How do I build a good sounding room?

Re: How do I build a good sounding room?

Jack Arnott said:
Hello All,
More about the house we are building. It is bemoaned in our circles that most places that musicians play are not designed for performances.

Kind of to that end, I want our house to have a good feel to it. I pay attention to things like this.
I am wondering how to go about constructing a house, with good sounding rooms.

1) I do not like the sound of drywall, but its use seems to be quite prevalent, indeed unavoidable.
2) We will not have any carpeting at all, so there is one place that usually helps with loose, ringy sound in a room that we will not have.
(It will be Marmolium on top of gypcrete, with radiant heat in it.)
3) Most of the main floor will have one brick wall, the interior wall. I like the sound of brick. But it will be fairly live.
4) If I can pull it off the ceiling will be barn wood. This, to me will be better than drywall. And it will have insulation behind it, which will be good.
5) We used some cork in our old house, and I liked it a lot. It reduced noise from outside, and inside as well. The main room that that was in was very comfortable.
But, it does not seem to stay to the wall very well. Even the places I have seen where it was installed by a professional, (read, not me), there have been tacks to keep it in place and from peeling. I do not like the look of this, and it would be expensive to do one whole wall, sunroom, kitchen, living room, dining room.

The wall will be 2x6, with OSB, and then probably about three or four inches of foam, and then a faux adobe.
Any suggestions for inside covering on this wall that does not involve drywall, is easy to color/paint, and will sound better than drywall?

Regards, Jack
Click to expand...

I'm doing a small house with all wood inside -more as a point to prove that drywall isn't a necessary requirement.
English style panelling isn't as hard as it looks. Also doing some rooms with combinations of tongue&groove cathedral ceilings, beadboard, carsiding, knotty pine boards and even that faux "log-cabin" rounded boards intended for outside siding. Throw in a bit of masonry and tile to round it all off.
Built-in bookshelves are great as is large fireplaces with stone or brick chimneys.

(No "masonite" or other manufactured based panels or those nasty 70's looking panelling sheets with the printed grain. Although the Armstrong catalog has some really good acoustical tile materials now that look like wood boards -might try those in higher places where you can't get a good look at it :-)

Having a balance of live and dead surfaces really helps the overall sound of a space. Cathedral ceilings also help with that 8' resonance and slap that parallel floor and ceiling tend to create.
 
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