How to soundproof your home studio?

Content:

• 1. How to soundproof a home studio?
• 2. PERFECT SOUND PROOFING
• 3. ALL OR NOTHING
• 4. DOORS AND WINDOWS
• 5. YOU HAVE THE POWER
• 6. AIR!
• 7. GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM: WHAT GENERATES THE SOUND

Let's take an example, there is a guy who has a room of 30 m2 and a large budget that can be invested in soundproofing the room. For him it is very easy. It is enough to contact a company specializing in thermal insulation and acoustics to carry out all the work necessary to build your small professional studio. Undoubtedly, this approach will be of the highest quality, given that all preparations will be made after studying the acoustics, who will recommend an individual solution according to the room and needs.

If the budget for the job is lower, our guy will be a little more modest and he will just need to roll up his sleeves and work step by step: first the isolation, then the acoustic treatment, and we can already expect some adjustments related to the acoustics of the room.

As a preamble, I want to warn you in advance: this article is not a tutorial that will tell you exactly what to buy and what to do with it for three good reasons. Firstly, I am not an acoustician by profession and not even a builder. Secondly, because of the great heterogeneity of home studios and home studios, which pushes us to look at things more globally. The third reason, finally, has to do with the fact that many musicians do not have the means or the ability to do this kind of work and that it is also a matter of interest in them. Go!

Perfect sound insulation

To isolate at the sound level means to contain sound waves where we want to hear them, and not allow them to spread at will outside our premises. The good news is that this works both ways: by isolating the room, you prevent the noise generated in it from outside from being heard, but you also protect the room from outside noise. In this way, we isolate ourselves for the sake of our neighbors and the people who live with us, but also so that the noise of the latter or the railway passing 50 meters below our windows does not disturb the quality of the silence of our little musical retreat.

The easiest way to stop a sound wave is to oppose (and therefore superimpose) a sufficiently inert mass against it so that it does not conduct vibrations. All of a sudden, it's simple: as long as your building's foundation can withstand several tens of tons, you just have to build your studio between six two-meter-thick marble walls.

In the vast majority of cases, we will talk about how to make a "box in a box." In fact, this is the only way to get high-quality insulation, even if it means a significant reduction in the area and volume of the room. The principle is simple: we separate the walls, ceiling and floor of the room from the walls of the studio so that the sound vibrations no longer propagate (or as little as possible, there is no perfect isolation). To do this, we place anti-vibration supports every 30 cm on the walls, ceiling and floor, on which the guides will rest.

Thanks to them, we will install acoustic stone wool panels (i.e. good density: assume 50 kg / m3) with a thickness of at least ten centimeters, while maintaining a layer of air. at least 5 cm between the wool and the wall, the woolen fabric on top of which the acoustic sandwich will be placed: two acoustic plasterboards covering the acoustic damper, e.g. Ecosound.

For the floor and false ceiling, the principle is the same, except that the supports are changed, as are the components of the acoustic sandwich. I'm a bit far from giving you the exact recipe for the perfect acoustic sandwich, because I think everyone goes their own way: so we can put glass wool directly on the wall with the help of special mounts, anti-vibration mounts and an air gap. But in all cases, these are approximately the same ingredients.

Home music studio owners often use a less expensive temporary replacement: as we said, it consists of placing battens on the wall and ceiling so that they cover the stone wool, and then stretching over the entire fabric of the wall: ideally a durable fabric, even if many are satisfied with the old good burlap. It's certainly better than nothing at a reasonable price, but it's not something that will silence the outside world, especially if the floor is unfinished.

You get the point: the box-in-the-box principle is a good headache, but aside from the marble walls we talked about at the beginning and knowing they'll be problematic for your room's acoustics, it's the only way to get good insulation that will protect your neighbors from the noise you make and which will protect you from the noise they make. And it is also an opportunity to anticipate acoustic problems.

In a previous article, we mentioned the fact that certain proportions of rooms guarantee better acoustics (Sepmeier's ratio is indicated in the text and Bolt's diagram in his comments. ) And, probably, right now we should take care of this, because even if this means installing partitions, raised floor and false ceiling, we might as well adjust the new dimensions of our room to approach the ideal described by our master acousticians, playing, in particular, on the thickness of the air gap that we talked about.

This can also be a good time to break some parallels: introducing variation on a wall or ceiling will be fun to deal with floating echoes before any acoustic treatment. And break a right angle, although, as it is right, these angles will also find their use when installing subsequent treatments.

