|
Garage conversion advice
|
View this Thread in Original format
| chris marsh |
Hi all
Converting the garage into a studio atm, just wrote a really long thread in the acoustic forum at gearslutz (c*&$s) just to have it deleted for some unknown reason, so thought i would try here
The main purpose will be for producing and mixing, but will also be recording vocals occasionally, and will want to do so to a high standard
Please take a look at my plan, the internal walls are not built yet, they are just my ideas. Mix position, monitor positions, treatment ideas are all just very rough at the moment.
The external walls are thermolite blocks, 100mm of rockwall rwa45 and Gtec DB plasterboard (couldn't find quietrock here in uk unfortunately)
I know theres a few of you out there with good knowledge of acoustics (Mr Raan for example). My plan has been made on my own, with my basic knowledge, so would appreciate any thoughts.
Would you change the layout of the internal walls?
How big should the vocal booth be? Anything i have to consider when building it? (will put extra layer of sound insulation in walls of booth)
Is it worth building a booth rather than just recording in the main room with headphones and a reflexion filter?
Considering the dimensions (all internal wall measurements are accurate on this plan) and the low ceiling of 230 cm, how good will this sound when treated?
Any ideas for room treatment? At the moment i plan to use 4 ceiling high corner bass traps and traps at all the reflection points, including ceiling. These will all be rockwall filled, and will test room with room eq wizard (and seek advice) when ready
Thanks!!
  |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
Hey Chris congrats on the progress with this.
As I said before, it depends how far you want to go. If you need the room to be isolated from outside noise, then you'd be better off removing the drywall and doing the resilient channel thing, but that will cost you about £350 in parts and probably 2 days labour. It might not be worth it, especially if keeping outside noise out is not really a priority.
However, if you're building a built in booth, then please, spend the time and money on properly sound proofing that. If booth isn't going to have a characteristic sound (I know some really high design studios have designed booths to have a certain flavor) then it just needs to be as flat as possible, with no leak in or out.
You should deal with that part nearly as a separate project but more an that later....
Right now you need to figure out if the floor plan is going to be OK. That's not a bad layout, I was thinking that a long narrow room with short ceiling won't perform that well but then I relaized that the image is not in proportion, and the control room (as I'll call it) is actually over 9 foot wide and that should be fine for nearfield and midfield monitors.
Bigger monitors (8"+ cone) are going to need a ton of treatment though as they typically need more space to breathe than that width would allow, especially with a low ceiling.
I think your current suggested layout may be the best compromise (of space, storage area and booth vs acoustic limitations etc) however, one thing to throw out there is have you thought of rotating the layout 90 degrees ant-clockwise so you sit facing the 3.94 marker and the booth is made in that triangle part? I don't quite know what the rest of the room looks like so not sure if that would interfere with windows etc, but it would give a larger soundstage for monitoring and that triangle part would still be large enough for the booth?
Now on to the booth:
You've got two ways of doing this.
The first is to go all out on the booth and make the wall structures themselves acoustic dampers.
The other is to build the walls as normal then put custom made treatment on them such as baffles and foam etc.
With either way most uneducated people think you can just rockwool all the walls it and you'll be fine.
Wrong
That will leave LF problems (it's not great unless very thick) and the room will just sound very dead and boring.
Acoustic foam only deals with mid to hi's so doesn't offer any treatment for LF which is the most powerful part of the spectrum.
The best way is to do a combination of materials (whether this is a baffle you mount ot each wall, or the actual wall construction itself).
So that back of the wall is drywall, then you put a thick layer of rockwall (or better, Owens corning 703 or another acoustic insulation such as auralex 2" insulation). Then a small gap of about an inch and then a layer of thin carpet or underlay hangin from the top, then another gap and a layer of mass loaded vinyl hanging from the top then a layer of underlay and then a smaller gap and some fabric over that.
What this does is create stages of diffusion for various different frequency band, so LF will be diffused by the MLV and the Rockwall layers, the mid will get absorbed by the underlay and MLV and the hi's will be absorbed by the fabric and underlay layers.
It sounds more complicated that it is. They're easy to build, just wood frames, stuff the rock wall in as the back layer, then have the layers hang from lateral supports along the top and cut the material to the hieght of the frame. Rinse repeat for each layer until you put the final fabric (something like a thick cotton or canvas or linen).
Then build these to size to fit your walls. Otherwise, like I said you biuld the walls with the same construction as the baffles from the outset.
Just remember, if you decide to add them to the built walls, you'll loose a minimum of 6-8" per wall which is over a foot of internal square footage.
The other thing you then need to think about is venting. All that insulation means a warm room anyway, then you'll probably have a light source (use LED as emits way less heat, but make sure it has a low kelvin nothing above 4000 as the light is too "cold" and can affect the cosiness of the space).
Nothing worse than a sweat box. vent of the ceiling of the booth is always best as breath travels upwards due to heat and it escapes easier. But you may need one on one of the walls to allow circulation.
If you're going to HVAC the room then run a small pipe to it but make sure the pathway to the booth is convoluted with a lot of turn or use sound boots etc.
Let me know you're thoughts but please do me a favor, don't go any further with the room until you figure out the exact layout and what materials and how you're going to use them; I wish you'd done a couple of simple even ghetto, cheap things before putting up the drywall like using small rubber washers between the drywall and stud, dipping the screws in acoustic sealant etc. It's not the end of the world by any means but the worst mistakes in any studio project are the one that are made early on as they're the hardest to change. |
|
|
| chris marsh |
hi mate, thanks for that
i did take something from your earlier advice, in that at least i used this special acoustic plasterboard which cost nearly 3x the price of a regular board (its bloody heavy, 35 kg a board)! I bought a load of acoustic sealant that i am going to seal the plasterboards with, and was planning to seal the screw holes too?
I did mention the idea of dipping the screws in acoustic sealant but my father in law was not keen at all on the idea, and seeing as he stayed with us for 2 weeks (without charging us a penny), and he and i both worked our asses off, i couldn't really complain!
Like i mentioned before, unfortunately there is a (every half hour or so) train line nearby, but apart from that its dead quiet, absolutely nothing that will get through the walls even as they are now, unsealed. The 100mm RWA45 actually seems quite good! I don't know if anything i can do will completely block out the train tbh, i know the rom is too low to do the room within a room idea.
Interesting idea about swapping the control room around 90 degrees. I decided on that way as i thought a longer rectangular room (about 5.5m by 3m) would be good, as opposed to a room that would be approaching more of a square shape (about 4m by 4.7m)? Which way do you think would sound better?
I have 6.5 cones atm but might go bigger at some point :)
The vocal booth was only a last minute idea, but i must really think about this your right. How about using the greenglue layer for the vocal booth, along with these DB plasterboards to isolate them further, from the train line?
So your saying the trap or damper would actually be part of the wall, so the membrane part would be the wall of the booth right? Would these layers of materials be the best way to build corner traps too for the control room? Do you have any links for how to make these kinds of traps btw?
I have to look into venting for the booth. How do people insure that no sound gets in through the vent?
Will i really get better results from an actual vocal booth than i would with a reflexion filter or portable type booth?
I was also thinking about the "Supertrap" idea, ive seen people have one huge trap on the back or frontwall, could be built into the wall i guess like the vocal booth
:) Cheers |
|
|
|
|
