to be soundproof, you need even more information - something on a level with actual blueprints and specifications, to be exact.

I'm guessing that the surveryor you mentioned on the first page has yet to arrive; these are the kinds of details he will hopefully get into. Be sure and let him know you want to build a room-in-room on your third(second) floor, and the approximate weight of it - this part could be difficult to figure out until you know the mass of the existing floor, and its load rating.

The reason I said that last is because in order to build an effective floated room, you need to design a m-a-m system whose resonance is at least two octaves below the lowest frequency you want to stop; 3-4 is better, but nearly impossible unless you're on the ground floor. Each mass in a m-a-m system is important, as are distance between the two masses, method of decoupling (spring rate), damping (consistency, compression, and type of insulation) - all these (and more) affect the resonance of the system, so if you can't afford (or accomplish) two heavy masses, you need to compensate with deeper air/insulation gap, still maintaining good damping of the mass layers; otherwise, it simply won't work.

If the inner walls are supported on the floated floor, (and they SHOULD be) then the underfloor needs to be even stronger to support the weight. The upside of this is that the entire structure will have more mass, lowering the resonance further (a GOOD thing)

If your floor can stand the weight, laying a 2" concrete layer over the existing wood (with proper sealing) then floating a 3" concrete slab over 2" elastomer blocks would be an effective way to go; however, this construction alone would require a dead load capacity of over 60 pounds per square foot, NOT including the weight of the inner walls (or ceiling, if supported on those walls)- lighter weight methods, such as wood, require much deeper air space between inner floor and outer in order to keep resonant frequency sub-audible in frequency.

Probably the best way to approach this is to ask your engineer/surveyor for an estimate on allowable added weight per square foot; that way, we can figure out what will work in your case, without either disappointment or death (the ultimate disappointment) getting in the way... Steve
 
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Chris, your other post of this is in the right place; if you'll notice, this forum is for Studio Building and Display, not Ads for sale... Steve
 
Okay! We finally got to the floors after clearing out tonnes of rubble, rubbish and plaster.

The floor frame is 100mm x 180mm softwood joists (I couldn't tell you more than that about the wood), spaced at 12" centres. There doesn't seem to be any rot or damage to the timbers. Approx. 3/4" softwood planks of various widths 7-9" wide are nailed, err, irregularly. It looks like parts of the floor have been replaced over the years. The floor was originally carpeted but we've ripped out the carpet and would prefer to rip out the floorboards because they're not very well fitted and seem to be creaking a lot, although the underlying structure is sound. Joists span the width of the room at an angle for a distance of approx. 4.9m and let into the brick by at least 6". Brick walls are continuous from the ground up. If you need to know exactly how thick the brickwork is, I would have to go back and check properly. There is a damp problem in one corner of the room which has caused some of the mortar to soften, which I will be having investigated by a professional builder. The rest of the room will be repointed and rendered 1/2" thick on the studio side. To recap, this room is the top floor of a three-storey building.

The structural engineer has given me a 'should be okay' after having a quick look, but I never trust people when they say things like that. His main concern is my plan to split the room into a studio + control room, which would add weight to the centre of the joists. If it comes down to it, I can't afford the expense of any major construction work and would have to abandon the plan to partition into two rooms. I can't go back to the structural engineer until I have a complete floor plan and cross section, so it would help to put something together that is at least likely to be okay without requiring any major work.

knightfly said:
Yes, I saw your floor plan and comments on construction; but comments like "Floor is softwood planks nailed into the timbers" aren't accurate enough to ensure that dozens of laws of physics aren't ignored, resulting in anything from unsatisfactory isolation performance up to the entire building collapsing.

Here is a text example of the level of detail I was looking for -

Floor frames are fir 2x10's, spaced on 16 inch centers and let into the brick walls by way of 4 inch deep pockets - these are sheathed on top with 3/4 inch softwood planks (fir, I think) which are approximately 8 inches wide - they are nailed with 3 nails per plank at each joist, and have an old funky linoleum covering that is coming off. The floor joists span the width between the brick walls for a distance of 15 feet, with no other supports between walls. The brick walls are continuous from the ground floor up, and appear to be 12 inches thick - some of the mortar between bricks is crumbling slightly, and I intend to have them re-pointed and rendered 1/2 inch thick on the side toward the studio.

