Acoustic treatment for wooden framed building

[Beedster]

I'm about to start work converting a 7mx6m garage into a live room (albeit one that will also have to double as a dance studio for my daughters)! I've just stripped out the old wall and ceiling panels and I have a room that looks a lot like this, wooden walls, concrete floor, high ceiling. The challenge is to keep the interior of the room sufficiently lively while not allowing too much of the world outside to get in and not allowing too much of what's going on inside to get out. It's pretty easy to disappear down a hell of a rabbit hole as soon as you start Googling 'soundproofing material' or 'acoustic treatment, so I'm looking for a solution that will do the above relatively cheaply, and if it also helps keep some heat in during winter, all the better. Any thoughts/experience most welcome 👍

 

[BigRedX]

As you know sound proofing and acoustic treatment are two entirely different things and need to be tackled separately.

 

What's on the other side of those wooden walls? The outside world? How close are your neighbours? How close is any noisy stuff going on outside? How much smaller could the room be without compromising the usable space?

 

For sound proofing you need mass and lots of it if you want to prevent noises leaking out or in. The current structure won't be very good at this. Ideally you want to be building a room within this structure  isolated as far as possible from it, but  that will probably eat up too much of the space and be too costly to be practical. At the very least you need to pack the space between the studs with RW3 and then apply two layers of acoustic plasterboard to the inside walls bonded together with Green Glue. And then maybe consider floating a floor inside this. Don't forget the ceiling. It need to have at least the same amount of mass separating the inside from the outside otherwise will be the weak point in your structure from a sound proofing PoV.

 

Don't forget about ventilation.

 

Unfortunately there is no way of working out how practical this will be without doing it first and being/hearing the results.

 

Once you have successfully sorted out the sound proofing, you can worry about the acoustic treatment. If it's also a living space but not a studio or somewhere where critical listening is taking place you won't have to do much unless you also need to install mirrors and a hard wooden floor for the dance studio functions in which case you will probably need to have additional damping elsewhere. You'll need to install all the essential non acoustic elements first and then work out how to get it sounding decent afterwards.

Edited April 24, 2023 by BigRedX

[Beedster]

36 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

As you know sound proofing and acoustic treatment are two entirely different things and need to be tackled separately.

 

What's on the other side of those wooden walls? The outside world? How close are your neighbours? How close is any noisy stuff going on outside? How much smaller could the room be without compromising the usable space?

 

For sound proofing you need mass and lots of it if you want to prevent noises leaking out or in. The current structure won't be very good at this. Ideally you want to be building a room within this structure  isolated as far as possible from it, but  that will probably eat up too much of the space and be too costly to be practical. At the very least you need to pack the space between the studs with RW3 and then apply two layers of acoustic plasterboard to the inside walls bonded together with Green Glue. And then maybe consider floating a floor inside this. Don't forget the ceiling. It need to have at least the same amount of mass separating the inside from the outside otherwise will be the weak point in your structure from a sound proofing PoV.

 

Don't forget about ventilation.

 

Unfortunately there is no way of working out how practical this will be without doing it first and being/hearing the results.

 

Once you have successfully sorted out the sound proofing, you can worry about the acoustic treatment. If it's also a living space but not a studio or somewhere where critical listening is taking place you won't have to do much unless you also need to install mirrors and a hard wooden floor for the dance studio functions in which case you will probably need to have additional damping elsewhere. You'll need to install all the essential non acoustic elements first and then work out how to get it sounding decent afterwards.

 

Thanks @BigRedX, much appreciated. The outside World is indeed on the other side of those wooden walls, hence the question. To be honest the main challenge at present is the cost (and potential loss of space) of getting the necessary mass of material in there (I'm looking at over £5k in materials for walls and roof, I still have the costs of electrics, floor and doors to worry about over and above that! We're a little isolated so noise getting out isn't a major issue for neighbours but noise getting in is - no joke I had to edit out a rather persistent cow a few weeks back, and the occasional farm machinery, police sirens and aircraft tend to get in. Luckily I have a decent vocal both that can also accommodate double bass or a small drum kit which makes life easier, and I have a decent set of acoustic curtains that will go over the mirrors and doors when necessary.

 

Re ventilation, it's a very big space and I'm going to look at this as things go. The building only get's direct sunlight early in the day and for the rest is protect by trees, so thankfully stays quite cool, although that of course will change once the RW3 goes in I'm sure. Als I'm not too worried about acoustics in the room, those will tend to be sorted with some moveable acoustic panels/dividers, carpets etc.

 

So, my hope is that, as you suggest the combination of RW3 and acoustic boards will do the job but if anyone has any cheaper ideas I'd love to hear them as well? As one of the builders said, you should have done this three years ago when everything was half the price! 

[WinterMute]

My garage conversion studio follows BigRedX suggestions pretty much exactly, except for having a floating floor and false ceiling additionally, the conversion includes a baffled A/C unit for ventilation, as the very last thing you want to do is punch holes in your isolation for vents or fans.

 

This is not a cheap option, but it works.

 

Don't neglect the door/window fit if you have windows, decent double glazing is OK, triple glazing is more expensive and doesn't actually help that much. commercial installers won't know how to isolate the window frames correctly to prevent flanking.

 

A well fitted fire door will help as they are naturally sound isolating, but the frame will need to fit tight and have seals installed to the rebates, mine is an FR120, and it's very good for isolation.

Edited April 24, 2023 by WinterMute
typos

[JoeEvans]

For the acoustic treatment, you can make a frame from say 25x100mm planks on edge, perhaps 800mm x1600mm, pack it with high density rockwool slabs then wrap some nice fabric round it and staple it on to hold everything together. For a 6x7 room, maybe three of these on each wall, pretty much randomly placed, will do a lot of good.

It's also helpful to cover one wall with something that isn't flat, to scatter reflections. Shelves of books are ideal if you can buy them literally by the kilo for next to nothing from somewhere. Or people sometimes make up panels with a sheet of ply covered with random offcuts of wood, all sawn at different lengths and angles.

You can add all this gradually and see what effect it has stage by stage, so you don't do more than you need.