952 Studios Construction!

#91

I’m thinking about just getting some self adhesive neoprene to put between the inner and outer leaf windows, but I’m open to suggestions.

Leave the gap between the windows open, fill it with insulation as much as you can, exposed to the window cavity. then cover it with black fabric. You need that little bit of damping that it creates around the perimeter.

You can see that in this thread: site built windows for high isolation (Most visible in second image).

- Stuart -

#92

eightamrock wrote:Source of the post Also, not sure how to calculate the amount of desiccation I need. Anyone know the formula?

Depends on what type of desiccant you use!

Silica gel seems to be the most common, so I'll assume that's it.

For silica gel, I normal use 200 grams per cubic meter of air space in the window cavity. Measure size of glass pane (width, height) and distance between glass panes: Multiply all three to get the volume. If one pane is bigger than the other, use the dimensions of the largest one.

It's OK to overdo it a bit with the quantity of silica gel, but don't go too far, or the air inside will be too dry: the wood of the window frame might dry out and crack after a few months / years. Use the right amount, and up to about 30% more, but don't go too crazy. And do make sure it is dry and dehumidified, before you put it in! What I do is to "cook" it for several hours, to make sure it is perfectly activated, before putting it in and seal up the windows. In other words, if it is the type that changes color, make sure it is the right color before you put it it! Either blue or orange, depending on the type. But never pink or green! If it is the wrong color, or if it is not colored at all and you don't know if it is dry or saturated, it probably needs "cooking". To do that, I heat it in an oven set to about 125 °C (about 250°F) for several hours, then put it in the cavity and seal the glass in place as soon as possible afterwards. It's OK for it to sit for a few hours while it cools, and while you get things in place, but don't let it sit for days, as it will start adsorbing moisture from the atmosphere and already be partly saturated by the time you put it in.

Silica Gel is pretty inert: it's actually similar to quartz or sand, chemically, so you can put it on or in pretty much anything, to hold it. Those labels that say "Do not eat! You will die horribly!" or whatever, that you see on the packs of silica gel in cameras, shoes, pills, handbags, etc. are because of the additives that they put in so that it changes color when dry / damp: That color-change chemical stuff is poisonous, but not the actual silica gel itself. It's no more dangerous than sand. If you got the stuff that does not change color, then you could use pretty much anything you want to make the "tray" to hold it. If you got the color-change stuff, then I'd go with plastic: you can find plastic "profiles" in hardware stores, such as Home Depot, and use that to make small trays to hold it, then glue and staple those to one side of the frame gap. Don't use metal or wood for the color-change stuff, as there might be reactions with the color chemicals.

Spread out the silica gel as much as you can in the "trays", to get maximum surface area exposed to the cavity air.

NOTE: The above only applies to silica gel! Other types of desiccant are different. Some cannot be "cooked", or need different temperatures. All need different amounts per unit volume of air.

- Stuart -

#93

Soundman2020 wrote:Source of the post
eightamrock wrote:Source of the post Also, not sure how to calculate the amount of desiccation I need. Anyone know the formula?

Depends on what type of desiccant you use!

Silica gel seems to be the most common, so I'll assume that's it.

For silica gel, I normal use 200 grams per cubic meter of air space in the window cavity. Measure size of glass pane (width, height) and distance between glass panes: Multiply all three to get the volume. If one pane is bigger than the other, use the dimensions of the largest one.

It's OK to overdo it a bit with the quantity of silica gel, but don't go too far, or the air inside will be too dry: the wood of the window frame might dry out and crack after a few months / years. Use the right amount, and up to about 30% more, but don't go too crazy. And do make sure it is dry and dehumidified, before you put it in! What I do is to "cook" it for several hours, to make sure it is perfectly activated, before putting it in and seal up the windows. In other words, if it is the type that changes color, make sure it is the right color before you put it it! Either blue or orange, depending on the type. But never pink or green! If it is the wrong color, or if it is not colored at all and you don't know if it is dry or saturated, it probably needs "cooking". To do that, I heat it in an oven set to about 125 °C (about 250°F) for several hours, then put it in the cavity and seal the glass in place as soon as possible afterwards. It's OK for it to sit for a few hours while it cools, and while you get things in place, but don't let it sit for days, as it will start adsorbing moisture from the atmosphere and already be partly saturated by the time you put it in.

