John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hello,
Long time larker, and I'm finally ready to pull the trigger on a studio build in my garage. (This trigger pull would be necessitated by the arrival of our 2nd child in about 6 weeks btw.... and the need to finish the house the studio currently resides in, namely the master suite. This project would have been started months ago were it not for a really busy season in said studio, so I'm way behind but blessed to be busy.)

SO.... aside from the obvious recognition that I should have been asking this months ago, and realization that I am working within a severe time deficit, I'm just looking for words of wisdom regarding my plans. I have been reading when I can for months, and my current floor plan is pulled off a thread from either here or gs.... can't remember which. I have already begun work, torn out all the old sheetrock and raised the ceiling in the space. Originally we had about 7'9".... the rafters currently sit bare at 9'7" at the low point. (slightly sloped concrete garage floor, which I don't think is a problem?..... maybe 2 inches over 23'?)

I am mainly an overdub mix room, but would love to be able to get a small "live" room out of my space to track drums in, unless it's deemed too small to achieve decent drum sounds and ample control room space. I fully realize that the extra space required to track drums + added expense of pres/ conversion/ mics etc... hardly make it worth doing a drum tracking room.... especially in Nashville.... so I am not completely married to the concept, but It would be nice. One other motivation to achieve this is that it would seem (and please don't think I'm taking this too seriously, just a consideration) that my 16 month old son is absolutely consumed with drums. Of course I recognize that a lot of kids love to pound on stuff.... etc, but I fear in a household of 2 musicians/ singers.... irregardless of our inclination to steer him in another direction...... he may in fact want to pursue his already acute passion for world domination through drumming.... in which case I can't think of a better argument for the inclusion of a drum tracking/ rehearsal room in our new studio.

I'm gonna attach the closest thing I have to a plan, and another scan of just the space with fairly accurate dimensions. I am wide open, and it would go without saying that when I see a Sayers designed room I drool a little. Unfortunately with the time/ financial constraints I'm working within... I fear my only option is to come as close as I can to building a room that avoids horrible dimensions and achieves decent isolation. A vocal "booth" is a fairly high priority, but in the current floor plan I could potentially use the pass through as the vocal booth? Amp isolation is also important, but I will likely build a guitar isolation box on wheels that can live in the drum room unless I'm tracking drums.... in which case I can just roll it out. (I'm talking a real big box.... maybe big enough for a 412/212/112 all in at once.... with enough room to sound decent, and be constantly miked and ready to go.) This is the only way I've been able to conceptualize a cab room without eating up too much studio build space. A box maybe 3x4x6 or so tall should be able to achieve said ambition.... and maybe could even have some drawers built in to hold misc junk that stacks up.... strings/ pedals/ etc. I'm thinking the amp equivalent to a guitar coffin.

So.... the things that trouble me about the "plan". I dig the idea of a splay, and it's the only way I can see to get 2 decent sized rooms in this space with regard to where the door on the north wall is. I don't have any beef with closing this up, but I had thought about the concept of maybe being able to keep it and use it as an access door for a small machine room? ... plus less expense than bricking it in. Also... and this existing plan was just placed over my dimensions, but I don't like the concept of walking out of the house and the corner of the wall being right there, so the splay either needs to be less drastic.... or only at the front.... in which case I'm gonna lose the front window, which may be idealistic to hope to keep, but I'm a big fan of natural light.... and even fresh air if I'm not doing anything that necessitates low outside noise. I am thinking there must be a way to build a decent "soundproof shutter" system that can give me the best of both worlds? Plus.... if I splay only the front half.... it gets pretty tight at the front of the room by the time I splay enough to achieve any desirable room dimensions. My other thought has been.... close the doorway, make a rectangular room with good dimensions.... and call it a day. Just seems so lame to have the opportunity to build it and not do something more interesting than that.... and above all things I don't want this to just feel like a cheap garage conversion.

