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January 2014
Posts: 14
| Hello, I'm building a small private studio, and would like to know what to put on top of a concrete floor for soundproofing. I was thinking about cork...
Suggestions are welcome :-) |
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January 2009
Posts: 4535
Location: Flahdaw | I would think even low priced carpet would absorb sound pretty well. I think you just don't want sound bouncing around |
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April 2004
Posts: 13303
Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Preferred method for most studios is wood floors with area rugs to help absorb reflections. Bass traps properly placed are also important. doorways and windows is where you will get the most sound leakage. not much is gonna travel through a thick concrete floor foundation.
Edited by stephent28 2014-01-13 9:11 PM
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Posts: 7230
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | This is not a simple question.
I put hardwood down on rubber mat. I did the whole floor then I used a circular saw to cut channels that separated the area's of drums, bass, guitar and singers. THe drum, bass and guitar sections were then carpeted.
You should start... ANYONE THINKING ABOUT A STUDIO should start.. at http://www.acoustics101.com/ then start reading the project threads on
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php
Once you get comfortable and understand Acoustics, and see the projects on John Sayers site, it will become much easier to make good decisions.
Studio's are NOT about how much money you spend. They are about the right choices, based on budget. You can spend a million dollars and have a room that sounds like crap, and you could do your homework and end up with a fantastic room for a couple hundred bucks. It's all about the acoustics. |
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January 2014
Posts: 14
| Thanks All, and thanks for the links, Mr. O.! I'll check'em out and get back to ya. |
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January 2014
Posts: 14
| At first blush, it is apparent that I will be building a "room within a room." With overall dimensions of 16' x 20' this looks do-able. A floating floor looks like the way to go.
Since I'm building from scratch I have freedom to do it right. I'm sure I'll have more questions in the months ahead -- watch this space :-) |
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January 2009
Posts: 4535
Location: Flahdaw | Ok, I did some reading thru that site and carpet is a no no. But it doesn't say WHY? I thought the whole idea with the foam on the walls was to keep sound from bouncing around back to the mic. Wouldn't sound bounce off a concrete (highly recommended) floor much more so than a carpeted floor? |
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June 2002
Posts: 6202
Location: Phoenix AZ | You can't turn a pickle back into a cucumber. So I would start simple and experiment with removable additions. Sound leakage into your studio through the concrete floor will be the least of your worries. I would start with just epoxy painting the floor. Add rugs, sound traps, etc. as needed. |
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July 2005
Posts: 1609
Location: Colorado | The primary reason carpet is not recommended...is most nice sounding rooms have some "liveness" to the sound; they are not completely dry in their sound. As the others have said, you do not want standing waves where resonance happens, and though you want the sound to travel...you do not want it coming back at you - hence some bass traps. Since you are willing to do the room in a room...you'll be able to get it pretty quiet...I in my past had the best luck with softer hardwood floors, using area rugs to tweak the floor reflections. Also - if it is just you and acoustic work, that is very different than recording a full rhythm section at once from the same room. Then you'll need to get some isolation. Don;t forget how loud your ventilation system is...you'd be surprised what crap good mics and good mic pre's will pickup when the A/C cuts on...just from the air moving |
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Posts: 7230
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | One often overlooked VERY important point is WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO IN THE ROOM !!!! I know it seems silly but the room were the mic's go (live room, studio, drum room, guitar room, etc) compared to the room that you are sitting at the mixer (control room) are nearly POLAR OPPOSITE in overal design. - The room with the mic's you want to sound good. You don't want it dead, you don't want it sucking the life out of the instruments, and you want it to pretty much sound the same everywhere in the room. It shouldn't have much echo, and things like cymbals need to be able to do their thing and not have the sound reflect back off a surface, but rather you want them to dissipate. Great studio's around the world are great because of how they sound. The original SUN, Abbey Road, Sound City etc..
- On the other hand, you want the control room to have as little affect on what's coming out of the speakers as possible, and generally the only place in the room you care about what it sounds like is where the engineer is sitting.
