My understanding is that you frame out the floor, all 'floated' on these little rubber peices. I've seen them, I just don't know where to get a ton of them. Then you build your walls on top of that. then you build your ceiling on the walls. That I can do. I'm freinds with an electrician, power and tie lines are not a concern. I'm thinking of skipping the HVAC. I know it'll get stuffy, but I'm probably not going to even record all that many rock drummers. I got really bored with rock. It's not like any drummers are going to spend hours in there. I mean the doors can be open for set up, close the doors to get sounds, then open the door up again. I mean, I'm not planning on using this for a practice room.

Sometimes I like recording in the living room and there's street noise or rain or something. Sometimes I want total isolation for an acoustic track, you know?

So if I build a room, insolate it twice (two walls, both insolated, with space between), and the only thing touching anything is the floor on these rubber pellets, that's several hundred dollars worth of drywall, 2x4's and some plywood..... and how much sound's gonna get out? Of that sound I'm thinking the walls of the basement will take care of that. Will it be any fun to record in there? With a nice table, lamp, and a little chair, maybe some fresh cut flowers, I'm thinking it'll be lovely.

-n

here you go:

http://www.auralex.com/sound_isolation_ ... _uboat.asp

the sayers people seem mixed on it, since they apprear to be more expensive than some other wierd things, but if i were doing it, i'd say screw it and use the auralex u-boats. i'm pretty skeptical of all the other auralex products though, there are a lot of substitutes out there that do the same for cheaper.

from what it sounds like to me - i think floating in your situation in the basement may be a bit overkill...

also, remember the whole mass-airspace-mass thing. so like the walls against your current cement basement walls you only want 1 wall, not 2. 2 walls for btw the live room & CR... but not against the cement. you get what im saying.

well don't forget, your lighting (assuming it's incandescent) is gonna be another heat source in your stuffy room. i.e. probably wanna keep your wattage as low and your bulb as efficient as possible. also, don't forget to factor in the cost of all the insulation you're talking about using. that stuff isn't free. if you can get your electrician buddy to hook you up with electricity and not charge for labor, that'll make it a lot cheaper (he won't give you materials for free, taking a loss, will he?). don't forget to pay attention to the dimensions of the room, so you're not getting into trouble with modes. as far as the acoustics of the room, is it just gonna be a plywood floor and drywall walls and ceiling? is it a big enough room that you'll need to help support the weight of the ceiling with that whole "resiliant channel" thing, or will the ceiling bear its own weight and the pucks be able to handle the weight of the entire room all focused on them?

probably a safe bet is to take however much you're thinking it's gonna cost and maybe double or triple it. that seems to be how things end up working a lot of the time.

this goes without saying, but please do keep us posted as to how it goes and how it turns out.

Too Many,

You seem to have some good experience in this so I wanted to ask you a question. My moms has been kind enough to loan me her basement for a practice space and recording setup. The basement is divided into two rooms and I'm taking one room and diving it into two rooms.

How important is it to do anything to the floor? It's a concrete floor basement, so I was planning on just throwing down a carpet so the drums don't move around and that's it.

Also, rather than build a room inside a room, I was planning on making moveable walls with soundproofing that I could move around. I'm also not looking for the extreme isolation that n.c. was looking for by the way. The other thing that's nice is she's got dropped ceilings in her basement. I took down all the drywall panels to glue 1x1 soundproofing on them, and there is about a foot of space between the drop ceiling and the floorboards of the kitchen. I was psyched about this.

But how much trouble should I go through about the floor. It's solid concrete, so I'm hoping to not have to do anything.

Well, I mean if you think about it, I'd much rather be in a tidy little room with some dim lighting that doesn't get great ventilation, than a stuffy basement with blankets over the windows and all sorts of other deadening crap on the walls. Isn't that just as stuffy? or worse?

The room will be about 10x12, not too big, the ceiling will be fine. I'll make it off square to avoid standing waves. The floor will be plywood and have a nice persian rug covering that and killing some ugly reflections. I'm thining of getting some nice drapes and running cutain rods around the room so that you can temper the thing a bit, make it liver or deader. My freind Barret is very nice and an electrician / contractor and, dude, electical stuff is sooo cheap. Even if I didn't have a professional electrician on call, I could always just make a small hole in the wall and stick an extention cord through, then caulk the hole up.

It may be kind of overkill, but I'll gladly shell out 200-700+ on a single mic. Why not put 300-500 into a room where you can make some noise.

I've already gotten the drywall, got the plywood I need for the floor from a construction site's dumpster. So far for studs and drywall and shit were around 300. I'm planning on using compressed fiberglass for the other side of the drywall. Insolation is ussually relatively cheap.

