Nothing much happened this week. Still waiting on the replacement carpet. In the meantime, I ordered new desk for the studio. Jonathan at Omnirax was awesome! The desk should arrive on Thursday - I just hope the carpet has been installed by then!
A very disappointing week. The carpet for the studio arrived, but was defective. It could take up to two weeks to replace. An unfortunate setback.
Going into the studio addition project, we knew our old HVAC system would need to be replaced. The old system was woefully undersized for the house and climate conditions (100+ degrees for most of the summer). Adding a total of 360 square feet to the house (including studio and office) would only make matters worse. To help keep costs down, we opted to have the studio tied into the house HVAC system instead of installing a separate unit.
We hired Mike from CoolAir to do the install. The studio will have over-sized ducts for the send and return to keep air turbulence down. Turbulence = noise. The ducting will also have a couple of 90 degree bends in it to help cut down on sound being transmitted through the ducts into the rest of the house. All ducting will be wrapped with insulation and enclosed in a double walled sheetrock box or channel.
Look at the photos below to see how small the old HVAC condenser is compared to the new one. The new condenser is twice as big but more efficient!
In other news, I took it upon myself to paint the studio this week (see photo). Yes, I am ready for the project to be done!
Next week the carpet will be installed and I'll be ordering the acoustic panels.
Just a quick update this week. The interior walls have been taped and textured. We just need to paint and install flooring now.
To that end, I've finally decided on the paint and carpet color for the studio. I would have preferred to install some sort of hardwood flooring, but there are a couple of advantages to carpet. With carpet you can get away with less acoustic treatment as the floor is no longer a source of reflections.
I still need to pick the color(s) for the A/V RoomService metu acoustic panels and corner traps, but I want to see how the room looks with paint and carpet first.
The studio walls are going up! Note the resilient channel onto which the sheetrock will be fastened (the horizontal metal strips). The resilient channel acoustically isolates the sheetrock from the stubs. The black strip visible at the top of the walls is the IsoPad from A/V RoomService. Also note that none of the sheetrock seams overlap. This helps to further reduce the transfer of sound in and out of the studio. About half of the sheetrock is up in the studio. The first layer of sheetrock is fastened to the resilient channel (not the studs), then a coat of RoomDamp is applied and finally one more layer of sheetrock. All gaps are sealed with acoustic sealant. Even though the studio walls are not yet complete, the room is noticeably more quiet than the rest of the house.
Audio engineer Matt McCabe's project studio and blog.
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