My main isolation goals are from the outside when necessary... we are in a fairly busy area where trucks, sirens, birds, mowers.... etc, can all be interruptions for vocal/ acoustic recording. The other main isolation desire is from the house itself... both directions.... so that roaring guitar is not an interruption to the house, and that the little drummer boy banging on pots and pans and or having a meltdown, TV, etc.... aren't interruptions to the studio. I am planning on the control room being room in a room, and the live room would be isolated from the control room and the house via the pass through, and only be connected throughout the rafters to utilize the full 9'7" of the ceiling. (The rafters of the house ceiling.... not the control ceiling, which will land right at about 9' even.). I think we will track drums infrequently enough to not necessitate absolute isolation from the house, just as much as we can without losing precious square footage . Where the garage door is will likely become a single entry door into the pass through, and a set of french/ carriage house doors into the drum iso. This may, however, need to be done in stages as my main goal right now is getting the control room up so that I can move out of the house... and as stated.... time is of the essence.
As far as budget.... I had the project bid.... and decided I was definitely not in the ball park. With a second child coming with no maternity insurance, the need to finish a master suite and nursery as well, and the loss of a garage which will need to be replaced at some point... my only option is diy.... which hopefully means I can come in for $4000-$5000 tops. That's including replacing the existing windows.... which are junk. I'll leave the concrete... stain it, maybe build a wooden "landing for the producers desk/chair, throw down a rug and be done with the floor. All acoustic treatments will be built by myself or a woodworking friend I just did an album project on trade with. I honestly feel I should be able to pull the construction off for way less doing it myself, but I haven't even crossed the HVAC bridge yet..... and that could easily be half my budget I realize.

Okay... enough rambling.... I really gotta learn to edit my thoughts. ha! Have at it.... I'm here for wisdom.... and it's easy to collect that by reading.... but seemingly harder to apply a lot of it to your own project.

Shayne

Hi Shayne, and welcome to the forum! And also, sorry for the delay in someone responding to your post: I just happened to notice your post now. If that happens again, please feel free to "bump" your post after a few days, so it gets noticed.

shouldn't be a problem acoustically, but a sloped floor might be an indication that water was expected, and it was built that way to get the water to run off... That might be an issue! Water running across your studio floor would not be fun.

Looks like it should be do-able. It won't be ideal, of course, but you seem to have enough space for both, if that's what you want.

Try downloading SketchUp, from Google. It's REAL expensive... FREE!!! That's about the only thing you'll ever get for nothing in building your studio. It takes a little while to get the hang of SketchUp, but it is a fantastic tool for studio design.

Sounds like an interesting idea, but bear in mind that anything that big is going to have a large effect on the acoustics of the room it is in, so if you wheel it into the CR, that will change everything about the way the CR sounds: I wouldn't try to do any critical mixing with that "coffin" on the room.

I don't see ANY door on the north wall??? Maybe you forgot to show it?

I would build them both as fully-decoupled MSM "room-in-a-room", pretty much as you show in your rough sketch, but correctly decoupling the walls. Just doing the control room won't help with the drums in the tracking room! Both rooms need to be properly isolated.

Sounds rather tight for a space that big, and a layout that ambitious.

Yep!

So I'd suggest that you re-do your design in SketchUp, and post it here along with some photos of the actual space, to give a better idea of what you are dealing with.

- Stuart -

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

Oh god, here he goes again....

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

Not any more! He won't be bothering us again....

- Stuart -

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

Well.... It served as a good reminder that I hadn't gotten back to this. Sorry for my negligence to your responses, which are much appreciated. I typed up a response and was gonna attach some pics before posting.... then lo and behold that little girl came.

Anyhow... My previous draft follows

Hi Stuart,
Thanks so much for the response. No worries on it taking a while. If you're like me, there aren't enough hours in the day.