Silica Gel is pretty inert: it's actually similar to quartz or sand, chemically, so you can put it on or in pretty much anything, to hold it. Those labels that say "Do not eat! You will die horribly!" or whatever, that you see on the packs of silica gel in cameras, shoes, pills, handbags, etc. are because of the additives that they put in so that it changes color when dry / damp: That color-change chemical stuff is poisonous, but not the actual silica gel itself. It's no more dangerous than sand. If you got the stuff that does not change color, then you could use pretty much anything you want to make the "tray" to hold it. If you got the color-change stuff, then I'd go with plastic: you can find plastic "profiles" in hardware stores, such as Home Depot, and use that to make small trays to hold it, then glue and staple those to one side of the frame gap. Don't use metal or wood for the color-change stuff, as there might be reactions with the color chemicals.

Spread out the silica gel as much as you can in the "trays", to get maximum surface area exposed to the cavity air.

NOTE: The above only applies to silica gel! Other types of desiccant are different. Some cannot be "cooked", or need different temperatures. All need different amounts per unit volume of air.

- Stuart -

I did read this and forgot to thank you for the response. I will be using silica so this will be great for me.

Small updates. I start the electrical and finished the siding. Im quite happy but also exhausted. Progress may slow down a bit as my "real" job is starting to get busy again. However now that it is at least weather sealed I feel better about taking my time on next steps with electrical etc.... I'm also out of money.

Curiously, does anybody follow all the youtube channels on studio building and design? I feel like every week there is a new studio that easily costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build going up. Im confused because I really dont know anyone making enough money in music anymore to warrant such a place or have that kind of budget. Most of the good studios in my area have closed up and/or are struggling to bring in income. I just cant fathom how so many people can afford to put up such magnificent structures. I feel like both Stuart and Glenn do this professionally so curious as to your insights on state of the "recording studio" business.

#94

most of my clients already have a business going and are now ready to expand or to reduce costs associated with renting time somewhere. most are looking to leverage their home or build onto it, and some prefer to lease a warehouse space to build in. most are a control room, a live room, one or two iso, and perhaps one or two post prod. and between 800-2000ft. so my design fee is $10/ft2. the actual construction as an estimate is 1.5x the high end home (typically) is using a contractor, and probably 1/2 of high end if providing labor and watching materials used. so somewhere between $150/ft - $450/ft - so a small 1000ft studio could run anywhere from $150K-$450K to build. not including equipment. so using box store exterior doors vs IAC doors - $1.5K vs $11K, bathrooms, kitchens, lounges, etc all add up.
note that a single room personal studio for a professional would typically be $75K-100K w/ all the proper isolation and acoustics.

#95

Its been a bit since my last update and progress is being made in small bite sized doses....

I finished the rough electrical and have the inspection this week. All my outlets in the live room will be surface mounted, so it took me a bit of extra time to place them, cut backing 2x4's, drill the holes for the wire to poke through. Also running the 10/3 cable for the minisplit was a PITA. that wire just drags on everything. I also had the (I hope) last delivery of safe and sound. Ill be stuffing the ceilings, and rest of the walls to the gills over the next few week.

Q: Assuming my insulation and electrical inspections are done, should I Green Glue the first layer of drywall to the 1/2" OSB sheathing that I am going to line the LR with? or just GG between layers of drywall?

#96

eightamrock wrote:Source of the post Q: Assuming my insulation and electrical inspections are done, should I Green Glue the first layer of drywall to the 1/2" OSB sheathing that I am going to line the LR with? or just GG between layers of drywall?

We discussed this on the forum some years ago here viewtopic.php?p=237#p237

In summary, here's a quote from Ted White on gearslutz, one of the original founders of Green Glue;

It's worthwhile to note that all things being equal, having three mass layers + 2 thin damping layers (1 tube per sheet) will be more damped than a system with two layers of mass and one thicker damping layer (2 tubes per sheet). Again, assuming same overall system mass and quantity of damping compound.

Based on this, having:

OSB
1 tube Green Glue
Drywall
1 tube Green Glue
Drywall

Is more effective than:

OSB
Drywall
2 tubes Green Glue
Drywall

Somewhere on the green glue website it tells you that one of the two materials on either side of the green glue must be porous, so using OSB then plasterboard is fine. Presumably this is because green glue cures through evaporation of water?

Cheers,
Jennifer

#97

agree on the multiple layers of GG vs single layer. also - one of the weird things about GG - you need to use the caulk gun approach to putting it onto the surface vs using a trowel. in talking with the GG engineers, the even trowel spread (like when tiling for example) is LESS effective than using a Jackson Pollok approach of random streams of GG. it seems counter intuitive to me but that's their stance.

