The New Studio
Well, after a few months of attending countless open houses and scouring the internet for real estate, I’m relieved to say my wife and I finally found a new house…. and a new recording studio. Upon our first viewing of this particular property, she fell in love with the Colonial Revival architecture (the house was built in 1830 and “updated” in 1907) and the perennial gardens surrounding the house, while I was won over by something totally different: The two-story carriage house in the back.
The interior of the carriage house is pretty raw, but a nice clean slate for building a studio. It just needs two crucial elements to make it suitable for a recording environment:
1. Electricity
2. Soundproofing
Does anyone out there have experience with converting 180 year old barns into music studios? The nearest neighbor is a few hundred feet away, but I want the soundproofing to be sufficient enough to allow me to record at any hour. I’ve read about some soundproofing materials available online, but until I see Billy Mays (RIP) endorsing it, I’m going to remain skeptical. I know a lot of you have your own studios and I’d love to hear any suggestions or words of wisdom you may have.
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I heard cardboard on the wall is extremely good to use. And it’s super cheap.
Here is a good book on the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/1598630342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247357638&sr=8-1
Plus, this forum is a great resource:
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php
I do. I live in Lowell, right up the road. Drop me a line.
I got lucky in moved into a house with double-paned sealed windows. The guy who lived there before us was crazy about energy efficiency, side effect was you can’t hear us outside when the full band plays. If it has windows, that’s where most of the sound is going to get out.
Other than that you could build out a “floating studio”, meaning you just frame in another room right inside the existing room, fill the walls with R-30 or Some of the Owens-Corning 703 or 705 stuff…or their ultra-spensive acoustic mat.
Might also check out this old article from Ethan Winer: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html for treating the inside of the studio when you’re done.
I outfitted an old practice space with mattresses, it worked quite well. Just drove around on trash day, and found them quite often, until I had enough for nearly every surface.
thanks for all of the suggestions and links. from your input, it seems like I need to make a floating room out of mattresses, cardboard and acoustic mat. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I am in the final stages of construction on my own home studio. I used the “Build It Like The Pros” book, followed the methods carefully, and they really worked. I can play drums at all hours of the day with no sound issues. I can also record vocals without sound coming into the space as well. The methods in the book are great because, for the most part, all of the materials you will need can be purchased at Lowes or Home Depot or other home center-style stores. Also, since you have no shared walls and your barn is pretty far from sound sources that may enter your space, you may not have to build the room-in-a-room. If you don’t have to worry about footfall from ceilings, or low frequencies traveling into bedrooms and such, you already have more options that will save you money. A lot of the “soundproofing” products out there are good, but expensive and give you benefits that you can easily get from regular building supplies. After building a studio for myself, I can tell you that cardboard and stinky old mattresses will not yield you long-term benefits.
Just make sure you think of everything you want wired in and out of your rooms before you put any drywall, soundboard, etc. up. I installed 5″ drain pipe from my tracking room to the control room (behind the wall) so I could run a snake from room to room. Just don’t put too many (none if you can help it) bends in the pipe or you will not be able to get the snake in and out of the pipe.
I would also recommend running 3/4″ bx (electric flexible conduit) to your electric boxes and then running your electric wires as well as any coax cables, speaker wire, etc. through conduit too, so if you want to upgrade later, you have options. Fish tape can pull almost anything through this flexible conduit. Just don’t mix your electric lines and audio lines through the same run of conduit. The conduit also helps if you ever find yourself with tiny, whiskered, in-wall visitors. They can’t chew through the conduit.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have other questions.
hey jen,
thanks for all of the info regarding your studio building experiences. definitely helpful. I’ll look into getting that book and keep your suggestions in mind as I pretend I’m bob villa. I still need to get some electricity wired from the house and into the barn before I start sawing and hammering.
I’ll be blogging the whole process as it’s going on… so feel free to yell at me if I start to make any stupid mistakes.
ryan
Check out some great soundproofing articles at this site. http://www.tmsoundproofing.com/store/pages.php?pageid=21
There are lots of products that work for sound isolation. Unfortunately things like mattresses, cardboard, etc., are not included on that list. A mattress may be able to provide some absorption and improve the room’s acoustics, but in terms of actual isolation the performance is nothing to strive for.
True isolation comes in either decoupling (the best) or damping. Decoupling involves double stud walls, staggered stud walls, or resilient sound clips. Damping involves a dampening compound like Green Glue.
You can achieve significant isolation just by building a basic double stud wall in front of your existing wall and hang a single layer of drywall on that wall.
Feel free to stop by my site and ask any questions you may have in regards to sound isolation. The link is http://www.soundisolationstore.com.