Attic Shaped Studio

#136

SoWhat wrote:Source of the postIf only you could 3D-print these...

How amazing would that be!

#137

I feel like I’m being state the obvious guy, but just checking you’re aware that over here in the UK plasterboard sheets are slightly smaller than OSB and plywood... annoyingly.

OSB and ply (and MDF) are 1220 x 2440mm whereas plasterboard is 1200 x 2400mm. Must be such a pain for builders doing stud walls with osb one side and plasterboard the other...

I’m sure you knew this but just in case.. could play havoc with your templating plan.

Gareth

#138

Thanks again for the warning Gareth, please continue with these. Even if I know the score it may be useful for others who don't.

Fortunately this time I noticed when specifying the materals and reduced the blue template for plasterboard accordingly. Phew!

Cheers,
Jennifer

#139

Thanks for the link to justfans.co.uk Gareth, they were really helpful as you said. They had the specifications of the components to hand and did a sanity check on my figures. All in order thankfully. I was able to get a suitable filter and various other components from there too.

I bought the "TD-SILENT 500/150" inline fan: https://www.justfans.co.uk/silent-500150-p-1906.html

As a bonus, they're recently upgraded those to three speed. When I first specified it last year it was only two. The third speed is slow, it should circulate enough air for several people to breathe while keeping as much heat in the room as possible. Useful during winter. When the fan was two speed only (medium and high) I would have had to buy an additional variac controller to get the slow speed. No need for that now, this simpler and cheaper three way control will do the job

https://www.justfans.co.uk/mts10-extrac ... -1171.html

If my calculations are correct, medium speed should be enough to keep 5 people working hard in the room cool. High will be super turbo chill :-)

#140

Nice! I’m glad they were helpful to you too.

The one I bought is single speed but works fine with a variac speed controller so that’s what I’ve got, and like you I don’t think I’ll need it running on full beans.

I might buy a co2 meter to establish the best speed - they don’t seem too expensive on Amazon.

Cheers
Gareth

#141

I bought this one last year from Duomo in Droitwich, Worcestershire. I explained my situation (not a classroom, laboratory, etc.) and had this one suggested. I haven't got far enough with my studio build to permanently install it yet but I stuck a plug on it and tested at home and in the studio. On thing I wanted was that the alarm could be silenced (be only visual) as I would not want a recording to be disturbed by an audible alarm going off. This one has that feature. It cost me £260, I have not looked at Amazon's prices.

#142

as I would not want a recording to be disturbed by an audible alarm going off

Like those great (and true) stories of recordings with toilets flushing when reverb used to be recorded in the tiled bathrooms of recording studios and someone forgot to put up the "DO NOT ENTER" sign on the door.

#143

CO2 meters, sound useful, I had no idea you could buy such a thing outside of NASA

I still sometimes use the studio bathroom as a reverb chamber by the way - never done it live during recording, only re-amped stuff when nobody else was there so no stories I'm afraid!

The palette of OSB and plywood arrived today from the builder's merchant, exciting stuff. Plasterboard should hopefully arrive soon too.

#144

Many (many!) years ago when I was a student at Berklee, a friend had the first Portastudio, and we used to record reverb in the bathroom (or a metal trash can; talk about your funky-sounding plate).

Nice to see your delivery! There wouldn't be a spot for it here as everything is covered in snow (again).

All the best,

Paul

#145

We had snow about 6" deep here only a week or so ago. Even built a snowman

All gone now!

Another point of detail concerning the studio ventilation. The fan & controller have three speeds, and I'm also hoping to use the ventilation system in "trickle" mode when the fan is off. To this end I will not be installing a backdraft damper. Exactly this is specified on the house plans for all the bathrooms, and I've not noticed anything untoward happening with them.

If this works I'll be able to close the window trickle vents, which let in a noticeable amount of sound from outside. They are an amazing demonstration of the "small gap leaks a lot of noise" phenomenon. They seem to act like a remarkable low pass filter when closed.

Cheers,
Jennifer

#146

The plasterboard sheets have arrived! It's all getting very real, yes :yahoo:

These are "Gyproc Soundbloc Plasterboard Tapered Edge - 2.4m x 1.2m x 15mm".

They have a higher density than normal plasterboard giving mass per surface ratio of 12.6 kg/m2. Normal 12.5mm boards 8 kg/m2.

