Dazed and confused! (Another newbie 'build a studio' post)

Hello all, first let me say I've been reading a lot at this forum and my head is spinning. I wasn't sure if I should post here or in the construction forum, if I've erred please excuse me. I am in the process of finding a home in SE Michigan to purchase with the idea of then building a studio there. Since the studio will probably entail a lot more requirements than the house, I am treating it as a priority in my house buying decision. Since I'll have clients, I cannot go with a basement studio since getting equipment in and out will have to be reasonably easy. SO what I am thinking is to start with a 2.5 car garage with a cement floor and build something along the lines of Flying Fox or Sonar. My understanding is that I will need a 2 mass, 1 space floor, double walls and double ceilings. I'm thinking that I need to treat the existing garage as basically a shell to put all this in, using pucks to isolate the actual studio from the outer shell (existing garage), and more pucks to seperate each floor mass and each ceiling (so a studio inside a studio inside a garage). I'll be recording live drums and other instruments (mostly indie rock, though I've worked with metal and will probably need to again), so I'm guessing probably around 110 db maximum, though I have done no measurements making this is a grossly uneducated guess. Here are my questions: 1. Does the above sound like I'm on the right track, or have I totally missed the boat and misunderstood what I've read? 2. Is it possible to build in stages, like do the control room and live room first, then later add the dead room (using the first two rooms until I can afford the third)? 3. I'm getting a bit lost even when reading the threads here over and over, are there any good books on studio design you can recommend to someone who is really unfamiliar with all this stuff (geared towards a beginner)? 4. Is there any info on the approximate costs of building Flying Fox or Sonar? 5. My budget would be somewhere around $5,000 for the control room and live room, how underfunded do you think I am? 6. Is it possible to use some sort of fencing outside of the studio to redirect some of the sound (I'm guessing for low frequencies the fence would have to be VERY thick)? 7. If you built your own studio, looking back would it have been more reasonable to have had a pro do it for you? 8. Do you have any information on how your studio has impacted your homes resale value? 9. How long did it take you to build your studio? 10. Is it easier/cheaper to do all this inside of an actual house instead of a free-standing garage (lets assume the rest of the house will expect to hear the music as if it is on a medium loud stereo system)? Thanks for any information. Sorry if the questions are dumb, frankly I'm not even sure I'm understanding what I've read so far on these forums and theres so much information it gets kind of muddled together in my head after a while. I am hoping to make the house purchase in the next 6 weeks, in case you're wondering what my timeframe looks like. Seth [EDIT] Having read more I'm thinking $10,000 is going to be a bit closer to a reasonable minimum.

seth floating the "studio" floor and then also floating the "rooms" on top of the the studio floor is not the right way to do it. this is three leaf floor which has been demonstrated to perform worse than two leaf in a lot of cases. you should count the garage floor as your first mass, and the floors that you float for your different rooms will be the second mass. that is two leaf. outer leaf walls will connect to the garage floor & ceiling. some people might decouple these but i'm not too sure about that. the forum is very random-access, not linear like a book, so it can get jumbled. but there is tons of info here. maybe keep a notebook? and make LOTS of bookmarks and keep them well organized. and spend LOTS of time reading. dan

Seth - what you propose is entirely possible. Yes - it's easier to do it in your garage as opposed to inside your house as it's also easier to get your building materials into the building as well as your gear. To coment any further we would need to know the actual specs of the garage. cheers john

Thanks, I don't know the exact dimensions yet because I'm still in the buying stage. I have about 6 weeks before I really have to have made a decision. At this point I am primarily basing my decision on having a large enough garage in as isolated a location as possible. I'm starting to get a better handle on the information here, I really appreciate all you guys, this is a goldmine for me!