Tracking room floors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Jones
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Hello Michael, say, I hate to answer for him cause HE may have already done that, but there are some observations I've made. First, to my way of thinking, 1" sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I poured a 1" veneer on my cracked patio once. ARRGGGRRRRRRR!! Ha! Lasted a month befor it started cracking too!. There is not enough concrete around the aggregate to give any strength. There IS no strength there, especially with the "poly" below. Second, the only room that has interior room in a room walls is your control room. And every "floating floor" I've actually seen, is really part of a "floating room". (ie, the walls are on the flooating floor)
Imagine, IF your walls of the control room are fastened to the same slab as the tracking room, right there you have negated any gain you've made with a floating floor by structural transmission through the tracking room floor to the walls of the control room. UNLESS you float the walls on rubber too! But that is the same thing as a floating ROOM! And IF your going that far, you might as well pour a 4" concrete floating
floor. But this also would require special spring isolaters mounted in the floating floor formwork, which is really a pain in the ass and EXPENSIVE. However, I HAVE built a floating floor from wood on neoprene, just never finished the rest of the room. I don't think you want to go to this extent, as it looks like your building is isolated from adjacent structures and you are not floating the tracking room anyway.
Now maybe he is talking about something else. I don't get it. Unless he is saying to do that in the tracking room:confused: Still, 1":eek: I think that needs further explaination.
I am certainly no expert at this but I still have common sense, I think:rolleyes: Now, I have seen a couple of other ways to do this, but your so close to pouring, and the forms are already in place. But I'll add this. SINCE, your exterior wall, IS the wall of the tracking room, and your perimeter footing compleatly surrounds your control room, you COULD actually build a form for a footing/slab that is physically seperated from the building slab, for the control room. In other words, the control room would actually become a seperate building from the exterior shell. Of course, this would require rebuilding the forms adjacent to the control room so there is no building slab in the control room area. Then pour the exterior shell slab and footing first, let it cure, then remove the forms, and reform for the control room slab and footings. There would be a gap in between adjacent exterior footing and interior(control room)
footings but personally, I would just lay a strip of "poly" as a 1"filler between the two footings/slabs BEFORE I poured the CONTROL ROOM slab/footing(with cable chases). Of course, the control room has angled walls, which makes for part of the exterior shell footing actually becoming a slab to the point it meets the control room footing. I would also, frame for a footing at the tracking room wall that seperates it from the CR. Same with the vocal booth and SEE ATTACHED DRAWING. This way your whole control room is isolated from the rest of the structure. But alas, this requires more time and money. Its just the way I would do it. I see no need to isolate the tracking room from the exterior shell, as you have brick exterior walls and staggered stud walls on the inside of that too! This would be gross overkill, and lets face it. That would be the way they do it to isolate from a TRAIN yard next to the studio and you DON"T need it!! Or do you?:D
Now this brings up one more thing. You showed the roof truss's your using, and I assume that they are perpendicular to the length of the room, is that correct? Are you building a seperate interior ceiling over the control room structuraly supported by the control room walls?(I assume you are). If so, you have 5/6ths of a floating room right there! Forming for a seperate control room floor would complete it. AGAIN, I am no expert, but I have seen pictures of doing it this way. Saves pouring another slab on top of the building slab. I really don't know if they consider this a "floating floor" or not, but it is structurally disconnected from the main slab. However, you are the only one who knows if you want, or need this much iso. Hell, if your recording acoustic instruments only, what the shit! Go with what you are doing! Then again, maybe you are using RC on the ceilings. Thats what I mean about not seeing all your construction details. Only plan.
One other way I see. Build a control room wood floating floor, with the walls built right on top of it. My floor was built in sections. So I could attach 1/2" ply to the bottom face before I laid each section in place.(5' x 12' as I had that size mdf available to me for the floor panels) I simply contact cemented 3/4" x 2"w x 4"L (4" x 4" at the wall perimeter) neoprene strips @12" o.c. to the 1/2" ply bottom at the complete section perimeter and in line with the joists(1 1/2" x 3 1/2" kiln dried poplar is what I used.) Once each section was in place, I bolted them togeather. Of course, there were cable chases framed in also between two sections. Once the whole floor was in place, I laid a
vapor barrior in the bottom. I then FILLED THE VOIDS between joists with KILN DRIED SAND. Then another vapor barrier over the whole thing. Then I screwed the 3/4" MDF top panels in place. Perfect subfloor for 3/4" x 6" T&G oak finish flooring(I had thes custom milled at work). There were removable MDF cable chase panels also(thats the
reason for 6" wide oak so the seams at the cable chases matched the flooring. Worked great! Now, the walls would be built right on top of this floating floor. But the one thing negative as to your situation, is it raises the room 6" and I don't know how that would relate to your shell ceiling and adjacent walls. One other thing. I use square head recess screws on EVERYTHING. They really work fantastic. I buy them in bulk, different lengths. Even on wall studs to plates. Try em, you'll like em! They don't strip like phillips!:mad: Well shit Michael, I've used up my whole morning writing this and I hope it helps. Sorry for the ebosity. Ah, what was it I was going to ask? Oh well, another reply later today when I remember. DUH!! Later.:D
fitz
 
