New STUDIO BUILD (HELP WITH WALL CONSTRUCTION)

Hi i am building a new studio in Albany NY. I have attached my drawings from my architect. I am at a crossroads with which wall system i should use ive considered building the room (colored green) first , then building the interior rooms (labeled red). I would also like to know how each wall should be layered. Thank you I appreciate all the help! Also should the walls go straight to the concrete then the floors or the floors in first then the walls on top of the new floor?

Hi Mike, you'll get a better response if you read through and address the points in the 'before you post' thread at the top of the forum :D . Having said that, before you start putting walls up, you'll want to re think that layout. Mostly the control room. It's got quite a few issues with it's basic shape regarding symetry. I'm also not sure how you could have gone to an architect to draw plans when you don't yet know how you're going to construct your walls. You'll find all the basic information about wall, ceiling, floor construstion if you search through the forum for those topics. cheers, steve

Mike, I'm totally with Steve on this: There are clearly concepts here that the architect doesn't understand, and as designed right now, that studio is not going to be very good, from both the acoustic and practical points of view. There's just so much wrong there that it's going to take a lot of re-design to get it usable. Starting with your basic question:

I am at a crossroads with which wall system i should use ive considered building the room (colored green) first , then building the interior rooms (labeled red). I would also like to know how each wall should be layered.

Right there, there's an issue. There are not TWO walls around the studio: there is only ONE wall. Yes, it is a two-leaf wall, that can be mistaken for two separate walls, but in reality it is a wall system that is designed to maximize isolation while minimizing cost and use of space. Building two walls is actually worse for isolation than building one properly fully-decoupled 2-leaf MSM isolation wall. It is also more expensive, and takes up much more space. A studio wall consists if two leaves: the "outer" leaf, and the "inner" leaf. Each leaf is built on a separate frames, and the frames do not touch each other. In fact, no part of the inner-leaf can be permitted to touch any part of the outer-leaf. That's what the phrase "fully decoupled" means. Usually, the outer leaf is the building shell itself that surrounds the entire studio area, which is hopefully brick or concrete, or sometimes is existing walls stripped back to just one leaf (in other words, if it was a typical stud-framed wall the the drywall must come off one side, leaving only one leaf of drywall n the other side of the studs, and then the mass is beefed up with additional layers of drywall on top of that bass layer, as needed to tune the wall correctly). The inner-leaf of each room is commonly built as a stud frame with ceiling joists resting on top, and drywall on only one side of that framing (never both: that would make it 3-leaf, which is bad). But the main issue in the drawings produced by your architect is that the basic design is very poor acosutically, and also very poor functionally. For example, right now there is no place to put the main speakers in the control room, as they would have to be moved out of the way each time the door to the live room is opened. There is no separate path from the live room to the outside world, so all of the gear and instruments must be dragged through the control room to get to the live room, then dragged out again by the same path once the session is over. Load-in and load-out will be a nightmare. And if a musician even needs to go to the bathroom, he still has to go through the control room to get there. The "kinked" front wall of the control room provides no suitable place for soffit-mounting the speakers, and even if they are just on stands, the shape is wrong, the dimensions are wrong, and the angles are wrong, acoustically. Ditto for the major discontinuity at the rear of the control room, where the door is. There is basically no symmetry at all in the control room: the two side walls are at different angles, different lengths, and with different acoustic terminations. It would be really hard to produce even a balanced simple stereo mix in there, and it that is going to be multi-channel... well, umm... :shock: :!: There is also no isolation system between the live room and the iso booth, so that would not be very usable, either as a vocal booth or for isolating amps. It needs to be built the same as all the other rooms, with a fully-decoupled 2-leaf MSM wall, if you hope to get good isolation. Overall, there are many other issues that need fixing, but those are the big ones. Once you get those sorted out, then please post an updated drawing (or just a simple sketch, even), so we can help you with the next round of issues. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Mike, I'm totally with Steve on this: There are clearly concepts here that the architect doesn't understand, and as designed right now, that studio is not going to be very good, from both the acoustic and practical points of view. There's just so much wrong there that it's going to take a lot of re-design to get it usable. Starting with your basic question:

I am at a crossroads with which wall system i should use ive considered building the room (colored green) first , then building the interior rooms (labeled red). I would also like to know how each wall should be layered.

