Advice needed on Studio build / Soundproofing

I'm building a small recording studio in San Angelo, TX and need some advice on the construction and soundproofing of my space. The studio is being built into an old brick building that my brother-in-law owns. He is letting me use the space rent-free, but I have to share the building with a hair salon. My portion of the building consists of 2 rooms (control room - 16'Lx13'Wx12'H, and Live room - 20'Lx15'Wx12'H). My biggest concern is that the live room is adjacent to the salon and they are only separated by the 20' partition wall. The salon will be open from 9am-6pm Tues-Fri & 9am-2pm Sat. I work a day job and will do most of my recording after 6pm during the week and on the weekends, however, I would like to be able to occasionally do some tracking while the salon is open. Currently, the building has a concrete floor, plaster covered brick walls around the perimeter of the building, windows only in the salon area & restrooms, and a tin ceiling through out. Framing for all interior walls has already been completed using wood studs at 16" spacing. I plan on putting a single layer of 5/8" drywall & R13 batt insulation on the salon side of the wall, and two layers of 5/8" drywall mounted on resilient channel on the studio side. The floor will most likely be laminate flooring. My brother-in-law wants to keep the tin ceilings through-out the building. So, I need to figure out if that's going to cause problems for my soundproofing or not. I'm pretty sure the tin is mounted directly to the ceiling joists with no insulation behind it. The joists run perpendicular to the wall that separates the studio from the salon, so the air space between the joists runs over the studio and salon. I currently only have about $1000 to spend on the drywall, resilient channel, and insulation. After that's gone, I can afford to spend about $100 per week on the project, but would like to invest that money elsewhere, if possible. Please advise as to what my best options are for soundproofing this space. I don't expect to be able to have a full band rocking out without people in the salon being able to hear it, but I would like to be able to record guitars or vocals and the salon be able to drown it out with the radio at normal volume. Thanks for your help.

Not to be a buzzkill, but I doubt that you'll get much sound isolation for $1000. You should spend some time reading this site to see how others have built sound isolation. And learn about the attached STC chart below. But you would need two stud walls (one on your side, one on the salon side) with no drywall in the middle. You'll also probably need your own ceiling structure and ceiling drywall inside your space that is decoupled from the other ceiling/roof structure. You almost need to build a sealed structure that is only connected to the rest of the building on the ground. You'll see that sound isolation techniques usually involve a Mass Air Mass design that you can learn about on this site, and in books like Rod Gervais', "Home Recording Studio: Build It Like the Pros". Posting pictures and drawings of what you have would help.

So you don't think that a single stud wall with 5/8" drywall & R13 insulation on one side and 2 layers of 5/8" drywall mouted on resilient channel on the other side will be enough to dampen the sound of a guitar? What if I built the walls this way, took down the tin ceiling, stuffed R13 insulation into the spaces between the ceiling joists, then mounted 5/8" drywall to the ceiling using resilient channel?

The wall you are proposing would give decent isolation, not as good as two serarate stud walls, but decent. But that wall is only a part of the entire room structure. It doesn't make any sense to build a wall structure that gives better sound isolation than the ceiling components. If the ceiling is the weak link in terms of isolation, you'll let more sound escaping through the ceiling into the salon. When you are trying to do sound isolation, any one small weak link can defeat the entire system and cause all of your money and work to be wasted. Posting pictures of what you have, and posting drawings of what you want to build would help. Also, are you tracking acoustic drums in that live room?

I've attached a rough layout of the building. I don't have any actual pictures of the space at the moment, but will try to get some up in the next couple days. The red walls are the existing plaster covered brick walls that go around the exterior of the building. The blue wall is an existing partion wall that is 2"x4" framing, filled with R13 insulation, and 1 layer of 5/8" drywall on each side. The yellow walls are currently just 2"x4" framing, which I'd planned on just filling with R13 insulation and putting a layer of 5/8" drywall on each side (possibly 2 layers of 5/8" drywall on the control room wall. The green walls are the walls that I had planned on using the resilient channel on. I'd planned on leaving the existing blue partition wall as is for now, but if you think it will cause sound to bleed into the salon area, I can pull off the existing drywall on the live room side and replace it with resilient channel and 2 layers of 5/8" drywall. I will be tracking drums in there, but as I mentioned in my original post most of my recording will be done when the salon is closed. So, I figured I would just try and work my drum and bass tracking around the salon's business hours.

