New plans, any help appreciated. rough sketch included

Hey folks, This is a great forum, and one of the most flame-free I've been to. It's very educational and helpful. Basically, I'm a recording engineer. A friend of mine, who is also an aspiring engineer, has decided to build a studio. He's got his gear in a basement now, but he's planning a major upgrade. He's building a building outside his residence that's gonna be 39'x41'. He recently purchased an MCI console and is ready to really turn this into a business for when he retires. For some reason, he's relying on me to help him design the studio. My only experience in studio design comes from my working in a lot of them and having interned for an architect who designs them for a while. As is evident in the picture, I can't draw, but hopefully the idea is generally conveyed. I'm also not a carpenter, so i'm attempting learn as much as I can about the procedures of construction. This forum has been invaluable in that. Thanks again. Basically, the control room will include an MCI console that's 7.5' wide and about 5' deep. Also, the odd triangular SL(sound lock) shapes were my best idea on how to A. mount the huge farfield monitors he'd like to have in the walls and B. run wires and HVAC between the rooms without ruining my isolation. The current plan is to raise the CR floor and use wire troughs for wiring. Sliding glass doors seemed to be the best answer for entering the machine room and the ISO 1. There was really no good way to get big gear(if need be) into the room. The little triangle room by the entrance would be for some kind of storage, maybe a mic closet. Currently, the engineer at the board would face ISO 1 and have the studio side-addressable through windows on the right. I'm planning on using the dual leaf system for walls using RC's and hopefully a 3" air gap. I have a lot of questions about the ceiling, but I think I'll wait on those until I've firmed up the floorplan. The building will have a trussed roof with 10' min ceilings and at the point of the trus, they'll be slightly under 19' tall, with the bottom of the truss being at about 13.5'. The studio owner loved this design, as it was about 100x better than his original 17'x35' rectangular control room with only a 3' wide hallway to the studio. However, I'm not yet satisfied that this design is "complete". In fact, I know it isn't. So any additional ideas would be helpful. He's got a budget of about $50k for the construction, so any opinions on that would be good too. One last note, this building is out in the country, with quite a way until the closest neighbor, and as far as I know there aren't any highways or airports nearby. Thanks guys for any help.

So I thought I'd go ahead and post a horrible drawing of a cross section of the building for purposes of seeing the roof/truss that'll be used. The floor is a standard concrete slab. Once again, thanks for any help/suggestions.

If you're building a new place from the ground up, and you've got that much space, I'd think you'd want to use double-walls instead of a single wall with RC on one side. The isolation of that sort of system is far and away better, especially if they're mounted on isolation pads that will keep structural transmissions down. Chances are you've gone thru the Studio Construction part of this forum, but if you haven't, that's where you need to sit down and have a good long read. Good luck!

Well, that's the way I was hoping to go with. I possibly (due to my lack of construction knowledge) said the wrong thing. Wouldn't I use the RC with the double wall method too? Thanks

Okay, a slight update to perhaps show double walls and really showcase my inability to draw.

Some quick thoughts... 50k is doable if labor is mostly DIY and budget is planned and adhered to, Are there ADA issues? The washroom seems to narrow regardless. Considered sightlines/access to the lounge? Seems large enough for a grand piano. Nice design! Andre

Well, there will be some DIY, but a real carpenter is gonna be doing a lot of the thinking and giving us orders(I assume). Yeah, it is a narrow bathroom. The machine room probably can be reduced by a bit to allow for a bigger space. The owner and I decided that we didn't want any view between the CR or Studio to the Lounge. There will be a window to the outside world in the lounge that's not on the picture. Thanks for the help.

Sam, if you'll be using separate frames for each leaf of a double leaf wall, then RC is a waste of time and effort - even in a single frame wall, using RC on one side does nothing for low frequency isolation, only mids and up (about 6-7 dB @ 500 hZ) - once you go to totally separate frames, the RC is a moot point... Steve

Ah, thanks for clearing up the RC Steve. I've spent probably 20 hours this weekend reading, bookmarking pages, and drawing stuff out. Thankfully, I'll have several weeks(at least) before his outer shell is anywhere near done, so maybe I'll get to absorb more by then(no pun intended). Where can I find ADA specs on bathroom sizes? There's no codes out in the boonies where this guy is building, but it'd still be nice to accommodate everyone.