Regarding the studio.... things have progressed at a pretty good pace. Much slower than I wish.... but great progress nonetheless. Plans have changed quite a bit since I first posted (I'm sure no big surprise there) and while I have certainly made mistakes and in some cases probably gotten the cart before the horse with certain things... I feel pretty good about where we are. Some of the cart before the horse stuff has to do with having a friend who has been kind enough to donate an unbelievable amount of time helping.... and wanting to utilize that help effectively when I can get it. I'm sure you can understand, I hate having him stand around while I figure things out.... and not always being sure when I'll get him again.... sometimes we shoot first and ask questions later. Unbelievable how many things come up in a build like this.

Anyhow... we ended up going with a design that would roughly equal John's corner control room. Room within a room, largely inside out, and managed to squeeze in a vocal booth and small equipment closet. Walls are 2 layers of sheetrock, one 1/2" and one 5/8", inside of the existing garage structure.... which is brick over sheathing. We were able to keep the walk in garage door (the one not included in the original drawing:)) and the big garage door is still there.... but will be going away as we move into the live room side of things. My main concern has been getting the control room move in ready before the little girl comes (we're not gonna make it btw ) so that has been where all efforts are focused. I'm gonna upload some pics tomorrow Lord willing just to give you a sense of where we are and what it's looking like. It may be a day late and dollar short, but please shout out about anything that seems way outta whack.

Regarding the floor, I'm guessing you're right about water... but we just had the biggest flood in well over a hundred years here in Nashville a couple years ago, and the garage didn't take on any.... so I'm thinking we're okay. If it did get up to that level.... it would hit the live room side first... which will be bricked off for the most part and stained concrete floor.... so we should be okay.

The control room/vocal booth are in fact room within a room, but the live room will connect to the outer shell. At least that's the plan currently. Drums or gtrs are all that will potentially ever be recorded there.... and noise really isn't an issue as far as bothering neighbors goes, so I feel like we can get all the isolation we need with dual sheetrock layers... and possibly green glue? I'm open to hearing arguments against doing it this way, but my feeling is as long as the control and vocal booth are both completely isolated, we won't have any issues.

I actually have downloaded sketch up and played with it a little bit.... but time has been so short that I haven't been able to invest enough to get my head around it... And currently have been working from the iPad as my wife needs the laptop for her work when I'm traveling. I will continue to attempt it.... and at the very least do another paper sketch of the current floorplan.... hopefully a bit more comprehensive. I'm aware of the concept that a great studio is 90% planning and 10% construction, so I recognize this probably all seems pretty "on a wing and a prayer" and I suppose it is, but I have been reading and trying to soak up as much info as I can in the last few months.... so hopefully I haven't made any truly critical errors. At the end of the day I have to accept that I have been making records in a much less well designed room than this one, and at this point getting my family into a proper living scenario is more important than anything else.

The major questions/ concerns I have at this point

Glass: I ordered glass to replace the windows... Which are fairly big. (36 1/2" x 62 1/2") I went with 3/8".... And in a moment of not thinking it through.... I didn't order different thicknesses for the outer and inner panes. Am I gonna really hurt myself? I have only installed the outer panes... So it isn't a done deal.... but obviously I can't return the glass, and by the time I realized my error.... It was already cut. Btw.... With only one pane in.... I'm pretty impressed. That 3/8 is a hoss. I think our isolation is gonna be crazy great... Not Oceanway, but light years from where we were.

Door seals: I am building my own doors, with glass in them... Which is less of a concern for me than the seals. All the stuff I've seen is pretty pricey, and I'm wondering what folks are doing that aren't into spending hundreds per door just on seals. Any great DIY designs I've missed?

And finally... Hvac. My plan is mini split, I just wanna make sure that fresh air isn't a big deal. This studio won't have 5 or 6 people in it all the time or anything.... But I do realize that's the downfall of mini splits.... And the one John pointed to awhile back (the Daikin Sahara unit that brings in fresh air?) doesn't seem to be available anywhere in the states that I've seen. I'll be doing the installation mostly myself btw.... Had a guy come out and bid the job, and he shot me $6900 for a 2 zone mini split system. Fascinating... I had no idea they were such rapists. I should be building a heating and cooling company.... Not a studio. ha! Anyhow... If I install I'm sure I can find a local hvac guy to do final hookups, and if not I can probably get my stinkin degree and become licensed myself for less than that estimate.

