The Most Important Chain in Your Studio

by Jason Johnston We will depart from our studio building theme for this month and talk about the most important aspect of getting a professional sound out of your home studio. Well, yes, you should be able to sing or play or whatever it is that you are trying to do. No plug-in can make up for lack of effort. But on the studio side, there is one fundamental equalizer for all studios in the world: The Signal Chain. The signal chain is the path which connects the audio signal being recorded to the final media that the signal is being recorded onto. A couple of common examples: Mic -- XLR Cable --- Mixer --- Output cable (RCA) --- Tape Recorder or in the modern home studio: Mic -- XLR Cable --- Audio Interface (eg. Presonus Firebox, Edirol UA-25, or M-Audio Fast track pro - three of our favourites) -- USB or Firewire Cable --- Computer Software --- Hard drive You have heard it said - a Chain is only as strong as its weakest link, this is not only a truism...it is a true truism. This is our approach to quality sound the studio. There is no point in buying a $1000 interface and then hooking them up with the cables the cat has been chewing for the last 10 years. Every link is important. When you are having trouble with your quality, think about your chain - Then ask where is the weakest link? How can I improve it?

How to Build a Floating Room for your Home Recording Studio Part 2 : the Sound Proof Walls

Part 2 : the Sound Proof Walls
This series of articles is more of a picture book of the floating room that we built for the live room of the studio here at Revolution Audio in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. (Caution this may take a few moments to load all the pictures)
Now we come to adding the walls onto our floating floor. Notice the final layer of the floor (the manufactured hardwood) will be completed after the walls are finished and painted. For the walls, I was shooting for an STC rating of around 62 which would allow me to record drums in the room without disturbing the neighboring businesses. So I decided upon a double steel studded wall assembly with double drywall on the inside.


For the STC ratings of various wall assemblies, this is a great website and resource: www.STCRatings.com

Of course, there is no such thing as a true sound proof wall. The proper term is "sound isolation." So you need to decided from from the front end how isolated you want your room to be. The three keys to isolation are three "d's" : density, distance and decoupling. We add density through the double drywall layers (5/8 inch in this case) and the safe n' sound insulation. We add distance between the inside and outside walls creating at least a 9 inch air gap. (We would actually decrease the STC rating by adding drywall in the middle of this assembly). By using double steel studs and resilient channels we decouple the walls from one another so that the sound has a harder time vibrating through to the opposing room.
You will see through the pictorial below that we built the inside walls on top of the floating floor, giving one more step in isolation from the outside wall. The ceiling then was built upon the interior walls, basically creating a floating room.


Ewen is seen here constructing the frame for the interior walls and ceiling.

Notice how the frame is built on the floating floor.

The interior ceiling will rest on the top of the walls and have no solid connection to the ceiling above. This is key for decoupling. You will have to consider the weight of the ceiling material to make sure it will hold!

The slant on the ceiling frame is intentional...really!

We installed this temporary bar in to keep the whole room from leaning before we could get the drywall on.

Here is the finished frame with safe n' sound insulation and the resilient channels on the ceiling.

Jak installing more resilient channels. Every bit helps with soundproofing.

Jak mudding the first layer of drywall. Attention to detail is important.

Here you can see the second layer of drywall being placed on the ceiling. It is important to stagger the seams. The drywall lift was well worth the rental price.

Some people use different thicknesses of drywall. We used 5/8 fire code on both layers to add more density.

Here is a half-depth wiring box so that both layers of drywall are not penetrated.


It's always nice to have good friends like Mark here! (if you are looking for a car - he's the guy www.carsense.to )

Using flexible Alex Plus caulk to seal between the drywall and the floor. A small gap should be left when putting in the drywall to allow for this.


A finished corner! (More about doors and windows in the next article)


Harmony Three-in-one underlayment for laminate and engineered wood flooring. They say it has an STC of 59! I doubt it's that high, but I can see how the design would help decoupling.

