Building and Soundproofing a Home Studio

Setting up a home studio can be expensive and difficult. However, to many musicians and voice artists, it is well worth the expense. There are plenty of books available with advice on buying and wiring in equipment. The focus of this article is about constructing, soundproofing, and tuning your home studio.

A major concept in studio acoustics is to eliminate parallel hard surfaces that reflect sound waves. It's also important to stop sound from entering or exiting the room through holes. Also, forcing sound to pass through multiple surfaces that are insulated from one another will dramatically decrease the sound that escapes the room. For example, two walls with an air gap or sound insulation between them will stop more sound than one thick wall.

When selecting a room in which to build your studio, think about how any sound leakage will affect the rooms near it. Putting your studio next to the baby's room (or any bedroom) is probably not a good idea. A loft in a detached garage would be perfect. A room in the corner of the basement would work well also. The best suited rooms have non-parallel walls (so the sound won't reverberate between them). If you can't use non-parallel walls, consider placing bookcases diagonally across the corners of the room to break up the wall surface.

Soundproofing takes a bit of work, and for the best results you can expect to spend a fair amount for this step. The best way is to build a room with double drywall walls and insulation in between, then leave 3 to 4 inches and build another double drywall wall that is fully insulated as well. The double wall serves as a bass trap and will absorb the majority the sound before it leaves your room. Do the same with the ceiling and the floor if you can.

The easiest solution for the floor is to put the studio in the basement, but if you can't do that then you'll have to insulate the floor. A double layer of sub-flooring with sound insulation in between can be covered with a carpet. Make sure to stagger the joins on the sub-floor so that there is no complete gap for the sound to penetrate. Don't lay the sub-floor all the way to the walls because then the walls and floor will bridge and conduct sound between them. Leave about ¼ to ½ an inch around the sub-floor and fill it in with caulk.

In addition to all the above sound proofing, consider installing baffles in your heating and air conditioning ducts to prevent sound from exploiting these handy connections to other rooms.

Once your studio is built, you will need to tune the room to improve sound quality inside it. Blankets and quilts hung on the walls can be a cheap way of solving the sound reflection problems. Another inexpensive solution is to glue styrofoam panels to the wall and then glue styrofoam egg containers to that. There are also plenty of internet stores that sell sound-absorbing or diffusing materials. Look for panels that have adhesive backing to simplify the job.

The final step is to find your new studio's "sweet spot" or optimal listening point. The speakers should be located equal distances from your ears, forming an isosceles triangle with the two speakers and your head. Don't put the speakers up against the wall or you'll get a bassier sound. Move the speakers around and try a bunch of different configurations.

Now that you've built and tuned your home studio, you should get great sound within it and hardly any sound outside of it.

by Matthew D. Sarrel