How necessary is decoupling a room?

MusicalBirdDog66 · Post by **MusicalBirdDog66** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:38 am

I will most likely begin construction on my own home recording studio and unlike many I read about (it seems, anyway) I am in the position of not having to worry about sound coming into the studio or sound getting out. With that in mind is it necessary to decouple the room from the surrounding basement walls using things like a floating floor?

rod gervais · Post by **rod gervais** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:49 am

MBD,

Not at all - if you truly have no concerns for isolation - then spending money to isolate would be foolish.

In fact - it would hit you twice in the pocketbook.

The less isolation you have the easier it is to treat the room - thus the least expensive route is no isolation at all.

Rod

Post by **John Sayers** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 12:39 pm

Yes - I agree with Rod. I made a series of country albums in a studio in the middle of a paddock that only had one layer of weatherboard on the outside. All the bass dissappeared out the walls and the wide open windows.

I loved working there.

cheers
john

MusicalBirdDog66 · Post by **MusicalBirdDog66** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 12:50 pm

thanks alot for the information. That's what I was hoping to hear. Is it ok then for me to mound diffusers directly on the cement walls or should I still put drywall up over them? I've been reading on some other forums and I've kind of developed the idea that having just plain cement walls would be about the last thing one would want. As it stands now, in the final product 2 walls would be drywall and 2 would be cement. The studio will be at my cabin which is far from anyone else, so I feel pretty lucky.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:21 am

Drywall directly on concrete won't change things much at all, other than at the high end which would be a bit brighter with plain concrete; it's the flexibility/air gap/damping you get with spaced out framing, etc, that changes the sound most when adding an inner wall over concrete.

So, you could put diffusion directly on the concrete and the most you might have to do to compensate would be use a larger area for absorption if it ends up too bright.

Partly this would depend on your room size - small rooms and diffusion don't often work well together, because you need a fair amount of distance for diffusion to actually "diffuse" - otherwise, it's just a bunch of specular reflections that can raise hell with trying to find a "sweet spot"... Steve