EXTREME crazy sound isolating room treatment !

[kevinc]

Our studios ready to take the next step here and we`ve got some changes to make so we can use our new facility 24 hrs.

Theres an office upstairs and I want to be able to get a full blown raging heavy metal drummer going full blast in there during the day without it bothering anybody upstairs. Hopefully not TOO much metal but you never know and I want to be ready for it.

We`ve currently got a room with full double wall and ceiling with insulation fill construction built in a rehersal complex with loud bands playing next door.

If I close the little 2 door soundlock I built I can mix just fine at pretty low levels but if I turn the music off theres a good amount of low frequency energy coming in still from the Bass and Kick drums from the metal bands next door.

It`s low enough that if I was going to cut a vocal or something in there you wouldn`t hear it on the recording so it hasn`t been a problem.
HOWEVER this still isn`t acceptable for people trying to do office work upstairs from me.


So what I`m asking here is if there`s a good way to INEXPENSIVELY improve the STC rating of my new room rather dramatically.

I`ve heard sheet lead is good for this. I don`t know where to find it though and that Auralex Sheetblock stuff is ridiculously pricy.

The rooms big enough that I could also just put layer upon layer of sheetrock and other materials with insulation in between. Maybe like a TRIPLE wall instead of a double wall or something. Seems a bit excessive though.

Is there anything else you all could suggest here ?

[Berolzheimer]

Some serious bass trapping in the rehearsal spaces might be a good start, if you can cut down on the amount of low frequency energy flying around in there you'll reduce the amount that's available to come through the wall.

But I'm sure you'll need to do more than just that.

[Simon Lomax]

Hey Kevinc,

You might want to have a look at the recording studio design forum http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

Hope that helps

Si

[Jules]

Do you own the rehersal studios?

If not they might be doing you a favor because the office may be used to their noise polution by now.

But I may have mis-read the post

[kevinc]

Jules the Rehersal studios are owned by the guy we`re renting the room from currently. He`s got a strict rule that no bands are supposed to play before 8:00 P.M. (PITA)

We want to expand our hrs enough that we could have a loud drummer playing loud in the middle of the day while they`re working upstairs. They wouldn`t allow that with my current setup so I`m hoping to beef the walls up quite a bit as we`re expanding into the new area.

Originally posted by Simon Lomax
Hey Kevinc,

You might want to have a look at the recording studio design forum http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

Hope that helps

Si

Thanks a lot Simon that is a big help. They`ve got a ton of valuable info there. dbluefield from the chat directed me there about six months ago but I forgot all about it.

I should probably read through every thread there for starters.

[MIKEHARRIS]

complete isolation is xpensive...ya gotta float the whole room....hope you have ceiling height you can give away

[kevinc]

It IS expensive and I`m finding out just how far you can push it. I`ve done a couple rooms with just the double walls and insulation and can usually keep it around the $1500 mark.

When your talking 3 layers of sheetrock on everything + floating the floor with rockwool in between the studs your talking some serious bux !!!

I could easily see paying 5 - 10 thousand on a room but maybe if I get creative here I can keep it under 3 or so and kind of add on to it gradually somehow.


Maybe I should just find a one floor building with a lot of traffic nearby to drown out the drums. The regular double walls just on the concrete is pretty good but not under a busy and quiet office buiding.

[tINY]

The problem is going to be the ceiling. Isolation requires mass. That means that you need to put a ceiling on top of your isolated walls to isolate the room from the floor above.

Double layered sheet-rock on an isolated ceiling should work well (with fiberglass or rockwool insulation).

Bass is a bitch. As the frequency goes down, you need more mass. Every octave lower, you get 6dB less attenuation. If you can pick your materials right, you might get really good performance out of triple wall (ceiling) construction if you can pick your critical frequencies right, but that would require two extra ceilings and a bit of testing....




-tINY

[kevinc]

Yeah the ceiling is just as important as the walls.

I think of the floor as maybe being icing on the cake for those last important 5 - 7 db of transmission loss but I could be mistaken.

My current "gigantic booth" has ceilings that are just an extension of the double walls. The insides attatched to the inside wall and the outside ceiling is a foot above it attatched to the outside walls.

So it`s like a big enclosure with another complete enclosure a foot inside of it with no parts whatsoever touching eachother.

I could screw the top side of the double ceiling from the top because of the fact that rehersal room outside the booth has a high ceiling.


I`m just tired of all that wasted space not being used on top of the booth. The inside of the booth is only about 7-6 which bugs me when I think of the 14 ft I COULD be using.

