Quintessence Studio
Creative Growth for Self-Expression
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Start the journey:
Getting Started
Welcome to the brick & mortar build of Quintessence Studio - The Workplace of Higher Being. Follow along as we go, meeting challenges, solving problems and doing our cooperative best to transform this residential garage to a project recording studio that will offer high resolution recording and DSD format production.
For decades I have been a solo artist, composer, singer-songwriter, arranger and producer, I am also a teacher and mentor. I create the kind of sound and music that penetrates and captivates, to bring back the felt experience of sound, beyond what our ears receive.
I am a Creative Growth Practitioner who specializes in allowing and welcoming the deepest best from the soul. I welcome what is in you, at any age and stage where you're at, we can bring your project to life, from conception through to completion. Work with me, and we can make your dreams and voice be both heard and felt by listeners. I can guide you without fear or judgment if you might be nervous in a recording studio, if you need to tell your story, if you want to sound authentically yourself, or if you want to learn how to produce your own project. I provide vocal expression lessons unique to Quintessence Studio, of the Italian-Swedish lineage of voice training that promotes clarity, power, ease and agility for how you naturally sing.
Watch the creation of an intimate professional solo creative artist's music studio, a quiet, warm, natural setting that can accommodate a small group. Surrounded by nature, Quintessence Studio sits on sacred Mohawk meadow land bordering Lake Ontario. CONTACT ME
Before the Build
Getting Started
TEARDOWN:
Build permit came active last week of September. The room within a room cannot be started until we identify the sketchy issues the very scary teardown revealed behind the garage drywall, and create a plan to rectify them. When we closed in 2020, the main house came with no architectural plans, there was nothing in County records to work off of, we don't even know when the house was built. "Mid 90s" said our real estate agent, mid 80s says anyone who knows decor trends of the vintage era, if that's any indicator. The original builder reused materials, paid no attention to architectural code; our Captain (Bill) is quite certain inspections were not a part of the process. Following a return visit of structural engineer Peter Yee, see what concerns us the most. It quickly became a game of "What is supporting what are supposed to be these supports?" and from my observation of the process, Mike Vance won that game.
Teardown Post Mortem Team (L to R) Mike Vance,
Peter Yee and Captain Bill. Like they just flew in from Hollywood...just for me, yeah, imma lucky girl.
Forensic analysis suggests the garage and squat room were added later to original house. Left: the 2x12 joists notched out to line up with support beam that tried its best to support the squat room above. Joist hangers are for 2x8s, they should be for 2x12s. The floor above sagged in the middle, down about 3 inches. Bill noticed 2x8 joist hangers even on the 2x10s. Right: single oversize header for two slit windows (one pictured) is reclaimed lumber and hollow. The sill/plates to support the upper level are half what they should be.
Above left: Here's the old sagging built-up beam using reclaimed, unstamped lumber that should be SPF, coming apart due to incorrect nailing pattern - to be replaced with new LVL (laminated veneer lumber); 2x12 joists were set at common wall sill with a bearing of only 0.75in while the 2x10s toward the window are seated at correct bearing of 3in at exterior wall sill.
Above right: the steps up to squat room need to be rebuilt, unequal rise, the opening framed incorrectly (no double header), no rim joists, and no joist hangers anywhere, wrong wood used entirely.
Below: the only thing that was done right (enough), the headers for the garage doors - all which are leaving anyway. Long story short, architectural and building codes matter, don't skip these steps if you're doing a conversion from a previous build.
The attic over the 2 car garage space (at 15ft) will have improved insulation, but there are no plans to decouple the roof superstructure from the rest of the mothership. The exterior shell will be sprayfoam insulated before beginning the studio build inside.
FLOORING (planned):
The garage floor is concrete slab and flooring will be floating and isolated from inframed walls. We've decided on Dricore panels to go over the garage concrete slab (for insulating, moisture controlling and cushioning) as the first layer to build up to finish flooring, WPC hybrid wood/vinyl with rubber underlay, then floor reflections are tamed with area rugs throughout the studio space.
