Gearslutz.com - View Single Post - Control room combined w/ tracking room...good idea?

AjD · 2nd April 2006

Cm, you are right, my studio does indeed rest atop a concrete foundation floor. In fact, when I first moved into the house, the room had wall-to-wall carpeting - not dissimilar to yours (imagine that thumbsup).

Thus, I was also concerned about the lack of floor reflections. My solution was more drastic - I tore out the carpet, underlayment, etc. all the way down to the foundation, built a new subfloor, and put a nicely reflective cherry laminate floor on top.

We used a product called DriCore for the subfloor (pic below) - this is an extremely cool modular tile underfloor made of humidity-resistant wafer hardboard (perfect for basement levels). Even better, DriCore has these little neoprene "feet" underneath, so the entire DriCore subfloor sort of "floats" over an 1/8" airgap atop your concrete foundation. The DriCore also doesn't touch any of the walls - there's a 1/4" gap running along the entire subfloor perimeter.

DriCore is not a true "studio floating floor" (not enough decoupling going on for that), but it definitely helps. Once the laminate is installed on top, the floor sounds and "behaves" similar to an upper-level hardwood floor. There is a satisfying click and thunk when you walk on it. That "basement" sound is gone. Mids reflect properly, with a pleasing "hollow" quality in the room. The room feels acoustically like it's on the main level of the house now.

So why the riser then? It's a poor man's "real studio" floating floor. Since I'm doing mostly old-style one room recording, the biggest challenge was isolating the drum sounds from the mics on other instruments in the room. The troublemaker is, of course, low-end (kick, floor, etc.) The drum riser decouples the whole kit acoustically from the rest of the room - most of the kit's energy no longer transfers into the floor, subfloor, and foundation (and thus, other microphones aren't as prone to pick up low end rumble from the kit).

There's a history of my long quest to design/build the drum riser over on John Sayer's acoustic design forum, complete with pics, here. (Essentially, the riser is made of several layers of Owens Corning 705 rigid fiberglass and high density MDF - I also built a few smaller versions of this riser to use with amps and bass cabs.)

Keep in mind that, even with your carpet covered concrete floor, drum freqs (and other low-end stuff) will still easily transfer into your house's structure through the floor (and thus, your other mics). Obviously, the best solution would be an entirely floated proper studio floor. But, for my purposes, these smaller risers were the next best thing.

Hope this helps!

Adam

2nd April 2006	#13
AjD Gear addict Joined: Jul 2005 Location: Dexter/Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 312	Cm, you are right, my studio does indeed rest atop a concrete foundation floor. In fact, when I first moved into the house, the room had wall-to-wall carpeting - not dissimilar to yours (imagine that thumbsup). Thus, I was also concerned about the lack of floor reflections. My solution was more drastic - I tore out the carpet, underlayment, etc. all the way down to the foundation, built a new subfloor, and put a nicely reflective cherry laminate floor on top. We used a product called DriCore for the subfloor (pic below) - this is an extremely cool modular tile underfloor made of humidity-resistant wafer hardboard (perfect for basement levels). Even better, DriCore has these little neoprene "feet" underneath, so the entire DriCore subfloor sort of "floats" over an 1/8" airgap atop your concrete foundation. The DriCore also doesn't touch any of the walls - there's a 1/4" gap running along the entire subfloor perimeter. DriCore is not a true "studio floating floor" (not enough decoupling going on for that), but it definitely helps. Once the laminate is installed on top, the floor sounds and "behaves" similar to an upper-level hardwood floor. There is a satisfying click and thunk when you walk on it. That "basement" sound is gone. Mids reflect properly, with a pleasing "hollow" quality in the room. The room feels acoustically like it's on the main level of the house now. So why the riser then? It's a poor man's "real studio" floating floor. Since I'm doing mostly old-style one room recording, the biggest challenge was isolating the drum sounds from the mics on other instruments in the room. The troublemaker is, of course, low-end (kick, floor, etc.) The drum riser decouples the whole kit acoustically from the rest of the room - most of the kit's energy no longer transfers into the floor, subfloor, and foundation (and thus, other microphones aren't as prone to pick up low end rumble from the kit). There's a history of my long quest to design/build the drum riser over on John Sayer's acoustic design forum, complete with pics, here. (Essentially, the riser is made of several layers of Owens Corning 705 rigid fiberglass and high density MDF - I also built a few smaller versions of this riser to use with amps and bass cabs.) Keep in mind that, even with your carpet covered concrete floor, drum freqs (and other low-end stuff) will still easily transfer into your house's structure through the floor (and thus, your other mics). Obviously, the best solution would be an entirely floated proper studio floor. But, for my purposes, these smaller risers were the next best thing. Hope this helps! Adam Attached Images __________________ "(People) believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, & that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' - Senior Bush advisor, NY Times, 10/17/04