It's not difficult to float the floor, I build studios. Just get 25mm polystyrene, 1.2m x 2.4m, and lay your floor over that. It will give a lot of isolation and help with damping. Try and find a factory that makes high density foam, as I've found that this is the best method of absorption. There are commercially available options such as Auraflex, but they cost a fortune. Make sure you use an anti-static floor, i.e. no carpets, as there's nothing worse than shocking yourself on your gear! I find industrial vinyl or formica to be the best. You don't need a booth anymore (unless you're planning to record bands), I find that recording vocalists in the room with me is much more personal and gets better results.

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I'd also keep the window, just double or triple glaze it, as natural light in a studio is great, otherwise it feels like a bit of a dungeon.

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So I poked at the ceiling last night.

I ripped down all the tiles and found that there is a layer of 1" fiber board nailled to the underside of the joists, with wooden slats running at 90 degrees to them.







That poses an interesting problem.

I could rip it all down, alternately if I pack in behind the fiber board between the joists with rock wool leaving an air gap it gives me an additional layer of material for sound proofing (So long as it's sealed)

To get the rock wool in I'd have to cut some holes in the fiber board and pull the insulation through. As you can see in the last image the edge has already been attacked by someone laying in a cable.

Once that's done I'll tape the cutouts back into place with Gaffa tape (aka duct tape).

Just run some numbers and CaraCAD says that leaving the fiber board in place would be better than removing it, so I guess it stays.

Once I've finished putting my thoughts together on some other points I'll post again later today

So I've read through some of the comments and done some thinking..

1. Racks in Walls.. Hmmmmm Yummy. I was wondering how to fit my two quiklok rack tolleys into the room and come to the conclusion that I don't have to if I build two racks into a wall.

More to the point I'm putting up a partion wall down the middle of he basement. If the racks live in there, there can be a dorr to access the rest of the basement which also provides access to the backs of the racks.

That kills a couple of birds with one stone.

a) Creates much more room in the studio
b) Removes most of the cabling to OUTSIDE of the studio (Tidy!)
c) Easy access around the back to work on hooking things up and changing things.
d) I could put mu comps on the otherside of the wall and have a pretty quiet room..

Me like. :->

2) Float the room. By that I meant put in a 2" neoprene pad, and pour a cement block on that and built the alls and ceiling all on that and not attached to any part of the house. That's too big an undertaking (not least I don't have 12" of headroom to loose)

On the otherhand I do have a bunch of interlocking high density foam tiles that are 8/10ths of an inch thick, and enought to cover the floor. That will do nicely as an underlay.

Looking at my CaraCAD models if I build the way I think I am with the walls, the three outerwalls will be pretty significant bass traps, and I will actually have a pretty bright room, which will need foam to treat. This is the opposite of most rooms, where adittional bass trapping will have a much better impact on overal sonics..

Lets see how I get on with the ceiling..

quote:

It's not difficult to float the floor, I build studios. Just get 25mm polystyrene, 1.2m x 2.4m, and lay your floor over that. It will give a lot of isolation and help with damping.

How can polystyrene dampen anything? Its completely non-porous.

StyroFOAM is actually very porous, this creates lots of little airgaps which can help convert soundwaves to heat (Absorption). Works mostly in the mid an upper ranges.

WARNING LINKS HAVE REASONABLE TO HEAVY MATHS CONTENT!

http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/waves/soundwav.htm

above gives a fairly decent overview

and below is a collection of BBC whitepapers on the subject of accoustics. They know their stuff..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/wh...iles/WHP021.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/archiv...fpartitions.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/archiv...ticpractice.pdf < This one rocks and is a veritable "How to"

The BBC papers are a goldmine of information, the TV licence is good for something!

Thanks for these pdf's, I look forward to reading them.

Yea Diginerd but polystyrene isnt foam? Foam is definitely porous. You can see the air pockets. But polystyrene is designed to fill out and expand. There are no air pockets.

Polystyrene is porous, just the air gaps are very small, do some research and you'll see.

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I'm on my work comp so i don't have my CaraCad models to hand, but here's some more photos of me packing the ceiling out.

You can see how I cut access holes, put the insulation in and then tape up the hole again. Also the white duct is a piece of pipe that goes over the studio and will go down the long wall and terminate as a hol in the wall. this will let me get the computer cables from one side of the room to the other without stretching them messily around the edge.

I'll draw up a chicken scratch of how it's going to be, scan it and post it soon..

Ooh, working with rockwool is such a bitch, why don't you use Isotherm rather?

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I have several questions:

1. Do you plan to use your studio as a professional recording environment, with hopes of renting it out?

2. How many producers that work without all these nick-nacks but have quality material are able to get their work done without much hindrance?

I'm actually at the same point as you - I also have similar type of basement scenario, with loads of gear and miles of cabling. it became so intimidating to go in there that I actually gave up the whole idea alltogether and moved some select few items to my upstairs office. No acoustic treatments, no racks, just 4 near and dear pieces of gear, running through $250 M-Audio BX5a monitors. So far, I was able to get more recorded and accomplished in the last week than I have done in the last year. Why? Simple - too much mucking around, getting the "perfect recording environment", at the same time loosing the main focus - I'm there to make music and have fun, not have an extra job.

Now, don't take me wrong - if this is what you use to relax, relieve your mind and have fun - by all means. I found it to be so frustrating and overwhelming, I had weeks when I couldn't even think of doing any music stuff.

Sometimes, I even thought that perhaps all this "rearanging, making shit perfect" was just an excuse not to do anything artistic.

Just my $0.02...

Have fun either way.

p.s. according to my latest calculations, I have sunk close to $30K into my existing setup... and that's not counting the time, gas, and other byproducts.

I'm currently running in my "upstairs studio" on about $3000 worth of kit and 1000% more productive. No insulation, not acoustically treated, etc, etc. etc.

something to think about. cheers!

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