The engineered hardwood floor installed. I used engineered hardwood because it has some good density and does not need to be nailed down.

The corner after the floor.


What will be the vocal/iso booth after the trim and window was installed.
Hope you enjoyed the pictures and article! If you would like more information, please contact us about consulting with you on building your own home recording studio!

How to Build a Floating Room for your Home Recording Studio Part 1 : the Magical Floating Floor

Part 1: the Magical Floating Floor

It all sounds very mystical - a room and floor magically floating, isolated away from any contact from the outside world. I kept thinking about Magneto's prison in X-Men. This article is more of a picture book of the floating floor that we built in my the live room of the studio here at Revolution Audio Recording in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

There are many ways to build a floating floor. I went to some extremes, but large budget studios would go much further than I did. I would consider this a mid-cost, home recording studio floating floor, suitable to put on any level of a house or commercial building with a little bit of headroom. The floating floor (only - not the hardwood on top) cost me around $800 CAD for 160 SF, or about $5 sf + labour. A bigger budget floating floor might cost 10 times as much or more and include hundreds of pounds of cement and high gauge metal springs - this floors are amazing, but are not for the typical home recording studio (or typical house construction!). Why a floating floor, you might ask? The main purpose is to create a room which is isolated from the rest of the building/environment around it.

Isolation, and specifically the method of "decoupling," is the key to reducing the sound levels traveling into and out of a room. Notice that I didn't say "sound proof" a room. There really is no such thing. In building a room, however, you can determine what the loudest sound will be in the room and then respond accordingly as it fits into your budget and space constraints. I determined that I wanted a live room that I could record drums in any time of the day or night without disturbing my neighbours to the left and right (a Hearing specialist on one side, oddly enough) and the other people living about the stores in the building. I determined that I was looking to build a room with an STC rating (sound transmission class) of around 62 to bring the drum level down to a reasonable level.

To achieve a target STC of 62 I had to plan and build to some considerable length, the details of which I may get to in a later article, but which included the purpose of this article: A room floating inside a room - basically an exterior shell, secured to the rest of the building and a room built inside upon a floating floor, none of which is secured to the building - the only real contact points being the floating floor. Below is the picture book showing the details of the first step, the floating floor.
Stay tuned for further articles on such fun subjects as soundproofing (so called), double walls, make-shift iso vocal booths and sound treatment vs. sound isolation in the studio.


The pre-existing floor looking towards the back room

The neoprene pad comes in a 2 X 2 foot size which we must cut down to 2 X 2 inches. This one is weighted for up to 25 psi

These straight edged tin snips are handy...

Cutting the squares

The two inch neoprene square.

First using the paint thinner to clean each 2 X 2 pad, we then use the contact cement to glue them together 3 at a time.

This part reminded me of a good old craft time

The finished neoprene sandwiches (or pucks as I'll call them)

The pucks are scattered on the floor. We figured out the weight distribution and to weigh each puck down about 15 lbs. for maximum elasticity, we used 76 pucks.

Ewen (with no head) and the pucks

We decided to put half thickness of safe n' sound insulation around the pucks to avoid any hollow sound to the floor. Ewen is using an exacto knife to cut them in - we don't want the floor resting on the insulation, or anything else except the pucks.

Side view of layer # 1 going down.

Layer #1: Tongue and Groove Plywood/ OSB resting on the pucks (not secured down, only resting on top)

Layer #1 finished

Putting down layer #2: 5/8 firecode drywall

Layer #2 finished - we put a few screws in to help secure the tongue and groove floor beneath it.

We built a box around the floor vent to allow the floor to float around it rather than resting on it.
Layer #3 - another plywood tongue and groove (OSB)

Ewen putting in the final underfloor piece. My final hardwood floor with underpadding will lay onto this floating floor (pictures to come...)

Side view of the new floating floor - from the bottom there is the puck surrounded by insulation, then T & G plywood, then 5/8 drywall then another layer of T & G