Asking before I buy ....

Hi, Now I'm afraid I have to break the rules a bit cos this is a general question .. for a couple of reasons. I have been on here for 2 weeks solid, every day reading, reading, reading. And I am sooo glad this place exists. There are a few common things I have seen. 1. People who don't take the good advice here generally have to rip out some(or all) of their build to do it right. 2. The 2-leaf/3 leaf concept is central to sound isolation. 3. When I am budgeting .. I should leave some money for fixing the acoustics after the build .. cos the real world implementation of even the best plans seems to always need a bit of adjusting with extra traps, more dispersion etc. So .. on to my question .. and what is this "before I buy" business all about? Well, I live in Madrid, Spain. I am lucky enough to be able to buy a house now that the market is dropping. I want to build a studio into my house and my work-flow as a songwriter means I want to be able to sing out loud at 2 in the morning without having to bother anyone (I'm good with 5 hours sleep a night). I want to have a live room but would only use on occasion for drums, guitar-players with amps .. and that usage would be during weekends, probably at reasonable times of day. Mixing would happen - at the recommended 85 db - also late into the night. House types available to me: 1. Apartment .. with common walls(brick), floors(concrete) and ceilings(concrete) with neighbours 2. Terraced house with studio in garage/basement below .. common walls(concrete) with other garages, my garage ceiling (concrete) would extend into terraced houses on either side 3. Semi-detached house with studio in garage/basement below .. one common wall with other garage and my garage ceiling (concrete) would extend into the adjoining house 4. Detached house I can afford up to 3 .. but 4 would be a push and leave me with no cash for my studio build My question is this: As everyone seems to be building floating rooms with high mass walls .. is there any real advantage of 3 over 2? (cos the price difference is about 60.000 Euros) Thanks,

Ceiling height is probably more important - if you want to float a room totally in the garage you will lose headroom so find a nice high ceiling.

Thanks John, So from what you say then, I understand that terraced or semi-D .. the more important thing is to have a good ceiling height. I've just started Philip Newell's book "Recording Studio Design" .. and lo and behold on page 8 he already says that anything below 3.75 meters is going to make it very difficult to have an excellent sound in the room cos you're going to want to use a meter in the ceiling and 20 cm or so in the floor ... So I'll be house hunting with my measuring tape in hand, though I expect this will be a tough one to find .. as most garage/basements in Spain will have around 3 meters height. Good thing I asked before buying though :-)

anything below 3.75 meters is going to make it very difficult to have an excellent sound in the room cos you're going to want to use a meter in the ceiling and 20 cm or so in the floor ...

well - I'll dispute that - there is NO dimension in a control room that can't be resolved by paying attention to the overall acoustic. May I refer you to this room http://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Hello_Testing.htm I'd visit this studio regularly as the owner was a friend of mine and every time he played me something I'd say in my head "f**K this room sounds nice" It's not about size, it's about dealing with the environment you have and treating it appropriately. This friend had a couple of hallways lined with global awards for the work he created in this studio.

The deeper you get into an acoustics conversation, the more of a religion it seems :-) That's a beautiful little studio/CR and I love the Star Trek look to the control desk :D Good news to hear your opinion on the minimum height because I'm not sure many 'standard' basements go above 3 meters and a bit. So .. my search for a house now continues as I keep studying on this excellent forum.