John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Steve, hopefully you can provide a little bit of guidance on this one.

I'm looking to build a studio, hopefully spring of 2005. I've read and re-read many threads in the forum, and seem to remember a couple of guys have built separate concrete floors for each room.

My working space (outside dimensions) are about 26' by 23'.

I'm looking to put in a control room, recording area and a vocal booth.

Do you think this will work, i.e. give me a reasonable amount of isolation from the adjoining properties (nearest about 12' - but he's a drummer!!!)

I've costed this out and it will cost me less in the UK to adopt this approach rather than one "big slab" and then having to float all the rooms and to double wall them all as well.

Nothing is to scale in the drawing, but you get the basic idea.

Cheers mate!

Colin

The advantage to the "many little floating floors on one big slab" approach is that the slab has the same amount of isolation from the outside world as each of your separate slabs would have, then you add a floating floor above that which isolates even further. I don't have any figures on the amount of extra isolation, but I would guess it's pretty substantial. Concrete itself conducts sound quite well, so any earth-bound sounds will transmit into your first slab - it's the inertia of the resilient mounts and the second (floated) slab that gets the job done.

If you're trying to isolate yourself from a drummer that's only 12 feet away, unless the drummer is also on floated slabs it may take more work than you think to keep the drums where they belong -

Another thing - although the drawing is fine, it's not indicated what the wall or ceiling construction is - so, whatever is the least isolative part will control your overall isolation (weakest link, and all that)

Hope that helped... Steve

Steve, thanks for getting back so quick.
At least that points me in the right direction.
I want to try and get this "right" first time before raising a hammer/saw/spade (delete/insert as appropriate) in anger.

Outer walls will be standard (solid) concrete blocks.

Inner walls will be based on John's inside out design, mounted on fully floated floors. (see drawing).

Ceilings Hmm....don't know yet. Height will be 8' - maybe 9' if I can swing it. As to construction - John's designs look brilliant on paper - if I can get my head around some of the actual construction methods then that'll be the way to go.

I'll be back with about a million questions before construction actually starts - still working on the floor plan/electrical/HVAC etc.

Cheers bud!

Colin[/i]