Obviously the door to the room (ideally only one entrance), as well as any windows (ideally none, because apart from the insulation problem, windows are very difficult to control acoustically) should have soundproof doors or windows, otherwise you will spoil all the benefits of wall decoration .

Doors and windows

Let's start by looking at the casing of any windows in your room. Don't waste your time and money on additional glazing solutions: from a thermal as well as sound point of view, it brings almost no improvement over single glazing, while true double glazing for its part proves to be effective.

However, keep in mind that if all double-glazed windows are based on a layer of inert gas (argon, which does not conduct molecular movement) between two glasses, the thickness of the latter, as the possible use of an additional insulating film can change the game. At best, a third window would be used to save an extra layer of argon, which would obviously be even more efficient. The only problem, as you can imagine, is that the more thermally insulated your window is, the more the price skyrockets: from the basic one, we quickly go up to the more expensive one, which does not include installation... If you own your own space, consider this investment,

We end with a door where the generally accepted principle is an air lock consisting of two very heavy doors (again, a solid sandwich) and a suitable frame. Again, it's a cost, but insulation, if you want it to be effective, comes at a cost.

I see some of my readers frown because I said ideally there should be no windows in the studio because glass is a problem in terms of insulation as well as acoustic treatment, the very ones who intended to divide their room into a living room and a studio with a beautiful window between them.

So let's get this straight: it's obviously better, when you have the opportunity, to isolate the room where you work and mix from the one where you record. This is how we do it in all professional studios. Assuming you have enough space for this, remember that there's no point in having a 2m² workspace if it doesn't need to have a return on your speakers. So it's better to have a real workroom and a very small recording booth (whether it was removable and small enough that you can only use guitars or vocals) to ensure comfort in the room where you'll be listening to what you're recording. and stir.

you have the power

Make sure you have wall outlets where you need them in the room, obviously grounded and using a line that doesn't come from another line in your house: plug your studio into an extension cord your kitchen is bound to be looking for trouble. If that's not possible (and even for that matter, if that's the case), I highly recommend that you take a look at voltage regulators/stabilizers and other inverters, which can save you a lot of bad luck later on. this is necessary to protect your equipment from voltage fluctuations, blackouts and blackouts, or by ensuring that the current you use is as "clean" as possible, i.e. no interference.

An excellent specialist, Ecosound offers a range of utilities designed for these tasks, covering all types of needs, from the most modest to the most professional. Obviously the whole thing will cost a little more than two basic power strips, but make sure the game is worth the candle: it's never nice to remove a hard drive due to a power outage on a heat day, and I've personally already burned (I mean, literally burned) an unnamed PC power supply due to a power surge... Knowing also that one of the most common problems that occur in a studio is to end up with a hum or hum whose origin we don't know, this precaution will allow you to rule out many possibilities if you encounter such a problem.

While we are talking about electricity, let's also talk about light: to protect the environment, as well as for your electricity bill and the voltage fluctuations that this type of device causes, do not use halogen lighting: energy-saving light bulbs and LEDs today have made enough progress to it was possible to use energy-intensive equipment that emits too much heat instead.

Because this is another point to pay attention to: heat and ventilation in your room.

At this point, I would tell you that we are done with our room and can move on to acoustic processing, but there are two small details that still need to get your attention at this stage. The first concerns electricity. However, assuming you have enough space to make yourself a usable 20m2 and an outlet of the same size, keep in mind that in doing so you need to insulate another door and that this glass will also be the source of many headaches, whether from the point of view of acoustic treatment or isolation. There is, of course, nothing insurmountable here, especially if you have the budget for it, but if you want to limit costs, be content with a small skylight or, even simpler and more economical, two. small video cameras and two monitors:

Air !

This is because between your pounds of mineral wool, your electrical equipment, and the heat from your body or any musicians playing in the room, carbon dioxide and odors increase rapidly. Not to mention unpleasant to work with, that heat will also make everyone sweat, creating humidity that is undesirable for the material you are storing or for your health.

Suddenly, the only way to not live on a tropical mushroom farm is to also consider designing your room's ventilation system. The challenge is to find a system that allows cold air to enter and hot air to exit without compromising the insulation. Hot air is lighter than cold air and is therefore located on the ceiling: this is where the hood should be located, while the air intake will be located near the ground, preferably on another wall to create air circulation around the room. To prevent sound from escaping or penetrating inside, we will use a sound trap (a baffle system in a box) that will be placed between the inner and outer grilles.

