Trying to avoid a triple leaf system in a new build

Hi, Long time lurker, first time poster. Love this site. I can't seem to find an ongoing thread with the following problem. Please advise if there is one. I'm in the planning stages of a new studio build in a commercial building. It is a private room meant for myself, my projects and is not intended to be a 'commercial bookable studio' in the conventional sense. For this reason, it only has to satisfy myself and will be set up and designed for my personal work flow. It's basically my home studio... just not in my home. (the wife has put up long enough.) My construction budget is not great at $40k US, but I'm hoping I can build something functional enough for ME. I need one large master control room, one edit room for my assistant, a shared iso room, a small green room and a computer/storage room. Please excuse my novice sketchup diagram. I'm still getting the hang of it and am amazed at the great sketches I see on this site. I'm hoping the sketchup is good enough to ask some questions. The setup: My studio space is 41' long x 33'5" wide x ~24' high. Concrete slab metal ceiling with open girders. From what I know right now, the existing walls are 2 x 6 steel studs with one layer drywall either side, floor to ceiling. no insulation. I have the ability to add greenglue/drywall to my neighbor's walls if needed. My suite is in the SW corner. The SE corner belongs to my friend, the owner who has himself a large makeshift studio and drum room that is only useable after 7pm, due to: there's a cell phone store in the NW suite and a RealEstate office in the NE suite. My question: My existing common walls with my neighbors are 24' floor to ceiling. My studio rooms within my space will only be 10'-12' high. I CAN greenglue, dbl gyp my neighbors walls (very expensive @ 41' x 24'), take off the inside drywall of my perimeter wall, fill with insulation and then frame in my studio rooms. No triple leaf prob. However, my studio walls will only be built ~12' high. I'm just not sure what to do with the common wall higher than my ceiling height. Should I still remove the inside drywall right to the ceiling and insulate? or just leave it with the existing drywall and just block it off somehow at my 'inside room' height, where presumably it makes sense to take off the drywall in order to avoid the triple leaf dilemma? It's hard for me to describe this. I hope it makes sense. I've included a sketchup below. Keep in mind the inside rooms are just drawn to show my dilemma. They're not the exact dimension, design, placement, etc... Any ideas on what to do with the common walls? kcvolt

If the cavity is really large, then less of a triple leaf concern. What is the distance from the proposed new room and the existing wall (with the drums on the other side)?

well, I had planned on just leaving about an 1 1/2" gap between the existing common wall and my inside wall plate. I guess that would make my control room inside drywall 5" from the common wall. However, I have some room to play with. I'd rather not lose a whole foot but I could leave say 6" between the common wall and my plate if that really helped....

I see. The image you posted looks like several feet of space. I'd say your triple leaf concerns are justified. It would be tricky to sew together the new structure with the old, since you'd be looking at removing only part of the drywall on that large original wall.

It might help if you were to describe the isolation issues in more detail, such as how loud you are, how loud your friend is, how quite you have to be, how much isolation you are getting with the existing structure, what is the rest of the existing structure made of (floor, ceilings, doors, windows, ducts, pipes, etc.). What I understand from your description is that you are considering taking off the drywall on "your" side of the common wall, but only up to the same height as the new inner room that you plan to build, instead of taking it off all the way up. Is that the issue? I may be wrong here, but thinking it through logically I don't see how that would help very much, if you need really good isolation, since half of your common wall would be beefed-up single leaf with insulation, and the other half would be un-beefed up two-leaf, without insulation. A basic principle of acoustics is that sound will take the easiest path in or out of a room, just like water takes the easiest path down a hill, so my guess is that sound will simply ignore the good "beefed-up-and-insulated" part of your wall, taking the easier path through the "not-beefed-up-not-insulated-two-leaf" section. You'd probably also have some strange things going on with MSM resonance, since only part of your outer leaf is a participating properly, and the other part is doing it's own thing. So based on that rather un-scientific analysis, I'm guessing that what you propose won't work too well. On the other hand, with a 12 foot ceiling, you could have a pretty amazing live room in there.... :) Many folks here would kill to have such ceiling height available to them! - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

What I understand from your description is that you are considering taking off the drywall on "your" side of the common wall, but only up to the same height as the new inner room that you plan to build, instead of taking it off all the way up. Is that the issue? - Stuart -

That's my take on what he's looking to do.