HippieSound Studios Construction Week 1

I am having part of my basement finished off for a home studio/band room. The first week of construction is done. Yipee!!!!

Here is the plan:




Here is what it looked like to start:




Then I cleaned it up a bit:




After the first day of framing:




All the walls are up:




The soffit is up in the control room and electrical work is under way:




More pictures here: http://www.hippietim.com/Studio/Studio.htm


I am doing a decent amount of stuff for sound quality and isolation.

The band room (larger room):

• All four walls are getting a Mass Load Vinyl (MLV) barrier installed - this is a VERY heavy 1/8" thick sound isolation material - it weighs 1lb per square foot and is very dense. This goes on before the drywall.
• Two of the walls are concrete and almost completely underground - the walls are 2x4 and are about 1" off the concrete wall - no sound is escaping this way
• The other two walls are 2x6 - after the MLV goes on then hat channel will be run on special sound isolation clips to float the walls for isolation purposes - http://www.kineticsnoise.com/arch/isomax/index.html
• The ceiling is trickier because about 2/5 of it houses plumbing, duct work, gas lines etc. - basically a bunch of stuff I want to be able to access over time. So the solution is to drywall as much as possible using the MLV and hat channel/isolation clips. The remainder will be grid/suspended ceiling tile. The tile will be drywall backed with MLV.
• The window between the rooms is still TBD - probably a dual pane laminated window.
• The doors will be exterior and will get the MLV treatment and acoustic foam on top of that.
• To minimize the number of holes in the ceiling there will be no ceiling lights. I am going with wall sconces instead. I'm still looking for cool ones.
• The walls will get acoustic tile (Auralex or similar).
• The floor is concrete - I am investigating if the MLV is necessary - I don't think it is. In any case, I will use a thick pad and commercial grade carpet.

The control room is simpler since the concern here is just making a room that sounds good rather than worrying about sound escaping too much since it won't be anywhere near as loud as the other room.

• The walls and probably the ceiling will be double drywalled - this will allow me to crank things a good bit - it won't be as effective as the MLV but it's considerably cheaper.
• The walls will get the acoustic tile treatment as needed as well.