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Covering a floor with a sound barrier
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
Posts: 1903
Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2016 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lee Gordon wrote:
And I can still hear street traffic when I'm inside the booth (although I can't say for sure that any of that sound is migrating through the floor and not coming through some other component).

My best advice is to locate your studio on the side of the house that is the farthest away from the traffic.


Or................................

Move to where there is no traffic!

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vkuehn
DC


Joined: 24 Apr 2013
Posts: 688
Location: Vernon now calls Wisconsin home

PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2016 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lee Gordon wrote:
And I can still hear street traffic when I'm inside the booth (although I can't say for sure that any of that sound is migrating through the floor and not coming through some other component).


You know what I want....? A "contact" microphone or something. Didn't they used to offer contact pickups for guitars? I want a "sensor"/Microphone that you stick to a wall and record, stick to another wall and record, stick to the ceiling and record, stick to the floor and record and then compare all the tracks for loudness, and a frequency range that is going to penetrate the worst through normal program content. (In our case that translates: Penetrates through the spoken word.) What am I looking for? What is it called? Who makes it?
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Roar-duh
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Joined: 04 Apr 2015
Posts: 81
Location: Chicago-ish

PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2016 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Congrats on your move! Smile Do you have a couple of very strong friends with a pickup?

http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/grd/5574319886.html

1.5" thick rubber would probably be enough to silence an AC/DC concert on the other side.
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
Posts: 1903
Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2016 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One thing you might want to think about when considering these horse stall mats or these hard rubber mats, is can you put a chair on them or slide a chair across them? Maybe that won't be an issue, and you might not even have a chair in your booth, but I do. It's an office chair on casters and I have to be able to roll a little bit. This is one reason why a basic throw rug works so well for me. But it is something to consider.
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Scott R. Pollak
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vkuehn
DC


Joined: 24 Apr 2013
Posts: 688
Location: Vernon now calls Wisconsin home

PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2016 6:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I looked at horse stall mats at my nearby "animal and pet supply store" recently and the ones I looked at were as brittle as street asphalt and left me a bit puzzled. If I were in Wisconsin already and had some time on my hands, it would be worth a drive to touch and feel the rubber mats that rohr-duh linked. Those things are heavy!

My preconceived prejudice is that I want to sandwich maybe three different kinds of material, guessing that each material works better at certain frequencies. The room is about 10 x 12 and at least the top one or two layers of the sandwich should be continuous rather than separate small squares. I don't want "geographical subdivision" borders showing up right where the casters of a chair might need to navigate.

I can visualize a carpet remnant down on the hardwood, covered by the jig-saw gym-mats covered by a layer of mass loaded vinyl. That picture calls for a top layer that firmly floats on top, resisting the weight of chairs and desk legs.
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Lee Gordon
A Zillion


Joined: 25 Jul 2008
Posts: 6843
Location: West Hartford, CT

PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2016 11:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Keep in mind, mass loaded vinyl wants to be loose. If it's taut, it won't perform nearly as well. It's also pretty fragile. It's not really suitable to be the top layer of a "sandwich." If you're not building your floor with two-by framing, but are just layering different materials on top of each other, mass loaded vinyl is probably not a great choice to be one of them.
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Foog
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Joined: 27 Oct 2013
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Location: Upper Canuckistan

PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2016 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have too thick of a foam (or equivalent) layer, your mic stand is going to wobble whenever you shift your weight near it, and that will translate into noise on your recording no matter how good the shock mount. Welcome to my world.
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Andrew Fogarasi


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vkuehn
DC


Joined: 24 Apr 2013
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Location: Vernon now calls Wisconsin home

PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2016 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A lot of the booth pictures I see in VO-BB leave me scratching my head over that very issue. My mic is likely to be suspended from a wall mount or a ceiling mount. My current space is a "Rube Goldberg award-winning project". I have a small mic boom mounted atop a 7 foot tall "thing" constructed of wood for a stairway bannister. I sit on a platform that sits about 10 inches above the floor on 3 inch square parsons-table legs. I can shuffle me feet, pat my foot or whatever.... and my mic picks up NO vibration from my feet or knee bumps. I'm looking for ideas to make the new space even better on issues like that.