CHOOSING A DOOR:
Quintessence Studio main entry door is inside a vestibule (~9'x6'x9'h) to be inset in the 6' wall, which will be 2x6 staggered stud, mineral wool filled, with drywall to STC50. The vestibule is the best air gap to common wall you could ask for. The main entry door will likely be the weakest link for sound leakage if we scrimped and went with a standard interior solid core door in a standard unsealed frame. My math showed this studio doesn't require an industry STC rated door, but I knew a stock exterior door from home depot wasn't going to be good enough either. I need to aim for STC 35. Going deeper into Ambico's and Penner's construction of acoustic doors, we wanted to see what does the lion's share of
soundproofing beyond a dense, solid core inside the door itself. Ambico provides 1-3/4" thick doors from STC 33 to STC 53 and Penner Doors are similar and their webpage shows the following are required for sound sealing, beyond just the door itself:
1. Wood face veneer (push side)
2. Acoustic core
3. Vertical stiffeners
4. Door sweep seal assembly
5. All edges to be solid hardwood,
including matching edges at stiles
6. 1/4" high flat acoustic threshold
7. Finished floor
Learn more about STC for doors at PennerDoors.com
The most important thing about STC ratings of various materials and assemblies is that they're only tested down to about 150Hz, so vibration isolation/decoupling is still crucial beyond soundproofing, it's the beefy bass that escapes the ratings game. Here is the summary of my research of STC rated acoustical doors for commercial studio use (I don't qualify), the best quality residential exterior doors that come with weather seals and doorsweeps, and then specialty research on what exists in between those two choices, looking at thickness and mass together.
Home supply stock doors for exterior 4-season are typically steel or fibreglass shell with about STC22 with an R6 rating if filled with styrofoam sheets that leave air gaps; heavier at STC 27 with an R8 rating if injection filled with polyurethane. Weather seals and doorsweeps are basic. Average cost $1K for a quality door, 6 weeks to order
Media Industry rated STC 40 to 56 doors are heavy, thick and expensive. They are solid core laminated wood product sandwiched with damping mastic, sometimes along with steel sheets, like Iso Door or Penner. Soundproof glass is per control rooms. Doors vary from $2.5 to 10K+ USD, made to order and lead times can be anywhere from 2 to 6 months.
Two sliding glass patio doors (airgap between) works well if you have the space. Other options include JeldWen ProCore interior doors STC 29 to 36, together with Pemko STC seal kit, fire-rated doors (mineral wool filled), commercial soundproof doors used in schools, hotels etc...are available but typically not sold one-off, and if so, lead time again is very long and $$$.
Following Bill's intuition of "look higher R value", I deep dove the market, googling "High Performance Exterior Doors" and wow, very little of distinguishing construction came up to choose from. Given that I'm in Canada, I knew there had to be some advantage, I began looking for thicker than standard doors for our "extreme winters" to see if any were mass loaded, or came anywhere closer to STC 35 I was looking for. Lo and Behold, I found NovaTech High Performance (NHP). I will test the STC of the door myself once I get it and let you know what I find.
Working with Kingston Doors & Windows, they got me more information from the company and we decided to go with their 2-1/4" thicker insulated high performance door that is made with 30% more steel. Fully framed, prehung, heavy duty hinges, better quality seals and compression at threshold...it came in on budget at 3K CAD with delivery - should be here in 6 weeks from Quebec, painted with heat reflexive Coastal Blue, a stock colour they offered that was an exact match with my logo.
Research
Quintessence Studio "brick and mortar" will take up residence inside the 2 car garage attached to the Mothership (main house). I qualify this build as a budgeted residential project studio, a semi-professional venture for recording traditional and hi-resolution DSD (direct stream digital) music projects. We have gutted the garage to its shell, and a heat loss assessment has been conducted. Sound isolation goals are based on our pleasant (ie quiet) situation in the country on a 140 acre property, and that there is a common wall to the main residence. We have complete control on building the room-within-a-room construction within budget, so now the research game is on as to how to achieve STC50 for perimeter walls and STC 65 for the common wall. While I have a background in physics and engineering, I'm not an acoustic engineer. Thankfully, I do have Warren Beck and colleagues at Audio Engineering Society to call upon. Following best practices and first principles of construction for soundproofing, let's see what we can create from a homeowner's perspective, using materials and methods available everywhere. All materials chosen have been thoroughly researched as safe, ASTM, low VOC etc... and are industry standard...at minimum.
SITE SITUATION: the road is about 1000 ft away from the outer corner of the Mothership (along the top edge of the diagram). Windows permit the greatest sound transmission compared to the rest of the exterior elevation structure. I designed for the most glass to be the furthest away from ambient noise, sheltered inside the inner nook of the L. This direction faces south so there will be afternoon light, hence a 72x80" patio door and 62x48"casement window. The other two perimeter sides have narrow slit fixed windows 21x48". All lites are triple-paned with an STC rating of 29.
