Dreaming of a small 1-room studio in an appartment.

[eråk]

I´m about to start looking for a new appartment for my family, and I´m considering investing in an extra room where I can set up a home studio (I rent a studio space now). Before I even start looking I thought I´d ask you acoustical genii some questions about what to think about when planning a studio in a residential area (and of course I welcome advice on all the things I didn´t think to ask about..).

1. The appartment has to be located in central Oslo, so every square centimeter costs an arm and a leg. I only do ITB electronic music so there´s no tracking space involved, nor loads of gear and 90% of the time no musicians other than me . How small can I possibly go before making it impossible to achieve somewhat accurate monitoring conditions.

2. Since I´m not doing the construction from the ground up, what would you look for in an existing room as a good starting point, i.e. which floor it´s on, what construction methods used etc.? Are there any pitfalls I should look out for?

3. The appartment is most probably going to be located in an appartment complex/building, so there´s going to be neighbours on all sides - how well can I expect to isolate the room in regards to keeping noise in (most of my music is quite bassheavy : / )? I´m thinking of floating the room, but I´m wondering how effective it will be if the room is too small to use the amount of space between walls/thickness of materials etc. that I´ve seen mentioned in various examples of box in box constructions.

I am, as you´ve probably gathered from this post, as bit green when it comes to studio construction - but this project is still at least 6 months off and hopefully by that time I´ll have picked up a thing or two..

Thanks in advance for any advice, much appreciated!

[Weasel9992]

1.) I've seen some pretty small rooms work well, but the smaller they are the more treatment they'll require. The composition of all the surfaces plays a big part here...i.e., sheetrock is better than cinderblock (but not for the question #3). If possible avoid rooms that are a whole cube (8x8x8) or rooms where one dimension is the multiple of another (8x16x16). A good starting place might be 8x11x15...something like that. Of course, an 8' ceiling isn't great either, but I'm assuming that you won't have much choice there. If you do end up with an 8x10x10 space, it's not the end of the world...it just needs to be treated well.

2.) Ground floor would be best I think...less places to transfer noise to. Composition is the tricky part. Sheetrock has better absorbtive properties, but concrete/cinderblock has better isolation properties. If it were concrete you could always install a layer or two of sheerock over it with an air gap between the layers. Do you know whether concrete construction is an option? I suppose it might very well be in a cold part of the world.

3.) Isolation is the tough part. Normal construction methods will allow everything under 100Hz or so to move through it like it was paper. The only way to stop it is to add mass (thicker walls filled with sand and two layers of sheerock with an air gap, for example); acoustic treatment will help a little, but won't provide anything like "isolation". Floating a room is always an option, but it can be very expensive and it's really not designed to eliminate noise transfer from inside the room to the outside. It's really meant to do just the opposite...avoid transfering noise from the outside of a room to the inside. The added mass of a couple of layers of sheetrock would help a lot though, no doubt....if you monitored at reasonable levels in a treated room that might be enough to keep you out of hot water with the neighbors.

Hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

Frank

[eråk]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

1.) I've seen some pretty small rooms work well, but the smaller they are the more treatment they'll require. The composition of all the surfaces plays a big part here...i.e., sheetrock is better than cinderblock (but not for the question #3). If possible avoid rooms that are a whole cube (8x8x8) or rooms where one dimension is the multiple of another (8x16x16). A good starting place might be 8x11x15...something like that. Of course, an 8' ceiling isn't great either, but I'm assuming that you won't have much choice there. If you do end up with an 8x10x10 space, it's not the end of the world...it just needs to be treated well.

2.) Ground floor would be best I think...less places to transfer noise to. Composition is the tricky part. Sheetrock has better absorbtive properties, but concrete/cinderblock has better isolation properties. If it were concrete you could always install a layer or two of sheerock over it with an air gap between the layers. Do you know whether concrete construction is an option? I suppose it might very well be in a cold part of the world.

3.) Isolation is the tough part. Normal construction methods will allow everything under 100Hz or so to move through it like it was paper. The only way to stop it is to add mass (thicker walls filled with sand and two layers of sheerock with an air gap, for example); acoustic treatment will help a little, but won't provide anything like "isolation". Floating a room is always an option, but it can be very expensive and it's really not designed to eliminate noise transfer from inside the room to the outside. It's really meant to do just the opposite...avoid transfering noise from the outside of a room to the inside. The added mass of a couple of layers of sheetrock would help a lot though, no doubt....if you monitored at reasonable levels in a treated room that might be enough to keep you out of hot water with the neighbors.

Hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

Frank

Thank you for the advice!

I´m just probing the waters here, before I even start planning, so I´ll probably have a lot of questions before any actual physical work gets done.. =)

I am mostly worried about the size aspect, 1 square meter in Oslo costs something like $6k, so I´m relieved that you think it could be possible to get ok results with sizes as small as 10x10.

