First studio for a newbie

Hi everyone, Happened upon this wealth of information while searching for info on studio design and layout. Have spent the last few hours reading the forum and drawing up a rough sketch of a space that I may sign a lease on this week. The space used to be a conference room and has double walls on three sides so the isolation is decent. Also has some added diffusion material on two of the walls, the drop ceiling will need some material, planning to use bonded logic r13 up there. My main concern at this point is the layout of the space, the entry way steps into a tiled hallway that has 3 doors total, one to the bathroom the other to enter the conference room and of course the entrance/exit. It's funny because the hallway has glass looking into the isolated conference room, which made me think that it may work well for a control room, however the tiled hallway is only 8 feet wide and would be the main traffic way. The space is very nice as is and I do not believe the owner will allow me to move any of the existing walls, however I may be able to add walls or doors as long as they do not destroy the carpet tile or ceiling. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. The sketchup file was pretty large but if anyone has any ideas they would like to throw at me I would be happy to send over the full file for you to modify. Cheers, Steve

since you might not have any options to do any serious level of construction, you might want to do a few things before signing a lease: 1) find out explicitly what you can or cannot do with the walls and ceiling 2) do some sound level measurements to see if the isolation is any good. if you're limited in #1 and the isolation turns out to be no good enough, then you may be stuck with a lease and a unusable space...

HI Glenn, Thank you for the quick response, have not had the opportunity to do a sound measurement test, but here is what I've found out so far; The architect who designed and built this conference room did so to keep outside road noise out for meeting purpose, double walls, thick acoustic ceiling panels and added soundproofing. The owner is fine with me adding insulation above the existing drop ceiling and also hanging anything from the wooden ceiling above, and covering that wooden ceiling if necessary. The owner does not want any existing walls torn down, however he is fine with installing any temporary type of walls, as long as they can be built and removed without destroying the carpet or ceiling. I made a mistake with two of the measurements on the drawing (Was up very late working on it) Anyway the mistakes have been corrected in red and attached. Also found a roomtune spreadsheet on the forum here. I'll attach the measurements that I've plugged into the spreadsheet for feedback. Thinking about dividing the larger 32' x 12' section into control room and live room, working on the google sketch now to update measurements and add walls. will use the other area as a second smaller room and plan to leave the hallway for storage and loading in and out.

keep in mind the conference room isolation may have been defined for the normal STC range (125hz and up - about half of the frequency range in your spreadsheet...) and for drums and bass this could be problematic. at a practical limit, unless the floor as been correctly floated and decoupled from the building, you probably would not be able to get more than 40db isolation before flanking becomes the predominate level. this may be more of concern for sound going in than out but it also depends on your neighbors in the building as well... i'm assuming the area with the doors and tile floor is the hallway and the space you can use if the 12x32 space?

Glenn, Thanks for the drawing, that is similar to what I had in mind for the 32 x 12 x 10. I would also be able to use the 9' x 6' space at the end of the hallway which would give me another Isolated room if necessary. there is only one neighbor in the building and he is using it primarily for storage and has agreed that any sound will not be a problem. Also the part of the building he is in has a concrete floor and the conference room is built on a seperate raised floor, not too sure about the type of construction for the raised floor. Thanks again for all the help.