Studio Flooring/Ceiling Question for Basement

[steev11]

Hello Everyone,

I am building a basement studio & Control Room. The space i have to work with is not framed out yet and is on a concrete slab. The dimensions are 21' x 11'4" x 8'. The 8' in height is from the conrete slab to the bottom of the joists in the basement ceiling. My big concern right now is sound isolation. I would like to do a room within a room but I am worried about the height of the finished studio. It would be great to raise the floor off of the slab but raising the floor and lowering the ceiling may only leave me with 7' of height. Here is what I am looking for some input on:

1. How low is too low for a studio ceiling?
2. What should I do for the concrete slab and the ceiling with only 8' to work with?

I have attached a drawing.

 

[Rod Gervais]

Personally I wouldn't worry about the floor - I don't usually recommend that people in basements bother creating a floating slab.

You could build a room within a room and only loose about 5" of ceiling height if you do it carefully - but we would need more info on the actuall room layout and framing details - could you post some pics and a sketch of what you think you want to do?

Rod

 

[SonicClang]

Don't rule out stained concrete. You don't lose any head room and it looks great.

 

[steev11]

That is good to hear. I have posted a sketch. Would you build an isolation booth within that room or would you keep it one big room using baffles. I record mostly electric guitars and vocals. Also what would you do about the window and what type of floor would you put down. Any suggestions would help greatly. In the room I will have a computer table with two flat screen monitors, Tanoy Monitors for Playback, a Korg Triton, Mesa Triple Rec, and a 4' x 19" Open Rack. I will probably put a couple of lounge chairs or a love seat if I can fit it.

Personally I wouldn't worry about the floor - I don't usually recommend that people in basements bother creating a floating slab.

You could build a room within a room and only loose about 5" of ceiling height if you do it carefully - but we would need more info on the actuall room layout and framing details - could you post some pics and a sketch of what you think you want to do?

Rod

 

[PhiloBeddoe]

First of all, listen to Rod. He's basically the man.

I highly recommend doing detailed planning and sharing ideas with people here and other forums such as www.johnlsayers.com. One seemingly minor mistake can ruin your isolation so it's worth the effort. You can also get good advice on layout, electrical and studio wiring, hvac, etc. This stuff is very important.

I built a basement studio by installing new ceiling joists in between (parallel to) the existing joists. This way you can take advantage of the cavity between the joists and lose minimal headroom. The walls were fastened directly to the concrete floor. Essentially this is a mostly floating room. You can take it a step further by cutting the concrete slab for additional isolation, but I didn't like this idea for my studio. I am happy with the isolation and I record drums all the time.

Acoustics experts will probably tell you that you need to make up for low ceiling height by using ceiling clouds to control floor/ceiling reflections. These reflections can be very ugly with low ceiling heights. I installed ceiling clouds over the drums and the listening position in the control room. The drums will never have the big room sound without adding reverb, but the benefit is that they are very controlled sounding.

 

[RFrecordings]

I bought 12 6lb Moving blankets to cover the walls in the two seperate "rooms" I made. The rooms, are really just seperated by a bunch of stacked boxes and junk, and then the blankets cover those up, giving the impression of some kind of wall.

I used carpet for the floor, but didn't use anything for the ceiling yet. I need to get pictures of this stuff.

Regardless... I got the carpets for free, and the moving blankets only cost me $80.... $80 to make my extremely crappy basement 100 times better looking? I'll take it considering I'm only 16 and have no money whatsoever. It might not be soundproof, but it does enough for me to make some pretty good quality recordings.