On the new construction I`ll probably try to do a couple layers of sheetrock with a resiliant channel and insulation on the existing ceiling below the office and than maybe add an entire new ceiling below that but not attatched.

I gotta find out how much that`s going to add to the STC though so I don`t waste a whole heap of money on something that`s not doing much.

Ceilings are BIG !

[rockstar]

like tINY said: you need more mass on the ceiling.

a cheap method could be to fill the space between normal ceiling and doulbe ceiling with sand. but on other side the construction to hold the weight could be very expensive.

i guess you did it right with the double ceiling with no parts connected directly to the outer wall. all examples on johnlsayers shows acoustic treatment for killing reverb. but the pictures in the examples show they´ve mounted the bars and struts directly to the ceiling. they should have done better with isolated mounting to prevent "sonic bridges" (can´t translate it proper form german). sonic energy is led over the construction to the outer ceiling. don´t want to be a clever shit but perhaps this could be the point?

wish you good luck!!

[max cooper]

Seriously, is it possible the space is just too flawed and that moving might be the most logical thing to do at some point? The co-op studio I use is commercially zoned even though there's an old apartment building backed up to it. We've had the cops come and they say: "We can't ask you to stop working but we just wanted to let you know that the tenants at the apartment are complaining."

The building is a late eighties tilt-up concrete wall job and the cops have only come twice...both times when we were recording the drums with a PA cranking in the main room at four in the morning or so. We're next door to a place where cardboard tubes are made and they make all kinds of racket...but not at four thirty. Thing is, the zoning is on our side. We don't need traffic noise to drown us out.

Does the proximity of the rehearsal space bring business that you might lose if you move?

[kevinc]

Originally posted by max cooper
Seriously, is it possible the space is just too flawed and that moving might be the most logical thing to do at some point?

YES !!!

Does the proximity of the rehearsal space bring business that you might lose if you move?

NO !!!


Your right.

One of the only things that keeps us there is the fact that it`s EXTREMELY low rent. ($175 for 750 sq feet if I was using it all)
That`s going to to increase quite a bit most likely if we move. But the fact we could potentially save $5000 in room treatment offsets that a bit.

The other thing is we DO rent this place and our Landlord has been nice enough to let us build the current illegal monstrosity in our room without a permit and without any complaint. He`s cool with the complete modification of the rest of the room as well which a lot of landlords wouldn`t let happen especially without permits.

I`m sure if I hit the pavement I can find something that might work but it`s hard to beat the combo of the price and the Landlord "looking the other way" as far as our Mad Laboratory is concerned.

[tINY]

Did you ever consider V-drums, power soaks and relegating the loud stuff to after hours?




-tINY

[jajjguy]

Are you sure that your drums will be audible upstairs? Is your only evidence the fact that you can hear drums from the sides? The transmission paths are somewhat different -- you share a floor with the drummer next door but not with the office upstairs, for one thing -- and you might possibly be in good shape already. See if you can arrange a way to listen from the office upstairs. Maybe the landlord would be cool enough to facilitate this.

[natpub]

I talked to Russ Berger and George Augsperger quite a bit about about this kind of situation. Quite frankly, I would move to a different building or build a new one if you are really going to move to 24 hours and need the kind of isolation you describe. It seems likely that you are going to end up spending way more to modify this less-than-ideal space than you would just getting something else.

--KT

[Tim Farrant]

The Auralex Sheetblock may seems expensive but;

• it's easy to install
• should give you another 10dB isolation at 100Hz
• you don't need framing to hold it up
• you can probably take it with you when you leave the building
• it does not consume valuable room volume

Worth consideration I reckon!

Look around, there are other brands of similar stuff that may be cheaper than Auralex.

Cheers
Tim.

[tINY]

If the water table is low enough, dig. Putting the whole thing below ground helps sound isolation (earth is heavy).



-tINY

[Marshy]

Hi guys, found this site by accident while googling 4 info and find it really interesting. Im in Australia looking into different things that I would need to open a couple of rehersal rooms any tips would be great, you now popular brands of equipmet, materials, size of building 4 2 or 3 rooms you know? cheers
Marshy.

[tomdarude]

what you could try first, is adding a decoupled drum-riser (also good for bass-cabs!).

simply built it pretty massive
(OSB, concrete plates (like on sidewalks, what are they called in engl.???), OSB)
and decouple them with Polymer-pieces!

this will at least enhance the DIRECT sound transmission into the whole building-structure in the low-end frequencies....and your drums will sound better, too