my basement "Studio"

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A1A2

A1A2

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hello, guys:

We have just built frames in the basement to form 2 rooms(mixing&tracking) with 2x4's. And being poor students, we have collected enough carpets and the paddings(yellow thin ones) for the carpets to nail them onto the frames instead of building the actual walls.
Our plan right now is, nail the carpets on one side of the frame, and the paddings on the other side, so there will be about 2" of air space in between them. And that will be our "insolation". Good idea? Bad?
we have about 4 inches of space in between the 2 rooms right now, and we were planning on stuffing something dirt cheap/free in between them to deaden the sound, what would you recommend?? ( I know...you get what you pay for, but I would like to know if I am stuffing something useless or not)
Lastly, we are putting windows (about 32"x18") in between the 2 rooms. WHat kind of cheap glass and how may layers would you recommend?

Thank you YERY much for reading. It's totally a newbe "studio", but due to the circumstance, we have to work with what we got.

AL
 
The carpet & foam will do little to isolate the two rooms, for sound proofing it has to be air tight and have some mass to it, normal drywall works fairly well.

Carpet or foam will only deaden the high freqs in the room and thats about it. Egg foam used in studios is engineered to diffuse and absorb high freq sound, most people assiocate this stuff with sound proof studios because its the most visiable thing in there. Think about a brick wall for a second, its pretty hard to listen in on someone on the side of the wall but a room just made out of brick would be very reverbent and sound pretty bad.


Check out this site for more information on studio construction:
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html
 
Sheet rock is very cheap. I think a 4' X 8' sheet of 1/2 inch is about $6. You can get a buttload of mud (sorry) for $15. Pretty much the rest is labor- ugly, backstraining, get dust all in your hair, labor.

Then you can put the carpets on top of that, but you'll find they absorb only a specific frequency, leaving your room sounding boomy.

There are lots of cheap tricks to soundproofing, but they involve mass and isolation. Rugs over wood framing offer neither mass nor isolation.

Good Luck...
 
Thank you guys

We are about half way done here, and i did notice that the isolation/insulation is as bad as you guys described. So, here is what we did:

In between the control and tracking room, we set up a wall of: carpet, padding, 2"air space, plywood(relatively thin, probably abour 1/4"), firberglass insulation. then padding, and carpet again. (Thanks to SAE)

I was thinking, will this be enough to insulate enough from the tracking room, so i can monitor the tracking process thru speakers instead of cans(of course drums excluded)?
Secondly, if my tracking room sounds boomy cuz carpet filters out only the highs, what can i do to improve that? Bass traps? Suggestions?
Lastly, what can i do to improve the environment in the control room with what i already have done?

Thank you for answering.

AL
 
Check out the following links. Both of these will provide you with some low-mid frequency abosorption. John's designs are slightly more sophisticated since they use slat-resonator type designs which will aslo give you some diffusion. I'm considering using a combination of both in my studio.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html

http://www.locall.aunz.com/~johnsay/HR/index1.htm

There are also some links to DIY cylindrical bass traps on the site. Happy building!

Alex
 
Alex:

Thanks for those 2 links. They bring in alot more factors than I could have imagined or..wanted...But, thanks for the helpful info

AL
 
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