New questions in this thread !!

[DeadPoet]

Hi,

I've been saving up my questions and been waiting for a good moment to unleash them to you guys... they're mostly of the practical kind.


1) room dimensions. I'm not sure what size a room must have in order to be comfortable. I know larger is better, but what a (comfortable) minimums ? Eg. when having a 6x20m piece of building space are these ok (average/vague) dimensions ??? control room:6x4m, iso booth: 1x2m, live room: 6x9m (holding a 1/4 grand piano and say my 11-piece salsa band??), drum booth: 5x4m, bathroom: 1x2m ??

2) HVAC: I have no clue what these things cost. Let's assume the 6x20m studio floor plan with 3m ceilings, any propositions ? (I'm living in central Europe, very moderate climate)

3) stud spacing: should all studs in a wall be spaced identical, or do you have to use a set spacing and have the 'last stud' (eg. the right one if you start at the left side) be spaced a bit narrower, or doesn't this matter in relation to the STC

4) floating the thing. Do you build walls of the floated floor or on the concrete slab, with neoprene pads underneath ? Or again, doesn't this matter ???

5) how important are power conditioners like the cheaper furmans?? If I have a separate el. line for the studio with only the audio, the hvac and lighting on it, will like 3 (1 for each) suffice ?

6) I'm trying to understand the STC ratings, and the auralexuniversity.com helped me a lot on this subject, but say again this 6x20m lot is enclosed between 2 houses in a calm street, would an overal STC of 65 - 68 be enough to keep the neighbours happy (= being able to record a drummer at 4am) and street noise out ?

7) what's the dB a drum set produces anyway ? I'm not talking extremes, just a general drummer playing. 80dB, 90db ???



Thanks for replying, I'll try to find more questions by tomorrow

Herwig

 

[Michael Jones]

WOW!
That is a lot of questions!
I'll TRY to help:

Spacial relations are always difficult. What looks good on paper, may not work well at all on the floor. Measure out some of your smaller sizes using masking tape on the floor and stand in it, and if you can, use cardboard to simulate the walls.
Does it feel crampt?
Can you move freely?
Can you turn around with out knocking the cardboard over?
Can you sit down in a chair and lean back?
Can 2 people?
These are the kind of things architects spend years studying and learning to resolve.

Let's start with your room dimensions.
Control Room
6x4m. (That's 19'-6" X 13'-0") For those of us that are SI challenged.
That seems like enough space to house a console, engineer and a few people on a comfy couch at the back wall.

Iso Booth 1x2m. (That's 3'-4" X 6'-6") That's barely wider than a regular door in the smallest dimension. It's also smaller than a prison cell!
I'd re-think that one. Remember, someone will have to spend a fair amout of time in there. You want them to be comfortable.

Live Room
6x9m. That's 19'-6" X 29'-4". Room enough for around 4 people, their gear and a grand piano. But an 11 piece salsa band? It could work, but I think it would be cramped.

Drum Room
5x4m. That's 16'-3" X 13'-0". A decent sized room. Maybe a bit over sized for a dedicated drum room. Perhaps you could "steal" some room form that to expand the iso booth.

Bathroom
1x2m. That's 3'-4" X 6'-6". It could work, but it's kind of narrow. I have a 1/2 bath (toilet and sink) under the stairs in my house (also called a powder room) and it's 4'-4" X 5'-6". I would consider that a minimum.


HVAC
I live in Central Texas. Mild winters. Hot summers. I had a system priced for my 1200 sq. ft. studio. Bids were all over the board, ranging from $6500 at the highest to $3500 at the lowest.

Stud Spacing
Check your local building codes. Its pretty typical to have the last stud be different in spacing from the rest. Here, our building requirements are for studs to be spaced on 16" centers, or less. If the last stud ends up being 12", no big deal.
Also, corners get 3 studs. 2 in the long direction of the wall, and one in the regullar direction. That forms a tight corner with the adjoining wall.

Floating
You can go to any extreme you want.
Personally, I'm building my studio on a concrete slab with the wall set on neoprene pads. Again, check your local building codes. Here, exterior walls must be set on a neoprene seal anyway! And the base plat has to be pressure treated wood.

Power
Perhaps someone more qualified can help you there....

Sound Transmission
An overall STC of 65 seems like it would be difficult to achieve.
Upper 40's to low 50's seems more practicle. A typical residential house is somewhere around 25 - 30.

Drums
I'm not sure. That sounds about right.

Hope some of that helps???

