Another Studio Design - Well....More Like a Box

Hi all, Well my ongoing studio construction has been a nightmare. We expanded into a new location FIVE months ago and the contractor I had was worthless. Unfortunately it took me all this time to figure that out. I need to get up and running ASAP so I'm trying to go as simple as possible. Our warehouse is 3,000 sq ft but this is a "tenant improvement" and I'm responsible for tearing down when I leave. I looked into prefab studios but was quote $40,000 for something that's a piece of junk IMO or starting at $100,000 for something decent, but that's beyond my current budget. So, considerations: 1) We do a lot of midi production and work with keyboards so our control room needs to be pretty large. We have a lot of gear. 2) I wanted the main tracking room to be as close to 3700 cubic sq ft as possible while still allowing for two iso booths. 3) Expandable - With this layout I can add another vocal booth to the main tracking room or add storage along the right hand side of the control room I think. 4) We scratched our plans to incorporate a "B" studio at this point. But we can add that along the south wall at a later time. 5) We're commercial, and I've had two plans shot down by the city so I really need this to pass for permits. I have a new contractor and am more confident in him. Input appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I'm sure there's other people here who can help more with a layout than I can, so I'll just rattle off a couple things that come to mind... I think you should break the wall between the control room and the sound-lock to the office/bathroom area, mainly to cut down on structural sound transmission. It looks as if you've got double-walls between the control/tracking/iso and the neighbor's tenant space (to the right on your image) so that's good- if your isolation requirements make you think you won't be needing a double-wall between control and the office, that's fine. I personally would double-wall between tracking and control, just to make the isolation that much better when you're tracking drums or a full band. Will you be floating the floor? With this layout, doing just the tracking room should be enough. Perhaps the outer iso booth (on the right) to minimize noise getting to your neighbor when you put a full marshall stack in there and turn it up to 11. The building inspector may have a problem with double walls- he may instruct you to put draft-stopping at the top of the wall cavity to keep any fire that starts between the walls from spreading up and over them. Trouble is that this will make a structural connection that will negate the advantage of having a double wall. Ask the inspector about building the walls inside-out, with the drywall between the stud walls instead of outside- this will fire-protect the cavity and the inspector might think that would be sufficient. Whats your ceiling height in here?

dymaxian, Thank you so much for your input so far. Originally I had all three elements broken into seperate structures, but the city considered the area between as walkways and wanted wheelchair accessibility. That is one of the things that got my permit shot down before. The walls are 12' with a drop ceiling at 10'. I plan on using tiles instead of fiberboard on top, and can lights instead of fluorescent.

One thing with a studio this size is that the plan checker may object to the total distance and number of intervening spaces between the iso room and the exit

On the old plan that was booted, the city engineer said the number of doors and distance wasn't an issue as long as all the doors extrude towards the outside. What they DID have a problem with is that if there's more than 10 people in the building at a time, they want to see two bathrooms. The current contractor said they'll want to see an additional exit. There's a rollup door we can block in and put a door in if that's the case. I got a quote from another prefab company today. Walls are 3 inch steel on either side. Total a little under $50,000 installed. The contractor did not show up today to see the revised plans, so I'll keep checking back here.

Where is the roll-up door? I still thinkyou may have trouble with the exiting requirements. In general once a building gets to a certain size a room can only dump into another room if that room dumps directy to the outside or a fire-rater corridor.

The roll-up door is on the bottom left of the warehouse.