Okay... Off my soapbox. I'm not home again to be able to take great shots.... But my wife is cool enough to send some pics.... So let me know about any specific questions... Or anything you wanna see. The walls and ceiling are ready for primer/ paint, and I have laminate waiting to go down after that. I haven't picked up insulation yet.... But I know several paces in Nash carry all I will need. I feel like we're getting close.... At least close enough to move in and be able to do treatment/ trim work and such while we are in. Right now I'm on the road for a couple weeks so progress will halt... But it's headed in the right direction... I think.

I was trying to upload pics but it won't give me the option to choose file. What am I missing...?

That's a little confusing! First you say that it won't be a room within a room, but then you say you'll be putting up dual sheetrock, which wort of implies room-within-a-room! So I guess I'm not understanding what the actual plan is there.

If the plan is just to add more mass to an existing wall, then you are limited by mass law, which is not a very encouraging law of physics. It says that each time you double the mass, you get a 6 dB increase in isolation. So to get the perceived level down to half of what it was, you need to multiply the existing mass by 4. In other words, if the existing house wall has a layer of 1/2" drywall on each side, then you need to add eight new layers of drywall! And all that will get you is a subjective decrease of about half.

Also, you say that your noise going out is not a problem and won't disturb the neighbors, but you don't seem to have considered noise going the other way: coming IN. When you are recording, do you really want things like rain, wind, thunder and helicopters mixed in with your music! Cars, trucks, animals, phones, radio, TV, people talking, doors opening and closing, people walking, pipe noises... there's about a million things that make noises which you might not want to have in your recordings.

How thick is are your leaves? You say that one leaf is brick, and the other leaf is on layer of 5/8 drywall plus one layer of 1/2" drywall, implying total leaf thickness of 9/8". Glass is about 3 times more dense than drywall, so it only needs to be one third as thick, so 3/8" is probably fine for that leaf. But tell us more about the brick leaf: You might need thicker glass on that.

You should probably be OK, as long as the surface density on each leaf is more or less constant across the entire surface. That's the reason for asking about the brick: the surface density of the glass that goes into the brick leaf should be matched to the surface density of the brick itself.

By the way, is that laminated glass?

Rod recommend Type-K trunk rubber for door seals, and that shouldn't be too expensive. the expensive part is the threshold seal...

Unfortunately, fresh air IS a big deal. Unless there will never, ever be any living creature at all inside your studio, then you need ventilation as well as cooling. The basic issue is this: The rooms will be sealed hermetically, totally air-tight, and in fact will be double sealed. People have this terrible habit called "breathing" If it wasn't for that, then you could forget about ventilation, but if there will ever be people inside there, then you cannot forget about that. You have to provide the right amount of ventilation for the expected occupancy.

Right below the area where you type your message is a section called "upload attachment", just underneath the "submit" button. Immediately under that is a button marked "browse": Hit that to select the photo you want to upload, then after you select the file, hit the "Add the file" button. Then "submit".


- Stuart -

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

Thanks so much for the response Stuart! I'll try to address things one by one...
That is... (or was) the plan. The brick + sheathing makes it fairy quiet on it's own.... So my thinking was that a couple layers of drywall would give me enough isolation... But perhaps I should re-think that? Basically available space was dictating this plan, as if I go much smaller in the live room I fear it won't be big enough to bother. Of course.... I want it t be isolated enough to bother too. Yes... I have considered this... but my thinking was whatever outside noise gets in won't be much of a bleed problem on electric gtr/ drum tracks where the source is usually pretty crazy loud. Of course that's probably pretty idealistic thinking.... and certainly things like overheads will pick up aforementioned noises in a heartbeat. I will definitely take this into further consideration. I have a bit of time to decide for this part of the build, as this side of the room won't likely get finished till I've done the master inside the house.