The Soundbloc boards cost twice as much as normal 12.5mm ones, and are therefore not usually cost effective. You'd get more mass for the same money from doubling up the normal boards.

In this case they made sense though. IR761 demonstrates a significant benefit of two layers of 15mm versus two layers of 12.5mm plasterboard.

Normal 15mm is 10 kg/m2, so two layers is 20 kg/m2

The room 2 -> landing wall I'll be applying some of these too has an existing layer of 12.5mm plasterboard. So we'll get a little bit more than the above;

8 + 12.5 = 20.5 kg/m2

Two layers of normal would have given more mass, but been overkill (particularly as I'll have green glue between layers) and meant double the labour to fit.

Cheers!
Jennifer

#147

endorka wrote:Source of the post
The Soundbloc boards cost twice as much as normal 12.5mm ones, and are therefore not usually cost effective. You'd get more mass for the same money from doubling up the normal boards.

In this case they made sense though. IR761 demonstrates a significant benefit of two layers of 15mm versus two layers of 12.5mm plasterboard.

Normal 15mm is 10 kg/m2, so two layers is 20 kg/m2

The room 2 -> landing wall I'll be applying some of these too has an existing layer of 12.5mm plasterboard. So we'll get a little bit more than the above;

Two layers of normal would have given more mass, but been overkill (particularly as I'll have green glue between layers) and meant double the labour to fit.

If you're anything like me, you probably thought about this a lot, did tons of research, thought about it some more, weighed the pros/cons, thought about the cost, looked at your budget, thought about it again, etc...

At a certain point you just have to make a decision based on what your needs are and be done with it. I have lost weeks of progress stressing over things that probably didn't matter as much as I thought they did. I don't think anything is ever "overkill", because i don't think we can ever have too much isolation. However, when it comes to financing these things ourselves on such tight budgets and limited time to do the actual work, there does come a point where it is 'good enough'. And when I look at build threads like yours where you are paying such good attention to detail, I'm sure you will be happy with your end result. I look forward to seeing your progress.

#148

Thank you, those are brilliant insights.

You read me very well concerning the extensive research, pondering, what-if-ing and assessment of tradeoffs. And you are also correct in the assessment of the point where I hope it is good enough. And that was;

1) Room 2 is already good enough to stop sound from vocals, acoustic guitars and the vast majority of percussion being heard in the control room (room 1) and the living room two floors below. My normal monitoring level of ~80 dB is barely audible in room 2.

2) Very loud lead guitar in room 2 can be heard in the living room. Want to reduce this.

3) I'd like to record brass instruments in room 2. I suspect loud ones will be a bit audible in the living room. Not sure though, I've only recorded brass in room 1.

4) The very very loud instruments - drums - are recorded in room 1.

In a nutshell, if I can improve the transmission loss above 80Hz in room 2 it should do the job. The extra layer of plasterboard on green glue should help in this. The limiting factor is the door. It's a heavy solid core fire door with perimeter seal and drop seal, and beefing this up further is beyond budget / practicality as I'll be doing that for the room 1 door at some point in the future. There didn't seem to be much point in making the wall substantially better than the door.

So much for the nutshell!

OK, second attempt at nutshell:

Room 1 is for quiet to very loud stuff with lots of low frequency: drums, bass, cranking the monitors to check the mix. Resilient clips & "super door" beefing up is in its future.
Room 2 is for quiet to loud stuff with not so much low frequency. So the two layers and normal heavy door should do the trick most of the time.

:-)

Cheers!
Jennifer

#149

Wow... so exciting. I just read 2-3 pages of the 10 on this thread but it looks like it is starting now. I will also have some exciting news and pictures soon as well. Good luck and look forward to keep an close eye. Lucky for me I have huge granite stone walls surrounding my studio on three sides and no one lives closer than 300m from the studio...
scott

#150

I collected more supplies today - some wood, the box of fancy TX screws, two saw horses, skim plaster, and last but not least, several tubes of caulk.

I got some 89 x 38 mm stud wood. Once this project is finished I'll use those to try out some experimental soffit layouts with the plywood & OSB offcuts. With the complexity of the room shape it will hopefully give a good idea of what will work and where it should go before committing to more expensive facings.

Cheers!
Jennifer

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