Hotel Earth studio 1 build diary

[Theo_Karon]

I really wish I had better Sketchup skills. Would make my current build so much easier.

Not to be glib, but I had never used it before and learned by doing this... I'm still doing a million things wrong and using idiotic workarounds I'm sure, but it's enough to get the job done with sufficient precision. Which is to say, necessity is sometimes the best motivator - you might be surprised with what happens if you just dive in when you have a specific problem to attack and don't stop until you've solved it!

OK: end of week two updates!

The wall framing for both leaves is finished now. I'm very happy with the proportions of the rooms, sight lines and flow of the space. I think it's going to feel really nice in here.

View from the control room


Live room looking down the long axis


The two smaller isos across from the control room


View of the control room and big iso from the live room


Completed racks and diffusers (well, most of them - they wouldn't all fit in the frame!)


Now logistics and prep for next week! I'll be running all of the integral mic ties / Furman headphone system distro /etc while Manuel the electrician runs power. I scored a crazy deal on a 50 amp Equi-tech balanced power transformer, so there will be technical power for gear / amps /etc and a separate system for lights & non-audio electronics, which I am extremely enthused about.

I will also be installing a set of fans and baffles using sonoflex duct to provide ventilation to the booths while maintaining isolation. In an ideal world there would be a separate central HVAC system for the live room and control room, with feeds to all of the booths, but for now it will be a very robust Mitsubishi mini split (the really quiet ones) in the CR and LR, with the booth ventilation systems spec'd to turn the air in the booth completely over every 5 minutes. Not perfect but hopefully more than sufficient.

Later on if things go well, I will retrofit a proper HVAC system - and open up the live room ceiling all the way up to that beautiful old-growth redwood bow & truss ceiling!

As far as cable runs, again nothing fancy, just some PVC tubes with entry / exit points staggered by at least 5 feet for isolation. They'll then be caulked around the cables once they're fed through, as a sort of halfway compromise - that way if I REALLY need to change something later, I can, but it will also be a totally airtight seal.

I'm leaning heavily on available space to create larger air gaps rather than resorting to more expensive methods. I'm using a double door, one in each leaf, for every threshold, since two $400 doors 10" apart with proper sealing isolate about as well as a single $5,000 acoustic door! The large iso also acts as a sound lock, so there is no direct path from the control room to the live room. This has been a common feature of every studio I've worked at with truly great isolation.

It will, admittedly, likely be a bit annoying to have so many doors to open and close between takes - I may revisit this decision later - but we will have to see what the weakest link is when all is said and done. Doors are the easiest thing in a room design to change post hoc. There will definitely be some impact transmission... but if impact transmission through the slab is a significant issue, that means you're already in a very good place isolation-wise, and there are a number of ways to mitigate that down the line.

Fingers crossed!

XO

Theo

[losthighway]

^ Just some words of assurance while you're in the thick of it.

When I built out my place I also did a straight forward, two leaf, room within a room design with bog standard solid core doors. I don't even think I have a ten inch gap between them, and the isolation is just fine.

There are a lot of jokes about going through double doors, but it really doesn't impede anything. If that were my biggest efficiency challenge I'd be having the most robotically, on point musicians complaining about the extra five seconds of door management when they pop in to hear a take. It's never a concern.

[Theo_Karon]

There are a lot of jokes about going through double doors, but it really doesn't impede anything. If that were my biggest efficiency challenge I'd be having the most robotically, on point musicians complaining about the extra five seconds of door management when they pop in to hear a take. It's never a concern.

Thanks for this! When you put it like that, yeah it seems like a ridiculous thing to worry about : ) I'm glad to hear it hasn't been an impediment for you.

It's hard to know which details will matter sometimes - I've been through enough builds now that I kind of think about it like this: I'm an obsessive person, so during the design / build phase I give myself full permission to be as fanatical as I want about every little detail; once the studio is up and running, the door is closed on all that and it's time to focus on work.

Cute little Saturday update:

Electrical conduit for both technical power (the transformer will live on top of the studio substructure like a little hat) and lights / ventilation / etc





etc.

A further detail on the small isos, which I realize wasn't apparent in any of the earlier images: a window between the booths, as well as the windows between the booths and the live room! I encountered this design at several of the studios I worked out of in Funkhaus complex in Berlin, loved the immediacy of it and wanted to implement here. The ergonomic gain more than makes up for the increase in specular reflections, though I will install some stage curtains that can be pulled closed to manage reflections as needed



A light (4:1 water:paint) whitewash applied to about half of the diffusers- I'll get to the other half tomorrow

[vvv]

... though I will install some stage curtains that can be pulled closed to manage reflections as needed

Or in case ya get a Axl Rose or Prince in there ...

[Theo_Karon]

A quick update for some details on the booth ventilation system.

Ventilation is powered by two fans per booth, spec'd to turn the air in the booth over every 5 minutes. The fans are mounted on the outer wall of the facing space (control / live room), and flex duct is run between the fan baffles and the (not yet built) supply / return registers in the booth.

