John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I am building a studio in an industrial warehouse. The space is essentially on the roof of the building so the main concern is preventing noise from leaking into the neighbors space downstairs. There are other neighbors next to us but there are numerous walls and space separating them from us. There is nothing but the roof above us. The other main concern is preventing sound from coming in from the surrounding area, i.e. cars, construction etc... We have a decent budget but are doing it all DIY and would love to cut as many corners as possible.

Our plan is to build a room within a room with a floating floor. What is the best way to build a floor in a DIY fashion. So far I've come up with neoprene decouplers under the joists and thats about it. Should we fill the spaces between the joists with something? I've heard sand is good and cheap?

As for the walls I was thinking about attaching resilient channels to the existing walls and attaching gypsum to that. Then a layer of roofing material and another layer of gypsum. Will this work or should I build complete new walls with insulation in addition to the existing walls? Space is an issue as I would like the room to be as large as possible.

Do I need an additional ceiling or can I just use the existing one? Can I just add acoustic treatment to the ceiling without too much noise coming in?

All help much appreciated! Links, tips, advice, etc........

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2125

http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.p ... 6b9b33833f

http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.p ... 86&start=0

http://www.recording.org/ftopic-28211-d ... asc-0.html

http://www.recording.org/ftopict-18326-sand.html+walls

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=13436

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 0176#20176

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=19989

http://forum.studiotips.com/viewtopic.p ... 280e1d399c

After reading through the above, you should have enough info to be able to provide the details we'd need to be able to suggest ways to go in your case; things like what the existing floor is made of, spans, materials, etc, layer by layer description of existing walls so we know if you're heading toward a multiple leaf (bad) wall...

In your particular case, a detailed description of what your studio will be RESTING on (the roof) is MANDATORY. If you just start putting heavy materials on it, someone may DIE. Not all buildings (in fact, very few) can stand a large amount of extra weight over what's already there so your description (and probably even an engineer's assessment" will be necessary to keep from having a catastrophic collapse... Steve