Building a brand new house / studio

[Beardhead]

Hello there.
I feel kind of stupid but you've got to start somewhere so I fire straight away.
I plan to build a house within the next couple of years that should also contain my studio. I have this idea of using the basement for the studio, which would give me about 80-100qm for the live room.
My main concern is isolation. I don't want anyone upstairs to hear a thing that's going on downstairs. I'm talking of loud drums and cranked amps.
Is this possible somehow at all? Does anyone have experiences with something like that? Remember: this is a new house so a lot can be taken into account.

Thanks in advance for any replies to this awkwad question.

Claus

[gullfo]

if you have the options available, consider putting the studio outside somewhere on the property, instead of inside, it makes isolation from the rest of the house easier :-). barring that, i'd plan on putting in isolated slabs and put in 14' basement ceiling so you have space for a room-within-a-room and nice acoustics.

[DSD_Mastering]

I have my rooms in my basement. I've been tracking drums in my rooms with 130dB peaks and you can just barely hear it upstairs. Nothing from upstairs get downstairs though... unless a bomb went off!
This was a purpose built house/studio with rooms within rooms. I lost 2.5 feet in ceiling height from acoustical decoupling using Kinetics Noise control suspension hangers, hat channel, cold rolled steel and 18" of rock wool...

Regards,
Bruce

[Beardhead]

Originally Posted by DSD_Mastering

I have my rooms in my basement. I've been tracking drums in my rooms with 130dB peaks and you can just barely hear it upstairs. Nothing from upstairs get downstairs though... unless a bomb went off!
This was a purpose built house/studio with rooms within rooms. I lost 2.5 feet in ceiling height from acoustical decoupling using Kinetics Noise control suspension hangers, hat channel, cold rolled steel and 18" of rock wool...

Regards,
Bruce

Your place looks beautiful! 130dB peaks - that's what I need! I don't care about losing height

[Beardhead]

*bümp* anyone?

[Milliken]

I have been looking to purchase a new house. I also like to jam and have come to the conclusion that retrofitting an existing space to try to soundproof or completely isolate it is almost impossible and extremely expensive. My buddy built a two car garage on his property for twelve grand. He had some help from contractor friends and got it done for a deal. End result though is a completely free standing building. I will probably ad this same type of building that could be easily converted to a garage for the next owners. Probably put a walk through to the house with a laundry or mud room. Big bonus will also be a lack of noise from HVAC units and fridges etc. that are typically found in the house. Enough insulation, treatment and no windows will be enough soundproofing to keep the neighbors or family from hearing anything too loud.

[Earwitness]

I just bought and am moving from a garage studio, MySpace.com - EarWitnessStudios - 33 - Male - WHITTIER, California - www.myspace.com/earwitness to a build from scratch studio that will be on the lot behind my new house. Bruce I really like the look of your place too. Do you have a layout or floor plan for how your place is set up? Like I can see the drum room but where is the booth in relation and there was another booth for voiceover stuff with a screen huh?
I'm going to start a thread pretty quick here about if you could build all from scratch what is the prime setup for all around mixing mastering production tracking do it all. Also I know this is a construction question but Bruce how did you get the fabric walls so nice and is there 703 behind all that?
I'm sure you payed someone big bucks to do all that... :-)
I may just hire a studio designer myself if I can put the pennies together.
sam

[DSD_Mastering]

Originally Posted by Earwitness

Bruce I really like the look of your place too. Do you have a layout or floor plan for how your place is set up? Like I can see the drum room but where is the booth in relation and there was another booth for voiceover stuff with a screen huh?sam

Here is the general layout. We overbuilt everything from the specs. A couple of the measurements are wrong because there was a mistake on the as-builts. There is 2" 703 behind the fabric on the walls and 4" on the ceiling and bass traps.
The fabric was done by Snap-tex. Total build was just over $300k

Regards,
Bruce

[gullfo]

they did a nice job of keeping the floor space by using multiple side wall treatments and the large soffits. that is one of the best ways to treat your space - use the overhead space to make nice bass traps and keep the floor space as large as possible.

[Earwitness]

Bruce,
hey I see you guys do a lot of mastering and really nice set up by the way... ;-) but my question is when you guys have a band lets say 4 or 5 guys that want to do drums, bass, guitars and all do you feel like its crowded at your place? My choice right now is to build behind the house and use the garage as a tracking room and maybe have a little more space OR build the whole studio behind the house and then I may not have as much room. The home/project studio that I have been working out of for 6+ years now is very, very small and I know I want more space and higher as well but just wondering how you like your setup.
Sam

[DSD_Mastering]

We love the set up that we have. All the mastering gear is modular, so when we have bands in there, everything is on wheels and can be pushed out of the way.
The place was orignially designed as a mastering room and post room with VO booth. Post work has really died down lately so I decided to start tracking in here. I'm not a mix engineer, so I have a local guy come in here on the weekends and track/mix bands.
I do my mastering during the week. The mastering room can be set up/torn down in about an hour.
Of course you always want more space. I had 9 people in here once... that got a little crowded. Anything less is a piece of cake!

Regards,
Bruce