Converting attic into studio, need advice please

[robn]

About 2 months ago they finished building our new house and we moved in…..it’s a 2-story….upstairs is my daughters room, an extra bedroom, a bathroom, and a walk-in attic area over the garage….I plan on converting this attic area into a personal music studio…..I’m mainly interested in soundproofing it….since I’m on a very limited budget for this project, I can’t afford to get too far into the acoustic treatment aspect….there is a door that goes into this attic area, and I plan to seal the room off and put another door going into the studio….the north wall has a window and the walls are brick exterior with 1” standard “waferboard” on the interior side (obviously with 2”X6” studs in the wall….the east wall has the studs for a knee-wall about 44” high, the west wall slants all the way from the top down to the floor, but I plan to knee-wall it about 2’ high, and the south wall borders the extra bedroom wall/closet. The ceiling is squared off at 8’ tall….the flooring is 1¼” thick tongue-and-groove plywood over 2”X12” joists….

Here are a few pictures to illustrate:

Under the floor I plan on spraying insulation about 6” deep underneath all of it….for the east and west sides knee-wall I plan to double wall them….on the north side I will spray insulation into the wall, and the south wall will get either a double or single wall (since there is already a wall with batts there)…..the ceiling slopes will get batting also.

Questions:

1. For the knee-walls, what would be a good material for the actual wall? Plywood? Waferboard? I noticed at Lowe’s they have foam walls in 4’X8’ sheets….these any good? I plan to spray insulation between the 2 walls that comprise the double-wall. Going from inside the room to out, does it need to be WALL/INSULATION/WALL/INSULATION/WALL or WALL/INSULATION/WALL/WALL/INSULATION/WALL? Do I stagger the studs? Is wood or metal the best stud to use?
2. Do I need to double-wall the north wall? It faces the street.
3. I would think that a 6” batting up the sloping slides (part of the ceiling) would be enough there…..any reason to double-up on that?
4. Any tips for the door leading into the studio?
5. Since I’m primarily concerned with soundproofing, I was going to put regular sheet-rock on the final interior walls/ceiling……
6. I’m not sure if I will need to put another subfloor on top of the existing one…..the garage door opener may be a noise problem since this room is directly over the garage….if I need to put another floor down, do I need any rubber between the existing floor top and the new subfloor? For that matter, will rubber be beneficial anywhere in this setup?
7. I plan to put a light in the middle of the room and a track light on either side of it. I want to put 3-4 outlets on the east wall and 4-5 on the west wall….would it be helpful to put the lights on a separate breaker circuit from the plugs?
8. The HVAC comes in at the top of the south wall….I don’t know if it would be better to leave it flush with the south wall blowing across the top of the room or to have it come to the center of the room and blow down….any suggestions?
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   Any help would be greatly appreciated…….thanks!!!!

 

[RichHead]

Since you are upstairs, I think the hardest part of your isolation will be the floor. I could be wrong about that, but if you are trying to isolate yourself from the rest of the house that could be difficult. Doing a search on floor isolation may get you what you need to know.

Im pretty much a newbie myself, learning as I go. If you are worried about isolating yourself from neighbors, that could be a bit simpler if your exterior is solid brick. I would try covering the windows with something temporarily and take an SPL meter out there and see what you got. Then do some research on sites like johnlsayers and recording.org. There A LOT of stuff out there, but I am not in the same situation as you with the floor, so I didn't keep any of the info handy.

Oh, and more thing I learned so far.....dollar for dollar, pound for pound, drywall is the way to go as far as isolating material on walls, etc.

Thats my two cents, the rest I would leave up to the pros. Get that SPL meter though, it is a great tool to have. It will allow you to measure differences in any change you make.

- RichHead

 

[robn]

Thanks RichHead!

I downloaded a PDF file this evening called "Making Walls Quiet" that was pretty interesting....it was talking about Resilient Channel....a metal stud put at a right angle to the wall studs...you screw your drywall onto the Resilent Channel...that way the drywall never touches the wall stud.....don't know if putting rubber between the wall stud and the drywall would accomplish the same thing or not.....

Thanks for the reply!

 

[RichHead]

Rubber won't, depending on how you do it. The point of the resiliant channel, or RC, is to decouple the drywall from the framing. That would be negated if you drove a screw through the drywall directly into the framing, regardless if there was rubber behind it or not. I am going to be using RC for sure. And it is pretty cheap. Just very labor intensive to do it right, as I will hopefully find out pretty soon.

So are you trying to isolate yourself from the outside, or from the rest of the house, or both?

 

[Todzilla]

Floor will be a weakpoint, but so too will HVAC. If you have ducting coming in to your space, it will serve as a wonderful conduit for spreading your power chords throughout the house. This can be mitigated with a split duct run system, where the studio ducting doesn't mingle with the rest of house ducting until their common juncture at the air handler.

I had a similar challenge, though mine was basement below the living area. HVAC is a biiiiiig part of your challenge. As for your floor, I advise you to do the dreaded W2W carpet, with the thickest padding you can buy.

Lastly, never forget the value of giving a wad of money to wife and kids to send them out to see "Elf" and ice cream afterwards for when you're recording drums or your Marshall stack.

 

[robn]

Richhead,

Really trying to do both, isolate outside sounds coming in, and inside sounds going out....I assume that if you accomplish one, you accomplish the other, but that may not be correct....


Todzilla,

Yeah, the HVAC will be a problem....as will the window and door.
Do you think adding another subfloor will be a good idea?

Appreciate the idea of sending the wife and daughter out while recording Good thing they like movies!

 

[Todzilla]

IN my limited experience (as a home studio practitioner, not professional), I have found that sound-proofing falls into the "weakest link" category. That is, the sound will find the one vulnerability in your design and head for it with gusto. Based on this, I wouldn't advise going overboard with subflooring and the like if you're not able to address the HVAC problem.

I would advise you to work incrementally and figure out ways to temporarily block off the HVAC vent with some sort of mini-flush-fitting door while you shred your Les Paul. Yeah, you get hot in the summer, but not as hot as a beleaguered spouse.

I'd carpet the floor with bigass pad, wall to wall (which will kind of deaden your high end), shore up the seal on the door, then make a heavy little mini-door to obscure the vent on your HVAC.

Good Luck!

 

[robn]

A few more questions:

Is there a difference between "resilient wall" metal and plain old metal studs that you can buy at Lowe's? Would sound isolation be improved with metal over wood?

I was planning on putting a double layer on each side of the wall....is it better to use 2 different materials such as particleboard/drywall or better to use 2 different sizes of the same material? Or maybe 2 different materials in 2 different sizes?

There is a company called Quiet Solutions that makes a glue called Quiet Glue... anybody used it or know anything about it? I was contemplating it to use between the 2 particleboard/or drywall sections.
Quiet Solutions - QuietGlue

Still don't know what I'm going to do about the HVAC......any suggestions would be appreciated. I asked a guy at Lowe's and at Home Depot and they had no clue. Todzill, I may go with your suggestion and just block it off while recording audio.

Looking at my breaker box, there is a breaker labeled "Upstairs" that has the attic lights (2) and an outlet. I could either tie onto this one or go on a separate one.....there is no more room in the breaker box, so if I went with a separate circuit/breaker for the studio lights and another separate circuit/breaker for the outlets, I would have to go with another breaker box? Is there any advantage to splitting them up, or do you think tying into the existing "Upstairs" breaker would be fine? The house is about 3 months old, so the wiring is up-to-date....


Any suggestions are appreciated!