The brick is standard 3 1/2" x 8" over 1/2" sheathing. I didn't actually know or find any info regarding the density of brick vs drywall, but even if I had... when I ordered the glass I was in somewhat of a fog and didn't even consider the fact that they should be 2 different thicknesses. One of those "shoot first and remember what you've read later" moments.
yes

Yeah.... trying to think up a clever DIY alternative. If not I suppose that won't be the worst of my expenses. Thanks for the trunk rubber tip... I'll definitely research that.

Clever. Okay, i shoud re-phrase my question. Do mini splits in fact bring in no fresh air, and if so, is there clear action that should/ can be taken? I haven't come across anything definitive in most of the discussion Ive seen. What is the way to provide necessary ventilation? Are mini splits not the answer? maybe I should just develop a green thumb?

I'm familiar with how it's supposed to work, but my "choose file" button is greyed out? Possibly because I'm on an iPad as opposed to an actual computer? If so I'll have to wait a couple weeks before I can post a drawing or pics that will hopefully help you be able to see where we are....


I truly appreciate your responses and have learned a ton from your wisdom in other threads as well Stuart. Thank you for sharing that wisdom... truly a blessing.
Shayne

The density of brick is anywhere between 2000 and 3000 kg/m3, depending on the type of brick. The density of drywall is around 700 kg/m3 at best. In other words, brick is about 3 to 4 times the density of drywall. Also, your bricks are 3-1/2" thick, while your drywall is 5/8" thick. Do the math: the surface density of your existing brick wall is about 190 kg per square meter. The surface density of a sheet of drywall is about 12 kg per square meter. So you would need about SIXTEEN layers of 5/8" drywall to double the mass of your brick wall and thus gain the excitingly tiny increase of a whole 6 decibels

Like I said: mass law is not very encouraging! All those sixteen layers would gain you that whopping (not!) 6 db extra isolation, which is barely even audible. Next time you are mixing, set up an A/B comparison with a difference of 6 dB, to see just how much that is: You'll be unpleasantly surprised at how little benefit you'd get form doubling the mass of your single leaf wall. And that would be with 16 layers of 5/8" fire-rated drywall: you can imagine how much extra you'd get from just two layers: you wouldn't even be able to measure it, let alone notice it.

On the other hand, those same two layers of drywall on a stud frame built right next to that wall (just a 1/2" away) could increase your isolation substantially.

Theoretically, you are getting about 40 dB of isolation right now from the brick wall alone. Add two layers of 5/8" drywall on a stud frame and that should go up to at least 50 dB. That's huge. That cuts the level by half, subjectively. Put fiberglass insulation in the cavity, and you should gain another 5 to 10 dB. That's even huger.

So, in less than half the space that you'd need for the hypothetical 16 layers of drywall, you would get at least ten times more isolation, and for a fraction of the cost.

In reality, it would have absolutely no effect at all. See above. Or take a look at BRN-217, which shows actual acoustic laboratory test results for a very similar situation. The only difference is that they used concrete blocks for the tests, not bricks. In the first test, they used a wall of 3-1/2" concrete blocks and found that it gave them 46 dB of isolation. So they added a layer of drywall to it and tested again: this time, they got 46 dB of isolation... And when they added another layer of drywall, then they got a figure of 46 dB of isolation... In fact, it worked better when they just painted the wall, without adding drywall: paint alone increased the isolation from 46 dB to 47 dB. Still not an audible difference, but at least it is measurable!

See above...

Sixteen layers of drywall (for a 6 dB increase) would be 10 inches thick. The MSM wall I described above (2 layers of 5/8" drywall on studs 1/4" away) would be 5 inches thick, for an increase of 15 dB in isolation. Half the thickness, ten times better isolation.

Depends on what you are recording: If it is drums for a heavy metal rock band, then sure, not even an earthquake would be louder! But if you happen to be recording soft jazz drums, where the drummer is just using wire brushes softly, and mostly on the hi-hat, well, even people talking outside, or a car door slamming, or distant thunder, or a phone ringing.... all such things would be in all your mics.

