turning a warehouse into a studio

Noah Shain, post: 422686, member: 47197 wrote: I Need to turn a warehouse in to a studio.

You have my vote!

Noah Shain, post: 422686, member: 47197 wrote: I need to turn these offices/rooms in to the studio

+1

Now comes the hard part, money and treatment. What ever you do, have a good time. You have my blessings.

And now to Space!

Cost is a concern as well as time so I'm hoping mass mass mass will do the trick.
My main question is...
Will standard steel beam construction support 4 layers of 5/8 drywall? Should I stagger widths? Am I dreaming?

Hey man, I spent some time looking around about your drywall question, and I couldn't get a solid answer, and the information I got I don't really know how to interpret. I would think important factors are how much load the walls are alredy carrying, and the guage and width of the studs, as well as wall height.

As far as staggering the widths I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but yes any seams should be staggered when possible, and the orientation of the sheets can be as well. For instance, vertical for the first layer (long way up and down), horizontal the next, vertical next. It probably wouldn't make or break an otherwise well built studio, but it's an expensive game of inches, so every little thing counts.

Yes you are dreaming sir. It's good, dreams can be the spark of greatness. What your thinking about is not impossible, or even necessarily impractical.

It depends on a lot of things, first of all money. Your budget. your ability/willingness of you/friends to do the labor is a huge contributing factor. Your expectations for isolation and sound quality. What are you going to be recording in the main room? What is your expected monitoring system, and what are your expectations for accuracy in the control room.

One huge consideration in your isolation is the existing floor, what floor are u on, and what is it made of? This is important because you share it with your neighbors, and an elevated deck is different animal than one on the ground floor (concrete base), from a studio point of view.

People always forget about bathrooms, and storage in their plans. Remember them. Clean power, creature comfort, are also important and can be expensive.

I urge you from multiple experiences of this nature, that these things are expensive and take long, if you do not create a complete budget and plan, down to the fastener type, you will exponentially increase the time frame ($$), of something that already takes way too long ($$). Unless you have acces to both spaces yo will be out of the office while this is being built and that wil put a damper on an already extremely expensive type of construction. I've seen it happen, I've told people, watched it pan out, and seen them do it again. This is not a craft project for the fair, simple simple things can set you back days or weeks. So before you sign a dotted line, or empty your bank and credit, or lift a hammer, plan your project.

There's onvciously a lot to talk about in your case man, so it'll be fun to see how things turn out after the basics are covered. Good luck!

Yeah mass is mass as far as drywall thickness stick w 5/8 fire code. Windows, are different. You want the glass panes to be two different thicknesses. This is because each pane of glass is acting independently, and you don't want them to have the same resonant frequency, hence thickness. In the case of layers of drywall sandwiched on the wall, the multiple layers are acting as one thing (technical term) so it's the collective sum of their mass that is relevant to how the wall will perform. So while you may want the independent walls to have different resonant frequencies ( like diff # layers of 5/8), it's not an advantage from and isolation point of view to have different thicknesses in the drywall sandwich you macking for each wall. Some people use OSB on the first layer, but that relates more to structural rigidity, not to isolation.

There's probanly need to be thinking about floating anything when your in a slab, until the walls and ceiling start getting so massive the contreras floor becomes the weak link. Unless I'm missing something you shouldn't need to float anything if ur in a slab.

You might wanna incorperating some ISO clips and stuff in your wall structure. You really might want to consider a double wall partition between you and the drum room. A single wall probably isn't gonna block a kit satisfactorily, unless it's a jazz brush kit.

Take your time with the book, theres a lot of good detailed stuff in there. Any time I've built assemblies, and used other techniques exactly the way it says, it worked exactly the way it said it was gonna. the structural stuff is all pretty defined by physics so it's more a study of following directions, than creating new solutions, once the plan is all laid out.

"Some people use OSB on the first layer, but that relates more to structural rigidity, not to isolation."

It relates to both. OSB has a close approximation to the mass that sheetrock has AND you are able to develop a more decoupled environment. SO it is almost, in my book, a prerequisite that you install OSB as the first layer of sheathing.

As to glass, the rule of thumb is to have the glass match in mass as closely as possible to the existing mass on the wall assembly. Using different thicknesses of wall sheathing OR glass gains nothing. The premise is that different thicknesses of anything will alter the path of sound and thereby slow it down. Alton Everest explains this in the Master Handbook of Acoustics, which you should also purchase.

But in reality it doesn't modify the resonant frequency per se and only makes your job that more difficult.

But, in any event, if you go thru all the trouble to establish highly isolated wall assemblies including the glass and use a drop ceiling, then you are throwing money at an issue you are not going to correct with this type of half-baked building.

A mass/air/mass assembly is a system. In order to retain the highest amount of transmission loss the wall assemblies and the ceiling assemblies must match in decoupled construction as well as mass. Think of the ceiling like a wall assembly :)

"I am curious if anybody has experience with big ass industrial laminated wood beams. They do unite the spaces in the building. I wonder if they'll transmit sound from my space to the others."

If you attache to it in any way, the answer is yes you will introduce flanking into your build.

Happy New Year Ya'll :)

Sound takes the path of least resistance, so if you build huge massive walls to contain the sound in your room, if the ceiling does not off the same amout of transmission loss, then it's going to leak to your neighbor thru that. Similar to water flowing out of a container w a loose lid.

The walls are going to vibrate, then pass that along to the beam, and the beam will vibrate and since it is a part of the ajoining rooms as well, will transmit a certain amount of vibrations into those rooms. A flanking path is a physical connection between two things, and isolatin depends on minimizing this. The beam, if it is exposed, and therefor part of your room, will be considered a flanking path. Other flanking paths can be pipes, electrical conduit, floorboards, ductwork, ect.

There are things available to help minimize the physical contact between your walls and ceiling, but that still leaves the question of what, if anything needs to be done to the ceiling, for it to keep up w the mass of the walls, as well as minimize flanking.

So you need to get some idea of how your ceiling is performing and either design your walls to that, or make sure your ceiling is designed/modified to match your walls.