What goes on my existing floor in the new space is likely to be a sandwich with the soft and squishy stuff in the middle and a firm, solid layer top with a thin carpet on the top. I'm looking for hints on what to consider in the squishy middle.... while keeping the entire "sandwich" reasonably thin or low profile.
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
Posts: 1903
Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Sun May 22, 2016 7:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's good that you're putting so much forethought and planning into this, but what I would recommend is:

1) wait until you're actually in the new place, and then

2) set up a call with George Whittam

Otherwise, in the meantime this is all just pure speculation.
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

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JohnV
Been Here Awhile


Joined: 25 Feb 2016
Posts: 230
Location: Md/DC

PostPosted: Sun May 22, 2016 8:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Covering a floor with a sound barrier Reply with quote

if it hasn;t been mentioned (here or anywhere) THIS is the best $30 you can spend on your room questions. http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X
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vkuehn
DC


Joined: 24 Apr 2013
Posts: 688
Location: Vernon now calls Wisconsin home

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scott Pollak wrote:
set up a call with George Whittam... Otherwise, in the meantime this is all just pure speculation.


speculation.... plus entertainment value! A couple of times I thought this thread had reached beyond it's "shelf life" and I was ready to just let the topic rest in peace. Then someone else would drop in something like the racoons "having a party". Or drop in a suggestion on treating the room for acoustics rather than dealing with isolation.

In addition to thinking of George as a resource "in my pocket"... I have another network of folks who also deal with such issues.... the discussion groups that deal with sound and recording in the house-of-worship setting. Some of those guys are real masters at stretching a dollar with plans for The Fix.

Overthinking? Guilty as charged. Through the years of trying to find all kinds of solutions in the world of business, I have been the develish guy in meetings who had a plan for stirring the pot when discussion to find solutions was failing to produce. Throw a bit fat juicy bit a crazyness on the table and the overly quiet would finally speak up and share some wisdom. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you go home with the "Annoying Court-jester" trophy.
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Lee Gordon
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Joined: 25 Jul 2008
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Location: West Hartford, CT

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2016 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do think you may be way overthinking the details of your floor construction. Do you even know what sort of noise you need to keep out, and how much of it there is likely to be? And how much of the sound you are trying to isolate is coming from outside (traffic, neighbors' landscaping equipment, etc.) and how much is generated within the building (human or animal activity, HVAC or other mechanical systems)?
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
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vkuehn
DC


Joined: 24 Apr 2013
Posts: 688
Location: Vernon now calls Wisconsin home

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2016 9:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lee, I don't disagree with your approach to logic about the "entry of noise into the space" is unknown. I'm dealing with a room that is 10x11. At a back corner of the small, small house. The entry to the crawl space is under one of the two exterior walls of this room. Based on the report of the Home Inspector, I WILL BE INSTALLING a fan that runs continuously inside or outside that crawl-space entry point. Based on my experience with the tiny, tiny pump that circulates hot water around my current home, I approach the little Radon fan with contempt, fear and animal instinct animosity!

Trying to short-circuit all the over-thinking, I conclude that before I put any furnishinngs in the room including my recording set-up, why not buy 110 square feet of some material anywhere from 3/8" to one inch thick that becomes some kind of "wet blanket" on venturesome, trespassing exterior sounds that come sneaking into the crawlspace into a fortress breach right under my recording spot.

If I wait until everything is in place including a custom built desk/table-top and shelves and then learn that yes, there is a bit of noise coming in that route, then I get to disassemble everything, move it out of the room, and put down the material. Yes, it is a gamble on my part. I may have the wrong material and later still have to take it out and replace it with something better.

I'm just looking for the name of "The Best Bet" on material to buy and install on the front end in hopes of avoiding a later rip-out and re-install. It may be that 5/8" gypsum board/drywall is about as good as anything else on the market. I think of a layer of patio type exterior carpet on the hardwood, with a layer of drywall (or something more effective at blocking sound) topped with a carpet as the top layer for minimizing reverberation is a pretty inexpensive investment and a safe bet on making the room better.

Then over the next year I can tackle one wall at a time as I figure out which one contributes most to the room tone... or maybe the ceiling. By then noise measurements will be available to guide those choices.

I currently have a shabby floor underneath my second floor recording space. Maybe I show up for the next party will just a little bit of ill-will about trying to mitigate a floor after you move in and settle in. Smile What is the gamble I am talking about here? Maybe spending $200? Maybe for the gold-plated most extreme product maybe $400 to $500?

If each room surface contributes an extra 1.5 dB to the base room tone and you treat all six surfaces, that 9 dB improvement is the difference between a pretty good room, and a room that is out-of-site GREAT!
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