John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hey,

I am Neil from India. I am a sound enthusiast and I have been making some music in my bedroom studio. Cant actually call it a studio, but yeah just a very basic PC and audio interface setup. I am planning to start a small project studio in my house. I dont understand anything about acoustics and stuff and I have never worked outside my bedroom. I have a few doubts regarding the construction.

1. The place I have for the small studio setup is located on the top floor of a concrete building. I have always seen studios on the ground floor and never on the top floor. So, is it possible to build a studio on the top floor of a building?

2. The building lies in the flight path of the airport and the planes fly every 5-10 minutes at around 50-100 feet above the building when the main runway is down for maintenance. So it surely makes a LOT of noise. So, I may need some good sound isolation rite?

3. The area of the place is around 450-500 square feet. Is this place sufficient for a small studio?

4. What kind of setup can be fit into a 500 square foot studio? I mean is control room + live room + isolation booth possible?

Attaching a diagram of the room with measurements too.



Can anyone please help me design a studio in this space? I dont understand the technical details about studio construction.

I would like to have a control room and live room setup. Is this possible in this space?
Thanks in advance.

Neil

Hi Neil, and welcome!

It is possible yes, but it might not be easy or cheap. The problem is isolation. The reason you normally see studios on the ground floor is because the ground itself helps to isolate the studio floor, while floors higher up in the building are basically just "drum heads" over resonant cavities. There is also the issue of weight: isolating a studio requires a LOT of weight, and upper floors might not be able to handle that. So the big question is: how much isolation do you need?

Ujmmmm... Yup! Being on the flight path for an airport certainly does complicate things That's a lot of low-frequency and very loud energy that you need to attenuate in your walls, floor and ceiling. My guess is that the entire building vibrates anyway, when a plan flies over, so isolating that effectively is very hard to do, and very expensive. But I doubt that the planes are flying THAT low over your building: It might SEEM that low, but it really isn't. If it were, it would look like this:




Those are both about 50 to 100 feet above the ground.

But anyway, even assuming the planes are coming over at 300 feet (more likely), that's still going to be LOUD! Isolating that will not be easy.

I'd suggest that you get a sound level meter, and see just how loud the problem is. Based on that, we can suggest the type of isolation you'll need, and possible construction methods and materials to get there.

Yes, it is possible to fit CR + LR + iso booth into 500 ft2. But with limitations on the acoustics.

Both ITU and EBU recommendations for critical listening rooms are a volume of at least 1500 ft3, so by the time you allow for the isolation (which is going to take up a lot of space) none of your rooms will be big enough to meet that criteria. However, that's the case with most home studios anyway, and many of them are very successful, and sound really good, even if they don't meet it. If you look around the forum, you'll find one example where John even built a studio inside a shipping container, so it can be done. But with limitations. If you understand and arre prepared to live with those limitations, then it's not a problem.

HOWEVER:

One more item that you didn't mention, is your budget. A build like this is not going to be cheap, if you hope to isolate the sound of large aircraft a couple of hundred feet above you, especially considering that you are not on the ground floor. What is the budget that you have in mind? That is very important.


- Stuart -

_________________
I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.

Hey, thanks for the reply man.

If the planes in those images that you posted are 50-100 feet above, then the planes that fly over my house must be flying at 300-400 feet but yeah they look big. The building does not vibrate when normal planes fly over it. It does vibrate when those HUGE military planes or something big like a Boeing 747 and those cargo planes. But its very rare. Will try to acquire a sound level meter and post the results here. Is there any way I can do it with my PC and a mic like SM57 or 58 or something?

About the layout, I thought and read a lot. I came across some articles that said an iso booth is not really a good idea. So that confused me a bit. Do I really need an Iso booth? If isolation booth is not gonna make a lot of difference, I would love to have a bigger live room or some storage area. Still as I said, I dont understand about acoustics, so kind of a noob here.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the budget. I have absolutely no idea what kind of material is used for isolation and how much it costs. So I am considering around $50,000. Will that be enough? If not, the budget can be increased by some amount. Actually I dont have that kind of money to build a studio. So most of the amount will be a loan from a bank. So I guess I can increase the loan amount if needed.

Also, I remember reading about some sound proofing guys for studios in my city. They charge $6/sq.ft for sound proofing. Don't know what kind of sound proofing is this. They also stated the price of some Texaa sound proofing treatment, which was priced at $10/sq.ft.

Have a lot of doubts. Will ask them in future posts

Thanks

Neil

Hey,

Today I made a simple layout. I dont know the technical details of acoustics and studio design. So it might be lame and very wrong. But tried making something by observing a few layouts found on this site. Attaching the file -



I did not know what should be the width of the wall. So I considered it as 10" in the diagram. Also, does a live room need to be symmetric?

Thanks.

Neil

No, a live room does not have to be, and is usually better off for not being, symmetric.

I couldn't see anywhere where you mention the height of the rooms, this is necessary to calculate volume but also to consider room ratios and modes etc.

You say the top floor of a building, and that planes fly close overhead - how many floors up are we talking about?

_________________
Brian
As you slide down the bannister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way...

Hey, I did not mention the height of the room because the room is not constructed yet. Its actually a terrace of a 2 floor building (ground floor, 1st floor and 2nd floor). So if the room is constructed on the terrace, it will be the 3rd floor. About the height of the building, I am not able to get an appointment to our architect, but I guess, the height of the room will be 9 feet mostly. I will ask the architect if I can get it a bit higher if necessary.

Any comments on the design? I know its kinda lame, but I am still learning to use Sketchup. Its kinda complicated for me. Will post some 3D designs soon.

Well, the basic layout looks reasonable, but it needs a lot of work to make it usable. The CR is too wide, for example, and that "storage space" is tiny: the door won't even be able to open in there!

- Stuart -

_________________
I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.

Hey,

I did some changes in the design and came up with this new one.

LR = 225.471 Feet ²
CR = 135.3251 Feet ²
Iso = 86.5134 Feet ²

Dropped the idea for storage space and made a sound lock.

How good is this design?

Also, what should be the width of the walls? I have considered 10" in this design.

Thank you.

The width of the mass/air/mass assembly of the walls are going to be determined by three things. One is how much isolation do you require, what materials will the wall assemblies be constructed of, and how much weight the existing floors can actually support.

_________________
Brien Holcombe
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Sound: You can't stop it, you can only try to contain it.