Looking to validate small studio design

Good evening, I have been reading information all over this site and the internet. First of all, thank you for this site! This is my first attempt at posting, so I would appreciate your patience! I am a professional musician/ somewhat amateur producer. I normally work in professional studios in NYC and what have you, but have been doing a lot of ministry based music work, and am looking to turn a spare room in my house into a small studio to record vocals and some guitars and violins. I would like the control room to eventually be correct enough to do some real mixing in, and the isolation room to be big enough and isolated enough to record drums. Neighbors aren't really an issue, and most of the music is pretty low key acoustic type stuff so the main thing is that the isolation room is quite. The room is about 20' by 18' with 9' 4" drop ceilings. The only odd thing in the room is an 18"x18" "shelf" along one of the walls which is plumbed and has some duct work in it. Attached are pictures of the room as is, and my design for the studio. The control room walls are 6 degrees off, and the isolation room is sort of the remainder. I was planning on doing 2 sheets of sheetrock, with offset studs with insulation for the walls. Doors are standard wood exterior doors. Window is actually 1 pane 1/8" on one side and 1/4" on the other side, 6 degrees off from one another. Other dimensions are illustrated on the sketchup file. The floor is carpeted concrete. My budget is $0. Haha, as cheap as possible but any total under $4000 could probably work. I know you probably hate reading this, but I guess my only questions are: 1) Will this design with the described wall build technique provide an adequate amount of isolation and acoustic correctness for the above goals? 2) Are there any problem areas the experts can see with this design? I'm sorry I don't have more articulate questions for you, but those are my goals and plans, which I came up with after extensive research. So I hope some of you can weight in and tell me whether or not I am on the right track. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU in advance for any help you can provide me with. God Bless, Jeff B

Hi, Are you taking into consideration flanking through the floor and ceiling? Are you going to pull all the original drywall? More detail would be helpful and pictures of existing would be good as well. Regards, Steve

Thanks for the reply, Steve. I don't have any pictures of the current room. I haven't considered flanking through the floor. It is currently concrete covered with carpet. How worried should I be about this if I am mostly only going to be doing acoustic and vocal work? The ceiling is a drop ceiling with acoustic tile. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, really. I have spent so many hours trying to design this thing appropriately. Now I am starting to wonder if the CR in that design is actually too large. I end up with a ratio of 1:1(average):1.9. I guess that's probably not very good for a CR. So I don't know....I guess its back to the drawing board ;) What are your thoughts? Thanks again, really appreciate it. Jeff

Ok some more information and another idea. I went to the house (we are actually moving in this weekend) and measured the ceiling again (forgot to take pictures). The drop ceiling is 9'4". The studs start about 8" above that, and the exterior roof starts 18" above the drop ceiling. So theoretically, can I use 9'4" + 8" = 120" to calculate the room ratios and sheetrock at the studs? Hopefully yes. :) Here is a new design that is closer to a 1:1.4:1.9 ratio. Still not sure if a double leaf wall will be enough isolation for the other room to be used as a live room for recording guitar, vocals, etc. Questions: 1) Is this a better design for an accurate mixing room and quite live room? 2) Is the above ratio calculated correctly and is it acceptable for an accurate mixing environment? 3) After adding the room treatments pictured, could I still have a communication window between the two rooms? 4) The south wall was actually an exterior wall before this room was added 20 years ago. It is stone with sheetrock over it. Will this be a problem if the new wall is sheetrock- offset studs- sheetrock? As in too asymmetrical? Or are the relevant frequencies so undirectional (yeah, that's a word, right? :) that the treatments will even things out enough? Thanks again for everything! Jeff Ok app

Ok so somehow my sketchup file got too large to upload. How can I resize it? Tx Jeff

Sketchup- do a search, common problem. Still unclear on your construction methods, from the sound of it there is going to be 3 leaves in there at least. Suspended ceiling is no good for isolation. Is this a Rancher? Trying to figure out the room in relation to the house. What is right next to it?Kitchen?Bedroom? Have you got a copy of Rod's book? Regards, Steve

Steve, Thanks again for all the help. I guess I haven't been very good about supplying the pertinent information. So thank you for your patience. The house is an anomaly. If you walked south out of this room, you would actually enter the "great room" of the original house which is about 45x25'. So that wall is actually stone. This room was added to be a separate apartment one day if desired. So there isn't very much noise coming into this space as the kitchen, bathrooms, heaters, etc. are all really far away. Biggest noise maker is probably the forced air HVAC. Here is the new sketchup with a better room ratio. Since the drop ceiling is no good for isolation, I could replace it and tie a new ceiling into the studs at the elevation of 10'. So my hope was to use the existing walls and/or build a room in a room. I don't own the home yet so I am a little leery of taking down the existing drywall. So could it be just the one new wall to separate the room into two? To avoid three leaves, could I just do existing wall--> space--> frame--> drywall? I do not have a copy of Rod's book. I ordered it yesterday, but I was actually hoping to start this in the next week or so. Catch-22 between wanting to do this right and a pending project with a deadline! Thanks again for helping out. I really appreciate it. Jeff

Do a little more research on two leaf walls. For isolation, none of the interior walls of your room (your inner leaf) can touch any of your other room's inner walls or any of the 2nd leaf walls either. Do some more research and the concept will become clear. Regards, Steve

Sorry Steve. I did read a lot about walls for the studio and thought I understood it quite well. here is a model of what I am hoping to do in terms of the build. Basically the wall between the control room and iso room is 5/8" drywall--> 3/4" drywall--> 2x4--> 1" space--> 2x4--> 3/4" drywall--> 5/8" drywall. Am considering doing two doors between the rooms. The other walls of the iso room are existing wall--> 1" space--> 2x4--> 3/4" drywall-0> 5/8" drywall. So as far as I can tell, the only places the two would actually make contact would be the concrete floor and ceiling. Again thank you for your patience. Please let me know what concept I'm violating with this plan. Thank you!!!!!!! Jeff

Oops...that was silly of me. 3/8th sheetrock and 5/8th sheetrock rather... Just to clarify