PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic OK, finally retired

I finally made it! Retired Sept. 30. Well, kinda. I immediately contracted back to the same employer. What the heck, the money is good and I might be able to take some more time off. Anyway, now I am going to build my metal barn (40X40X14) and build out my practice/studio room (20X20X10) inside. All exterior walls and ceiling will be plywood and interior sheetrock. Besides a good layer of insulation all around what is the best bang for my buck for sound proofing? I am not going to be ready to spend money on fancy baffles so what have some of you guys done?

Todd

There's a whole science to building a studio, of course. The best way is to build a box within a box. If that's not possible, have lots of odd angles. If that's not possible, Aurelex on the walls.

Todd,

Congratulations on the retirement gig...
Ya, another company made me and offer couldn't refuse.

Took me about 2 years after totally retiring for the
I'm off Monday thru Friday thing to hit...

Enjoy, enjoy.

Todd,

There are several good books on the topic. For right now, forget about absorption in the room. Here's a general rule of thumb for acoustics and noise control: Stop it at the source, failing that - stop it in it's path, failing that - stop it in the final space.

If you are wanting to build this in a metal barn, you have some challenges ahead of you to turn out a usable recording studio inside of a metal outbuilding.

1. Metal barn = metal roof, correct? If you live in an area with any amount of participation, this is going to be a huge thorn in your side. Instead of the roof serving to stop noise from coming inside, it will become a SOURCE of noise that you have to manage whenever it rains. This makes my head hurt just thinking about what you would have to do to make this a non-issue. I would seriously consider trying for an asphalt shingle roof over OSB sheeting if that's at all an option.

2. Matt is right that you will need to do a room inside of the room. That is, you will want at least two layers of isolation (sheetrock) separating your space from the larger space of the barn. Biggest challenge here will be heating/cooling that doesn't act like a big path for airborne noise to enter the room. Pay particular attention to this, it is where you will want to spend the most time and planning and even dollars. Do this right, and you can always add more layers to the outside of the room to kill off a little bit more noise, do it wrong, and no matter how many extra sheetrock layers you do, or how many auralex panels you buy, the HVAC ductwork done wrong (typical home construction) will be a constant headache to make quiet recordings. You need to plan for much larger cross-sectional area for the HVAC, with at least 2x the typical length of what you would normally use. Why? Because you need to make a 'tortuous path' for the air, that also has absorption in the ductwork.

I would not pay attention to any resource on new home studio construction that doesn't address this topic FIRST, or at very minimum, in the top 3 things to consider. It requires the most planning AND it requires quite a bit of space to do well. For most folks, they don't think about this, but I know far too many people that have spent good money on their 'foam' without taking care of this aspect first. The Auralex page on HVAC addresses most of the sources of noise coming into your room from the HVAC system (both self generated like fan noise and air rush noise, as well as transmitted noise from adjacent spaces). http://www.acoustics101.com/hvac.asp

Again, this probably doesn't seem like the most obvious thing to think about when planning your construction, but because it's infrastructure related, it's hard to correct once installed.

Non Parallel Walls, also mentioned by Matt above is important for keeping flutter echoes and standing waves to a minimum. They don't have to be huge non-parallel differences, but again, this is a primary challenge since most folks that do construction aren't used to thinking about things this way. We want everything plumb, not at unfamiliar angles. Not so with a recording space.

Getting more familiar now - entry and exit to the room. Dispose of any idea of using a typical interior door for the room. For my construction at my last house, I used a solid wood door that the builder hung into his own construction jamb, and I specified the clearance at the floor so I could use a 'bulb threshold' seal like an exterior door, and I built my own sealing system from simply 1"x2" trim and some triple-seal weather stripping. This let me experiment with pressure on the seal and different thicknesses of weather stripping.

Already covered of sorts, but just again to re-iterate; this should be a room in a room. This also means avoiding sharing any of the metal walls with the walls of this room. Impractical, yes.

Even more familiar - sheetrock.

Some fairly simple ideas rule here, if you can plan for it:

1. If you can do staggered stud wall construction, then by all means do it. http://www.controlnoise.com/staggered-stud-wall/ The only error I see in that construction is the plate is shared. When I did my room, I designed it with two independent 2x4 plates at top and bottom and only let them touch each other at the corners. What you are trying to avoid here is the mechanical transmission of noise from the exterior sheetrock surface to the inner sheetrock surface through the studs.

2. If you can't do staggered stud, then at very minimum make sure to use two different thicknesses of sheetrock. This keeps the 'drum head' formed by the sheetrock across the studs that will have it's own natural frequency, from coupling with exactly the same natural frequency of a similarly constructed sheetrock/stud combination on the other surface. Mass is your friend here - go as thick as you can imagine, even doubling up the sheetrock on one wall if you do it.

