2 room guest house into studio

I just bought a home with a separate two room guest house with bathroom. Basically the guest house is a big square. The two rooms are approx 13' x 18.5'(control room) and 10'x18' tracking room. 9' ceilings both. I have 4 Realtraps for the control room and a bunch of Auralex 4" foam that I'd like to get rid of unless I can make it into something usefull. Without using up too much interior space I need to make the tracking room suitable for drums and singing. There are a bunch of leakage (to the outside world) problems such as 4'x5' windows and wall mounted A/C units in each room. Shag Carpet floors(circa 1979). Cottage cheese acoustic ceilings. 2x4 stud wall construction with drywall inside, wood siding outside. Doors to the outside into both rooms. I've been reading for hours on this site and have been getting lots of ideas. So far I've sealed up one of the control room windows( that leaked some traffic noise in) by screwing plywood to the outside wood frame and caulking. I was planning on drywalling up the inside of the same window giving me a recessed box to display client CDs or something. Other than that, I've pushpinned into the drywall some of the Auralex around to start working temporariily. Lots of flutter echo problems and a skewed freq response towards a low/mid boxiness. Ideas? what to tackle first? I'm fairly handy with construction.

sorry mate - I saw your post in the acoustics forum and realised I'd missed your post here. Firstly the sound isolation - without adding more mass (drywall) to your walls and sealing up windows like you've done there's not much more you can do. Don't forget to put fibreglass, or some auralex in the cavity when you seal up the window. For your general acoustics you will need a lot more than what' you've got - those extra 4 Ethan panels will help. The idea you had for the ceiling would work well in the drum room but without the auralex. 2 x 2 ply panels hung randomly at angles will liven up your room as well as stopping some of the flutter echos. If you got some 8 x 4 sheets of ply and glued the auralex to it and mounted them on the walls at angles that would also help. cheers john

Thanks so kindly. The traffic noise nearly went away when I sealed up the outside of the window, I think with some insulation and drywall inside it'll do the trick. plain plywood, huh? without auralex or batting/cloth wrap, OK. What about bumpy stuff of some kind attached..maybe varied height balsa wood?? I was wondering about the outside wall as well. The outside has rough-sawn plywood siding with 1"x6" vertical slats nailed every 16" or so for a cabin-ish look. It would be easy to attach more siding material to the vertcal 1"x6"s and by attaching more 1"x6"s the appearance would remail the same and no interior space would be usurped. Would I gain isolation? would I leave the spaces between the 1 by's behind the extra layer of siding air? expanding foam? should I float the extrta layer somehow?

adding and extra layer will help by adding more mass - you could also make sure it's well air sealed in the same process. cheers john

Thanks again. Would I fill the gaps in between the 1x6"s before I put up and extra layer of sheeting on the outside? Just leave them air? Styrafoam, expanding foam pumped in through the top or bottom before sealing? Some kind of batting?

That styrofoam expansion stuff is useless. You need a good expandible caulk for the job. cheers john