Building My Studio: Part 6 (The Walls)

One of the first things I did with my walls was to add "sleepers", also known as braces to the walls. This makes the wall more rigid, and strong. The last thing you want in your studio walls is for the studs to be able to wobble around easily. If the studs can be moved fairly easily, your wall is not rigid enough and sleepers should be added.

There are a couple of interesting things about my walls. First, the builder used 2x6 studs, instead of 2x4 studs. I was thrilled about this as this makes for a strong, and thick wall. Second, I had some irregular spacing, which is (in my opinion) great. Traditional studs are usually placed 16" off center. When building a studio, I personally think that by having some irregular stud spacing, you can reduce sympethetic reasonance in the walls. I had some irregular spacing already, which was part of the design to support beams, conduit, piping, etc. so some spacings were less than 16", which also lends itself to a good strong wall.

At this point, I hired a professional to come in and put in my outlets. I made sure that I had thought through the layout of my studio in great detail so that I would have outlets where I needed them. I also made sure that the contractor knew how I was constructing my walls so he could properly space the outlet boxes. This is also a good time to install other boxes that will be used to carry audio signal from one location to another.

I had determined that my side walls would use resiliant channel to hang the drywall from, but that the front and rear wall would not. I did this for many reasons - tweaking the dimensions of the room, trying to create different reasonant properties in the walls, and of course taking into consideration the location of those walls. For example this photo is along the wall that separates the main studio from the future multipurpose room - considering I might have drums in there, these walls will help provide an few extra decibals of noise reduction. You can see some of the irregular stud spacing in this wall. This wall was quite strong, but I did eventually add some extra "sleeper" braces from the back side before finishing the wall.

The sidewall facing outside was already insulated with R13, which I felt was mostly sufficient considering the location of that wall - facing into my large, quiet backyard. I did strategically place some additional mineral fiber insulation into the wall in order to help with the overall acoustic performance, but this was minimal.




The front wall was given special treatment. The top left corner has over 8" of mineral fiber in it. The entire corner was treated with 4" or so, and the rest of the wall was treated with 2-3"... all on top of the existing R13. As with other parts of the studio, this was not done so much to keep the room quiet as it was to help the acoustic performance of the sound inside the room, providing broadband absorption that would due particularly well on the bass frequencies. This same basic process was repeated on the right side of the front room as well.





Once everything was done to my satisfaction, and some cables were ran where needed within the walls, I moved to hanging drywall. The first layer of drywall was 1/2" thick, and was hung vertically. The front, center portion of the wall recieved a second layer of 5/8" drywall, but only because I had some leftovers from the ceiling. You can see that I have a squared opening roughed out in the wall for future use which will make sense later.











As with everything else, the drywall was hung with screws - no nails. I did all of this by myself, and it was a breeze compared to the ceiling, but I still recommend that it's better to have a friend help you. Mounting drywall on the resiliant channel requires special attention. If even just a couple of screws go into the studs, you completely lose the advantage gained by using the resiliant channel in the first place. I carefully measured and marked the drywall prior to securing it to make sure this was done right.




Before hanging the second layer of drywall, I did caulk and/or mud over all screws and all seams in the wall. Then, the second layer of drywall was hung. As before, I used 1/2" drywall, but the drywall was hung horizontally this time. I felt that this would make a stronger wall, with less reasonance. As before, I took careful steps to make sure I was securing them into the resiliant channel, and not hitting screws from the previous layer.

Between the layers of drywall, I used a product called Quiet Glue. This product was "sandwiched" between the layers of drywall. You can visit their website for full details, but essentially, it improves the damping of the wall, which leads to a better performing acoustic wall. There is a similar, more famous product, called Green Glue, which is reported to have better performance. After researching both, I opted to use the quiet glue though as it seemed a good fit for my personal use. In this last photo, the room is done with the exception of the final piece of the second layer, and you can see that I've already caulked or mudded over all of the screws on the second layer.



My isolation booth was done in a slightly different manner. The main drain pipe for the house runs down the wall in the back part of my iso booth. So, I built out the wall by the drain pipe, and then put in extra insulation around it and covered that one section with 1 1/2" of drywall. The rest of the walls recieved just a single layer of 5/8" drywall, due to trying to preserve as much space in my small booth as possible. The outside wall was stuffed with a ridiculous amount of mineral fiber and R13 insulation. As with the rest of the walls, I used caulk and/or mud to cover every screw and seam.