The fact remains that a passive system in a place where everything is done to control the movement of air will in many cases not be enough to guarantee good air circulation. You will then need to consider using a VMC that will be placed outside the room, knowing that the larger its fan, the slower it can run and the less noise it will produce. Finally, if this is not possible, there is a last resort - a fan, which will be activated frequently during the day, opening the door. But in fact, this is a temporary measure.

With this final note, I will tell you that it is time to take an interest in the acoustic treatment of our room. However, before you get there, you should not forget that most home studio owners are not able to do a hundredth of the work we just mentioned.

And for two balls, what should we do?

Unfortunately, the solutions described above are not applicable in many cases. Not even talking about the necessary budget of several thousand to several hundred thousand hryvnias, which is not available to everyone, we will refuse it when the home studio in question is just a corner of the living room in a tiny apartment. which we rent out and in which it is unthinkable to carry out insulation work in order to get something even smaller.

What to do then? Try to keep costs down by combining goat and cabbage. Rest assured, none of the tips we are going to detail will give you good soundproofing, but we will try to simply improve on the usual one, or at least make it "less worse".

We return to the main question: what is soundproofing? As we have seen, this prevents sound vibrations from propagating to walls, floors, and ceilings. And since you can't affect the sound conductivity of your room, we'll look at simple solutions to avoid, as far as possible, your sound objects in direct contact with the walls of the latter, or whatever is most likely. to control or amplify the sound.

Getting to the Root of the Problem: What Generates Sound

Let's start with speakers by following these tips, which also apply to guitar, bass, or keyboard amps:

• Do not glue the speakers to the wall, otherwise the wall itself will become an extension of the speaker! In fact, the more space between the latter and the wall(s), the less vibration you will conduct. Obviously, this applies to a simple partition, but even more so to a load-bearing wall, which will the better conduct vibrations throughout the building.

• Don't put speakers on the floor for the same reasons, though as we'll see, you never put speakers on the floor in a home studio context. Of course, this is also (and above all) true of a subwoofer: you don't put a subwoofer on the ground if you have a neighbor downstairs, no matter what the subwoofer manufacturer says. Also, let's be clear: we don't equip ourselves with a subwoofer when we're in a home studio that hasn't been isolated or acoustically treated and we have neighbors... Or is it this one, of course, not so much a gentleman as a muzzle not caring about others.

• Do not glue speakers to any pipes (gas, water, electric) because such pipes running through the whole building, again, are the ideal means of sound transmission. Obviously, we will also avoid any contact with the radiator.

• Do not place the speakers on an object that can create a resonant chamber and amplify the sound : a closet, a half-empty piece of furniture, a fireplace.

What not to do is fine, but what to do then? Place speakers not on a table that will be an extension of the cabinet, but on legs designed for this, and if you really need to place them on a table, use isophonic foam supports or structures. as suggested by IsoAcoustics in order to avoid vibration propagation to the furniture as much as possible. I would like to take this opportunity to warn you against one of the biggest misconceptions coming from the wonderful world of audiophiles: the famous decoupling cones, which, let's be clear, don't decouple anything at all.

The idea of ​​this wonderful little accessory, which can be found for a few thousand hryvnias in all good audiophile stores, is that by reducing the contact surface of the speaker with the support on which it will be installed, we better isolate the speaker. the sound produced by the speaker, otherwise we would have that kind of bass or something like that. The problem is that these cones do not absorb sound energy at all. On the contrary, they concentrate it.

This is the basic law of physics, demonstrated over several centuries, that the pressure exerted by a body is the ratio between the force that moves it and the surface on which this force acts. Pressure = Force / Area. In practice, this means that a 60 kg woman stepping on you with a stiletto heel exerts 8 times more pressure than a 5-ton elephant whose foot is 700 times larger than the heel. It is thanks to this law that we can hammer nails and nails without any problems.

Cheeky cones are not so useless, since they concentrate vibrations in three or four points, and, in fact, are "easier" to control the latter. In the context that worries us, namely with regard to insulation, we will in any case be very careful not to put the speakers on cones resting on a piece of furniture or a shelf, otherwise we will not change anything in the conductivity and damage the furniture. Let's say on a 200 kg marble slab or concrete slab this is more likely because the only way to destroy these vibrations is to push them against a sufficiently heavy and inertial mass. But can your office withstand such a load?

