For studio construction slutz only - Sunshine Mastering, Vienna

[mischa janisch]

Picture of the (non floating) walls to support the floating walls...

HVAC ducts beinning to be installed...

This week:
Drywall for the mastering room should be close to finished. Floating floors in the other rooms will be installed. More welding of frames to support the 145kg studio doors... HVAC installation continued. Start of electrical installation.

[Shot]

Excelent work!
I hope it'll all go well and at the end sound (and look!) beautiful for everyone!


What was it like when you started discussing plans with architects (WSDG)? Did they come down to see and measure by themself or you handled everything via mail?
Is construction work more expensive than architects or it's vice versa? (I'm not asking you to go with numbers, but i'm interested in financial dimensions of project like yours). Sorry if it's too much to ask, I'll understand if you skip answer!



cheers!
Luka

[mischa janisch]

Originally Posted by Shot

What was it like when you started discussing plans with architects (WSDG)? Did they come down to see and measure by themself or you handled everything via mail?
Is construction work more expensive than architects or it's vice versa? (I'm not asking you to go with numbers, but i'm interested in financial dimensions of project like yours). Sorry if it's too much to ask, I'll understand if you skip answer!

Hi Luka,

Thanks for the kind words!

Decision finding upon using WSDG was over phone and email - as was negotiating the contract. We do have a local architect who did all the measuring and CAD drawings of the existing structure, handled all the bidding and is at the site during construction. After all the initial paper work was done we decided on a kick off meeting which should take place end of July in the WSDG-Europe office in Basel, Switzerland.

At this meeting we discussed our needs and expectations for every room - main usage, eqipement used, noise criteria & working levels (in db-A) and resulting isolation needs, client area, ... We also looked at many samples of acoustic materials, discussed basic construction techniques and HVAC requirements. After 8 hours of talking and looking at some example drawings of other projects both sides had a pretty good idea of what this project was about.

Entering SK Level of design - during the following 4 weeks we received 3 SK plans (sketches) via email - They were Auto CAD drawings using actual dimensions that included no constructional details. At the end of this phase we decided which design should be further developed during the Design Development (DD). That's were isolation requirements, room ratios, room acoustics, HVAC plans and furniture plans are merged and put into one design - one that can actually be built. Partition details, acoustic panels, ceiling plans and much more were being discussed. Numberless conversations over skype and email resulted in a final set of plans. During that phase bidding started. Construction finally started November 5th...

Financial aspects: Construction is definitely much more expensive than the design fee. Suprisingly to us WSDG's fee is within the range of Austrian and German designers... The more expensive part is their ideas and reqired materials
Our architect has long term relationship with some of the builders and we got some very good prices, but still the budget has doubled during this whole process - but at the same time our requirements and possible usage have similarily expanded. We didn't cut any corners, quite the oposite was true - we tended more to remove compromise. Read - Very expensive

[George Necola]

seems to me that you will need to order soon a lot of WEISS gear

nice work!!

keep us posted!

[mischa janisch]

- Weiss gear definitely has been on ou list... But I'm not sure we will be able to afford some by the time the studio is finished.

This is what we're currently spending our money on:

[mischa janisch]

we also spend some on this (walls of the floating shell construction - HVAC ducts cut between the shells):

[mischa janisch]

and this as well (installation of some more floating floors, removal of old and installation of new windows):

[mischa janisch]

Hi everyone,

Right now everything is moving pretty fast... Last week the walls of the floating construction went up. But the really interesting part (for me) was the ceiling. Again I included lots of pictures (apologies to Jules - I hope it is OK to post this many).

HVAC fitters were busy putting in lots of ducts - In the place that is going to be the sound locks you can hardly see the raw ceiling any more.

Electric installation should finally start next week - there simply was not enough room for them to start last week so it had to be postponed...

These pictures show the spring ceiling hangers mounted on the primary suspended ceiling construction that was welded to the existng ceiling last week. They are very low profile, this way not much hight is lost.

[mischa janisch]

more ceiling details...

[mischa janisch]

First layer of the mastering room ceiling almost done. Second layer is 19mm plywood to support all the acoustic treatment and HVAC ducts - third layer is gypsum board again (No pics, but they should have finished since I left).

The other pictures are of the 5.1 control room - floating floor construction and some pics of the primary ceiling construction.