 

[DeadPoet]

Thanks a million Michael!

iso seems small indeed
bathroom is only for toilet and sink (maybe fridge)
drum and live could swap some space. When rehearsing with the band I'm talking about (11 people) we mostly do in a class room, about 7 by 7 whichalso contains a marimba, 3 drumsets and an upright piano.
the proposed tape method seems a very good idea indeed, thanks.
HVAC: that's a big diff, but I guess 3500 is reachable (you're talking US$ right ?)
STC i know, 65 is alot, another question on this topic would be: when constructing 65 rated walls, ceiling and floor, will you actually get that figure (imagining perfect windows and doors) ??? I guess not...

thanks again,
Herwog

(The proposed measures and rooms are fictional, just to get an idea, I'm saving up with my wife to buy a house, and we know a guy owning a house with a nice 6x20m piece of ground in the backyard that meets the street at the back of the block. )

 

[Transputer]

I can get 123 dB outa my Mapex floor tom (undamped, Remo Ambassadors batter and resonant heads, lowest possible tuning but tuned to the fundamental pitch of the shell) that is with the Radio Shack dB meter sat right on the tom like a close mic.

I've posted before on how much actually gets out of my room. Got go now but will try to find it later.

Cheers

 

[Michael Jones]

You say you CAN get that level, is that peak level when you just hit it as hard as you can?
What's the average peak under normal playing conditions?

I'd be interested in reading the other thread if you find it.

 

[Transputer]

Here's the other thread http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23371
123 dB is a maximum volume from that drum, head combination if playing very hard and open but also consistently. Playing 20 plus years helps on the tone, volume and consistency front, but the downside can be greater soundproofing requirements Lighter music or an inexperienced drummer (trying to play hard!) will be in the region of 100 - 115 dB. I took the figures to try and give myself something to work with when I was building.

Dead Poet, check out;
Lightweight partitions having improved low frequency sound insulation.
(G.D. Plumb)


http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/ for some good tested designs.


Cheers

 

[DeadPoet]

Lighter music or an inexperienced drummer (trying to play hard!) will be in the region of 100 - 115 dB.

Hmm... these are values then of drummers really trying to play loud ? Average will be lower I guess (hope)

Dead Poet, check out;
Lightweight partitions having improved low frequency sound insulation. (G.D. Plumb)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/for some good tested designs.

Thanks Transputer, I already had those. not that I can figure them out though... for instance fig. 8c (page 6 printed, 10of15 in pdf): these are actually quadruple leaf walls ??? (which is a thing to avoid as I've thaught).
Or are these two designs with the same STC-rating ??


Michael: sorry, it was late on my latest reply, I thought you were from Australia, hence the us-$ question


Thanks guys,
Herwig

 

[Transputer]

Dead Poet,
The dB noise levels I mentioned do sound hard to deal with, so here goes on my room and the overall result . My garage is a 4" single brick building, the foundation slab is below the floor level of the house but butts up against it, more on this in a minute, the roof is a flat felted roof which sits on a wall plate which is bolted to the house wall, only door is external, nothing penetrates the house wall except electrical cable and the bolts connecting the roof wall plate. The house wall is usual UK construction - from outside in 4" brick, 4" insulation and 4" concrete block.

Some years back clear out garage,set drums up in garage, house is double glazed all windows shut etc - play - 67 dB on the Shack meter, much too loud wife can't watch TV ! Spend all my life online and end up building a room within a room in the garage; from inside in house wall (damn that slab connection), 8" air gap, inside out wall -1"double glued and screwed drywall, 4" Rockwool batts 33kg/m3, another 1" double glued and screwed drywall (that's recent and done partly as an experiment), floor is double 18mm blockboard/chipboard on 2X4" on the flat, on 12.5mm neoprene pucks, 12" spacing on the pucks and rockwool in the cavity. Various DIY fabric/fibreglass and Rockwool acoustic panels kill small boxy sound. The room is practise/recording room and a test bed for bigger and better things to come.

With this lot i'm getting about 53 dB in the house - which is fine as it's below TV levels! More important than the dB meter reading is that it sounds acceptable - it's just low end and easily talked over. Outside the garage standing at the boundary of my property 6.5 m from the garage I can't get a reading on the meter and more importantly I can't hear anything at all.

4am metal drums don't get recorded, but until the TVs go off I play as hard as I like. For 4am heavy drum playing I would need to build a better floating floor, but I don't have the space. A Joe Egan type construction would be great. I should have cut the slab but I honestly didn't think that would be required when I started down this road But hey it's all a learning curve so there we go.

