Basement Studio/ Allentown, PA/ Need Professional Opinion

I am considering doing some construction to my basement to bring the level of my recordings up. Right now I use the main room as a multipurpose band practice/tracking/mixing room. It is not treated and so does not sound that great. Also, none of the surrounding walls are insulated or drywalled. They have some kind of particle board fake wood paneling on them. I would like to make the main room the tracking room and use the other room next to it as the mixing room. I have drawn up a 3D model in sketchup so please have a look at that so you can see what I am talking about. The model is located at: Basement Sketchup File I will explain a little bit about the model: The layer called "Layer 0" is the existing structure. The ramp is the stairs coming down to the basement. On this layer I have excluded some of the other rooms that are adjacent to the two main rooms. They are unnecessary to show. All of the other layers are things that would be constructed. I did not go into too much detail with the furniture and equipment. There will be much more equipment but that is not really necessary to show because I know that I will have room for it. Also, I did not show any broadband traps on the walls or ceiling or any treatment foam as I want to establish the proper layout of the room first. As far as the construction of the control room, that is as large as I can make it due to the need to be able to access the fuel oil tank and furnace, etc. For the construction of the bass traps I made them to have a faux wall built, then stack 703 in the "super-chunk" style behind said wall, then fill the gaps between the studs with either batts insulation or another type of rigid fiberglass (the point of using another type is to target different frequencies.) and then cover the whole wall with breathable material. Also in the live room I show wood panels going horizontally across the trap walls and spaced a foot and a half apart. The reason for these was, if necessary, to bring more life to the room. I have read that many times in small rooms when you treat with rigid fiber traps that it can decrease mid to high frequency resonation too much and make the room too dead so these panels would be put up to add some of that life back. These would only be put up if after the traps were built I felt that it needed it. If not then they would just be left with cloth over them. For the shapes of the rooms I tried to eliminate most parallel surfaces. Also, for the ceilings I will most likely have hanging broadband clouds that are at varied angles and heights to diffuse any ceiling floor reflections. As far as budget goes, I would like to spend less than $5000 if possible. Questions: 1. First of all, does my logic seem to be on point? Please correct any notions that I have that are incorrect. 2. Are the shapes of the rooms good? What should be changed if needed? 3. Should the ceiling of either of the rooms be made with a peak or is this unnecessary? Or should the ceilings be made at a slight angle? 4. What are going to be the problem frequencies when trying to make the rooms have a flat response? I don't know much about modes, standing waves, etc. so I could definitely use some help when trying to figure this out. For example I could use these numbers to make broadband traps for the walls that are a certain thickness to correspond to one of the problem frequencies etc. 5. How should the construction of the walls of the control room go? In other words, should the outside of the new walls be drywalled or just have the open insulation? Isolation is not a huge deal for me because it is in the basement and I live in a fairly quiet neighborhood. Also, even now without any isolation, the noise transmission to the outside is not a problem. So these decisions should be based on getting the best room response and not necessarily for isolation purposes. 6. Should I possibly use hanging broadband traps behind the trap walls instead of the super chunk method? That is it for now. Once I get answers to these questions I may have more specific ones. Thank you in advance for your professional opinion!

Hi, I didn't see where you defined your room height and condition of overhead ceiling? You also have spent much of the post talking about acoustical treatments but none of isolation(sound proofing). Is it safe to assume that your noise levels can be at whatever volume you want and no one outside, next door or upstairs is going to be bothered? Good luck, Brien

Please read the post and look at pictures. All of your questions are answered. The height is in one of the pictures and is 7'2" from floor to bottom of upper floor joists.

Sorry, I don't usually look at software produced pictures when the text needed to make decisions is made available per the site requirements. But I will look at actual photos if you have them ;) Brien

Haha! Well if I had real photos then I would already be done with the build. :lol: Anyway, all of the necessary info is in the first post though. All except the fact that the ceiling height is 7'2" which you now know.