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Building a Recording / Rehearsal Room

peterpalmieri

peterpalmieri

Supporting Member
Apr 19, 2005
7,887
5,601
Babylon, NY
#1
Hey guys I would appreciate your insight. I will give you some background.

I have a space in my basement 35 feet x 12 feet that I am going to be finishing. I've already had work done to move some duct work that was in the way. Sometime in the next two weeks I am having the plumbing and electrical tucked up into the ceiling. I do have my main drainage line running along the 35 foot wall out to the sewers, I will need to access points along the wall for the trap and clean out. Along the shorter (12 foot wall) I have crawl space that I will need to build access to as well. The ceiling right at the moment is just under 7 feet and I've already installed a vapor barrier and a sub floor. Once all the plumbing and electric is moved I will start to frame things out.

1. I have not finalized my layout just yet but I am considering a 14x12 rehearsal room, a 8x12 control room and a 11x12 additional rehearsal room that may serve other family functionality as well. This would be with the control room between the two rooms. I've considered 2 larger rooms as opposed to three rooms.

2. I've spoken to a number of people and read a lot and have had conflicting views on the best way to sound prrof the room. The first being sound insulation, a reisilient channel and then sheet rock. The scond being traditional fiberglass insulation, wrapping the room in sheet barrier, then two layers of sheetrock with green glue sandwiched between the two.

That's probably enough for now as I've got a lot of different things I could add to the list but I'll start there.

I should add I mostly want to practice my double bass and electric bass at moderate volumes and not disturb everyone in the house. I don't expect 100% sound isolation. I also have a jazz quartet that rehearses at the house every week. I can get into what recording gear I have at a later point but basically a 003 console and some outboard gear. Mostly recording the jazz quartet or other small projects just for the fun of it. I've got a Vdrums kit and an acoustic kit depending on what I am working on...

Any insight would be helpful, I will try to keep this thread as a running update as to where I am in the project. I'll do my best to take some pictures of the unfinished space in the next few days...

Pete
 
#3
Thanks Dan,

Not sure I'm going about this the right way or not but my first priority is sound Isolation. I thought if I went with two "rehearsal rooms" one would be treated on the interior to be live and the other dead. I guess this has to be addressed from the constuction phase?
 
#4
Nothing really useful to add, I just dislike basement spaces. Is the ceiling gonna have 7' throughout or will it be 7' at the highest point and have channeling for pipes etc. that drops down below that. I'm always whanging my scroll into something whenever I have to go into a basement space.
I think it's prolly a good idea to have the control room be a transition between exclusively music space and shared music/fambly space.
In an old BASS PLAYER interview, Will Lee said he insulated his loft (for sound) from his neighbors by using sand as a filler.
 
#5
You don't have to go with 2"x6" walls, fiberglass insulation, etc. on any of the existing concrete walls - they are already pretty well insulated by virtue of being surrounded by lots of dirt! The same is true of a concrete basement floor: it is already well-isolated. Normal pad and carpet should suffice. You will want to put a lot of effort into isolating the basement ceiling - which would not be as big a priority in a "normal" above-ground, single story building.

There are many excellent books available on studio design - buy one or two of them. But keep the scope of your project in mind at all times. "State of the art" studio designs tend to speak in terms of double, offset wall framing, double layers of sheetrock, edge sealing gaskets, spring-suspended ceilings, floating floors, etc. You can spend A LOT of money (tens of thousands of dollars) pretty fast if you try to incorporate all the "best of" techniques!
 
#6
Ed,

I have to take the exact measurements but I believe it's 7 feet now, I'll have to substract out two layers of sheetrock in the ceiling and 3/4 inch flooring. It's not ideal but I am not about to have the concrete riped out and dig the floor deeper that's way out of my budget. The good news is all the pipes in the ceiling will be recessed so it will be flat all the way across.

Certainly a tight fit with the end pin extended.
 
#8
scottbass said:
You don't have to go with 2"x6" walls, fiberglass insulation, etc. on any of the existing concrete walls - they are already pretty well insulated by virtue of being surrounded by lots of dirt! The same is true of a concrete basement floor: it is already well-isolated. Normal pad and carpet should suffice. You will want to put a lot of effort into isolating the basement ceiling - which would not be as big a priority in a "normal" above-ground, single story building.

