New Studio Build in Nashville TN

Ok, I'm a contractor who's been hired to build a 600 square foot studio and a 250 square foot gym, giving the complete building a square footage of 850. The shape of the exterior of the building has been made to look like a regular house since codes and the historic commission have determined it must. I tried to copy John's "Corner Control Room" plan as well as I could fit it into the building and still allow access to all of the rooms from the entrance. First off, I would love to hear what you think will be my problems with this design and second, If you think I need to double wall the control room. Feel free to tear me a new one. I'm pretty thick skinned. Thanks, Richard

Hi Richard. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things! :) - Stuart -

Ok, Sorry for leaving out some info. The studio will be used for acoustic to rock bands but will mostly for cutting drums. No metal bands but you never know. I have no idea what SPL's are involved in that but I'm guessing you guys do. The building will be build in the back yard of my clients current house which is in a pretty quite neighborhood. My client's budget is $75K and at 850 square feet, I think that is not going to be enough. So my plan is to do all the necessary stuff within this budget and let them fill in the details as time goes on. Like I wrote earlier, this building is historically zoned, so it will have to look like the houses that surround it. I've attached a picture of the proposed exterior of the building. Please ignore the height of the foundation. Since the yard is sloped(2-3'/12') I had planned on building this on a crawl space but Stuart has already informed me that there is no way to have any sort of real sound isolation with a crawl so I am now planning to burry the back half of the house and possibly build the non studio portions of the building on a crawl to minimize excavation and back filling. The roof of the building is 4/12 and I plan on vaulting the live room but the drop ceiling will probably be vaulted at a shallower pitch. I plan on having two skylights on the live room and one in the control room as well(budget permitting). I plan on putting control joints in the slab between the control, live and vocal booth and building double walls in the live and vocal booth. All the exterior walls will be covered in fiber cement siding over 1/2" OSB and the inner walls I plan on just using two layers of 5/8 drywall in the studio areas and except where they are adjacent to a studio wall, I plan on using one layer of 1/2" drywall in the bathroom, entrance/kitchenette and gym. I was going to use Green Glue between the double 5/8 but I'm not really sure it will be worth the added cost. I just realized that my HVAC system will have to be redesigned since it was originally based on a crawl but that is a post for another section. My biggest concern right now is creating a floor plan that fits within my clients square footage requirements, allows for accessibility to all of the areas in the building without interrupting each other but in the end will not be a nightmare to make sound decent. As I stated in my first post, all I have done with my floor plan is copy John's corner control room floor plan as best I could within the building's shape because I though it fit my clients requirements the best. I realize that there will have to be a portion of this budget set aside for treating these rooms once they are built. If it's cheaper and sounds just as good to treat parallel walls than the angled ones I drew, then please save me the headache. Thanks, Richard

Not sure how I missed seeing this! :oops: Sorry! Better late than never, I guess.... :( One problem I noticed with your control room shape is that the front of the room is not symmetrical. Symmetry is very important for room acoustics, at least for the front half, but your's isn't symmetrical. i would suggest trying to fix that.

I have no idea what SPL's are involved in that but I'm guessing you guys do.

upwards of 115, probably around 120 (C, Slow).

My client's budget is $75K and at 850 square feet, I think that is not going to be enough.

Definitely on the low side! You still didn't follow the posting rules, so I don't know where you live, but in most parts of the world $88 per square foot is not going to be enough to build a place from the ground up. If you were just modifying an existing building, that would probably be OK, but not for starting from an empty piece of ground.

I plan on vaulting the live room but the drop ceiling will probably be vaulted at a shallower pitch.

An angled drop ceiling? In a live room? That sounds a bit strange. Maybe you could elaborate on that?

I plan on having two skylights on the live room and one in the control room as well(budget permitting).

Skip that. Seriously, doing skylights and still maintain very high levels of isolation is already a pain in a certain anatomical area, but doing so on a very tight budget is a recipe for disaster. Forget sklights. If you want natural light, do windows. But even then they would have to be very small, due to the budget.

and building double walls in the live and vocal booth.

But not the control room? :shock: so no isolation is needed? I thought you said you planned to be tracking and mixing rock groups: How are you going to do that successfully if the CR is not isolated?

All the exterior walls will be covered in fiber cement siding over 1/2" OSB and the inner walls I plan on just using two layers of 5/8 drywall in the studio areas

You'll need something substantially more massive than that for the levels isolation you are talking about.

I was going to use Green Glue between the double 5/8 but I'm not really sure it will be worth the added cost.

If you need serious isolation for low frequencies (drums, bass, electric guitars, keyboards) then yes, it certainly would be worth the added cost. But you don't have the budget to do that, by the sounds of it, so you'll probably just have to live with the not-so-great low frequency isolation.

I just realized that my HVAC system will have to be redesigned since it was originally based on a crawl but that is a post for another section.

That's a major part of studio design, and requires a lot of space. Much more than for a typical house or office HVAC, since the ducts have to be over-sized to keep the air velocity low, and the silencer boxes take up a lot of room. Yours more than most, since you need high levels of isolation.

I realize that there will have to be a portion of this budget set aside for treating these rooms once they are built.

Right! But the treatment has to be designed at the same time as the rooms, if you want to have them sounding good. You need to allow for treatment space as part of the room design, and the amount of space / type of treatment depends on the room shape / size / purpose as well as the goals for the studio as a whole.

If it's cheaper and sounds just as good to treat parallel walls than the angled ones I drew, then please save me the headache.

Well, it is possible to build studios with all parallel walls, but only if you do not want an RFZ based design (or one that works on similar principles). So first you should choose your basic design concept, then shape and size the rooms accordingly, then adjust that to allow for treatment, access, sight lines, geometry, HVAC, etc. - Stuart -