-n

patrick md wrote:But how much trouble should I go through about the floor. It's solid concrete, so I'm hoping to not have to do anything.

How important is it to do anything to the floor? It's a concrete floor basement, so I was planning on just throwing down a carpet so the drums don't move around and that's it.

unless you're looking to set up a real-deal professional recording studio that is attempting to be competitive with big studios in town, i don't think there's any reason to do anything to your floor. sounds like you have a good plan in that regard.

sounds like what you're gonna build are baffles, which should be useful for altering the sound of the room, changing the character of it. but in terms of isolating the noise, they're gonna do very little, i'm guessing. maybe you could position them in a way that would prevent higher-frequency stuff from leaking out a window, or from one room to the next. but in general it sounds like they'll be useful for fighting reflections and altering the character of the room, but not for sound insulating. which seems like a fine plan.

that's more than i've done in my basement. alls we did is plug up two windows and a door with some homebrew wooden/gasket/caulk plugs. that was to keep from pissing off the neighbors, and that's all. i did nothing to alter the sound of the room itself. it's alright and all, but if i wanted that next level, i'd save up the cash and go hit a real studio rather than try to rework my room. especially since i was renting. and i'm leaving town in 2 weeks.

good luck with getting set up! nothing beats a basement to rock and record in. unless your moms will make pizza, too. that would be even better.

Cool. Thanks man.

That's what's nice about this place. My mom is the only person that lives at her house and she's got the extra space. She owns the house, so I can set up something semi-permanant and not have to worry too much about it.

Yeah, I am planning on building baffles, at least for now. Like I mentioned in my other post, the basement is divided into two rooms, but there is just a smaller open space between the two rooms. It's not divided off by a wall or door. A baffle is just my attempt at making a wall and keep some of the sound from going up the stairs without going all out and installing a new wall.

I hope she will make me pizza. She is usually pretty good about making me dinner or at least a bit of pie and ice cream.

n.c. wrote:Well, I mean if you think about it, I'd much rather be in a tidy little room with some dim lighting that doesn't get great ventilation, than a stuffy basement with blankets over the windows and all sorts of other deadening crap on the walls. Isn't that just as stuffy? or worse?

personally, i would think no. i would anticipate being happier in a basement with sealed windows and doors than an entirely sealed up room with no windows and no ventilation. i would be afraid i might get a little claustrophobic in there. though that is a reasonably big room, so maybe not. and i'm no good for the first part of this question, because i usually emotionally equate tidy with sterile. i like me a little clutter. effects pedals sitting around, speakers in the corner, some broken strings and broken sticks here and there. that's when i feel at home. so like i say, i'm no good for that first part of the question.

and for the general content of the question, it sounds like your mashing sound insulating the room to isolate it into one creature with sound insulating the room to affect its internal acoustics. these are absolutely not necessarily the same thing. you can, for the most part, do one without the other. as far as putting shit all over the walls, i wouldn't do that. because i don't like the sound of a totally dead, unnatural sounding room. and i don't like adding delay/echo/reverb effects to stuff. i'd rather have a room that sounds good from the get-go. and something you said is a bit of a red flag, "blankets over the windows"... that's not gonna do anything useful really, like really not gonna do much of anything at all. fyi.

n.c. wrote:The floor will be plywood and have a nice persian rug covering that and killing some ugly reflections. I'm thining of getting some nice drapes and running cutain rods around the room so that you can temper the thing a bit, make it liver or deader. My freind Barret is very nice and an electrician / contractor and, dude, electical stuff is sooo cheap.

that's three "nice"s in three sentences! EGAD! but that does sound good, like you'll have a cozy room that you can control the acoustics of. best of luck, i hope it turns out exactly like you're aiming for.

persian rugs, now those are expensive fuckers, too!

You can find out just about everything you want to know about studio construction here:

http://www.recording.org

Seaside Lounge wrote:You can find out just about everything you want to know about studio construction here:

http://www.recording.org

hey seaside, go check out your thread about the STC calculation. everything everyone told you there was absolute garbage. i registered to clear that up. i know i talk a lotta shit, but i swear to you, i've been paid thousands of dollars by some of the biggest home-building firms in the country to take STC measurements. i wrote a spreadsheet that's used to calculate STC. everything everyone told you there was shite. i also pointed out that STC is measured in accordance with ASTM standard E-413. any deviation from the processed detailed therein is NOT STC. it's something made-up.

cheers.

ps - available for hire as a certified acoustical consultant, God help us all,

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