Help me do the best i can..

Ciao!! Sorry for my english.. I ask all of you some help to do the best i can in my studio. I have an open space 11,40m x 5,10m in a building at low level. I want to have 1 control room, 1 drum booth and 1 big room for recording and reharse. Room is made of 12cm brick and plaster on it. Floor is made of concrete with tiles on it. Ceiling is made of concrete and bricks with plaster on it and has some metal beam with plaster. You can see everything in the pictures and the model (true dimensions). I found inside the room very bad made subdivisions and isolation. I'm gonna remove everything and start again from zero. but i'll keep all that is good: lot of rockwool, lot of plasterboard 10 cm, some wood joists,some wood boards, some lead sheets (very slim)... With this material and new to buy, i want to have: 1 control room quite isolated. Possibility to upgrade isolation in future. 1 Drum booth very very well isolated for recording. 1 big room for reharsing quite isolated. Possibility to upgrade isolation in future and do recording there as well. In this studio I'm going to record lot of rock music. Musicians one at the time. So i'm interested in getting at first a very very well isolated drum booth. i will use it later for bass amp. Then guitar amp....till the singer alone. Control room and Big room need of course isolation but i can do it with time. Drum booth is top priority. Need to stop sound of practicing rock bands in near rooms (since now called neighbours) on the 2 long walls. No need to stop my sound thru ceiling or floor, but need to isolate from vibrations coming from neighbours. I studied a bit this forum, learned a bit of sketch up and tried to draw something. i'm gonna add some mass (plaster board, lead sheets i found in place) to the exsisting wall to increase mass. Then build secondary decoupled wall with new material. Use Rockwool i found in place and maybe new one to fill in between theese walls. After this step build a floating like floor only in control room and drum booth. In the future would be nice to do also in Big room. After this step build ceiling for Control room and drum booth hanged with some sort of decoupling suspension. Thats more or less what i'm thinking to do by now. What do you think about the whole thing? Sketch up file Studio opt 1 is draft to understand dimensions of my ideas..yet to finish of course.. Thanks by now for your attention, this was to introduce me and my project, i'll ask more questions on "details" next time. Ciao Tango

welcome! looks like a nice big space. which wall are the neighbors on? are they directly attached to this space? if so, you're probably going to have to do some work to be fully decoupled from the building.

yes Glenn, but when drawing inside seems to have always less space than needed. i soon post a drawing of the inside i'm thinkin about more accurate. The neighbors are beyond the two long walls.

To maximize the space overhead and ensure isolation your going to have to build up in between each existing beam and effectively encase it. And to add to it, do that within the constant of each room so they are isolated from each other...

Yes, that's what i thought.. I have to spread the works in different times. the best would be do first the walls. Then floor and ceiling in the 3 rooms i'll create(fully decoupled from all the existing structures+decoupled from the new walls). What do you think Glenn about that? Could be equal, worst or better than building first floor and then walls? I'd like to build walls decoupled from existing walls, floor and ceiling. Cut a kind of U in the plasterboards to let them perfectly fit around the beam and ceiling. Gap filled with rockwool. Detail 1 Pic shows what i said (on the floor), dark grey stripe is kind of rubber to decouple. Plasterboard will be only in the inside room face. Detail 2 pic shows for example wall between Control Room and Drum booth.(CR up right, DB up left, little gap to existing wall(but hidden) down ) Or anyway the walls inside the new isolated perimeter i just created near the existing walls. Do you think i'll have to separate the two room's perimeters in the point indicated by the arrow? Ciao e grazie!! Ale Forgive me for the still not accurate drawing, i'm getting more and more precise, but i need time.

Ciao! I kept drawing in these days and that's what looks like my favourite room arrangement. I'd like to receive suggestions.. Ale

you will need to separate the rooms. you have some options for independently floating the walls and the floor so the isolation walls sit on the existing floor via isolation mounts, and the inner floor is floated on rigid insulation. you could also make the rooms rectangular (choose good ratios) and use treatments inside the room for the angles - this can help with creating more overall volume and possibly simplify the construction for you and your builders.

Ciao! These days i'm removing some of the material in the studio. I post you one pictures showing some bad work of previous owner. He didn't isolate the inner wall from the existing structure, also if he did the work with expensive material as a lot of lead sheet. But this is good because i have a lot of material to recycle for a better rebuilding. Second picture shows side view of the old treatment, i already removed one layer of plasterboard. About this i have some questions. What is the better i can do with material i already have? 1: outer world-existing concrete wall-rockwool(which side the paper?)-air-again rockwool(which side the paper?)-lead sheet-plasterboard-my studio 2: outer world-existing concrete wall-lead sheet-Rockwool(which side the paper?)-air-Rockwool(...)-plasterboard-my studio 3: other.. Another question I'm going to build the new long (11,4 mt) second wall. the one after entering the studio on the right. I have no old treatment on existing wall (30 cm bricks). I want to loose about 20 cm of space. I have mdf 2cm and plasterboard 1cm for all the surface. I have rockwool 5cm 40kg for all the surface. I need to isolate well from the band reharsing beyond the existing wall. Do you think is good with that recycled(removed from other points of the room) material or ... ...a lot better if i add more rockwool, maybe heavyier or.. ...a lot better if i add mass(plasterboard or recycled lead sheet) to existing wall or.. ...other ideas? I can spend some money for that wall if it can give me 6db more isolation or even more. Thanks for your attention.. Ale

"1: outer world-existing concrete wall-rockwool(which side the paper?)-air-again rockwool(which side the paper?)-lead sheet-plasterboard-my studio" Your finish room should resemble this picture that you posted of the existing walls configuration. This is a basic double wall assembly that everyone is talking about:) If you have lead sheets, and it reads like you do, this is a good thing. The paper on the insulation always goes to the warm side/interior of the building. When you are trying to isolate, that means stop sound, you want mass. Insulation does stop some mids and high frequencies, but mass stops the low frequency and taking care of the low end as a focus will eventually get a better overall isolation level on all the frequencies.

Thanks for the answer, also if i think i understood all the topics i read..sometimes is better to ask again.. Everything clear with the double wall you suggest me. And i understand the paper side.. My indecision is : it's better to put some mass to contact with existing wall? or put all the mass i have in the second wall i'm goin to rebuild? Something changes in this two configurations? Thanks a lot Ciao Ale

if the exterior mass is concrete already, then i would put the mass on the inner walls.

especially if it is lead sheets....

Ok. Existing wall-rockwool-air gap-rockwool-mdf 2cm-plasterboard 1,2 cm-lead sheet 2mm- plasterboard 1,8cm This should be good, and i only need to buy plasterboard 1,8 cm and metal studs.. Thanks, i'm very close to start building the long wall. Today i finished to remove old floor in all the room, disassemble old control room and the ceiling too. Repaired the plasterboard removed, cutting out all the irregular sides and adding paper tape all around. Removed a lot of wood beam, i will probably use them for the floor. And finally cleaned a very lot of dust in the room.. Tomorrow back in the old studio to record lethal poison drum tracks and in the evening my girlfriend's birthday.. But on monday i'll continue working and take some pictures for who is interested. Thank you all, you are very valuable resource.. Ciao Ale