Floor: wood, tiles?

[Moonbathing]

Hello everybody,

First of all I would like to say hi –I’m new in this forum and this is my first posting.

I’m about to renovate a small room in order to make it my first home studio, and would like to ask you about the kind of floor I should (try to) have. Now, this is a small room (9 x 16 ft, the ceiling is a little bit more than 7 ft), with walls made of brick and/or concrete blocks, a metal, garage-style door, and a window (mostly glass and metal, no wood).

I have a concrete floor (old, dirty, uneven) so I’m thinking of having a new floor made of… wood? Tiles? Linoleum? I’m asking if it makes sense to invest a lot of money (an important variable) in a wooden floor for such a small room; or maybe it does, and more than that, a wooden floor is the only kind of floor that will work.

According to what I’ve been reading:

• Wood absorbs and diffuses sound. (What about tiles? Are they a bit like glass or metal, reflecting everything?)
• Wood also gives a ‘warmer’ sound.
• Linoleum might reflect sound just like concrete.

Along these lines wood would be better, right? However, according to Paul White (‘Basic Home Studio Design’, Sanctuary Publishing, UK, 2000) “… wooden floors can be a real problem... it’s very difficult to get rid of boomy resonances.”

I am… puzzled. I’ve found this kind of mixed evidence many times. Any kind of advice, information, comment, etc. will be appreciated.

Thanks a lot,

Moonbathing

 

[Zgrimes]

Hey, I'm pretty new here myself, but welcome anyway ! I'm sure lots of smart people will be here before long, and you'll get a lot of great advise, but be prepared. Some of it may be conflicting as well. A lot of this stuff is subjective, in the ear of the beholder. Other stuff is more in the common sense catagory.
So. Here's my two cents. From what I've read, most studios are built leaving one surface "live", and for a variety of reasons, this surface is often the floor. ( easy to clean, for one.) Also, It sounds to me like you have some much bigger concerns on your hands, with hard walls and the metal garage door. If I were you, that's where I would start. Metal garage doors are hideous things acoustically speaking. They'll rattle, and bleed back into yer mics. They'll do nothing to keep out noise from the outside, or keeping your music in...Do you have neighbors?... Some more questions. Do you own, or rent...squat? Are you handy? Know someone who is? and of course, How much money ya got? I've been setting up my own home studios in apartments, storage buildings, and in one case, a barn, for 35 years, and you can do it anywhere, but it does take a good bit of planning. But fear not. You've come to the right place. I'm no expert, but I'll try to hep ya, and pretty soon, the experts will be here.
Zgrimes

 

[Zgrimes]

ok. I just did a google search, and found umpteen options for all kinds of paints, epoxys and the like, designed specifically for garage floors. You can spend a bundle on this stuff if yawanna, but the main thing is to find a product that will fit your skill level and budget, in order to treat grease stains. Ya gotta do something about them, cuz paint won't stick to them. But then, I'd just get some good deck paint, that is made for concrete, and paint your floor, at least for now. Then, if you're as much of a tightwad as me, you can go find a carpet remnant, (new carpet, left over or odd sized pieces) CHEAP!, and spruce the room up a bit. This way, you can leave your ceiling as a live surface for a while......Some of the best little studios I've had just kinda ...grew this way.
Later, you can always spring for South African Coco-bola, or what ever your heart desires.....
Z

 

[Moonbathing]

Tiles it is; and thanks.

Hello Zgrimes,

And thanks for taking the time to reply; I apologize for not having got back to you before; you know how crazy December can be.

I finally chose tiles; a matter of price in fact: I thought I’d better spend less money on the floor and invest what I save in soundproofing & acoustic absorbers, which I’m going to need –the room is very ‘boomy’…

Thanks again, for your help.

Have a great 2009.

Moonbathing

 

[Zgrimes]

