Photo:Greenwood Studio
Soundzipper Acoustic Consultants : Adrian Lo | Julian Martinez | Johnny Lee | Cindy Lin
Soundzipper Project Managers : Donovan Phoon | Johann Tan
Architect : MKPL Architects
Lighing Consultant : NIPEK
Interior designer : Index Design
The Challenge
Our acoustic consultants were hired by the client to design acoustic solutions for a guitar room located in the basement of a private estate in Greenwood Avenue. The purpose of the guitar room was to record music and hold jamming sessions. The client wanted to make sure that there was no disturbance to his neighbours and people inside the house while playing music at close to 100 dB.
The Design
The studio was to be split into 2 rooms – a typical live room/control room setup. We specified a noise criteria rating of NC 30 for both the live room and the control room. A reverberation time target of 0.6s and 0.3s was set for the live room and control room respectively. No special control room topology was chosen as the client preferred it to be a more comfortable space rather than a precision monitoring and recording environment. As the music studio is located in the basement, there were height and space limitations, which made it difficult to obtain enough wall and ceiling depth for proper sound isolation.
Our isolation materials and doors were treated with Tecsound damping membranes to counteract bass frequencies. Low profile Sylomer vibration isolators were deployed in order to use thinner and lighter construction without resorting to the use of masonry structures. There were two novel acoustic systems used for the space – a custom designed curved-profile diffuser wall and Topakustik Micro-perforated acoustic ceiling. For the ceiling to integrate perfectly with all the light fixtures and air ducts, the whole micro-perforated acoustic ceiling had to be pre-fabricated in Switzerland with all cut-outs already done before installation on site. The curved-profile diffuser was a collaborative design with Hazel from Index Design. It is made up of individually shaped undulating pieces of wood with different depths and finished with yellow balau veneer.
The Results
After construction, both the live room and control room were tested and attained optimal results, with the live room having an RT of 0.5 seconds and NC 25 and the control room RT at 0.4 seconds and NC 20. The client was very happy with the overall design and even extended the project for Soundzipper to engineer the acoustics for the rest of the house.