Try this - http://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm If you want, there's a downloadable zip file... Steve

Hey guys, So I've redesigned some parts of the build. I've also tried to clean up my drawing and really show the room within a room nature of it. I've been pouring through the forums, reading a lot stuff. It's very helpful, but I've still got a long way to go. It's especially hard when you read books and websites and they have conflicting info. However, I think I'm slowy sorting it all out. My big question now is the ceilings of the rooms themselves. More specifically the angle of the ceilings. I've been planning on making them slanted, so as to avoid flutter echoes and such, but I'm also looking at flat ceilings with diffusion(like skyline) or clouds hanging above. Any help on which would be most cost effective would be great. My plans for the control room ceiling would be approximately 10ft on the side where the exterior wall is and slant up to approximately 12 feet on the wall where the window to the studio is. For the Studio ceiling, I was planning on making the side marked Dead to be about 9 ft tall until the window in the wall. At this point, slant up(to the right of the drawing) and meet the slant of the truss(which would be slanting towards the top of the drawing). This would make the live side of the studio room about 13' tall. Not being a builder though, I don't know if this would work without supports or some type of poles in the room. So any ceiling suggestions? Thanks for the help

Hey Sam, What part of Nashville are you in? Aaron

Southeastern part. Where the briley meets I-24. The studio however, is going to be in rural Western KY.

You're just down the road a few miles. I'm at Briley and Lebanon Rd. :D

Cool. Did John Kerry destroy your traffic down there yesterday too? I had to run downtown about 3:30 and it would have taken more than an hour I'd bet if I hadn't cut through side streets and a bunch of neighborhoods. So do you do studio work here in town? I primarily do audio for films right now, with some live stuff thrown in here and there.

Yeah. Fortunately, I'm on the downtown side of Briley, so I didn't have to wait too long. I'm currently building a studio now. (check out the "Floating Floor over Basement Concrete" thread in the construction forum). I haven't done hardly any stuff but construction the past year. I'm getting anxious to get back behind the console. I also work a full time gig here in town.

While I'm thinking about it, How do you select square cornered lines in Smartdraw? Every line I draw seem to be rounded off on the end. I can't figure out how to change it. I know how to adjust the arrowheads, but there's nothing in that dialog that seems to do it. Thanks.

It's been almost a year since I have used Smartdraw, not sure. I've been using Autocad since my trial of smartdraw expired. Maybe Steve or John or someone can help here. :D

How do you select square cornered lines in Smartdraw?

they aren't lines - they are rectangles. Draw a rectangle say 1 unit high and 20 units wide. Then select shape properties(right click) and click "horizontal only" and the shape will stay the same height but have variable length;) cheers john

ah, ha! Thanks John. Perhaps I'll redraw my drawing. The squares look so much more professional.

since i noticed you did some smartdraw questions i´ll throw one in aswell... How do you fill diffrent areas with diffrent colors?.. i can only fill premade shapes like rectangular shapes.. you know what i mean?.. sounds abit unclear maybe? Andy

Andy - use the freeform line draw. nineth icon from left. It forms a shape when you return to your original point. cheers john

So I've made revisions to my drawing. I'm hoping someone could give suggestions or feedback as to if they're improvements or not. I altered the control room so that there is symmetry (at least in shape) both front to back and left to right. I'm having trouble figuring how to achieve acoustical symmetry though. With the large glass that my friend is wanting to use, the opposite sides are going to have to be equally reflective. I'm also not for sure about the back wall. Right now, I am planning on major absorbative material, like 703. However, with such distance, I know that diffusion could be an option too. Currently, the plan is to soffit mount some far field monitors, but that soffit in the front is not drawn in. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks.

So I'm starting a new job working nights and am having to adjust my sleeping schedule. Thus, I'm still up at 6am and playing around with my drawings. Any opinions on this new layout of my rooms? It's real rough, but I'm just brainstorming. Which would you rather record bands in? Thanks.

mabe something like this?? cheers john