Right there, there's an issue. There are not TWO walls around the studio: there is only ONE wall. Yes, it is a two-leaf wall, that can be mistaken for two separate walls, but in reality it is a wall system that is designed to maximize isolation while minimizing cost and use of space. Building two walls is actually worse for isolation than building one properly fully-decoupled 2-leaf MSM isolation wall. It is also more expensive, and takes up much more space. A studio wall consists if two leaves: the "outer" leaf, and the "inner" leaf. Each leaf is built on a separate frames, and the frames do not touch each other. In fact, no part of the inner-leaf can be permitted to touch any part of the outer-leaf. That's what the phrase "fully decoupled" means. Usually, the outer leaf is the building shell itself that surrounds the entire studio area, which is hopefully brick or concrete, or sometimes is existing walls stripped back to just one leaf (in other words, if it was a typical stud-framed wall the the drywall must come off one side, leaving only one leaf of drywall n the other side of the studs, and then the mass is beefed up with additional layers of drywall on top of that bass layer, as needed to tune the wall correctly). The inner-leaf of each room is commonly built as a stud frame with ceiling joists resting on top, and drywall on only one side of that framing (never both: that would make it 3-leaf, which is bad). But the main issue in the drawings produced by your architect is that the basic design is very poor acosutically, and also very poor functionally. For example, right now there is no place to put the main speakers in the control room, as they would have to be moved out of the way each time the door to the live room is opened. There is no separate path from the live room to the outside world, so all of the gear and instruments must be dragged through the control room to get to the live room, then dragged out again by the same path once the session is over. Load-in and load-out will be a nightmare. And if a musician even needs to go to the bathroom, he still has to go through the control room to get there. The "kinked" front wall of the control room provides no suitable place for soffit-mounting the speakers, and even if they are just on stands, the shape is wrong, the dimensions are wrong, and the angles are wrong, acoustically. Ditto for the major discontinuity at the rear of the control room, where the door is. There is basically no symmetry at all in the control room: the two side walls are at different angles, different lengths, and with different acoustic terminations. It would be really hard to produce even a balanced simple stereo mix in there, and it that is going to be multi-channel... well, umm... :shock: :!: There is also no isolation system between the live room and the iso booth, so that would not be very usable, either as a vocal booth or for isolating amps. It needs to be built the same as all the other rooms, with a fully-decoupled 2-leaf MSM wall, if you hope to get good isolation. Overall, there are many other issues that need fixing, but those are the big ones. Once you get those sorted out, then please post an updated drawing (or just a simple sketch, even), so we can help you with the next round of issues. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart I have attached a sketch of an updated design i hope this one works a little better. I Would like to add that every room (iso booth, Live room, Control room) will be completely separate rooms (decoupled walls). When i said i was at a cross roads as to what i should do about the walls i meant should i use a staggered stud method or a double stud method. And i would also like to add that the ceilings in this building already have sheet rock on them so i would like to decouple the ceilings in every room. If you have any good ideas how i can accomplish this that would be great. Also i would like to know how i should layer the inside walls of every room. For example 1-studs with mineral wool insulation 2- RC1 3- Sheetrock 4- Greenglue 5-sheetrock. Thank you for you help thus far.

Hi Stuart I have attached a sketch of an updated design i hope this one works a little better. I Would like to add that every room (iso booth, Live room, Control room) will be completely separate rooms (decoupled walls). When i said i was at a cross roads as to what i should do about the walls i meant should i use a staggered stud method or a double stud method. And i would also like to add that the ceilings in this building already have sheet rock on them so i would like to decouple the ceilings in every room. If you have any good ideas how i can accomplish this that would be great. Also i would like to know how i should layer the inside walls of every room. For example 1-studs with mineral wool insulation 2- RC1 3- Sheetrock 4- Greenglue 5-sheetrock. Thank you for you help thus far.