Project K2R4 Studio Design Tip–Building Quiet Walls

When I started building the studio I had two specific priorities. Number one, the noise of the freeway didn’t interrupt my recordings. Number two, my amps and drums didn’t bother my neighbors.

I did a lot of reading, bought a few studio design books, and finally after balancing the results I would get vs. the cost and modifications I would have to make, I came up with a balance of a way to build a wall that will get a whole lot of bang for the buck. As it stands now, I can tell you that I can have a Marshall Amp on 8 on once side of the wall, and in the control room, I can talk over it without having to raise my voice at all. The same goes for drums. As far as outside the house goes, you have to get about 3-4’ from our garage door before you can hear that there is anything going on when someone is playing drums inside. Wow!

So how did I do it? I can tell you know that I did NOT pour a floating floor and build a floating room. One of my goals was not to modify the house too much so that when we ever sell it, I won’t have something that ruins the value. That means the original garage door stays in place, the floor is not changed and I am not modifying the ceiling. I did however, build some walls.

The view above is looking from near my drum kit. You see a 1 3/4” Solid MDF door (blocks a ton of sound) the walls I’ll describe in a second, and two 1/2” pieces of glass separated by about 8”. That’s important to mention before we get to the wall, because you have to consider that no matter how well you build the wall, if your door, window and cabling break the integrity of the wall, you are not going to get benefit from the wall. Notice how my cables are mounted in a box hanging on the wall, not in the wall. The cables route in one side of my control room, they go through a hole just small enough for the cables, that is completely sealed. The cables then travel 6’ horizontally, and come out the other side at the other end of the window. That means there are no paths for sound to travel through.

The Wall

So how did I build the wall? First you want some mass. I accomplished this with two layers of 1/2” sheetrock on each side. Instead of just putting 4 pieces of sheetrock on a single 2×4 wall, I build two walls. I spaced them by 2”, and I insulated each wall. There is no sheetrock between the walls, that’s important. You wouldn’t believe it, but adding extra sheetrock between the walls would make it LESS soundproof.

Here you can see the wall before it was finished. Below is a diagram of how the wall itself is constructed. The 2x4s are insulated with Rockwool.

Once the walls were built and insulated, I applied the first layer of sheetrock, completely sealed it with mud, then using liquid nails and screws, I put on a second layer of sheetrock, and sealed that layer too. After sanding, I had quite the sturdy wall that blocks a whole hell of a lot of sound.

Watch the video if you want to hear the difference.