John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I know a lot of people have been having issues with radio waves coming into their studio...check this out:

http://www.forcefieldwireless.com/defendair.html

At that price, you'd probably be better off putting a layer of hardware cloth on the outer frames before putting up your siding, and grounding that cloth to your building ground - of course, a continuous layer including ceilings would be necessary... Steve

Alternatively you could try a faraday cage.
studiotips faraday thread

And I thought I'd seen it all...

http://www.radiationproducts.com/gypsum-board.htm

Lead lined Gypsum board.

Commonly used in X-ray rooms, etc - don't remember how expensive, but would work better than the "quiet-rock" stuff most likely - If you could afford to do the entire room, you might be able to ground the lead in the gypsum and get high TL, no RF, and safety from Death Rays, all in one back-breaking product Steve

The funny thing about Chicken Wire is that no one takes it serious. True, it is not made of copper or gold (I think it's some form of tin). It has the following setbacks:

1) It is not the best conductor
2) It does not weld worth its weight in chicken.... scratch!
3) It is not effective at stopping very high frequencies because of the holes.
4) If not properly installed, it may even corrode.
5) It just plain sounds silly!

However, it has the following advantages:

1) It is very extremely cheap.
2) If grounded well, it is still very effective at shielding most frequencies
3) Most frequencies include everything up to (?) around 35 GHz or so!
4) You can put it almost anywhere (Keep away from electrical stuff!)
5) It's very easy to work with.
6) It makes a good joke: "I lined my building in chicken wire!"

On point 2: good grounding example: Several strands of copper making many, many contacts to chicken wire.

On point 3: Just what frequencies will it stop? Well, someone correct me if my math is wrong, please. I don't claim to be the world's greatest math whiz, but I believe an electrical wave can penetrate any hole of a conductor which is 1/2 its wavelength.

* Chicken wire has holes in it approximately 1.2 inches diameter.
* Light travels at 3 x 10^8 m/s.
* There are 314.96 inches in a meter.
* That makes the speed of light = 94.5 Giga inches per second!
* This number divided by 1.2 inch diameter chicken wire hole =
78.7GHz. The wavelength of an electromagnetic wave of 78.7 GHz is
1.2 inches.
* Since the chicken wire is actually only good up to 1/2 wavelength, we
have to reduce the number above by a factor of 2.....
39.4 GHz.

Therefore, chicken wire, if grounded well, and attached throughout the structure such that no holes greater than 1.2" exist, it will block everything up to, say 35 GHz, above which, you may start seeing leakage.

So the question is this: What does your recording equipment use? Will you run into problems above this frequency? Your computer certainly runs above this, but where is extraneous leakage actually going to occur? Most copper wires tend to suffer from short wave radio, and lower (local) radio stations. And if you're using lightpipe, there's basically no problem there. I can't answer the rest of the questions for you. You will have to do that research. But maybe there's a start.

In summary, chicken wire is pretty cool, actually!

Eric