Whenever you think of stud and sheetrock construction, you also need to consider all the electrical and HVAC pass-throughs. If you can avoid it in your planning, always make sure to stagger your electrical and other pass-throughs so that they don't share the same section of wall. Avoid cutting any holes in the sheetrock (like no recessed lighting) if you can.

You can also hang sheetrock on resilient channel to help kill mechanical transmission of noise. In my previous home, I used resilient channel to hang the ceiling drywall, as there was living space above with foot traffic. It wasn't necessary for the side walls.

So far, resilient channel is the only 'fancy' material mentioned. Everything else is basic construction technique, but with more planning (the HVAC will be somewhat more costly than normal, but not preventatively so).

Once you have all of that sorted, then you can think about absorption in the room, which can actually be accomplished very inexpensively.

That's great on the retirement, Todd.

Now ya'll can GET TO WORK.


--Mac

I giggled. Nobody participates 'round here..

However we did get some precipitation, in the form of snow. It's still out there. Not much, but not welcome. May be we're in for a long winter.
I'll be participating in snow removal if that's the case.
Sure; Lions finally havin' a good year and the weather has to get Uglish.

Oops Participation precipitation.. carry on...

Congratulations! Enjoy your new avocation. I was going to add something to this discussion, but NotRockStar said it all and more. I'll just reiterate that you shouldn't spend a dime on acoustic treatment until you do some research. Amazon has some wonderful books. If you're on a budget, look up How to Build A Small Budget Recording Studio From Scratch. If you're not on a budget, the sky's the limit. Good luck, and keep us posted.

R.

BTW - I have the "How to build a small budget recording studio from scratch" book and I would be willing to send it to you if you paid for postage, or I would even just sell it to you for a small fee. I won't be building another studio anytime soon. My current room in the basement in this house has no forced air entry/exit into the room and it also has a big sliding door closet stuffed with winter clothes and linens - that combo and my mic choices have been pretty forgiving compared to the old purpose built room.

To be honest, quite a bit of stuff in that book was quite a bit over my budget when I built my basement studio.

I'm pretty adamant about the HVAC stuff because it's specifically what I was unable to accomplish in my build and it was by far and by spades the weak link in my whole build.

The issue for me was that I had to create this basement 'studio' in a space where the built-out ceiling would be just under 7' and I had to run HVAC via the space over the main I-beam and between the floor joists and I had no ability (though I just read a very interesting idea while looking for some links for you) to make the tortuous path I was referring to above - particularly for the return path.

I WAS able to keep the foot traffic noise above to nearly non-existent through both isolation as well as absorption - thick batting between the joists, 'sound stopper board' (which looks just about the same as the old asphalt bound sawdust sheeting they used to use on stick construction before foam became the norm), furring strips across that, then resilient channel (I used the stuff that is 'z' shaped), and then hung the drywall from that. I should say that I did all of that work except for the hanging of the drywall, the guy I paid to help me did all of the drywall work.

On one side wall - it was running along the length of the main iron I-beam for the house, so I built a wall on either side of the I-beam using two different thicknesses of sheetrock for each side - and stuffed it with batting. Door details in the previous post.

With all of that work - I could still hear my kids playing coming through the HVAC, two floors above and probably 40-50 feet of duct-work in between. Normal forced air HVAC ducts are incredibly efficient sound transmission devices!

I saw a really cool tip yesterday on how to perhaps help with that: Use a section of wall between studs as a plenum of sorts, make a tortuous path in the plenum with some of that stiffer fiberglass insulation - dump in at the top of the wall, and make your exit into the room at the bottom of the wall. This is from the Auralex site:

"• If you do your wall construction appropriately, you might even consider terminating your duct into the space between two wall studs, which you can line with fiberglass board, then venting that space into the room. We have seen this done and it proved to be very quiet!" If I was to do this all over again, I would make some flex-breaks in both inlet and outlet air, do this tip for both inlet and outlet (make sure you have enough x-sectional area for flow both ways) and be done with it.

I wish I had seen that before I did my build. Now, in order to make this work, you would need to caulk the sheetrock and stud interfaces in that section pretty tight, to avoid airflow leaks. I know I saw a diagram of this yesterday as well.

I was able to keep actual system noise to a minimum very simply because about 5 steps outside the door was the main power for my forced air HVAC. The only issue is that now and then after late-night recording sessions, I would forget to switch the system back on and the house would be really cold in the morning!

I guess the reason for my passion is that the amount of work that is done with noise & vibration control is dependent on the weakest link/system in the whole design. I'd like to see anyone avoid the big mistake (well, I was incredibly limited as to what I could do duct-work wise based on the existing construction and that danged I-beam) in my system design. I rolled the dice - I did know that HVAC could be the weakest link, and in a way I lost. I still had to wait until the family was at rest before I could do my mic'ed recordings as I was using a pretty sensitive LDC microphone at the time (I've almost completely 'switched teams' now using a very forgiving and inexpensive EV dynamic mic designed for vocals)

-Scott

The only people I've ever met who did not LOVE retirement, were those who didn't have anything planned for all their free time. Sounds like you have that well under control.