Last pic is of the future Edit room - now Rockwool storage room.

[JIRI PASKA]

Thanks for this topic, I honestly think that this is very cool... I watch this topic every day and I am always looking forward to seeing some new photos. I really can´t wait to see this studio finished!!!

[clip6]

It's looking great. Can you talk about cost?

Thanks

Hi,

Pretty good progress in 4 weeks.

Is a set of measurements schedule at this stage of the construction to check:

- Floating ceiling & floor: control vibration isolation curve is close to target
- Walls: decoupling isolation curve is close to target
- HVAC: duct branch insertion loss is close to target
- HVAC: be ready to exchange standard fans with higher efficiency low speed ones

Before finishing work would even start, it makes sense to verify that baseline isolation target can be reached room by room by intermediate step measurements.

The 1st point of all acoustic construction is to build 'silence' by means of acoustic & vibrations isolation.

This is what makes the quality of a studio in particular mastering the quality of silence inside each room ... then great room acoustics.

At this stage, errors can be found and fixed at low cost. Not later ...

It can only take 1 oversized screw or 2 touching corners of normally independent steel studs to drop a room wall isolation by 10dB or more...

Even if contractors are doing a great job ... rushing at one stage of construction execution can result into unforeseen errors.

A good low frequency sweep (20-100Hz) with a powered 18" subwoofer can always reveal unexpected rattling inside the primary decoupling structure.

Just suggestion from previous projects...

Good luck!

[mischa janisch]

A quick update:

* 2nd (plywood) and 3rd layer (gypsum board) on the Mastering Room ceiling
* some more welding
* adding another 3 layers... actually I should have rotated this pic - it's a wall
* Edit Room rear/sied walls
* perimeter board seperates floor between Control Room and Iso 1

[mischa janisch]

* Edit Room and Iso 2
* Decoupled Control Room rear wall construction - sway braces
* Supporting wall for Control Room side wall
* Edit Room Window - drywall framework
* Control Room side wall

[mischa janisch]

* HVAC ducts Mastering Room
* same duct ...grown up
* more ducts
* finished ducts in the lobby
* ducts with lots of corners - help to stop the noise from traveling too far...

[mischa janisch]

Originally Posted by clip6

It's looking great. Can you talk about cost?

Thanks

When we first asked WSDG this question they estimated 2.000,- EUR per m2. Our local architect is known for getting very low prices, so we figured we should be able to build it cheaper. Suffice to say we failed to meet this goal...

[mischa janisch]

Originally Posted by High Fidelity

Hi,

Pretty good progress in 4 weeks.

Is a set of measurements schedule at this stage of the construction to check:

- Floating ceiling & floor: control vibration isolation curve is close to target
- Walls: decoupling isolation curve is close to target
- HVAC: duct branch insertion loss is close to target
- HVAC: be ready to exchange standard fans with higher efficiency low speed ones

Before finishing work would even start, it makes sense to verify that baseline isolation target can be reached room by room by intermediate step measurements.

The 1st point of all acoustic construction is to build 'silence' by means of acoustic & vibrations isolation.

This is what makes the quality of a studio in particular mastering the quality of silence inside each room ... then great room acoustics.

At this stage, errors can be found and fixed at low cost. Not later ...

It can only take 1 oversized screw or 2 touching corners of normally independent steel studs to drop a room wall isolation by 10dB or more...

Even if contractors are doing a great job ... rushing at one stage of construction execution can result into unforeseen errors.

A good low frequency sweep (20-100Hz) with a powered 18" subwoofer can always reveal unexpected rattling inside the primary decoupling structure.

Just suggestion from previous projects...

Good luck!

Thanks for the input - we're checking everything as good as we can on a daily basis. I almost live there...

[clip6]

Originally Posted by mischa janisch

When we first asked WSDG this question they estimated 2.000,- EUR per m2. Our local architect is known for getting very low prices, so we figured we should be able to build it cheaper. Suffice to say we failed to meet this goal...

What would that be in USA dollar per square foot. What does that price include? What is the budget for the studio buildout only (no audio gear)?

[Clueless]

Originally Posted by clip6

What would that be in USA dollar per square foot. What does that price include? What is the budget for the studio buildout only (no audio gear)?

I calculate $271/sq ft.