Booth floor isolation?

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:15 am

Hi everyone. I'm almost done with the control room of my studio and now I'm working on my 3 isolation booths. The whole studio is in a basement. The total room is about 12.5' x 26'. The booths are all right next to each other on one end. Basically 4 closets spanning the 12.5' width, equally divided which after multiple sheets of drywall, 2x4 studs, and foam, leaves me with just a 30 wide by about 39" deep set of closets. Three of them are for recording and the fourth is just a closet with the electrical panel in it. I already floated a pergo wood floor in the control room seperate of the booths. Now I just want to know what I should do with the booth floors. Right now it's just the bare floor. One booth is a for vocals and the other two are strictly for miking amps. Can I just float a piece of 3/4" OSB on cork spacers or would the wood resonate too much and effect the tone? I just want to get good isolation between booths. Thr walls inbetween are 2x4 with 3 layers of 1/2" drywall per side and 2" foam wedgies. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Eric

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:09 pm

Eric,

At this point, I'm not sure what is going to help you the most, but I'll toss my paltry .02 at it...

If your drywall is touching the floor, you might as well just put anything on the floor you feel like. This is because your drywall will be a cause of flanking noise to go straight into the floor. That would negate your attempts at isolation through floating a floor.

Also, according to the way you describe your wall construction is done, I'm not sure how well any floating will work, or if it would warrant the expense of floating. However, this might be a better answered response from Rod, Andre or some of the other guys...

My thought is that since you used a single 2x4 wall design (or used the existing) your walls are directly coupled to each other. That direct coupling is probably going to make it tough to record vocals at the same time you have an amplifier going.

You do have a good bit of mass on the walls, but is that really enough to offset the issue of direct coupled walls? To some extent, I would think it should, but I wouldn't expect miracles.

The other thing I'm going to assume is that your ceiling is a common ceiling and will give you the same situation as the floor and the walls... direct acoustic coupling and flanking noise.

I do trust, and hope. you did get at least some R13 in those common walls and that you have some good insulation within the ceiling cavities as well.

If it were me... I would attempt to finish everything off and see what your results are. Then, I would try to determine if putting in a floating floor would be worth it.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:06 pm

With what you have described of the walls, the floors are not an issue. Relax on that part. It is fine.

Andre

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:38 pm

Thanks guys. There is R-13 in the walls and R-19 in the cielings which are also 3 layers thick with drywall.

Eric

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:53 am

I kinda' felt like you did have some insulation in the walls.

So you have hard walls, hard ceilings and hard floors at this point.

I know there tendency for lots of folks to put carpeting on the floor. (or something soft) This usually ends up giving a slightly odd perception of space when done in larger rooms.

I wonder if it might help to do a more traditional hard floor/soft ceiling in such small enclosures or would it have no real effect?

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:00 pm

I'm just hoping for a completely flat-dead space with as little reflection going on as possible. I really dont want to resonate the whole enclosure and have that get picked up on the mic. Here to crossing my fingers. I'll let everyone know whenever I get done which will be a while. I still have to custom build the doors and that's gonna be a while.

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