The control and live room each have an ultra quiet mini split unit, so the booth ventilation system is just to circulate the conditioned air from the CR / LR into the booths without transmitting noise. Eventually the mini splits will be replaced with a proper studio grade central HVAC system to get those last few deebs of noise floor but the mini splits are pretty damn quiet.

The flex duct goes around several corners to minimize sound transmission, and is also quite long (25' per) to give any sound in the duct plenty of surface area to 'bleed out' into the space / insulation between the walls:



This does decrease the efficiency of the entire wall by a negligible amount, but insures that room-to-room isolation is maintaned, and also that fan noise is suitably attenuated (to near silence) before reaching the register.



Both fans are mounted on the outside of the booths; the exhaust fan pulls air from the booth through the flex duct, while the supply fan pushes air through the duct to the register. The supply fan (i.e. intake) is placed low to the ground to collect cool air, while the supply register will be up high on the wall to let the cool air filter down throughout the booth.

A detail of the supply fan in its baffle:



A detail of the exhaust fan & baffle:



The fans are very quiet indeed, and for most music continuous operation won't be a problem, but they are on switches in each booth for the occasional ultra critical session where they will need to be disabled.

[trodden]

Awesome...
*looks at my 400 sq foot garage that has been in the works for 5 years, then looks over to the living room where my "temporary" studio has taken up half of the living room for 5 years...

I'm thinking of doing something similar with my two booths, when they are built. Just refreshing the air with the conditioned air in the main room using a minisplit. I'm just doing a single room control room/track room but with two iso booths.

Can you link me to the fans you're using?

[Theo_Karon]

This is the one I’m using:

https://www.sustainablevillage.com/super-quiet-fan

So far they work as advertised. They are very quiet and they move a lot of air.

Although I am taking care to construct the baffles / outlets in such a way that they will be easy to replace without taking anything apart!

[drumsound]

That's a well thought out and interesting system. Nice work!

[Scodiddly]

Something I was looking at a couple years ago was a "duct booster fan", which is a fan designed to be mounted in the middle of a round air duct. Some models have quite low noise specs, and can be used with soft flex duct to really decouple the vibration.

[Theo_Karon]

A small update. Today we started the ceiling joists for both the inner and outer leaf at the same time, staggered and very close together but not touching. 2x8 and 2x10 joists 12" O.C. because of the spans, the longest of which is 26'. The joists are very unwieldy and heavy. This part is hard to do and it is going slowly.





A detail of the staggered joists:

[trodden]

Fucking Awesome. Thank you again for sharing.

[roscoenyc]

Yes. Like Button!

[digitaldrummer]

Looks great. I can't tell from the picture as it looks like both joists are sitting on top of the wall plate. Is there some kind of isolation clip between them or something? I mean between the 2x10's and the top plate? I assume the 2x8's are for the interior/ceiling (inner leaf) so they can sit on top of it no problem.

[Theo_Karon]

I can't tell from the picture as it looks like both joists are sitting on top of the wall plate. Is there some kind of isolation clip between them or something? I mean between the 2x10's and the top plate? I assume the 2x8's are for the interior/ceiling (inner leaf) so they can sit on top of it no problem.

The outer leaf top plate is 1.5" higher than the inner leaf top plate, and the joists for the outer leaf (2x10 as you correctly surmised) are spec'd to deflect far less than that. The outer leaf joists rest on the outer leaf top plate, and the inner leaf joists on the inner leaf top plate. Don't be confused by the 2x8 vs 2x10, that has nothing to do with the leaves not touching - it's just a matter of the spans involved. The height difference between the top plates is what keeps the leaves separate. This is where this design breaks a bit from the norm - it will have a plywood then double sheetrock 'roof,' because the outer shell of the building is so leaky and cannot be used as the outer leaf. So it's like a whole little building (outer leaf) with rooms within rooms inside (inner leaf) and never the twain shall meet.

Between the control room / big booth and live room walls, there is another set of big 4x4 supports with a giant 4x10 header at 'outer leaf height' so it pokes up between them by 1.5". This is kind of hard to explain in writing. It almost looks like a 3 leaf design if you look at the framing, but it isn't. That wall just has a bigger space so that the support framing can fit inside. This will also help with CR / LR iso as that is the most critical path. The joists for the outer leaf meet at that frame; otherwise the spans involved would be impractical with wood.

My experience with iso clips / resilient channel etc on other people's builds is that they are horrible and don't work, because unless you are a super fucking pro expert you will fuck it up and short out the entire design. Like, you basically can't make a single mistake ever, and you are hitting a tiny target through the sheetrock hundreds of times. It's a ton of work, and then it doesn't work and you have to either accept the shitty isolation or redo it differently. That's been my experience at least. Neoprene isolation for bottom plate from ground, joists from top plate etc are a different story, but I'm not doing either of those things here in the interest of economy and time. Based on past experience, double walls on a thick (this one is 6") slab with no decoupling isolate pretty damn well. If impact transmission becomes an issue there are ways to mitigate that with rubber underlayment & then adding a floor. Or building a floated drum riser if drums are the only real culprit. We'll see. My hunch is that putting that much effort into wall iso without a serious door upgrade will make no sense, and it will be just fine anyway.

I'll try to take some better photos today from up on the scaffold while the light is better.