As regards the BBC pdfs the Camden panels were factory made so that the BBC could build modular studios hence the testing of multiple camdens. Yeah they do make a quadruple leaf wall which I'd avoid. Page 8 (a) triple boards either side of a 474mm wall is something like I'd build with more space.

Cheers

 

[DeadPoet]

thanks transputer for the elaborate explanation. Bottom line would/could have been cutting the slab ?
Land prices ae incredible these days (i guess everywhere in the world), so the only thing we could be affording would be a house with a +/- 6-ishx20m (20x65ft) patch in the back, but enclosed between two houses. If we would ever consider buying this, I would have to have a guarantee that I can build a small studio there with absolutely no sound escaping (or a little as possible) in order to keep the neighbours happy.

(slab disconnection seems an important thing to note in my book)


thanks again,
Herwig

 

[Transputer]

Sorry for delay Dead Poet,

Bottom line would/could have been cutting the slab ?

This probably would have worked - in my building. From the sounds of it your planned space might not have to suffer sharing of slabs anyway. My house is semi detached so the slab is shared with my next door neighbour! that definately itsn't a good thing to start with.

My garage is screened by conifer trees which help to increase the overall background ambient noise even with a light breeze and it's often rainy and windy here which helps aswell.

Saw something once where the designer, pretty certain it was Eric Desart used a hammer as part of his tool kit for investigating impact transmission whilst planning a nightclub installation. Now a club can be a lot noisier than a studio but all examples help when trying to deal with sound. Another thing I looked at was anechoic chamber design - now those places have an incredible level of sound and vibration control.

Cheers

 

[Roker1]

Hi Dead Poet,
When you mentioned cutting the slab....do you think that ,if you had room for a comfy set up and if one was building it from ground up, it would be advisable to actually do two separate, not-connected slabs for each, control and studio rooms (or whatever nymber of rooms one would have)??
Like,, do two slabs, put a wall on one, put a wall on the other...seel it on the sides and have an air cavity!!??
And then of course your window would go in the middle or whatever...
Have you heard of anyone that did something like that??
if you know what I mean...

 

[DeadPoet]

Yo Roker:
If you have the dough and want to go trough all the trouble: yes.
Check out www.galaxy.be/galaxy.htm
It's a studio (co)designed by Eric Desart, and holds a world record in transmission loss between rooms! They designed the whole thing to be separate bunkers of concrete !!
(note: this is offcourse an extreme, but a nice example)


IMO: if you wanna build from the ground up: hire an acoustic consultant and/or studio designer, even if for a few visits and a few hours consulting. I think your project will benefit a lot from it!


Herwig

 

[DeadPoet]

roker:

I *just¨got this message from the Yahoo acoustics newsgroup:

(from Eric Desart to a guy that wants help in constructing a box-in-a-box studio)

> And I think I'm right in saying that if the walls were built on the
> Studio floor then they wouldn't require further floating???
> [ double spring ?? ] i.e. Floor is already floated so walls
> attached drirectly to flooring. And the floor would need a
> different specification of vibro material at the floor edges to
> take the considerable wall-ceiling weight??

My personal preference, where or whenever possible is to start with a floating concrete floor, which then is the basis to mount the walls upon. In that case you don't need to worry anymore about disconnecting the bottom plate of the floor, or stuts from this floating floor. This indeed allows a mechanical stiff connection, which also helps for the stability.
When mounting the walls on visco-elastic material an additional
problem arises: how to fix the bottom plate or stuts without creating new connections, and if one finds a solution, it mostly will integrate some stability problems which must be compensated otherwise.
If you should build and disconnect the wall on the existing floor,
you indeed better use continuous stripes, which simultaneously acts as sealing. Materials as SYLOMER, possibly CDM or EAR or good for that, and do exists in different densities to be adjusted to the weight load.



Check out this newsgroup, it's soooooo interesting


man, i've got to stop living my life on the internet


Herwig

 

[Jeff_D]

If your doing new construction its not that big of a deal to put in an expansion joint- just put where ever you want seperated spaces. If course there is always a cost associated with any thing in construction but I dont think that would be huge.

 

[DeadPoet]

If your doing new construction its not that big of a deal to put in an expansion joint- just put where ever you want seperated spaces.