SOUND IN SPACE: This brings us to aliveness - atmospheric sound quality of the studio. There will be surface treatments after the basic build. And in odd shaped spaces, it's difficult to predict how irregular room modes will interact. In this project studio, designed for solo-work primarily, there is no separation of control/mixing space and live space, it's open throughout, even to the lounge area. With variation in ceiling height and room shape, parallel wall differing construction and surface treatments, and an operating SPL between 80 to 90dB, no single region of the space will be fully live or fully dead. The mixing area will be more controlled, treatment wise. The goal is to post-address the worst frequency offenders in a targeted way, pragmatically with surface treatments and natural diffusion from room setup/decor. For example, one corner will have a kitchenette (wall mounted cabinetry), another section will have wall shelving etc.. Primary axial and tangential modes exist in the upper 5ft of the 12'x21 mix-live space, where the greatest parallel wall/boundaries are. I rely on Carl Tatz's axial mode calculator and Amcoustics AMROC room mode calculator. Overall there is variation of axial and tangential room modes, giving rise to greater oblique mixing - the effects of this space will have to show themselves in reality because the only boxlike space that exists in this studio to permit standing waves is up high 8 to 15ft, and the box doesn't really have a floor boundary at 8ft. Surface absorption, deflection and diffusion will also have to be assessed post build. Reverb time is about 0.3 seconds for the dimensions specified. Loads of experiments to come re: how to mic the room, address bass buildup and dropout nodes down the line and build treatments to match. Then we go for gobos, ARC or Sonarworks, room EQ etc...featured voices and instruments will be close mic'd, no matter what.
MATERIALS & METHODS: I have begun researching material resonance, sound transmission, absorption and reflection qualities of gypsum board, 5/8" FR drywall (reg and type X), mineral wool, sprayfoam and cellulose insulation, and staggered stud wall assemblies, both wood and metal systems, and materials such as latex caulking (absorptive, non hardening), isolation clips, resilient channel, low expansion foam and more. Thanks to everyone who is helping, Bill and I are learning how best to put it all together without any buzz, leakage/air gaps or coupling to adjacent structures based on the methods of those who've done it, companies who advertise their methods and materials - one learns from those who confessed what didn't work when they tried. As the build captain, Bill will have to convey clearly the methods we decide on - to the subcontracted window/doors installers, the electrician, the drywallers, plumbers, and to Mike and Gord. After all, this is the first time building a recording studio, for all of us. A labour of love, and a testament to solid relationship.
When we closed on the property in 2020, it was decided that the recording studio would be built in the existing 2 car garage space, attached to the Mothership (the main house). Due to the non-standard layout of the garage, only one vehicle could ever really be parked in there because the mudroom entry to the lower level of the house significantly shortened the 2nd space. The Mothership is set back almost 1000ft from the road and is situated on 140 acres of sacred land of the Mohawk. Just across the main road is Lake Ontario. Needless to say environmental noise is not a concern for this location - only sound transmission through common wall to the main house is. Thank goodness, nothing of what I do participates in the loudness wars of today's commercially marketed music.
Above the 23' x 24' garage was a finished attic space known as the Squat Room - joists were overspan and weak, so the floor sagged down in the centre. If you were 5'3 or shorter, you could stand upright in the middle of the space and not hit the ceiling. Together with our build team, we decided this floor was going to go, and the combined mixing and live space of the recording studio would be 1.5x height. The studio space nearest the house would have a new 9' high soundproofed ceiling, and we could still have a portion of the "squat room" as storage space above.
The objective is to make the best use of existing structure, admittedly questionable in places, and come up with a design where the build would be a specified purpose project studio under a residential space conversion. Studio build budget is assigned to construct a room within a room. Equipment budget is separate. Any structural improvements that the existing-garage requires once we gut the space would be funded separately, and we expect to find original build issues that need remediation once drywall comes down. Because a new LVL support beam is going in, a build permit is required for converting this garage into what the county considers "livable space".
You need to know why you are building a studio, and how it will be used. As a solo project artist and creator, putting my own musical, audio engineering and architecture training, skills and creativity to work, I designed a layout for this 'low to mid volume' project studio to fulfill its (experimental) higher purpose: to produce Hi Res and DSD (Direct Stream Digital) live artist recording so that the subtle felt experience of sound can be captured to reproduce at minimum the same inexplicable fullness of analog recording or a live environment, to beyond auditory sense...to produce recordings that allows the listener a deeper, transcendental experience. Since its inception, Quintessence Studio has always been The Workplace of Higher Being. Here is where that music will be recorded. And there is plenty of room and production capability for other artists to get their projects done.
The planning stage has me researching Sound Transmission Classifications (STC ratings) for various types of wall assemblies, so that I can estimate how the exterior perimeter walls (existing from garage already) with an air gap to interior in-framing will rate for overall soundproofing. This studio will not be for recording full orchestra, but maybe chamber music; not for rock band recording of marshall stacks, more for solo guitars; no standard drum kit on site, but there will be djembe and cajon...you get the picture. Now that we can see what's there following demolition, I'm aiming for double wall (decoupled) combined STC-65 (common to the house) as highest priority (R40). Then the perimeter walls (exterior) overall STC rating of the in-framed studio (with air gap) once insulated to R22 can be devised. Specific materials being researched for studio build include fire-rated gypsum/drywall, acoustic plywood, mineral wool insulation, resilient channel and iso sound clips, latex caulk and more, only if necessary. The walls of the room within a room will be 2x6 staggered stud framing 24"oc for walls allowing an air gap to exterior existing walls. No two parallel walls will be constructed the same way, and each wall assembly will be designed as required.
