Studio Soundproofing is a major consideration when you’re planning a home recording studio. You don’t want to have unwanted background noises interfering with your recordings and your neighbours will definitely not be impressed if they hear you playing loud rock music at 2:00 AM in the morning!

The only way to eliminate the possibility of sound escaping is to completely enclose it. Even the tiniest hole renders the studio soundproofing ineffective. Although upholstery foam and mineral wool provide excellent acoustic treatment, they are not effective soundproofing materials.

What you need are thick walls, ceiling and floor for the best Studio Soundproofing

You can achieve this by completely plastering the room with an additional thick layer of cement but a much way is to build a ‘room within a room’. Adopting this approach forces the sound to travel through a double barrier and by utilizing the dead air space between the walls, dampens it considerably.

The most important thing to remember if you are going to adopt this approach is to ensure there is no contact between the outer and inner shell of the room. The inner room basically floats to create a gap of around 3 to 6 inches between the two structures.

Cut the Cost of Studio Soundproofing

If you’re working to a tight budget, building a room within a room might be too expensive, so let’s think about other options that can provide an acceptable level of studio soundproofing.

Consider the floor first. A lot of floors are already covered with underlay and carpeting. Then place squares of 18mm chipboard, two layers thick, on top of the carpet. It’s important NOT to screw the chipboard directly onto the floorboards. The chipboard joins need to be staggered to prevent the sound escaping through gaps. Any gaps between the chipboard squares and the chipboard and walls are then filled with mastic which effectively seals everything, eliminating gaps. On top of the chipboard add another layer of underlay and finally a carpet. The ‘several layers’ method provides additional insulation for the floor and if done efficiently, should stop sound escaping.

Moving on to the walls. We can again adopt the insulating type of technique by constructing a double plasterboard partition to add soundproofing to the existing wall. This new ‘wall’ must not touch the existing wall so it is wedged between layers of hair felt carpet. Fill the space between the two pieces of plasterboard with mineral wool and seal any small gaps with mastic. Once in place, the new wall should be covered with a layer of plaster.

The positioning of your studio will determine how much soundproofing is necessary for the ceiling. If it’s at the top of the house, with an attic above, you may be able to get away with a layer of chipboard over the joists in the loft. However, if your studio is downstairs soundproofing can be more of a problem. Insulating the floor of the room above is one possibility but what if that room does not belong to you?

Suspended plaster tiles are one option but are not really suitable for high frequency insulation. Another option is to use layers of plasterboard but remember to take the load bearing capacity of the joists into consideration. You don’t want to go to all that trouble just to have the entire ceiling collapse under the burden of the additional weight.

Traditional domestic doors are light and generally bad fitting with plenty of available gaps that let the sound escape. You can get around this by installing a solid fire door and ensuring it is well sealed all round.

Although implementing the above ideas will considerably diminish noise levels, they are not guaranteed to eliminate it completely. However, unless you intend to record live bands or head banging heavy metal music in the middle of the night they should be enough studio soundproofing to keep you and yours neighbours happy.

• Graphics Workshop Blog: Ruminations, observations and postulations … - You are currently browsing the Graphics Workshop weblog archives for May, 2007. My project this weekend was building a soundproof box. The box itself came out pretty slick, and really muffled my air compressor.
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