John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi all, I'm about to explain a problem I thought I'd never encounter ... & now a week over schedule for completion of my studio build, I'm at my wits-end!

Right, here goes...

I have just finished building my control room & vocal booth within a 400 sq ft unit, on the 2nd floor of a victorian warehouse building in East London. The control room is 13x10 ft & Booth is 5x10. The unit was just one large rectangular room with 3 stud walls (2 with neighbours on the other side, one with a corridor on the other side) & the 4th wall is the outside brick wall with a large window. The floor is concrete. I removed the plasterboard from the existing stud walls and filled them with insulation, then built new 4x2 timber frames 1 inch from the existing frames. I then put 2 layers of drywall on the new frames, thus creating a double stud wall. These walls are screwed to the concrete floor. The walls between the control room & booth are single layer of drywall on each side... There is also a lounge room adjoining the two rooms, again, seperated with just one layer of drywall on each side, as I'm not concerned about noise from my lounge as there shouldn't be any when I'm not in there! The ceilings of both rooms are single layer of drywall, with insulation on top, then theres just a big gap of 2 ft between that & the existing ceiling

So, I was just painting my argosy-style mixing console, when the chap downstairs cranked his reggae music up... I could feel the bass in my feet, and hear every lyric of the songs, and also people talking & laughing in the room with him. I also here an indian band playing from below. I had felt some bass through the floor while i was building the studio but it didn't seem significant enough to concern me. Now it's as if my room is playing the music to me, almost as if the walls are amplifying the sound. The room is completely empty at the moment, apart from the console which I am painting. The walls are just plain drywall.

Now, I'm really confused about what is happening, and feel like crying because I have just spent all this money...

I didn't think the concrete floor would be a problem as I had read people saying that the benefits of floating the floor on a concrete floor were minor, and also, there are other studios in the building who haven't floated their floors..A friend of mine previously had a studio here & never had a problem with noise.

Could it be that my walls are resonating & amplifying the sound? Could it help to add more layers of drywall?
Is there anything i should/can do about the floor now that my walls are all in place?

I'll try get some photos to add if it helps?

(Hoping someone will say that I can buy a feather duster from the corner store & wave it in the air & then my problems will disappear)

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Many thanks,

Will.

have you checked to determine if the sound is transferring via the lounge or the window? the LF may be coming through the floor but the higher frequency stuff may be coming around through the window or the lounge wall esp if there are pipes or air ducts etc. you should check to see how much vibration is making it from the floor to the walls, there may be some options to reduce the vibration of the floor enough, or add a small floating floor into the vox booth.

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Glenn

"I didn't think the concrete floor would be a problem as I had read people saying that the benefits of floating the floor on a concrete floor were minor, and also, there are other studios in the building who haven't floated their floors..A friend of mine previously had a studio here & never had a problem with noise. "


Floating an upstairs concrete floor would cost so much as to make the job end before it even began. floating a ground level floor is still expensive, but would be the more doable of the two.

It is often advised against constructing on an upper level floor, or any elevated floor that has the potential for noise to migrate into the floor from either flanking, airborne.

You are in a building with many flanking/air-borne paths due to the concrete and brick structure alone. But you have to follow some of the air registers, any of those open existing paths that sound can travel freely from upstairs/downstairs and get into your room.

You could have made the path yourself, so tracing backwards you would be able to remove the offending part thru forensic elevation. Like electrical paths, how heat/cool travels to or from the room...air returns...and I have to think that there is a better than high possibility that the screws that are holding the walls hard secured are in part as guilty a path as any.(I understand the need.)

But, without a real detailed build to evaluate it is a lot of guess work. Like Glenn mentioned, the window could be a big open receptacle for sound to accumulate into...and depending on the height of the building, there could be a direct air-borne sound turned flanking path from the roof.

A lot to consider, but even more that would have to be seen at this point.

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

Thank you both for your responses.

I have since filled the room with all my equipment and acoustic treatment, and the problem seems to have shrunk massively. I still feel & hear bass from time to time, but rarely anything else. (Well, I do hear a door being opened and closed upstairs...even though the ceiling of the control room I have built is several ft below the actual ceiling and not attached in any way... but I can cope with this door)

From what you have both said I can better comprehend the issue now. Certainly info to bare in mind for future projects.

I am about to post photos of the build on here now, so have a look if you'd like to see.

Many thanks!

Will.

flanking is not meant to have a deck around it... but I like the idea. If I were to build a deck around an abililty I would try double strike, first strike, ...

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