John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

so i have used this room for a while as a make shift studio, but i think its time to ramp it up a bit. I am very new to this, so excuse me for my ignorance.I also will not be using this commercially, so things dont have to get too fancy, but i do want a nice setup to record me, my band, and my friends. I am going to divide the room up into a control room, a vocal booth, and a studio proper. The funny thing is, that i only need the control room and vocal booth soundproofed/ acoustically treated, because in studio proper i have midi drums, the bass is plugged directly in, and the guitar amp cab will be in a isolation bow that i am going to make. the room is 18x14, and it is 9 feet tall. i will also be removing the french doors on the side of the room. so what i need help with is how to divide the room up, how to soundproof it, and how to acoustically treat it. the soundproofing is mostly because this will be built in the upstairs of my house, and there is noise coming in my recordings from all over the house... here is a panoramic view of the room as it is now.(please excuse the messiness)

"so what i need help with is how to divide the room up, how to soundproof it, and how to acoustically treat it."

Not asking for much are ya ?;)


"the soundproofing is mostly because this will be built in the upstairs of my house,"

This is an issue since anything you want to do adds to the overall weight of the existing structure and loads it in a way that was never intended.

Anyway, I personally would not cut the room up. You currently have 2268 cubic feet of room volume which is why the room has been pretty good sounding.

The trouble spots are the doors and windows. the doors need to be solid core with seals to prevent leakage. The windows need to be heaver as well, but if a storm window could be installed, then this might help reduce the leakage.

Also the floor has to be modified in some way. If it has carpet on it now, then the carpet needs to be removed.

The sound coming thru the floor from below has to be corrected. How best to correct will be seen. One would be to remove the ceiling below, mass up the underside of the upper floor then insulate the cavities, use clips and hat track and reinstall the ceiling.

Another option would be to construct a decoupled flooring system upstairs.

One of the problems you are having right now is that your room is tied into the homes HVAC and is allowing sound from the system AND from the other parts of the residence a direct path to your recording head

Gotta deal with that too.

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