Building in a second floor......

Okay, I have tried looking on the forum for the past two months concerning help with my situation but have not found anything so I have finally decided to post. Please excuse me if certain details are thrown around and not very organized, I am kind of new to posting. I am a young sound engineer currently living in brooklyn new york and need to build a studio in my apartment. I work with both music and post production for film so I will be needing to set up a 5.1 system in a somewhat small space. I am very cautious about my hearing so I try to avoid listening at high levels most of the time except when doing some last run throughs and making sure that everything sounds ok at louder levels. My levels are usually set at 76-80 dB and when doing final mixes I check everything at 82-85. This is usually checked with a radioshack spl meter. First let me start by explaning the space. It is an apartment building that was made in the past year and therefore is built according to all the new ny building codes. I am living on the 4th floor which is the top floor, and considering that all the apartments are 16 ft high, it is more like living on the 6th floor. There is a kitchen at the north wall with no door that connects to the main room. Above the kitchen is a 10’ l x6’ w x 6’5’’ h room that shares the same dimensions of the kitchen. That is currently being used as a bedroom but I may use as a recording booth. The problem is that said room connects to the neighbors apartment and may leak sound to them. At the moment I don’t have anything that would cause enough noise for me to think this is a problem but I am considering investing in some drums to use only for sampling (recoridng the drums and creating midi drum kits out of). The main room is open to the kitchen and the entrance to the apartment. To the west of it is another room that shares a 16’ wall with the main room, the north of it is the kitchen. If you cut it off at the kitchen and the next room, it is around 18’ L x 11’ W x 16’ H (if exact measurements are needed, let me know, at the moment there are boxes everywhere so it is kind of difficult to remeasure or find the paper with my previous measurements.) On the south wall (which is towards the street) the is a door to a balcony that is 7’6’’ high and a window frame that is 4’8’’ wide x 4’4’’ high that stops at the same height as the door. Above these starting at about 10’ high are another row of windows. On the west wall there are 2 central air/heating vents that are about 9’ high. The landlord had built the space so that his tenants could build into the space hence the vents so high on the wall. The second room is 14’6’’ long x 8 wide x 14’ high. It has a closet near the door to enter the room that makes the west wall about 13’. The windows are the same height as the main room as well as the vents (except they are on the east wall). The apartment will need to act as three things, if possible. It will be a living space for myself and one other. We will also have one part of the apartment needed for a computer based film editing suite and the other for the sound part. The walls I believe have been done with metal studs that are very strong (I tried putting shelves in the room above kitchen and my drillbit broke on the stud). Everything is sheetrock, I believe it is 5/8’’ but I am not positive. The south wall, which looks out the the street has concrete (as I am told by the landlord). The reason that he did this (and I know this is going to make you squirm), is that the subway passes outside the apartment. The track is about 25 feet out and 20 feet down. With all the windows closed you barely hear it and I would like to keep whatever is used as the recording booth as far away from the windows as possible. All the windows are double paned, however, and the door to the balcony is really strong so it's not really an issue. If I must I could probably make some sort of window door on hinges to really block out the sound with foam and mdf but hopefuly that money could go to something else. I also have 8 gobos from my last studio that are really heavy but really good at blocking sound so I might want to put these somewhere where sound is leaking. They are 6’ high x 2’ wide x 1’6’’ long and weigh A LOT. They have mdf, pine and fiberglass, I think I got the basic idea from somewhere on this forum but can’t seem to find the post anywhere. My ideas have ranged from a lot different things but the one I am currently hoping on and that has been agreed upon with my brother (the editor living in the west room) is the following. I am considering building a second floor into the main room that would cover the whole span to the kitchen (18’ x 11’). There would most likely need to be some kind of basic ladder or cheap stair case to go up but I will probably start off with a ladder like thing and maybe upgrade down the road. I would like the ceiling of the first floor to be level with the top of the door (7’6’’) and I was thinking that, in order to avoid major sound leakage and in order to avoid a floating floor, I would try some sort of staggering stud system with the floor but I am not sure if this is expensive or even practiced. On the second floor I am thinking of splitting it so that the control room is 13’ and the recording booth is 5’ (minus space needed for the actual wall) and putting a door. The reason I need to do it upstairs is 3 fold, first, there is a lot of wasted height space if I don’t build the second floor, second, we need a common area/office downstairs and third, putting the sound studio on the first floor would be a pain in the a** for getting around the apartment as well as having to hear footsteps over my head while I am working would be annoying. I have not begun any construction yet since the guy that was supposed to help me with this is busy this month and therefore I am awaiting another meeting with him. The first meeting I had with him, he discussed connecting wood beams to the current metal studs (outside of the wall, not taking the wall down or anything) and then putting the beams for the floor across using those, which sounded good except that there will be beams all over the bottom floor. He also seemed a bit unsure whether this way would support all the equipment and gobos etc, he started talking about maybe doing other ideas but I can’t remember, he was kind of vague about them. I am trying to keep this whole thing under $2,000 but, I could maybe go up to $4,000 if I absolutely must. I am worried about investing that kind of money in a rental especially with the way the economy is going so if someone knows a way I could do it for less, I would very much apreciate it. My questions are: 1) Is building a second floor crazy? Would maybe building the second floor for something besides the studio be the right way to go? Remember, having the studio on the first floor will be pretty bad.... 2) If it's not crazy, what would be the best and cheapest way to go about it. 3) If building a second floor is a crazy idea, how else would you go about working with the space? 4) Also, I saw mentioned a way of doing a recording and control room in one room that seemed interesting but I noticed the dimensions are pretty different from what I am working with (was something like 20’ x 13’). Would I be able to pull it off with the second floor idea? Would anyone talking in the control leak into recordings? I have tried something similar to having both in one room and the problem is that no one can talk during recordings, which makes working with more than one person at a time kind of difficult. Thank you very much!!!!

I don't think it's possible, structurally, to implement your plan. Even the rough framing for an 18' x 11' loft would probably be too heavy. Maybe set up the main room as a control room and use the little room over the kitchenette as a booth? You'll have to get some air exchange going.

yea, i kinda of expected that, i just hoped i could maybe do it. the problem with doing the studio without building some sort of upstairs space is that i would still need a recording spot (or bedroom, depending on what I put in the little room) and a place to put an office since we also have a lot of graphic design and financial work that is done from another computer.......

Sharing work/living space. I've been there. It gets old pretty quick. How about this: Set up the main room with all your gear on the window side of the room. "Separate" the room with a couch facing the kitchenette forming a mini living room. Turn the couch around to face your gear when you have clients. Use the little room above the kitchen as your bedroom. At least strangers won't sit on your bed that way! Good luck man.

thats a nice idea but i really need a separate space for recording. recording in the same room as the rest of the gear never works because the computers and everything make noise, as well as the fact that the main room doesnt close off, so anytime someone goes to the bathroom i would have to stop recording. i think i might try to work out a way to use the smaller room and put a recording space/bedroom on a loft and the control room downstairs. i think that might work a little better since the editing suites don't really need to be as isolated as the sound stuff and they require a lot less weight, they could go upstairs on a loft in the main room.......