Welcome to the WWW! (Wondeful World of Wretirement)<grin>

LLOYD S

Great input for everyone, especially RS_not.
Our ranch is is the middle of South central Texas so precipitation (or participation for that matter as we are in the middle of nowhere) is rarely an issue (extreme heat, yes).
The new barn (metal) will be located a couple hundred feet from the house and will not have true HVAC, only a window unit for heating/cooling. It can of course be turned off during recording sessions. This will basically be a room within a room as the structure will be completely sheathed on all sides and top with plywood and then sheet rock on all sides. The top will remain plywood because I will use that space for storage. The side walls of the barn are 14" so there will be plenty of room above the studio room.
The room will also be used for jam sessions/practice sessions so I need to make sure the space is multi-purpose. I'm actually thinking of building space into a wall for my PA speakers so as to conserve floor space. I want to add a raised space along a wall for amps to provide easy access. Drums will be located on a small riser in the corner.
The barn also includes a 40X12 covered porch so the band (and the party) can move outside when the friends and neighbors gather at the pool.

Todd--

Check the Yellow Pages and other directory sources for the kind of outfits that install Home Theaters and also supply the components for such that likely are in your area.

Room treatments, panels, design guides, etc. have never been more easily accessible nor as inexpensive due to the wide interest in Home Theater installations.

And the Home Recordist can take big advantage of that, as the techniques are pretty much identical as to acoustic environment treatment.

I know a young fella around these parts who just walked up and told the installers of Home Theater stuff what he was about, Home Recording, and asked them if there were any leftovers in panels, wall treatment materials, etc. - and the guys on the crews kept bringing him cutoffs, partially filled boxes of acoustic tiles leftover from jobs, etc. - which he pieced together to build a rather nice home studio in the family farm outbuilding. zero dollar situation as to materials.


--Mac

Soundproofing, that's expensive.

Treating a room to create a better listen enviornment, as Mac said, not so expensive.

Here's a good thread on the topic... Start at Post #17 by Yep:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=11882

That description doesn't sound like what folks refer as a room within a room.

You need to 'float' a room inside of a room. The object is to dampen the vibrations from the inner room to the outer room. The inside walls should not have any materials (like the studs) that make a connection to the outside walls. You literally build a room inside of another room. Even seperate doors.

If actual soundproofing is a must, and you are building anyway, consider constructing the "room within a room" concept.

The old school method was to "float" the interior room on top of trailer truck inner tubes.

The space between the outer room and inner room can be utilized for instrument storage, mic cabinet, etc. as well.

If you can find an old Hearing Test Booth, often found surplus, reassembling same on premises makes for a great and silent vocal or ac guitar booth. They even have connection panels already on the inside and outside.


--Mac

Mac makes a good point about surplus panels. Another great source are companies that do portable office installs - you know, cubicle walls. Once they get out-dated looking, they get sent out to pasture. You can make nice GOBOs out of these.

Air movement in/out of the room quietly will be your biggest challenge.

Ah, the cubicle thing made the light bulb come on...room inside a room!

Where I often record tracks as a sideman is a neat little setup made from an unused two-car garage. He has the room-in-a-room, acoustically isolated from the outer building, and that's divided into two parts: control room/lounge, and recording area with mics etc. In the recording area, he further has a room-within-that-room small isolation booth for a solo recording, voice-overs etc. That last small room is very small, maybe four or five feet square.

ps Congrats on retiring. I decided to do that twelve years ago, so I could concentrate on music, put out a CD, and see what would happen from that. One of the best choices I ever made. I would never have been able to do that while running a college.

If you have a home depot around When you get ready to insulate the walls and ceilings, they carry cellulose blowing material. I use that in our business here for superior sound control. It is far better than fiberglass due to the shear density of the material.

When you purchase the bags you can rent the blower for around $30 a day. just go ahead and drywall but leave a 2 inch strip off around the walls and stick the hose down in there, and fill it till it is packed pretty good. Then on the top, place the pressure blocks right down the middle and leave a 1 foot strip of the plywood decking off down the center, and blow both directions until it is filled and screw the center strip on and you got a very well insulated box. You can also buy a special drywall called quiet rock, that deadens sound transfer through it.

buy some simple semi rigid fiberglass panels from a good building supply and cover then with fabric, and attach them to the walls like decoration panels , and that makes a great home made bass trap.

Todd,

Great advice has been given here and I have little to add. I just want to remind you that there is math attached to the science of acoustics. If you are serious about treating your space correctly, you must do some research before you pick up a hammer and saw. Otherwise you are just shooting in the dark, and you probably won't be happy with the results. I hope you will take the time to do some reading and calculation before you begin this wonderful project.

Richard