I had to record a Christian rock band a few years back, and for complicated reasons the drums had to be recorded in their own church. They promised me it was quiet in there... but forget to mention the birds nesting under the eaves! You have no idea how loud birds can be, even when recording rock. It took me many, many days of rather complicated editing to kill all the birds in all the mics.

Just a thought...

"This side"? You can't isolate a room by doing only one side. You need to isolate all size sides to the same level, or it isn't worth doing at all. If you only isolate one side, sound will simply bypass that side, going around it as id it wasn't even there.

I mentioned it above, but the density of brick is variable between about 2000 kg/m3 and about 300 kg/m3. Yours is mostly at the lower end of that range, say around 2100 kg/m3. Drywall is much lower density: about 1/4 to 1/3 of brick. Fire-rated drywall is the most dense, and that comes in at about 700 kg/m3. Ordinary drywall is less dense.

You'll probably be fine. The "two different thicknesses" rule is not a life-or-death issue. Nice to have if you can, for a few extra dB of isolation at certain frequencies (those where the coincidence dips no longer coincide), but overall is not a huge deal. You can compensate for that by leaving larger air gaps between the panes.

The vast majority of min-splits do not bring in any fresh air at all. A mini-split consists of two "boxes". The noisy one with the compressor in it is the one you put outside, and the quiet one with just the cooling coils and air fan is the one that goes in your room. The connection between them is a pair of copper pipes and an electrical cable. One of the pipes brings the coolant from the outside unit to the inside unit, the other pipe returns the coolant back to the outside unit. That's it: no air AT ALL moving between them. Only coolant. All that the mini-split does is to cool the air in the room.

That said, there is one single model by one manufacturer that I am aware of, that adds a very small pipe to the outside, to bring in a tiny amount of fresh air. But that's the exception. All other mini-split units do not do that. It's a special unit with that feature.

Mini-splits are the answer for cooling, but not for ventilation. You need both. So if you go with a mini-split system, then you also need to add a pair of ventilation ducts to your room: one duct brings in fresh air from the outside world, the other exhausts stale air to the outside world. And since those ducts destroy your isolation (they are basically just huge holes in your walls), they also need to be done correctly to fix that again: they need to have silencer boxes on them (sometimes also called "baffle boxes").

So it's a system: the mini-split cools and dehumidifies the air, while the ventilation ducts keep you alive by supplying you with fresh air and getting rid of the stale air. You need both. That's why this concept is generally referred to as HVAC, which stands for "Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning".

There are other ways of doing it, instead of a mini-split, but the cost goes up and the system gets more complicated.



I'm not sure where you are seeing a button labelled "choose file". The one you want should be labelled "Browse"...



Are you seeing something different from the above? If you are not seeing the above, then please take a screen shot of that and send it to me. (But there's no reason that I can think of why it would be different on an iPad.)

(The other button ("Add the file") will be greyed out until you actually select the file: you can't add a file that you haven't selected yet!. After you have selected the file, then you have to add it.)


- Stuart -

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

Okay, must be an iphone/ ipad thing... cause I logged on with a bandmates laptop and it looks as you show it. I'll include my screenshot so you can see what i'm looking at.


Also... while borrowing his laptop I'm uploading a very crude drawing of the floorplan, and some pics of the progress... whether they help or not. Not great detail as I just asked my wife to shoot a few random shots.... but it'll give you some idea.

Okay.... thank you for the breakdown of the isolation. I've read those figures before.... but again, somehow until it's applied to my walls it doesn't compute.
Here is my main issue... where the front wall of the control room is, that's 2 separate 2x4 walls. The control room has it's own rafters/ ceiling and doesn't touch the actual garage rafters.... but the "live room" wall ties into the rafters. I did this to give the garage rafters support as I will deck that space for storage, and the previous deck... though it was sitting on 2x8's, wasn't what I would call rock solid with no wall underneath that big expanse. From everything I've read, being tied into the outer structure anywhere basically negates any gain whatsoever in isolation correct? SO.... I either need to build yet another wall inside of this one.... or get rid of this one, support the ceiling by other means.... and then put up a wall that doesn't touch the garage rafters to gain anything from separate walls on the perimiter... right? I'm trying to decide the best way to do that without eating another 5 inches or so of space from this part of the room. Not that that would be the end of the world of course... Just wish I could work off of that wall.

