not an ordinary room

ravenwing operates within a fully soundproofed room, with substantial acoustic isolation from the adjoining house and outside world, and plenty of space for recording anything from solo vocalist to full drum kit.

here's the story of how the room came about.

the need

project studios are often set-up in bedrooms or spare rooms and can impose severe compromises acoustically.
we wanted a room suitable for recording everything from acoustic to rock music without leaking to/from adjoining buildings or irritating/recording the neighbours and passers-by.

but we didn't want to compromise, so we did a full conversion of a garage into a room using all the best current advice in soundproofing.

we enclosed the two down-pipes shown above in sand-filled box-work, and then covered that with two layers of plasterboard, thus far exceeding fire advice from the local planning office.
then we deepened the solid concrete floor for additional bass absorption and isolation.

room within room

this room within room concept is widely used in quality professional studios for soundproofing.
the concept is to build a structure which is isolated from the existing floor by rubber insulation and forms four walls and a ceiling without being in contact with the existing room.

natural light

many recording studios are isolated from natural light, but we didn't want to work in darkness.

so where the garage door once was, we built a cavity-wall structure and installed a new double-glazed window.
we then added a further two glazing layers for even better isolation.
also shown above is more of the room-within-room structure.

moving house

the horizontal "resilient bars" shown here provide the mounting point for the double-layer plasterboard walls and ceiling, permitting movement.
the plasterboard ceiling is already installed here.

the insulation is 100mm rockwool for warmth and increased acoustic absorption. note the amount of wiring - there are eleven ceiling-mounted spot-lights and twelve double 13 amp sockets fitted on a separate ring-main for excellent mains noise rejection.

finally, we fitted a 55mm solid fire-door with storm-proof weather seals for even more improved isolation.

the walls and ceilings were skim-coated with plaster, all joints sealed and the room decorated, adding specialist acoustic underlay and carpet to make it look like an ordinary room. but it's not an ordinary room...