Sound Proofing a Studio

K

KimB

Member
I have just started a new job where I have been essentially given an almost complete small video studio. The room itself is about 6 metres wide by about 15-20 metres long with a 3 metre ceiling.

There has been some work done on it to sound proof the room including some acoustic insulation in the roof, though not a lot. Acoustic panels placed on two of four walls and a third wall seems to have been filled with acoustic insulation.

The biggest problems are the door to the studio and the surrounding wall and a wall dividing the studio from the control room. This wall has not been built to the roof and so is far from sound proof.

So other than building the studio again, which is not going to happen, are there any thoughts on how best to sound proof a room this size which is situated in the basement of a cement office block that has a fare amount of foot traffic and doors opening and closing.

Be very interested in any thoughts. Thanks.
 
Soundproofing and sound treatment are two different things. You probably need to do both.

Soundproofing takes isolation. There really isn't a short-cut. Room-in-a-room type construction is a typical solution. From the sound of it, you don't even really have a single room, what with the unfinished wall.

Sound Treatment is a whole different thing, intended to 'tune' a room, for lack of a better word, for quality, reliable sound recording / monitoring.

Do you have any kind of budget at all for this or are you trying to make something happen on the cheap?
 
JordanBlock said:
Soundproofing and sound treatment are two different things. You probably need to do both.

Soundproofing takes isolation. There really isn't a short-cut. Room-in-a-room type construction is a typical solution. From the sound of it, you don't even really have a single room, what with the unfinished wall.

Sound Treatment is a whole different thing, intended to 'tune' a room, for lack of a better word, for quality, reliable sound recording / monitoring.

Do you have any kind of budget at all for this or are you trying to make something happen on the cheap?
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We have a budget however it is quickly shrinking so I wouldn't say small but I wouldn't say endless either. Essentially I think the best that can happen at this stage of the project, which I have to say I have come in on late, is a salvage solution. So I am thinking of some acoustic treatment that I may be able to attach to walls and furthering the insulation in the roof. Plus I think we are going to have to build another wall to cover the incomplete wall between the control room and the studio.

As for sound treatment we have installed a Polycom SoundStructure (http://www.polycom.com/products/voi.../installed_audio/soundstructure_c_series.html) which is being used to cancel out some of the room sound and extras. But really it is about sound proofing first up and then working with the Polycom for Sound Treatment.

We are never going to get dead room but something which can limit the sounds or remove the sounds of people talking in the hallway and traffic outside would be good.
 
Kidnap/coerce/persuade/beg or pay a pro to advise you on site or it'll either crash or you'll do it twice or more. Good luck.

btw this same situation came up here about 2yrs ago .. ?

Cheers.
 
Do you have photos?

Also, while Polycom does make decent sound-processors to make video conferencing work in bad rooms, it's not intended, or high quality enough, for sound mixing.

And doors are extremely tricky. Really you want dual prefab Zero-International door assemblies, but that's very expensive.

Photos, an honest budget with $$$, and you can get much better advice.
 
Gohanto said:
Do you have photos?

Also, while Polycom does make decent sound-processors to make video conferencing work in bad rooms, it's not intended, or high quality enough, for sound mixing.

And doors are extremely tricky. Really you want dual prefab Zero-International door assemblies, but that's very expensive.

Photos, an honest budget with $$$, and you can get much better advice.
Click to expand...

So you picked it exactly. What seems to have been asked for was a small broadcast quality studio which can be used on a daily basis to present people who work here to give expert opinion to nightly news services as required (which will be often). What has been built is a large room capable of presently pretty good video conferencing. I need to now try and salvage something to get it to what was asked for.

So the budget it is in the range of $10,000 - $20,000 and here are some photos.

img0594mr.jpg
img0595ew.jpg
img0596j.jpg
img0598x.jpg


So this is the best I can do photo wise at present.

Behind the blacks is the incomplete wall. It reaches the ceiling as in the white foams but not all the way to the roof, as in the cement. The white wall is supposedly acoustically insulated and does seem to be the case.
The ceiling is not 100% insulated. The floor is concrete with rubber and carpet. The door is solid.

If you need more info just ask me and I appreciate any advice.
 
Raster said:
Kidnap/coerce/persuade/beg or pay a pro to advise you on site or it'll either crash or you'll do it twice or more. Good luck.

btw this same situation came up here about 2yrs ago .. ?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Do you have any thoughts on 'professionals' who may be able to help? Am in the same area as you. Cheers.
 
Gearslutz has an entire section dedicated to just what you're asking.
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/

You can also use a product called Quiet Rock. They also make other sound proofing products.
http://www.quietrock.com/

No matter what you do, consult a profesional FIRST. You will save money and get better results with less. Weather you're treating or soundproofing, it will be hard work. There's just no way around it.
 
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So you are shooting "talking head" things. But you didn't mention how you are micing this? Do you have a boom operator? Are you using lavs? Do you have soft-talkers on camera? One viable alternative is to maximize the direct-to-ambient sound picked up by the microphone(s). Talent speaking in a decent delivery with a (nearly invisible) headset mic can overcome remarkably bad ambience (reflections, noise, etc.). The farther away from the microphone you get, the more it costs to mitigate the problem(s).
 