What I mean is this side of the garage. The control/ vocal booth is currently completely isolated room within a room, but is only taking up half of the garage. That's what I mean by "this side".


As large of an air gap as possible while still having the panes splayed.... Correct?

The Fujitsu possibly? That's the only thing I've seen here in the states that offers a "fresh air" intake.... and only on the ceiling cassette model. That still doesn't deal with exhaust air.... so I will dig into the separate intake/ exhaust concept, and come up with a solution.

Fire away with any questions/ concerns from the pix above. I hope the floor plan is even remotely legible and helps make sense of things.......

You can't have it both ways, unfortunately. If you want good isolation in your live room, then you have to cut those hard ties. So you need to decide what is more important here: supporting your "rafter deck", or isolation.

Yep! If there is any mechanical tie at all between teh two leaves, that seriously degrades the isolation.

Did you ever play with an "old fashioned" tuning fork? Tap it to get it ringing, then hold it up in the air, a couple of feet above a table: cay you hear it? Nope. Now put the stem down on the table surface: Can you hear it now? Yup! Big time! What you did there is to create a mechanical tie between the vibrating tines and the surface of your table. That's what happens if you have a tie even as small as the stem of that tuning fork. That's all you need to transmit vibration very, very loudly and clearly. One badly aimed nail is all it takes...

That would make a three-leaf system, which has even WORSE isolation in low frequencies...

You might not need to get rid of that wall: you might just be able to decouple the top from the rafters. There are several ways of doing that.

If you splay the two panes of glass, then you are not getting the largest gap possible! If they are splayed, then obviously at one edge of the window, the two panes are closer to each other than at the other edge, so that isn't maximizing the gap.

Also, it's a myth that you must splay the glass for acoustic reasons: there are no acoustic reasons why you would want to splay your windows. The reason why studios often do splay glass is more form lighting glare, not from acoustics. Some people think: "If the glass is vertical, and I have a singer standing in front of it with a mic, then I'll get reflections off the glass, unless I splay it". Wrong. Even if you splay it, you will still get reflections! They'll just come from a point a bit higher up the glass, instead of from directly in front. Think about it, or sketch it out on a piece of paper, and you'll see that this is true. All that splaying does is to move the point of reflection up or down the glass (or left/right, if you splay sideways). It does not somehow magically send the reflections off into a black hole somewhere. Myth.

Others think that having the glass parallel creates a resonant cavity at a single frequency, while splaying it makes that go away: wrong. It just flattens the Q of the resonance, so it is at a lower level, for sure, but now also covers more frequencies. Myth.

So the best idea is to have your glass panes vertical and parallel to each other, and just design your lighting and decor more effectively to minimize glare, since that's the only real reason you would need to splay glass.

Could be: I don't recall. I was thinking Mitsubishi, but I might be wrong.

I'm wondering about the purpose of that large hole next to the doorway. You mentioned something about putting some rack gear in there, but how will you solve the issue of lost isolation? You will need to build a box around the other side of that hole, fully decoupled and isolated in the exact same manner as the rest of the studio, and that seems like a lot of extra work! Why not just put the gear in a rack, either inside the room our somewhere else? I'm not sure that I understand the logic and thinking here...