The south elevation will be mostly rebuilt replacing the two garage doors with a patio door and casement window. The Medallion Logo will be mounted in the upper inset. Since we can no longer get an exact match to the siding, we will use existing siding to patch and go with a new look of vertical board & batten in white. Then it won't look like we tried to match and failed. LOL
Meet Krista Mercier, our HVAC specialist and heat loss assessor. Quintessence Studio GC, Bill Hyndman knows everyone round these parts. I want to see this studio bring people together, like a barn raising brings a community into harmony for a purpose. Converting a garage attached your house to be what they consider a livable space here in Prince Edward County Ontario, means that basic "living conditions" need to be met. Primary heat source plus secondary heat source, ventilation, everything to code re: plumbing and electrical. Just what you'd expect. It changes the useable square footage of your home, and luckily, our property is zoned RU3 which means the main dwelling can be a B&B, the land can be for farming or winery/vineyard, and you can run a business from your main dwelling.
Planning
Q Team
besides me and Stevie
WILLIAM J. HYNDMAN, Owner and General Contractor
Hyndman Contracting Ltd, Belleville Ontario
The Captain who has done it all, government, corporate and private, commercial & residential, and more. And now add to his impressive portfolio amassed over 35 years, a project recording studio for a homeowner. He and everyone he subcontracts is fully credentialed and licensed and vetted by him.
I was beyond lucky to have found Bill about a year before we moved out of Colorado, while still there, when I discovered we'd been defrauded by the builder-contractor we hired in 2021 for mothership work. The Hyndman team, including Mike Vance and Gord Moore, picked up from the mess we'd been left in and we haven't looked back. A master builder, Bill knows residential & commercial code, has worked with all agencies and people from a place of integrity and expertise. He has experience and knows how to seamlessly harmonize minute details with the bigger picture. Bill is a genius problem solver when it comes to working with and around realistic limitations of existing structure. He was willing to work with me and that's the beyond lucky part (for me). He knew what this project studio would require before I did. And admits that our barn was *not* the sketchiest place he'd ever tackled. And he knows exactly who to call, and when, in these last 3+ years, everything that has succeeded here at mothership has been because of him (infrastructure, interior, outbuildings and more...)
WARREN BECK, Midtown Media Toronto
SC Media Broadcast Specialist, Audio Engineer
Warren rescued me when I arrived back in Canada having to start completely from scratch. It's because of him that I even have the DSD recording studio equipment I needed for bringing the felt experience back when listening to music. In him, I have a brother, a colleague with experience and connections in every avenue of music production in Canada, a mentor, audio equipment repair specialist and microphone expert. Warren knows my soul as a musical artist and vocalist. He gets what I'm trying to do, and he hasn't said no to what we're trying to get done either. Like Bill Hyndman, Warren knows who to contact and what to research. So with both Bill and Warren, I get to learn what a project studio for DSD recording requires at bare minimum, from engineering and construction first principles - from the very physical 'materials and methods' perspective, to the nuanced considerations of sound in space that only an acoustic engineer experienced working at various budget levels would know about. He knows what will get these acoustic goals met.
GUS SKINAS, SuperAudio Center, Octave Records Colorado
Mastering Engineer, Sony Phillips Developer of Sonoma DSD
'In his great career, Gus has worked on projects for Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Al Kooper, George Harrison, Queen, Joni Mitchell, Chick Corea, Frank Zappa, and The Police (to mention a few). Octave Records (est. 2020) records on the Sonoma and Pyramix multi-track workstations which both use pure one-bit Direct Stream Digital® (DSD) technology.' The whole reason I'm even doing any of this is because Gus saw (and heard?) something in/of me. Gleaned from what I consider to be quite little evidence, it is his unwavering confidence, which he has instilled back in me, that has put this spiritual path and purpose into motion...in me, and through this studio, it shall be heard and felt. He has witnessed my piano ambient sonic effect and he advised me to give stereo (left/right channel) DSD a chance since he insists no one has used it to its fullest potential - yet. At his home in Longmont Colorado, we listened to NeuroSound that I created and he said it was as powerful and engaging as Pink Floyd he'd mixed and mastered in the 70s. And if people could feel the effects of this kind of sound healing at levels as full as analog, via DSD, we'd be on a very different plane of healing experience. During my time with him working in both studios, at home, he showed me what this technology has the capability to do, and at Octave studios how simple build and treatments lets sound move in an ideal organic, semi-live space and with his help, we intend for this little recording studio to be optimized to surprise!
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