Hi Moonbathing, That' good. You've got one decision out of the way. The tiles you've chosen will be very durable, and with proper care should serve you well for a very long time. Keep in mind though that you've chosen a very hard surface, and while the acoustical difference between wood and tile is not going to make a radical difference, a wood floor, I believe, would have been a bit more forgiving if you were to say drop a mic on it. So be carefull in that regard, and don't drag metal objects across it, because it is possible to scratch ceramic tiles...I'm asuming you went with ceramic... Still, you have a hard and acoustically reflective surface in your new floor, which will do nothing to aleviate your bomminess. So once again, I'd find a carpet store, and look for a deal on a carpet remnant, and a piece of carpet padding. These remnants are pieces brand new carpet that get left over, and are too small to use in most people's rooms. There's nothing wrong, or dirty about them and in fact you still may want to air your piece out, before laying it, to get rid of the factory chemical smell. Once you do this though, you'll reep several benifits. First, you won't need to worry about dropping your mics so much. Second, you'll eliminate your new floor as a part of your boom problem, making it a much simpler task to tune your room, and third, when you get to a point where you've decided how to adress your walls, metal garage door, and ceiling, and then decide to show off your tile floors, you can use the carpet and padding as additional insulation in those areas. That's not to mention the comfort factor af having a rug on the floor. Here again, the best studio rooms I've built, evolved slowly, step by step, into good sounding rooms. Just some thoughts.

Once again though, I feel that I should try to impress upon you the serious problem you have with your garage door, and metal ones are the worst of all. Roll up garage doors have an abundance of metal parts, all of which are likely to rattle the moment you turn on an amp, whenever a truck rolls by, and in a hideous way if anyone ever tries to play a Bass in your studio. It's not an insurmountable problem, but if I were you, it would be the very next thing that I would address. Reason being, 80% of the acoustical problems you have right now, can at least be effected by fixing your garage door problem. Solve that, and the rest will be much easier to identify, and fix. Once you do that, you may be amazed at how much better your room sounds, and little you need yet to do. So. Here's my advise, for what it's worth. I'm going to assume that you don't want to tear out the garage door, for what could be a variety of diferent reasons. What you need to do, for starters, is to silence the door. You want to do this first, because if you follow through with this idea, you won't be able to do it later. Go to the Home Depot, and get some wooden shims, (cheap), and collect whatever kinds of rubber or closed cell foam rubber you can find. Innertubes, from bike or truck tires will be handy. Break the shims into strips about a half inch wide, and tap them in between the rollers and tracks of your garage door, nice and snug, on the inside side of the roller, so that your shim forces the door to seal more tightly against the garage wall. Pound on the door with the heel of your hand, and anything that makes a metal to metal sound, or any kind of rattle, should be adressed with either a piece of rubber or a shim.This will greatly improve the acoustic nature of your garage door, while doing no damage to it, so that if you ever sell your place, you can easily convert it back into a funtional garage, or, if you're renting, your landlord will have no excuse to hold your deposit. Quiet door, no damage, everybody's happy. Next, I'd go back to the Depot, and buy the materials necessary to build an actual stud framed wall, that would fill the garage door opening. I know. This sounds like a big expensive deal, but it's not. I know a few guys who live around here who would be happy to throw up a wall for anyone named Moonbathing fo no charge. I'm sure you could find someone to at least help you out for cheap. As far as cost goes, I think it would probably be the very best 150-200 bucks that you'll ever spend on your garage studio. Here again, there's no need to damage anything. Frame out the wall, laying on the floor, stand it up, tap it into place with a hammer, and then use some more shims and a nail or two to secure it in place. Removal, if ever needed, would be a snap. Get some R-13 insulation to put between the studs, and then cover it with sheetrock, or whatever you can lay your hands on. This done, your garage door will have been transformed from being your biggest problem, to the best wall in your studio, and you can then proceed as though you started in any other, "normal" room.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Zgrimes

 

[Zgrimes]

Ok. Sorry Moonbathing. I knocked that out in a hurry because I had to leave, and I made a mistake or two. I was thinking about a garage door opening that I built a wall in about 20 years a ago, and I now remember that that garage had "swing- out" doors. Not a huge difference, but if you have a roll-up, you'll need to build a box around your door, rather than filling the door opening. Use some 2X4's to stand your new wall a bit further into the room, and provide just enough clearance for the door itself. You can use a few wall anchors to afix these to your (cement block?) garage walls, and then simply nail your new wall to the 2X4's. You'll need to get a bit creative when building around your door tracks, and power lift if you have one, but again, no big deal. If you know anyone who's handy with a hammer, this entire project could easily be done on a week-end. Here again, I'd try to do as little damage to the existing walls as possible. You should be able to do this with no more than a 6 fasteners. A couple of nails or screws into your ceiling joists will do a lot to secure your wall, all by themselves. Also, stand your new wall up onto some type of rubber product, so as to isolate it from the floor. You can find materials for this on-line, or just find something with some "give" to it at a building supply store. I heard someone say that they used some rubber mats that are made for children's play areas for this purpose. Cut them into strips, and stand your wall on them.
Sorry for the mix up.
Good luck!
Z