Need help with room-within-a-room design

Hello all. Totally new to this forum. I am designing a recording studio within a 500 sq ft warehouse space with ~20' high ceilings. My question pertains to floating ceilings. I am going to build a room-within-a-room design. My question is -- when building a floating ceiling, should my floating joists only be connected to the walls of the interior room? If so, won't I need to stabilize the interior walls in some fashion in order to prevent the whole frame from toppling over? Since I am building this studio in a warehouse space, I am supposing that I can accomplish the desired soundproofing by just building a regular ceiling (about 9' high) that is only connected to the walls in the recording space. Also, when building double walls, should I connect the two sides of the wall in any way? Many more questions, I just don't want to overwhelm in my first post. Any help would be much appreciated, I want to complete the construction within a month. Thanks in advance!

Quick reply: Read this first: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7572

when building a floating ceiling, should my floating joists only be connected to the walls of the interior room?

Yes.

If so, won't I need to stabilize the interior walls in some fashion in order to prevent the whole frame from toppling over?

Yes and no. It depends on how you build it.

Since I am building this studio in a warehouse space, I am supposing that I can accomplish the desired soundproofing by just building a regular ceiling (about 9' high) that is only connected to the walls in the recording space.

Provided that you keep your inner leaf totally decoupled form your outer leaf, yes. And if you have a warehouse to build in, why use only 9 feet of it? Surely there is much more height available in there?

Also, when building double walls, should I connect the two sides of the wall in any way?

Absolutely not, never, ever, not under any circumstances. Doing so "short circuits" and destroys the isolation that you just obtained by building an MSM system in the first place! The only time you might want to maybe consider doing that, is with proper acoustic sway braces, for certain special situations.

I want to complete the construction within a month.

Good luck with that! :!: Most people spend months here first learning about acoustics and how to design their studio, then months more designing it, then months more actually building it. Very few even try to do it all in a month. And of those few that HAVE tried, I can't recall seeing a single one who came back to tell us how great it turned out.... On the other hand, you'll find numerous threads here from folks who took the long, slow route, and DID come back to say how wonderful their studios turned out, with pictures and albums to prove it. Hmmm... maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere! :) Seriously, I've been here a year now, and I'm just finishing up the details of my design. I probably have another year or so ahead of me in actual construction, and all I'm doing is a simple small CR and tiny LR in my garage. Unless you have oodles of money and can afford to hire a studio design company to come do it all for you, with teams of people, it seems unlikely you'll accomplish anything in just one month. It took met that long just to figure out that floating my floor would have been a bad idea! Good luck with your build! And read the stickies. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

I want to complete the construction within a month.

Good luck with that! :!: Most people spend months here first learning about acoustics and how to design their studio, then months more designing it, then months more actually building it. Very few even try to do it all in a month. And of those few that HAVE tried, I can't recall seeing a single one who came back to tell us how great it turned out.... On the other hand, you'll find numerous threads here from folks who took the long, slow route, and DID come back to say how wonderful their studios turned out, with pictures and albums to prove it. Hmmm... maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere! :) Seriously, I've been here a year now, and I'm just finishing up the details of my design. I probably have another year or so ahead of me in actual construction, and all I'm doing is a simple small CR and tiny LR in my garage. Unless you have oodles of money and can afford to hire a studio design company to come do it all for you, with teams of people, it seems unlikely you'll accomplish anything in just one month. It took met that long just to figure out that floating my floor would have been a bad idea! Good luck with your build! And read the stickies.

Think of TRUE/"pure" Room within a Room design as building a COMPLETE building within another building, except that you just don't put a roof on the inner building. Nothing in the structure of any room should physically touch any other aspect of any adjacent room. To back up Stuart a bit.... Granted I had several months worth of delays.... by neighbor being an absolute prick, my mother passing away and my brother having heart surgery, but my build has taken a solid 30 months, with me doing 80% of the labor... solo.... and I still have another 2-3 weeks before I can get my CO, and probably another 6-8 weeks to finalize gear installation and get the doors actually open for business. I know for a fact that I have taken at least 2 hours at each major stage, to ensure that I have not "shorted out" any room to another room... I've taken several hundred hours just to caulk the seams of every possible air leakage point in each major stage. I know too, that at the end of this insanity, that whatever coupling between rooms that is there (by law/code, there is some minimal contact from rockwool and fire caulk) is as little as possible, and that the facility will be as good as I can possibly make it. Had I taken shortcuts, circumvented the design, cheapped out on essential elements or just plain gotten sloppy, I would have pissed away a significant investment of blood, sweat, tears, time and money. A month to construct a 500 sq ft studio.... not gonna happen unless you have a crew of 6 framers, 4 concrete workers, 4 general laborers, 2 electricians, 4 HVAC guys, 4 gypsum guys, 4 general/finish carpenters, 2 plumbers, 2 runners and a barmaid with a beer truck, working 7 days a week and all your material is already ordered and delivered on call.