There are many excellent books available on studio design - buy one or two of them. But keep the scope of your project in mind at all times. "State of the art" studio designs tend to speak in terms of double, offset wall framing, double layers of sheetrock, edge sealing gaskets, spring-suspended ceilings, floating floors, etc. You can spend A LOT of money (tens of thousands of dollars) pretty fast if you try to incorporate all the "best of" techniques!
Click to expand...

Thanks Scott,

I've done quite a bit of reading on this already and will need to do more. My issue is first conflicting ideas of what will work for my space and in my budget. Most of the talk is as you describe, double walls, room inside of a room etc..

To give you a better picture my entire basement space is 35x24 and I am carving off one half of it 35x12. So I am surrounded on three sides by cement block. The interior 35 foot length is partitioned by my main load bearing beams. On the other side of that is the heating unit, washer and dryer. The ceiling is 2x8 construction and keeping the sound from carrying up into the living and bedrooms is my first concern, not letting the sound of the appliances in is my second goal.
 
#10
Here is the layout I've come up with thus far. The entrance being on the lower right side. The long wall along the bottom is the center beams in the house. You can ignore the red, yellow and blue dots.

untitled.jpg
 
#11
Just remember to decouple your walls/floors and add "options" to your room. If you need a "this kind of room to record this instrument or ensemble" have it available. By that I mean...

Decoupling can be as easy as setting a 3" square of non conductive rubber at your connection points. ... walls to 2x4's raised floor to walls, etc. We raised our floor by 2" and ran the rubber squares everywhere that it still seemed to vibrate (or create some kind of standing wave). We got the mat at a feed store and did the cutting with our table saw. Lots of smelly stuff and a whole lot of cleaning along the way.

Diffusers at every possible spot that standing waves could kill your work.

My recording class (high school) just visited CSU Chico and their very expensive studio. They had curtains that were sound absorbers that could open/close in what ever increment you needed them. Diffusers at places (rectangles) that the sound would create a standing wave. Odd shaped walls to help diffuse the standing wave issue.

Glass in the room for windows should not be strictly vertical but rather one canted and the other (after space between) canted a bit harsher. You can create a speaker out of the glass in the control room/recording room once the sound bounces back and forth (like the movement of a speaker). \ | is essentially what they had. The glass was 3/4" on one side (studio side) and the glass was 1/2" on the control room side.

Build GOBO's for use when you need to block off things (gtr amps) from other things that need to be running in the room. :) build nooks and crannys for storage and for changing the way the room deals with sound. :)

Just My thoughts ...
 
#13
Stumpy. I do not have the luxury of headroom to float my floor. I've installed a sub floor already which are 2'x2' dricore tiling, are suggesting isolation between the floor and wall studs and between the wall studs and the ceiling?

Keep in mind I have budget to deal with so I need to figure out what are the must haves to keep sound out of the rest of the house.
 
#15
The other idea is to just soundproof one large space 35x12. Have a large practice space and then I can use GOBOs as needed to partition the room as needed as i'm not planning on spending hours in a control room recording other people.

In any case my main concern and I'm hoping you all can help me with is my construction methods to soundprrof the space. I was originally thinking of 2x4 construction, tying into the main beams down the center of the house, using Roxsul sound insulation on all the walls and the ceiling. I am hung up on if I should hand 5/8ths rock from resilient channels OR tradional fiberglass insulation and wrap the room in sheet barrier and two layers of sheetrock with green glue between the two.

The single room idea also allows me to only have a single soundproof door and no windows between rooms which allows me a larger budget for other materials. The other thing I need to address is how to plug the walls where I need access to the drain pipe and crawl space.
 
#16
Try flipping the console 90 deg counterclock-wise, where the console is will be the walk thru. Desk will be opposite console. Maximizes space. On the ceiling, go with fiberglass, then acoustic ceiling tiles.You can do the insulation and panels with a utility knife and staple gun yourself. Add a screw gun and a helper, and put 1/2" sheetrock before the panels.
The drapes are a good idea. Any kind of heavy fabric will do.
 
#20
Search for "staggered stud construction" and "Z-Channel". Check the Auralex site for the Acoustics 101 paper they put out. HVAC will become your Achilles Heel. See if you can find a way to slightly float the floor without taking up too much height.

KO
 

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