- Stuart -

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

Hey Stuart!
Thanks for the response. Interesting about the tuning fork analogy... hmmm. Point taken. No sense going to all this work and not getting the full payoff... in both rooms
Well, there currently isn't any drywall on the studs.... it's just framed, so no 3rd leaf. Still.... no sense in having an entire frame standing between my two walls....
I'll definitely research this.... unless you can point me in a particular direction?
Okay, I thought I remembered reading that from you somewhere before.... but then I came across the following quote right out of John's "Recording Manual"....
It actually works better not to splay them in my scenario... so I'm glad to hear I don't have to.
My thinking is that the computer and power amps/ power supplies/ converters, etc... cause a ton of heat. Rather than combat that heat... why not build a box that can vent to the outside when necessary, i.e. summertime... and get rid of said heat. The room that is in is actually separated from the vocal booth, so I don't think much isolation will be lost? It is more work to build around it.... But in the long run I think it will be worth it.... and my design is pretty tight on studio floor space.... So I figure the less racks sitting in the room taking up space.... the bigger it's gonna feel. I may regret it and think I should have just put stuff in the closet without having direct access to it, but it sure will be nice to have the ability to see what's happening with amps/ converters....etc. That's my logic anyhow.....
and if I'm really clever, I can find a way to switch my venting of the rack to the inside and utilize all that heat in winter. My attempt at being "green".

John wrote that a long time ago, and has since changed his opinions on a few things. Somewhere on the forum there's a post he wrote where he even states (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting) that he use to think that the two leaves of a wall or window had to be non-parallel, but that now he knows that this is not true.

The science of acoustics is still advancing, and theories, idea, design concepts do change over time, as understanding, techniques and methods improve. So things that were assumed to be right years ago, are now known to not be so right. For example, LEDE design was once touted by leading experts as being the perfect way to build a studio... but nobody does it that way any more, since it turned out to be very unpleasant to work in LEDE studios. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that things have changed since John wrote the Recording Manual, and just because he wrote something in there years ago does no necessarily mean that he still does things that way. Of course, the vast majority of what he wrote there is still perfectly true today, but some things have changed.

Hmmmm... is there any reason why you can't use that framing just like it is? It seems a shame to waste it. How about posting some photos of what you have, so we can see if it is any use, as-is.

The basic idea is fine, but not the implementation. If the gear is producing heat, then it is producing heat all the time, not just in summer! Your studio will basically end up as a box that is sealed air-tight, twice over, and is then wrapped in very thick thermal insulation, twice over, with even more thermal insulation inside it... I think you see where this is going: Heat is going to be an issue, not because of the weather outside, but simply because you have people and equipment producing heat inside a small, very well insulated, hermetically sealed box. It would be much better to put all that equipment in a simple vertical rack, inside the "closet", but with suitable cooling and ventilation for the closet.

Also, by cutting that huge hole in your isolation shell you are creating a big problem for yourself: you are destroying your isolation! There is no point to building a wonderful decoupled 2-leaf MSM isolation wall, then cutting an enormous hole in the middle of it. That is kind of like building an aquarium for your fish, then taking out the glass from one side...

On the diagram, all that I see is a single-leaf wall between the booth and the closet, and that wall has a door in it. And there is no isolation at all between the closet and the control room, due to that huge hole.

So then forget the closet, make the vocal booth larger, and put your gear in racks under, on, in, around or behind your desk. That takes up zero extra floor space, since the desk is there anyway. If the gear is very noisy, then build silencer boxes for it.

Here's another option: If you really want the closet for your gear, then build it, but with no door to the vocal booth: make that wall a proper 2-leaf MSM. Put your gear in a rack in the, and put the door into the control room, not into the vocal booth. Enlarge that hole upwards, to door height, and put a simple door in with lots of glass in it, so you can see the gear from the mix position. Since the "closet" will be part of the control room, acoustically, that door and wall actually doesn't need to isolate much.

I don't think that you'll be needing much heat in winter! Your room is basically two very thick plastic bags wrapped in two very thick blankets: It will get warm in there pretty fast, summer or winter. You'll need an HVAC system, for sure, but it will be doing an awful lot more cooling than heating, I reckon.


- Stuart -

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

Regarding the splaying of windows:

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13145&p=90436&hilit=window#p90436

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