It seems obivous when you think about it, but often in the midst of calculating reflections and absorption rates one forgets the purpose of the room. If you have looked at the websites in the links provided, you will see "money" generally has more affect on aesthetics than anything to do with sound, especially for the live room. Most people who record at home, just need a good live room. You can compensate for mixing in a less than proper control room area, but you don't really want to have to compensate for bad sounding tracks. You can always take good tracks to a mixing studio if you have to. So the key to a good live room, is to avoid the things like square rooms and equal surfaces as outlined in Acoustics 101 and build a nice room using the construction techniques they discuss. Then just furnish and treat the result until you're happy with the way it sounds. Take it from somone who tried to design the perfect "live" room. It just doesn't work that way. The list of "do not do's" is much longer and reliable than the "this is the way to do its," and the "do nots" list isn't really that long. As was told to me by the author of Acoustics 101, Just build a nice comfortable room, and then treat it. On average you will usually treat about 50% (or less) of the surface of a room to get it right. What it's treated with depends on what needs to be treated. If it turns out you need to treat more than 50% of the surface area (walls, floor, ceiling) than you likely made a mistake in construction.
A control room on the other hand is easier. You just get the dimensions of the space and what they are made of, what make/model speakers (for their specs), what make/model board (again for the specs), some overall layout ideas, even including the height of your ears when sitting at the control desk... Then, for a few grand you get a set of detailed plans and instructions for a control room. Then you just build it. Essentially a control room is all about reflection and absorbtion. The main goal, really the only goal, is to get the sound from the speakers to the engineer without the room having ANY affect on that sound at all.
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January 2014
Posts: 14
| Wow, sounds like great advice, thanks for the detailed responses, Mr. O!
I'm not looking to create a professional recording studio. What I really want is a space that is acoustically pleasing, and leaks as little sound in or out as possible. I live on the main street in a farming community, directly across the street from a busy tire shop -- pneumatic tools are heard so often that I really don't even notice them anymore. Big trucks rumble by all the time (very low frequency noise). My dogs tend to bark at the wind, or nothing at all.
These are the major sounds I want to keep out -- the rumbling trucks, well, that's a real challenge but I can at least minimize it.
I also want to do some artwork, so natural light is desirable, but not as important as the sound isolation. I definitely will do the "floating room" thing with a high ceiling, this much I know. Do you suppose a 10x5 space would be adequate for a control room? |
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December 2001
Posts: 7230
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | 10 x 5 would be VERY tight. You would want the 5 to be the width so you'd really have to shop for speakers what would work being less than 5 feet apart.
If it's just you wanting to record yourself, you really don't need a control room. Just a nice sounding room for recording and assuming that 10 x 5 was going to be carved out of the larger space, I'd just leave it PART of the larger space and work from one nice sounding room. Maybe make an equipment closet to put gear that makes noise like a computer to keep that noise out of the recording area.
How big is the overall space you have to build in? |
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January 2014
Posts: 14
| The overall dimensions are 16x20, but I want a small half-bath to occupy one corner (5x5). Thus I figured I'd just extend that wall straight across to form the control room - and as a place to put the fridge.
The "live room" would be the floating part, with its own footing and slab.
Edited by Earthbound Misfit 2014-01-17 6:57 AM
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December 2001
Posts: 7230
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Oh well that's easy-ish. So I assume the half-bath is on the 16 foot wall ? If so.. so that leaves you a 10 x 5 space to put the control room area, just don't close it off. It will be non-intrusive into your live room. In other words when you are recording you'll have a 16 x 20 space with a 5 x 5 intrusion, that's not terrible. And when you're mixing, you'll have a 16 x 20 room as well. With that 10' space you have plenty of room to do speaker soffits and enough room behind you when you are mixing (sitting with your back to the room) to eliminate enough reflection. That could be a pretty awesome space dual purpose space
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January 2014
Posts: 14
| That's certainly worth thinking about. I'll toss it around with my associates :-) |
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Studio Flooring