In short, stay away from the cones in question and favor plain legs or foam or both: it won't be perfect, but it will at least have a real use.

Apart from speakers, a simple acoustic guitar can be a real challenge for your neighbors if your apartment is poorly insulated. So try to play it without your legs, which conduct vibrations, being in direct contact with the ground, laying you on a bed or on a sofa. Yes, it makes a difference, even if it can put you in funny situations and it's not always very convenient...

It's the same with digital pianos, or worse, electronic drums. Even if you're playing with headphones, the mechanical noise of the keys or pedals of the bass drum and hi-hat, in addition to the beat of the sticks, will be enough to annoy your neighbor downstairs. MIDI drums are really not quiet at all.

The bass drum is louder than the cymbal.

What to do then? Sound deadening mats may improve things a bit (let's say it's better than nothing), but it's more likely that by installing a podium you'll achieve something effective. We can, of course, take inspiration from the floor insulation described above, but we can also choose a rug that rests on a board, itself resting on a dozen tennis balls that will be on the floor. For a record budget, you will significantly improve the comfort of your neighbors.

Obviously, in addition to these tips, you should show a little common sense:

• Thick rugs or a large carpet will attenuate a little, but will still attenuate : we can easily get 10 dB of attenuation for some sounds of this kind, and if that's not enough to talk about isolation, it's not. worth nothing to your neighbor downstairs. You can also benefit from this in terms of the acoustics of your room, as we shall see.

• Set the power of your speakers to suit your room : We don't use a pair of 100 watt monitors with 8" boomers in a 10 m2 room unless we are sure of the quality of the insulation. and the acoustics of his room. It's best to choose small sizes, even if it means losing bass reproduction: no bass is always better than crappy bass, while loudspeakers that are too powerful for the surface will be more of a problem than anything else. even acoustically. But we will return to this.

• Same advice for your guitar amps and cabinets: equip yourself with quality gear when you're in an apartment, it's like taking a Saint-Bernard when you're living in a maid's room . Therefore, we will never use them as they are, but run them through at least a Power Break type attenuator or, even better, through a cabinet simulator, as, for example, Two Notes offers. And we don't put them on the floor!

• As far as possible, try to compose music when people are not around, and do not rely on the legend that everything goes on from 19 to 22 hours. It would be a shame if a policeman or, even worse, a magistrate explained this to you. Because the money that you refused to invest in the insulation of your premises, you will give to the state or even to your neighbors ...

• Never play music with the windows open , especially if the window in question faces the courtyard, which will sound like a sounding board. Or how to sweat 300 people in addition to their direct neighbors.

• Feel free to close doors and shutters during music, such as curtains if you have them. And while we're at it, feel free to choose very heavy curtains or varying thicknesses: these are often referred to as sound curtains. However, it is not worth equipping the theatrical curtain: the barbell would not have resisted it.

• It makes sense: turn the volume down! And since low frequencies are the problem, don't be afraid to lower them as much as possible if it doesn't interfere with your activity. After all, even when mixing, you spend most of your time dealing with mids and highs. This of course doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with what happens below, but it might not matter when you're editing cymbals. And, of course, the great Bob Katz claims that the ideal listening volume is 83dB SPL(C). But the great Bob Katz talks about professional listening conditions in a professional studio...with professional isolation. Keep this in mind if, for some reason, you have given up serious warming of your room:

Let's open up a little misconception to finish: it's pointless to stick egg plates on the walls : if you've eaten so many eggs, the only benefit you'll get out of it is to raise your cholesterol and pass as a criminal in the eyes of your vegan friends. But even if from a distance it looks like panels that are used for acoustic treatment, this does not affect the sound insulation, but gives an indefinite absorption around 700 Hz ... And this is ugly. And it's flammable. So if you do that, you will look like a fetus of an egg. Though if you place the junction points under the egg plates, I'm quite willing to invite you to Wednesday night dinner... ;-)

As you can see, in the absence of serious insulation, the main defense is to reduce and control the noise you make. which in some hopeless cases can even mean working only with headphones. We will return to this.

Finally, let me remind you: make it a habit to talk to those who may be bothered by your noises. Invite them to your home so they can see what you are doing and recognize the noises that disturb them. We suffer much more from the noise generated by our neighbors when we cannot determine its source. Think about it before driving others crazy...

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