Rick, yeah, I was worried about the 1" concrete. Might work if one was doing a mortar type mix, but yeah, 1" with aggregate is a disaster.
I thought about isolating the control room in just the way you speak of, but man, having to set forms twice is sooo expensive.

I had estimated $6500 for the concrete foundation and slab.
Then I added $800 for the pain of forming the channels, and pouring the patio as a step down from the Control Room's outer door. That made for a grand total of $7300, for a level slab with appertenances; by my estimation.

I had 3 bids for the concrete.
One was $9800.
One was $7500.
One was $5800.

The low bid used an inferior type of select fill under the slab.
Needless to say, I went with the middle one.

I think setting all the walls on neoprene rubber is the best bet - the best "bang for the buck" scenerio here. I never intended to try to build a world class studio. (Speaking of that, anyone see the NFL Films Studio featured in MIX mag this month?) Just a real nice sounding working studio. With the nice Grand I have, and with what I think will be a real nice sounding room, I intend to target more classical music musicians. It willl be my "market niche". :) But, I'm not going to limit myself, and fully expect to do the odd rock band as well.
For that reason, I have the drum room. And I have a real nice kit for it too. A Tama "StarClassic" Birchwood Series.
So, I need to begin detailing finish-outs for that room now.

About the trusses:
The trusses do run perpendicular to the long axis.
This makes for a nice high ceiling in the tracking room, and the Drum and vocal booth, but would make for all kinds of hell in the Control Room.
So the plan there is to go ahead and install the roof trusses, but to install a separate interior ceiling, supported by the control room walls, like you invisioned.

The challenge there is to span the 18' or so of the widest control room dimension. A "rule of thumb" there is that a piece of lumber will span in feet, the nominal dimensions of the lumber. For example, a 2"x10" will span 20'; a 2"x6" would span 12'.
But that's rule of thumb there and not real world.
The actual support member is two 2"x8"'s with 1/2" plywood sandwiched between them.

If you notice, from the plan, the widest part of the control room, on the side adjacent to the exterior wall, is offset a distance from the exterior wall. This is to have the clearence from the top of the ceiling support member, and the bottom of the inside of the truss.
All that while maintaining the control room geometry!
The devil is in the details!
 
Here's a view of the model.
All walls except the tracking room walls, and the trusses, have been removed for clarity.

See the yellow support member?
That's the 2"x8" I was speaking of.
See the clearence there between it and the bottom of the inside truss.
 

