Would anyone help me with some questions?

wicked_s · Post by **wicked_s** » Wed May 25, 2005 5:29 am

Hi there,
I've been reading this forum a lot, not posting so much though... just trying to learn as much as possible first. Me and my wife recently bought a house and the fun part is that I get to use the basement to build a little studio. It's about 2 weeks left until we have access to the house, but I thought it would be great if anyone could help me solve some issues I've been thinking about.

Info:
I don't have the exact measurements of the place, since we've not moved in yet. The walls are concrete and I remembered that the hight was quite low. So If I'd put in a very thick floor and ceiling I wouldn't be able to stand up straight.

My goals:
1. Record electric and acoustic guitars, bass and vocals.
2. Have a suitable room for mixing my music.

Drums will be recorded elsewhere, so the "only" thing I'll be doing is recording bass, keyboards, guitars and vocals. So I feel that there's no need for a bigger live room. But I'm thinking of having a controll room and 2 smaller boths (one for setting up amps, and the other one for vocals).

Questions:
Since I'll not be recording loud stuff like drums, need I spend a lot of money on isolation? I've read that some people recommend that you build 2 thick walls with 20" of air in between? That seems a bit overkill for just recording guitars? And what about floating floor in this situation?

In a couple of weeks I'll be able to add details about width, height etc and post lots of pictures and sketches of it. I hope anyone can help me out. Thanks for a great forum!

Deluks · Post by **Deluks** » Wed May 25, 2005 11:18 am

You needn't spend a lot of money on isolation, but you will still need a lot of isolation. No drums makes things a lot easier but the bass guitar will be pushing lots of air at volume.
Being (below) ground floor is also a bonus so your main problem will be soundproofing the ceiling and avoiding flanking sound travelling up the walls into the room above.

Your low ceiling already dictates that you cannot have a proper floating floor unless you want to dig down and spend lots of cash, but you're unlikely to need one if you do things properly.

The ceiling issue also means that you will probably have to treat the floor above as well as the ceiling in the basement, as you won't have enough space for a good solution.

It looks like timber/plasterboard/rockwool are your best hopes without spending lots of money, also a solution for the floor above but I wouldn't know where to start with that.

Another important point is to make sure the basement is dry before you start doing anything!

...and ventilation, could be tricky but not something you can afford to ignore.

The most important thing to remember is the seven P's!

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Wed May 25, 2005 6:49 pm

Would those be

Prior Planning Prevents Possibly Piss Poor Performance, or is there a different set of "P's" ??

Oh, and are you planning to record the bass acoustically out of the bass amp speakers, or more likely DI ? Steve

wicked_s · Post by **wicked_s** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:37 pm

Deluks wrote: Your low ceiling already dictates that you cannot have a proper floating floor unless you want to dig down and spend lots of cash, but you're unlikely to need one if you do things properly.

Well, dig down isn't an option since that is way over my budget. And the house is quite small, so we're planning to buy a new house within 5 years, since we're planning to build a family and all that stuff. So in the future I'll build a bigger studio, with liveroom for drums etc. But I want to make the best out of the situation, and until we get a bigger house I still want a fully functional studio (for my needs).

Deluks wrote: The ceiling issue also means that you will probably have to treat the floor above as well as the ceiling in the basement, as you won't have enough space for a good solution.

I never thought of that, to treat the floor above. That's a smart thing to do, thanks for that tip!

wicked_s · Post by **wicked_s** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:40 pm

knightfly wrote:Oh, and are you planning to record the bass acoustically out of the bass amp speakers, or more likely DI ? Steve

The bass will be recorded DI, only amp speakers will be the guitar.

Deluks · Post by **Deluks** » Thu May 26, 2005 4:06 am

knightfly wrote:Would those be

Prior Planning Prevents Possibly Piss Poor Performance, or is there a different set of "P's" ??

Almost! Proper Preparation & Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, although I'm sure it varies from region to region

Post by **sharward** » Thu May 26, 2005 11:03 am

Deluks wrote:Proper Preparation & Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

One of my favorites is: "If you don't have time to do it right, you don't have time to do it over!"

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sun May 29, 2005 6:27 pm

ONce you find out more, let us know; things like, do the concrete walls go all the way to the ceiling of the basement, or are there other materials (like framed walls for the top parts of the basement walls...)

Generally, with no bass or drums and reasonable mix levels, you should be able to do a resilient ceilng (hopefully there's enough height for THAT) and maybe fur out from the concrete walls with gypsum and insulation.

Be sure to note any MOISTURE conditions too; check out the building sciences links in the REFERENCE section... Steve