Thanks HXD, Richard and Gohanto.

Richard. Will be using a range of mics and be in a range of situations. Although predominantly lapel mic or overhead boom with between 1 - 4 talent.

Hxd. Will check out gearslutz

Gohanto. Thanks for advice.

Always open to any other thoughts and will let you know how things progress.
 
Here is a forum dedicated to acoustics and recording studio design:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

I am sure someone on there will be able to give you a recommendation for a professional who can help you out. This really is the type of thing where someone is going to have to go inside that space and see all of the details before giving you suggestions.

Sound Proofing is one of the hardest things to do, because if you miss even one tiny detail, your work can be ruined. Some things which seem like they might help, can actually hurt in the long run. Make sure when you hire a contractor to do whatever work needs to be done, that you get references for people who understand acoustic work. A couple of screws in the wrong place can cause a sound isolating wall to not work properly.
 
markblasco said:
A couple of screws in the wrong place can cause a sound isolating wall to not work properly.
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Cough... Cough.... Contrator screwing through a resilient channel into the wall behind making it worthless.... cough

Yeah, there's a lot of ways for things to go wrong. For the number of times we've had contractors drill through resilient channels and then the owners are yelling at us for the sound isolation not being good enough, in general we've just stopped spec'ing them on projects since they're so rarely installed properly. Also why you want consultants to do site visits during construction to verify what and how everything's being installed.
 
One of the first things I would look at is that drop ceiling. That space needs to be killed acoustically or your going to have sounds come bouncing from above. Regular insolation is excellent at absorbing sound. We used to make large panels filled with fiberglass insolation, hard on one side cloth on the other.
Those will help absorb sounds and you could use them but isolation is pretty key and they don't help al that much with that. If your still finishing the wall to the control room then build it as two one sided walls that don't touch and fill the gap with insolation. That was very effective in a studio I helped build. Also double sheet rocking was a big plus. We didn't, but I would in your case, float the floor. You could probably get 80% of a floating floor by laying a few sheets of homosote down and laying plywood over the top.

If you can get someone local who has some experience that is good.

If you have the $ for professionals that is the way to go but if not you can get pretty close if you do the research and plan it out.
For instance, we didn't do this but, I bet Homosote on the inside of the walls would make a pretty dead wall.

Once you kill as much connection to the real world as possible you probably will need to add some hard surfaces back in to keep your stage from being too dead.

A big thing to consider, that we didn't take into account enough, is air-conditioning on the stage You will need to get some air in there or it will get uncomfortable for your subjects pretty fast. Good solutions are all pretty $$$ unfortunately, but you need to do it.
 
KimB said:
Do you have any thoughts on 'professionals' who may be able to help? Am in the same area as you. Cheers.
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Hi Kim, sorry late with this, and Mark in post 11 has given you my recommendation as well. Say Hi to John Sayers from me (Al Black) I worked with him circa late 1960s at Natec Sound Studios in Sydney. We made the first (analogue) multitrack recorder in Australia. The 8track heads were made by Bruno Van Arkin in a house at Hurstville, in his bath! He mucked up the earthing and we had no end of trouble for a month . But she worked and we were booked months ahead .. great days.

Cheers.
 
You need hard dense well sealed barriers to totally isolate sound between spaces. Since the walls don't go to the deck, what you need to do is replace the ceiling tiles with tiles that have a very high STC (sound transmission coefficient) rating. Do this with at least 6 inches of high density fiberglass over the tiles and an isolation barrier fabric over the light fixtures and you should eliminate most of the problem through the ceiling. The barrier fabric can also significantly improve the STC of the walls if needed. I have used similar fabric on a wall between a video conference suite and a bathroom to eliminate plumbing noises.
The last thing you will need to address is the doors and any possible air gaps into the space. HVAC can be addressed with a damped U duct in the main room feed. Sound does not like to go around corners. If the HVAC is an open return plenum system, you will need to change to ducted returns, again with a U trap, to exhaust air to the adjacent room plenum.
If you can measure your existing ambient noise levels under worst conditions with a calibrated sound meter, you will have an idea of how much you need to improve. The goal is to meet an NC or PNC criteria curve of 25 or less. Overall you can expect typically a 20-30dBA improvement with barriers rated STC56 or higher.
Some links provided for reference. but there are many more options out there.

http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/n/o/noise%20criteria/source.html
http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/acoust_ceilings/barricade_ceiling.htm?d=20
http://www.auralex.com/sound_isolation_sheetblok/sound_isolation_sheetblok.asp
http://www.zeronoise.com/sound_control/high_stc_door.htm
http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/hvac/duct_silen.htm?d=26
http://www.owenscorning.com/worldwide/admin/tempupload/pdf.3-74495-165 _QuietZoneBro_E.pdf
 
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Thanks for all the comments and advice. We have since I first posted had an Audio Engineer come in pop some balloons and take some measurements and start working with our builders. All in all we are building three new walls separating the existing walls. Bricking up the windows I was unaware of behind one wall and building a airlock entry. We are also raising the floor and filling in the ceiling.

Start building tomorrow and hopefully should be up and operational by the end of the month. A bit of $$$$ but hopefully should be worth it.

Thanks again and will let you know how it comes along.
 
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