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Here's another view without the trusses:
 

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Howdy Michael, I know what you mean $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ more. It was just a suggestion but I figured you figured already. Don't mean to stick my nose in, just tryi to help:D Never know what the other guy is thinkin, you know? Heres the pic I forgot.
Just to show. BTW, your 3D's are great. I get my new computer tomorrow, and will immedietly start the 3d stuff.
http://home.rcsis.com/beachchic/michael.jpg>
Say Michael, how do you like Nuendo? What Vs are you running? Also, what video card are you using for your twin monitors? I'm getting ready to set up the digital stuff.
Right now I'm running 2 Tascam MSR-16's synched, but want to have digital too!! What a glutton:D
fitz
 
OK, I remember now, Michael, do you have any section details of the door jambs, thresholds etc.? I'm real curious about these. And what are you doing with the HVAC?
Just a few words so I can invision it. I might actually get my plan done soon. I'm totaly planning my control room but not the studio until I see where I am moving to next yr.
Can't wait. Thanks for the info michael. I sure would like to upgrade my CAD too! I don't think R14 is too user freindly when it comes to 3d:rolleyes:
fitz
 
Rick - I LOVE working with Nuendo!
I'm running version 1.5.3 but I've been using it since ver. 1.0
I think there's a version 1.6 out now, and is available on the Nuendo site.
I haven't installed it because, well, because 1.5.3 WORKS!
2.0 will come out soon, and will be a version you have to purchase. I'll make the change when it comes out.
I run Nuendo with WinXP Pro on a dedicated DAW and it is ROCK SOLID!
To be fair, there are some things I don't like about Nuendo. I wish there were a pro level controller for it like there is for Pro-Tools. The reverbs on it are horrendous! But the compressors are fairly nice.

The video card I use is a CardEXpert TNT2 128MB. Two of them actually. I have an AGP slot, but I also use a DC10 Miro video capture card, and the 2 were just NOT getting along well together! So I scrapped the AGP card, and went for the 2 TNT's and they don't interfere with the DC10.


HVAC - There is a distribution box set adjacent to the main blower. From it, individual trunk lines run to the control room, the drum room, and the vocal booth and the tracking room.
The control room, tracking room and drum room have return air vents set up in much the same way. The control and tracking rooms actually have 2 return air vents, and ALL ducts are oversized and flexible. This avoids an acoustic link between all the rooms via the ducts.
The kitchen and bath share one trunk.

All of the doors I intend to use are pre-hung. So the jambs will be pretty standard. I'll make extra effort to seal them properly though.
The sliding glass doors for the control and drum rooms are pre-hung as well, and as far as the thresholds go, I'm going to have to build an extended threshold so that it extends out further from the door to transistion better.

Thanks for all your interest Rick. I still have a lot of work to do!

My plumbing and lay-out inspection happened today, and passed!
So, on to the next phase.... (concrete and steel!)
 
Ok, Ive been reading this thread and am also building my drum room floor.

My home studio is a converted garage with two tracking rooms a drum room and a vocal room. The walls were built inside the existing garage room and "floated" on rubber material. Basically its two free standing boxes on a rubber material.

I'm building my drum room floor by laying 2X4s flat on rubber material (on the existing concrete slab). I will fill my pockets with sand and cover the frame with particle board sub flooring. I am leaving a 1/4" gap between my flloring and the wall. The idea I am thinking is the floor will not physically touch the wall or concrete and the sand will help absorb the high SPLs of the drum set and not transmit them to the slab.

Hopefull the picture will help if I attached it correctly.

if not here's a link

http://www.geocities.com/gatorhaus/floor_design.jpg

Thanks
Larry
 
another point of view

i got this from an article on building speaker stands. maybe a little of this is why they use wooden floors. this guy says it produced some remarkable results.


"The wood I’ve used is hard maple wood. Why maple wood? Simple! Because it can sound very musical! If you don’t believe in such a claim, think about this: if maple wood is not musical, why will it be used for making such musical instruments as the violin? Make sense?"






Improvements Noted After Using the Maple Wood Stands

The following are the improvements I’ve noted after using the completed maple wood stands:

1.
More details can heard, especially the various layering of sound during the playing of string instruments (e.g. plucking of guitar strings).

2.
More authoritative bass.

3.
Improvement in soundstage due to the greater depth.

4.
Most importantly , my system sounds more musical!
 
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