Hello friends!

As per the title, do any of you fine folk have experience or knowledge of glass and/or air con companies based in the UK that understand the needs of a music studio?

My build will be modest (a lot more humble than my initial plans) but I do want decent isolation still.

Thanks in advance,
Pete.

Not specific to a commercial recording studio, but I'm doing a studio build at home currently and in the space there are two very large windows. The (local) company I am contracting to fit them offered me the option of so-called 'acoustic glass' which I took them up on.

The option consists of a double-glazed unit described as "Low emissivity 28mm Pilkington glass sealed units manufactured to BS.EN.1279 with thermal spacer bars and ARGON gas".

The units are double-glazed but one glass sheet (not sure whether inner or outer) is 6.8mm thick, laminated and has some kind of synthetic polymer sheet sandwiched in it. They were more expensive than standard double glazing but not prohibitively so; about £150 extra per window.

Whether this is helpful or not I don't know, but it may give you enough info to start looking into possible options in your scenario.

This is probably exactly the sort of thing that Max AKA Studio Support Gnome could help with as he is an acoustic expert who currently works for an HVAC company.

James Perrett wrote:This is probably exactly the sort of thing that Max AKA Studio Support Gnome could help with as he is an acoustic expert who currently works for an HVAC company.

Indeed. I'm pretty sure his recommendation when it comes to a window would be to lose it altogether, either by relocating or blocking it in ;-)

However, there is a product he recommended to me once which is an acoustic treatment to cover windows which lets light through. I'm racking my brains to remember what it was but I can't recall it at present and it's not mentioned in the notes he left me with. Blindrew mentioned it on a recent SOS virtual meet though, so maybe he can identify it.

I seem to remember reading, years ago, that the glass panes have to be different thicknesses and not parallel with each other and the opposing walls. Also the air gap is much wider than that of a double glazed unit.
So if a company tries to sell you a traditional double glazed unit you will know that they have no experience of studio installations.

MOF wrote:I seem to remember reading, years ago, that the glass panes have to be different thicknesses and not parallel with each other and the opposing walls. Also the air gap is much wider than that of a double glazed unit.
So if a company tries to sell you a traditional double glazed unit you will know that they have no experience of studio installations.

Yes, i read that too MOF, different weights so they don't 'go off' at the same frequency.

But, bog S FSTVs are very cheap these days, as are PDGood cameras. A pair either side if the wall will let you lookey-see.

Bonus, you can watch the footy/cricket/snooker when the muse eludes you"!

Dave.

Thanks for the replies, chaps!

I’ve done a lot of reading on what I need glass-wise, so happy with the construction requirements, I just wandered if anyone had a recommendation for a company whose work left you with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

HVAC I’m a little less familiar with. I’ve previously had a long chat with Max - great bloke. I get the impression he works on much bigger projects than I am undertaking. Will check though.

Cheers,
Pete.

Have a shufti at the Summerly studios sticky thread at the top. I seem to recall one of the more recent posts recommends the acoustician by name.

Howard Turner - StudioWizard.co.uk i think from a quick google. But worth checking with Tony from the thread.

Eddy Deegan wrote:However, there is a product he recommended to me once which is an acoustic treatment to cover windows which lets light through. I'm racking my brains to remember what it was but I can't recall it at present and it's not mentioned in the notes he left me with. Blindrew mentioned it on a recent SOS virtual meet though, so maybe he can identify it.

It's called DEAMP Clearsorber and I describe it at length in the article about my own studio refurb. It's remarkably good stuff!

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/studio-sos-making-small-room-sound-good

Ahh DeAmp Clearsorber - yes, that's the stuff. Thanks Hugh.

mellowsouls wrote:do any of you fine folk have experience or knowledge of glass

Yes, 30 years working for a leading glass manufacturer, starting out in R&D and becoming Global Product Manager along the way. This was all in the Automotive side of the business but I do know a bit about Building Products as well as glass in general.

When it comes to sound transmission glass is pretty poor. As well as letting sound through monolithic glass (single sheet) also suffers from having a coincident dip which is dependant upon thickness. For 6mm glass (the common thickness in a lot of windows) that's at about 2kHz which is bang slap in the middle of the voice intelligibility range (and also the range for wind and diesel combustion noise in the Automotive realm). Having a double glazed unit improves things, increasing the gap improves it more as does filling the gap with a dense gas. A lot of sealed units would use Argon for thermal benefits but this won’t do anything for the acoustic performance.

If you use two different thicknesses of glass you improve things by having different coincident dips. If one of those glasses is a laminate (two thin sheets of glass sandwiched together with a plastic interlayer, typically Polyvinyl butyral or PVB for short) then you get further improvement. Acoustic laminates use a special interlayer where the PVB sheet itself is a tri-layer with a softer inner core.

Design and installation of the sealed unit, I imagine, would have a big impact. I’m afraid that I can’t help you there but if you want to design a new vehicle with a complexed shaped, high tech, glass – then I’m your man.