#98

gullfo wrote:Source of the post agree on the multiple layers of GG vs single layer. also - one of the weird things about GG - you need to use the caulk gun approach to putting it onto the surface vs using a trowel. in talking with the GG engineers, the even trowel spread (like when tiling for example) is LESS effective than using a Jackson Pollok approach of random streams of GG. it seems counter intuitive to me but that's their stance.

endorka wrote:Source of the post
eightamrock wrote:Source of the post Q: Assuming my insulation and electrical inspections are done, should I Green Glue the first layer of drywall to the 1/2" OSB sheathing that I am going to line the LR with? or just GG between layers of drywall?

We discussed this on the forum some years ago here https://www.digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=237#p237

In summary, here's a quote from Ted White on gearslutz, one of the original founders of Green Glue;

It's worthwhile to note that all things being equal, having three mass layers + 2 thin damping layers (1 tube per sheet) will be more damped than a system with two layers of mass and one thicker damping layer (2 tubes per sheet). Again, assuming same overall system mass and quantity of damping compound.

Based on this, having:

OSB
1 tube Green Glue
Drywall
1 tube Green Glue
Drywall

Is more effective than:

OSB
Drywall
2 tubes Green Glue
Drywall

Somewhere on the green glue website it tells you that one of the two materials on either side of the green glue must be porous, so using OSB then plasterboard is fine. Presumably this is because green glue cures through evaporation of water?

Cheers,
Jennifer

Many thanks to you both for the responses! One tube per sheet, starting with osb, it is!

Glenn, I have a sense I understand the dynamics with why "messy" is better than full coverage. If you think it about it in terms of energy, you want the energy to get trapped in-between the layers. Having air in there helps do that. I think about how on thermal applications, like a CPU processor, if there are air bubbles or gaps in the thermal paste between the heat sync and the CPU (2 hard dense surfaces), the heat gets trapped and the CPU overheats. In that application you want no air so the heat passes through efficiently. For sound isolation this would be the opposite! You WANT the air gaps to trap the energy and NOT let it pass through.

This make sense to me, hope I articulated it well enough.

#99

i did ask the engineer the air question - and the response was - air is not desirable. :-)

but somehow in their testing, the random smearing of the GG produced better results in their lab testing. counterintuitive at best as air pockets could cause resonances between the mass layers (very high frequency buzzes).

#100

Interesting! I'm thinking way back to the Wyle report of 1973 and wondering if this behavior of GG has something to do with point-contact and line-contact bridging between the layers. Perhaps its a subject worthy of investigation by some student of acoustics, for a thesis! Understanding the mechanism might help improve the damping/isolation even better. For example, would application in straight lines, or a grid pattern, be any different than random squiggles? Hmmm....

- Stuart -

#101

That would be an amazing thesis.

Jackson Pollok patterns, what a brilliant description Glenn. I seriously hope this proposed thesis would conclude it to be the best pattern, because after the all the demanding tolerances required in studio building, making these patterns provides some much needed levity!

#102

endorka wrote:That would be an amazing thesis.

Jackson Pollok patterns, what a brilliant description Glenn. I seriously hope this proposed thesis would conclude it to be the best pattern, because after the all the demanding tolerances required in studio building, making these patterns provides some much needed levity!

This is giving me some really great ideas on how to design my green glue patterns!!

#103

eightamrock wrote:Source of the post This is giving me some really great ideas on how to design my green glue patterns!!

I think I see a new art form budding here... Green Glue Patterns!
We should try bird-shaped patterns, and dog-shaped patterns, and hamburger-shaped patterns... and fractal patterns, ... triangles, circles.. You could even do a scaled-down drawing of your studio layout, as a pattern!
(I think I need a break... working too hard, and my mind is running a bit wild and crazy....)

- Stuart -

#104

Electrical inspection passed with flying colors this morning. The inspector noted that my wires were some of the straightest he's ever seen!

He had never seen a building constructed in such a way before.... "what kind of music are you doing in here??" was his reaction. I said its not about my music, its about the lawn mower next door!

#105

congrats! and looking back at the photos - damn! those are some straight wires! although i do recommend leaving some slack when crossing isolation boundaries to ensure minimal coupling from tight wire tension.

Soundman2020 - Studio Design Forum