Now, with detail like that I could tell you that your floor is only rated for a live/dead load of 40/10 pounds per square foot, and that you should NOT attempt to build a floated floor/walls on top unless there is a way to either double up the joists or add a cross-beam and a lolly column under not only that floor, but centered under each floor to the ground, where the lower most concrete slab would need to be cut and a large, deep footing poured to support all the extra weight.

These are the kinds of details which are necessary to prevent death; there are other details involved in the actual construction of isolated rooms that, if ignored, will waste most (if not all) the time, money and effort expended on the project.

I don't have time to draw an example drawing of the above explanation, but hopefully you get the idea; you can't tell a carpenter to build you a "wood house with brick walls" and expect him to know how to proceed, or even how many bedrooms you wanted; when you also expect that house to be soundproof, you need even more information - something on a level with actual blueprints and specifications, to be exact.

I'm guessing that the surveryor you mentioned on the first page has yet to arrive; these are the kinds of details he will hopefully get into. Be sure and let him know you want to build a room-in-room on your third(second) floor, and the approximate weight of it - this part could be difficult to figure out until you know the mass of the existing floor, and its load rating.

The reason I said that last is because in order to build an effective floated room, you need to design a m-a-m system whose resonance is at least two octaves below the lowest frequency you want to stop; 3-4 is better, but nearly impossible unless you're on the ground floor. Each mass in a m-a-m system is important, as are distance between the two masses, method of decoupling (spring rate), damping (consistency, compression, and type of insulation) - all these (and more) affect the resonance of the system, so if you can't afford (or accomplish) two heavy masses, you need to compensate with deeper air/insulation gap, still maintaining good damping of the mass layers; otherwise, it simply won't work.

If the inner walls are supported on the floated floor, (and they SHOULD be) then the underfloor needs to be even stronger to support the weight. The upside of this is that the entire structure will have more mass, lowering the resonance further (a GOOD thing)

If your floor can stand the weight, laying a 2" concrete layer over the existing wood (with proper sealing) then floating a 3" concrete slab over 2" elastomer blocks would be an effective way to go; however, this construction alone would require a dead load capacity of over 60 pounds per square foot, NOT including the weight of the inner walls (or ceiling, if supported on those walls)- lighter weight methods, such as wood, require much deeper air space between inner floor and outer in order to keep resonant frequency sub-audible in frequency.

Probably the best way to approach this is to ask your engineer/surveyor for an estimate on allowable added weight per square foot; that way, we can figure out what will work in your case, without either disappointment or death (the ultimate disappointment) getting in the way... Steve
Click to expand...
 
Running out of time right now, I'll try to calc your loading (approximate) tonite - just in case, you're not wanting/able to put a central beam and lolly column under your wall location in the lower two floors, right? Steve
 
Construction on the lower two floors is an absolute last resort that has to be avoided if at all possible - the ground floor is a shop and they're already being unpleasant with me simply for being there at all and spoiling their monopoly on the building.

knightfly said:
Running out of time right now, I'll try to calc your loading (approximate) tonite - just in case, you're not wanting/able to put a central beam and lolly column under your wall location in the lower two floors, right? Steve
Click to expand...
 
Well, I'm disappointed to say that the whole project has been grounded due to a major damp problem that was discovered in the building. We couldn't afford to fix this and other inherent building/electrical problems so the idea has been dropped, which was quite a painful thing to do considering how much work we've already done (but fortunately not spent any money on yet). There are no other suitable properties in the area within our budget so I'm thinking about selling up and moving to Los Angeles like I've wanted to do for a few years. Maybe I'll be back in the future to ask for help on an LA studio project :) Thanks to everyone for all your help.
 
Hello conan, better now than later AFTER you spent a bunch of money. Actually, it sounded as if this would have been a money pit anyway. Sometimes, buildings just are NOT suited to this type of stuff, and unless your BILL GATES, it's simply better to change direction and move. Better luck with your future endeavors.
fitZ :)
 
Conan,

I'm sorry to hear that - but I'm glad you took our advice and found this all out before you spent a ton of money.

Good luck in the future.

Rod
 
Rod, Fitz and co. - I really do appreciate the time you've all taken to help me out. Until I move it looks like I'll be building something at home so I have somewhere to produce, at least. Thanks to spending a fair amount of time here I feel confident about getting much better results even in a small temporary space than I would have done a few months back. My offer to buy you all a few beers still stands should we ever end up in the same time zone :)

Rod Gervais said:
Conan,

I'm sorry to hear that - but I'm glad you took our advice and found this all out before you spent a ton of money.