In regards to construction methods and ceiling heights it depends on the age of the building. As far as I´ve seen (I´m nowhere near knowledgeable about construction work) the two main types of apartments here are either in old buildings with wood and bricks, which are large and have high ceilings (often 3 meters +), or in newer buildings which are, as far as I know, concrete, and are generally a bit smaller with much lower ceilings.

As to isolation, I generally tend to monitor at very low levels except when mixing, but I´m (much too..) polite - and would be willing to go the extra mile to make sure that I can work until 5 a.m. on weekdays without driving my neighbors insane. But of course I understand that there are limitations, both to what is physically possible and to what is economically viable (I make money doing this, but I´m not quitting my day job anytime soon : ) ).

[Weasel9992]

$6,000 per square meter? Holy crap. That makes New York City look like the hills in Tennessee.

I'm certain you can make it work. The smaller the space the more you'll need in terms of low end control (bass traps). If you've got some time and can work with the dimensions, that'll help alot as well.

Monitoring at low levels is a good habit anyhow. People fool themselves into thinking that they have a great mix by monitoring too hot...if it sounds great at low levels, it sounds great.

Good luck,
Frank

[llatsni]

sorry don't have much advice, but i will have a little moan... $6k p/m2 is cheap... its more like $10k here in Dublin

a friend did have an apartment here that was on the top floor, and his composition/mix room was in the corner of the building (two outside walls) looking into the centre of the complex (not onto the main road)... it was surprisingly quiet!

[Weasel9992]

Holy Mary and Jeebus...my house here in Savannah, Georgia comes up to about $200 per square meter, not counting the 3/4 acre of property I'm on. Of course, this is the cheaper end of the American housing market.

Frank

[llatsni]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

...my house here in Savannah, Georgia comes up to about $200 per square meter...

Screw Ireland... Georgia here i come! that's insanely cheap!!!

[SigmaDeltaAudio]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

Holy Mary and Jeebus...my house here in Savannah, Georgia comes up to about $200 per square meter, not counting the 3/4 acre of property I'm on. Of course, this is the cheaper end of the American housing market.

Frank

$125 m^2 here

So crazy to me that someone would pay more than $500m^2... but 6K? I'd just leave the country, job and family be damned

[llatsni]

Sorry to continue this hijack but you Americans are talking about BUYING? yes, not yearly rent or something strange??????

The average house price (to buy the freehold) in the whole of Dublin county is €390,274 or ~$600,000 dollars; and believe me its a lot more for a place in a nice part of the city.

Paul

[eråk]

If you think real estate is expensive here you should see the price of gas and alcohol..


But I´m guessing Norwegian salaries are a bit higher than in the States as well.


Anyways, I didn´t want to sound like I was moaning about real estate prices (which compared to cities like London are pretty darn cheap here..), the reason I brought it up was to explain why I´m going to have to make due with such a limited space.

[Weasel9992]

Yes, we're talking about buying. I bought my 1400 Sqft. house in 2004 for $115,000 on 3/4 acre of property total...and this is much more expensive that, say, Augusta would be just 3 hours north-west of here.

Then again, as the illustrious poster from St. Pete would attest ( neighbor), it's just about to get, literally, as hot as hell in about a month or so. 100 degrees, 98% humidity until the end of September. Not too much fun.

Frank

[llatsni]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

... 1400 Sqft. house in 2004 for $115,000 ...

Sorry to be a pain in the ass but:

1sqm ~= 10.7sqft
so 1400sqft ~= 131sqm
so p/sqm you house cost $878 US dollars, not $200

Still MEGA cheap compared to here tho!

Paul

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

Yes, we're talking about buying. I bought my 1400 Sqft. house in 2004 for $115,000 on 3/4 acre of property total...and this is much more expensive that, say, Augusta would be just 3 hours north-west of here.

Then again, as the illustrious poster from St. Pete would attest ( neighbor), it's just about to get, literally, as hot as hell in about a month or so. 100 degrees, 98% humidity until the end of September. Not too much fun.

Frank

I still say Savannah is the best kept secrete for buying. Where else can you have wonderful beaches and a city with so much darn historical history, all at rock bottom prices? Take a drive 4 hours to Atlanta and you are paying twice the price.

Glenn

[Weasel9992]

"Sorry to be a pain in the ass but:

1sqm ~= 10.7sqft
so 1400sqft ~= 131sqm
so p/sqm you house cost $878 US dollars, not $200

Still MEGA cheap compared to here tho!

Paul"


Thanks for the math correction. Still pretty cheap.

Frank

[jwl]

To the OP:

Look for a non-square room. To take it even further, make sure none of the dimensions are even multiples of each other, ie, 8' ceilings and an 8'x16' room.

See how the empty room sounds. If you can, bring an acoustic guitar or something to see how it sounds.

Preferably, the corners are clear (ie, no doors or windows) so you can add bass trapping.

Also, see how airtight the room is. Close the door and see what you can hear outside the room.