Could you explain the term 'expansion joint' please for a non-english, non-engineer type of person like myself



Herwig

 

[Jeff_D]

sure- I'll try- an expannsion joint (exp.) is a tar impregnated soaked kinda sticky piece of, uh, um paper layers i guess. its about 1/2" thick and however tall your conc. slab is and as long as it needs to be- comes in a roll i think- or maybe in 4' or 8' or 10' sections not real sure- its used in the states everywhere- concrete sidewalks, driveways, wherever a slab meets a foundation wall in homes or commercial buildings. Its practical use in construction is to allow the concrete to expand and contract with environmental variances- temp mostly. I dont know if it helps but there are three types of joints in concrete-

1. A control joint- usually saw cut (not all the way through)into a semi cured slab- we all know concrete is going to crack over time- this joint lets us control where-

2. Expansion joint- a joint between two slabs filled with an expandable material - as mentioned above-

3. Construction joint- where two slabs come together- because we didnt have time to do the whole thing yesterday- or whatever- you probably wont run into the construction joint on your project- thats more like malls and airport runways- homes and small commercial doesnt involve that much concrete.

Anyway- i dont know what else to call it so if that doesnt help maybe someone else can chime in and translate

-jeff

 

[DeadPoet]

Yep, the reference to sidewalks and driveways made it clear to me what you mean.

 

[Jeff_D]

Good- Glad i could help

 

[Osbick Bird]

WOW!
That is a lot of questions!
I'll TRY to help:

Spacial relations are always difficult. What looks good on paper, may not work well at all on the floor. Measure out some of your smaller sizes using masking tape on the floor and stand in it, and if you can, use cardboard to simulate the walls.
Does it feel crampt?
Can you move freely?
Can you turn around with out knocking the cardboard over?
Can you sit down in a chair and lean back?
Can 2 people?
These are the kind of things architects spend years studying and learning to resolve.

Let's start with your room dimensions.
Control Room
6x4m. (That's 19'-6" X 13'-0") For those of us that are SI challenged.
That seems like enough space to house a console, engineer and a few people on a comfy couch at the back wall.

Iso Booth 1x2m. (That's 3'-4" X 6'-6") That's barely wider than a regular door in the smallest dimension. It's also smaller than a prison cell!
I'd re-think that one. Remember, someone will have to spend a fair amout of time in there. You want them to be comfortable.

Live Room
6x9m. That's 19'-6" X 29'-4". Room enough for around 4 people, their gear and a grand piano. But an 11 piece salsa band? It could work, but I think it would be cramped.

Drum Room
5x4m. That's 16'-3" X 13'-0". A decent sized room. Maybe a bit over sized for a dedicated drum room. Perhaps you could "steal" some room form that to expand the iso booth.

Bathroom
1x2m. That's 3'-4" X 6'-6". It could work, but it's kind of narrow. I have a 1/2 bath (toilet and sink) under the stairs in my house (also called a powder room) and it's 4'-4" X 5'-6". I would consider that a minimum.


HVAC
I live in Central Texas. Mild winters. Hot summers. I had a system priced for my 1200 sq. ft. studio. Bids were all over the board, ranging from $6500 at the highest to $3500 at the lowest.

Stud Spacing
Check your local building codes. Its pretty typical to have the last stud be different in spacing from the rest. Here, our building requirements are for studs to be spaced on 16" centers, or less. If the last stud ends up being 12", no big deal.
Also, corners get 3 studs. 2 in the long direction of the wall, and one in the regullar direction. That forms a tight corner with the adjoining wall.

Floating
You can go to any extreme you want.
Personally, I'm building my studio on a concrete slab with the wall set on neoprene pads. Again, check your local building codes. Here, exterior walls must be set on a neoprene seal anyway! And the base plat has to be pressure treated wood.

Power
Perhaps someone more qualified can help you there....

Sound Transmission
An overall STC of 65 seems like it would be difficult to achieve.
Upper 40's to low 50's seems more practicle. A typical residential house is somewhere around 25 - 30.

Drums
I'm not sure. That sounds about right.

Hope some of that helps???

WAY off topic, but are you an architect? You seem well-versed in the subject. I ask because a close friend of mine is a home designer-draftsman with something like twenty years' experience who's found himself out of a job (people around town don't seem to be building so many of the kind of mega-luxury homes he typically worked on). I realize you don't know me or him from Adam, but if you know or hear of someone who's looking for someone like this please let me know. I promise he's a lot better at drawing buildings than I am at naming them!

OB

 

[DeadPoet]

Architect ?

thanks for the compliment, but I'm just a musician with waaaaay too much free time

this acoustics/studio building thing fascinates me and I'm just carefully planning a small semi-pro studio I wanna build. I want to get informed a well as possible, but I know for sure I'll need the help of some professionals (acoustics, building, drawing,...) if I want to do this right.


Herwig