Good luck in the future.

Rod
Click to expand...
 
I'm sorry to hear you have had to give this one up. :( If you still have the space, maybe it can be used for stuff on a more temporary basis. Perhaps you could track the vocals there and do the mixing at home or something, although that might be more trouble than it is worth too.

My feeling is that it's very hard to share a building that has a studio in it. It's just so hard to stop the sound from getting into other parts of the building. I live in a terraced house in a not so great area as I say, and the problem of sound pollution is not so much of an issue in terms of annoying the neighbours but in terms of my personal privacy. I don't want them to know what my music is like in the same way that I already know what their budgie sounds like.

Structural borne sound just seems like a nightmare to avoid.

I hope you can continue to make music in your house.

Do you do a lot of work in LA then?

love

Freya
 
My colleague/co-producer sort-of rescued the situation by suggesting we build the studio in the currently-unused top floor of his house (yeh, I bet he's REALLY miffed about that :P). I bought £400 of building materials and since it's only a small room it will be a good test run :) It's not the end of the world if isolation turns out disappointing.. we'll just have to be quieter. You're certainly right about the noise pollution issues.. that's entirely why I moved out of the existing studio in the first place. It gets tiring when everyone has got wind of your latest project within an hour of starting.

I used to spend a lot of time in LA but US immigration has been near impossible since Bush got in unless you're willing to marry an American or have millions in the bank. So I feel it's kind of pointless investing my time or money there until I have some hope of being able to stay permanently :) </politics>

Freya said:
I'm sorry to hear you have had to give this one up. :( If you still have the space, maybe it can be used for stuff on a more temporary basis. Perhaps you could track the vocals there and do the mixing at home or something, although that might be more trouble than it is worth too.

My feeling is that it's very hard to share a building that has a studio in it. It's just so hard to stop the sound from getting into other parts of the building. I live in a terraced house in a not so great area as I say, and the problem of sound pollution is not so much of an issue in terms of annoying the neighbours but in terms of my personal privacy. I don't want them to know what my music is like in the same way that I already know what their budgie sounds like.

Structural borne sound just seems like a nightmare to avoid.

I hope you can continue to make music in your house.

Do you do a lot of work in LA then?

love

Freya
Click to expand...
 
<i>"It gets tiring when everyone has got wind of your latest project within an hour of starting."</i>

Yeah except in my case it's not because I'm remixing simple minds or something but because I don't want the neighbours saying things like "Mommy, Mommy, the girl next door is singing about eating beatles again!" "Now dear, you stay away from that girl next door, she is obviously mad as a box of frogs and might be dangerous".

This wouldn't actually be so bad in itself if it wasn't that children tend to do the exact opposite of what their parents tell them to.

It will be interesting to see how the new studio works out. Not sure if you will have any intimate neighbours, but the problem with studios on the top floor tends to be if you are working late at night as neighbours will tend to have bedrooms up there. During the day they tend to be downstairs listening to UB40 really loud or something.

I bet you can get good results with £400 of materials! That sounds good. Theres a lot of talk about Mass Air Mass being the solution to sound proofing but from actually reading what people say, I get the impression that the answer is actually to seal the hell out of everything till you can barely breathe in the place. So I guess whatever you do, make sure you have plenty of acoustic sealant. :)

Hey why LA, it's very polluted anyway. I bet you could find a nice new home in the EEC somewhere.

Well let us know how it works out!

love

Freya

l
 
"Theres a lot of talk about Mass Air Mass being the solution to sound proofing but from actually reading what people say, I get the impression that the answer is actually to seal the hell out of everything till you can barely breathe in the place." =

Actually Freya, it takes BOTH - if you leave a teensy hole in your mass-air-mass construction, it can lower the effectiveness by 20 dB or more.

This is why ventilation/air conditioning ducts are as critical as everything else for sound isolation; they need to be long, large, absorbed, somewhat tortuous in path, and NOT common between rooms (IOW, a separate run from source to each room and back) or they undo most of what we build to control the sound.

I've not heard much on your own studio plans lately; have you gotten disheartened, or just (like a lot of us) following Mr. Lennon's famous comment "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"? Steve
 
I get the impression that the answer is actually to seal the hell out of everything till you can barely breathe in the place. So I guess whatever you do, make sure you have plenty of acoustic sealant.
Click to expand...

Connect a speaker to an amp, put the speaker in a cardboard box and seal it with duct tape and listen. :D
fitZ
 
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