The yellow walls are currently just 2"x4" framing, which I'd planned on just filling with R13 insulation and putting a layer of 5/8" drywall on each side

I'm wondering why you don't need isolation between bathroom and control room? I would have thought that you'd want decent isolation there, considering the typical noises in bathrooms.

The blue wall is an existing partion wall that is 2"x4" framing, filled with R13 insulation, and 1 layer of 5/8" drywall on each side.

Again, I would have expected that you would want much better isolation than that between CR and LR. Personally I find it hard to track well when I can hear the same instrument in the speakers and also coming through the walls. Maybe it's just me, but I find that confusing.

I will be tracking drums in there,

Ouch! Tracking with drums on the other side of a thin wall would be unpleasant for me. Maybe you don't mind that, but for me it would be distracting. I like to hear the speakers as cleanly as I possibly can, to hear what I'm actually recording, rather than just guessing because the pristine speaker sound is muddied and masked by the heavy bleed through the walls.

The green walls are the walls that I had planned on using the resilient channel on.

You seem to be treating each wall differently! Once again, isolation is an "all or nothing" proposition. Just like you cannot build an aquarium with glass on some sides and cardboard on others, so you cannot isolate a room by only treating some walls, not others. You could put a two-foot thick high-density military-grade reinforced concrete wall where your green lines are, but it would be worth absolutely nothing in terms of isolation... unless you did the exact same to the other five sides of the room. Sound will simply flank around your fantastic wall, taking the easiest path. If the easy path happens to be through the attic space and tin roof, then that's the way it will go. Or if it happens to be out through the bathroom and down the passage, then that's where it will go. Or through the electrical work. Or through the HVAC ducts- Or through the doors or windows, if they are not built right and correctly sealed. Or.... In other words, if you want to isolate a room, you have to do the exact same thing on all six sides, or at the very least on the five walls plus the ceiling (provided that you already have a really good floor). Same mass, same air space, same isolation. Treating only one wall of a room is like trying to build that aquarium with only one piece of glass. All four walls, plus the ceiling, plus the doors, plus the windows, plus the HVAC system, plus the electrical instalation must all be built to the same level of isolation. If not, then you wasted time, money and effort on building the "good" parts, since they are worthless. An example. Build a fantastic room with brilliant STC-80 isolation all around, but only put an STC-40 door in. Guess what your isolation is for the entire room? Yup. Around STC 40. So unless you do the exact same on all sides of all your rooms, you might as well not bother. - Stuart -

Ok, so say I used the single layer of 5/8" drywall, R13 insulation, 2x4 wood framing, resilient channel, 2 layers of 5/8" drywall, and I did this to all of the walls in the live room and the control room (except the brick walls). Then I take down the tin ceiling, fill the space between the joists with R13 insulation (there's no attic by the way), put up resilient channel, and then 2 layers of 5/8" drywall. I fill all seams, gaps, holes, etc with acoustic caulk. Floors are laminate floor panels over concrete slab. And, I put in doors with a 55 stc rating. What kind of isolation could I expect then? Would I be able to record drums while the salon is open?

Almost ready to start putting up the insulation & drywall (waiting for electrician to finish). Anybody want to give their thoughts on my previous post? Need to know if it's going to be worth all the trouble of tearing out the existing ceiling and drywall to install the resilient channel, or if I should just save my money and plan on doing all my recording when the salon is closed? Soundman2020, what are your thoughts?

What kind of isolation could I expect then? Would I be able to record drums while the salon is open?

Hard to say exactly, but my guess would be that you'd get isolation somewhere in the high 50's. Which means that drums would end up as something like 60 to 70 dB on the other side of that wall. Is that quiet enough? That all depends on what is going on in the salon. If it is a noisy salon already, with hair dryers, people talking loudly, music, etc., then it might be OK. But if that is a quite salon, then it might be too much. If you need more isolation than that, then you'd need to increase the mass of both leaves on the walls/ceiling, and/or increase the air gaps between the leaves. You will probably also need to forget the RC and go with separate studs frames to get better isolation. And since drums put out a lot of low frequency energy, which is the hardest of all to isolate, I'd also suggest that you use Green Glue between the layers of drywall, to give you a bit extra isolation in the low end. - Stuart -