Rehersal studio / recording studio / house in the same??????

Hello all, After 4 years of using completley unacceptably small rooms for my studio, it's time to upgrade to a larger room(s). I have a number of options, but here is an idea that I've considered. I'm very close to finalizing a deal to put a metal building up about 5 minutes out of my hometown of 35,000 in the rural area where land is cheap. The first idea was to put up a rehersal hall for bands to practice as loud as they want whenever they want as there is no service of this sort around here and I could put some nice cash flow into my pocket. Then I had the idea of trying to use the metal building for both my rehersal hall idea and for my recording studio. I'm concerned that the rehersal hall will bleed into my studio quite a bit. I'm trying to figure out if it would be better / cheaper for me to go with seperate buildings or if it I could pull off doing both in the same building. The odds are strong that I won't be in this building forever. So with that in mind, I'm not going balls to the wall as far as sound proofing is concerned. Any money spent on sound proofing would probably end up as a loss when I end up selling the metal building to someone who just wants a barn. To top off all of this, I'm toying with the idea of putting my living quarters in between the studio and the rehersal hall. I live with my girlfriend and it would be a stretch to get her to go for something so unconventional. However, if we could make it comfortable, I think it would save us thousands and thousands of dollars in the long run. Is it reasonable to put a rehersal hall, a small home, and a recording studio all in the same big metal building from a sound proofing perspective without spending $10,000 on soundproofing?

Unless those rehearsal rooms are like 4'x4', it seems like an insanely lofty goal for that amount of money. Actually, for that money, the outer shell seems a little out of reach even, let alone inside rooms.

I forgot to post sizes. The entire fortress would run 100 x 60. Each rehersal room would be 10 x 15. The studio live room (which is not set yet) is 30x30 in the picture. I can cover the cost of building the fortress. I'm guessing it will $150,000 for everything. For all I know it will be half that. I just don't want to do too much extra, besides what is already laid out in terms of sound proofing. The $10,000 mentioned in the original post was for extra sound proofing, certainly not for the entire building. The general thoughts were to seperate the sections with cinder blocks, make sure each rehersal room is an individual cube, and put my home in between the two. The idea is to keep everything simple and minimal. Brandon

I would recommend you start at your city's or county's Building and Planning Department (whatever it's called there) to determine whether or not you're even allowed to do what you're proposing. Zoning is key. Some of what you want to do may be taken off the table because zoning or planning ordinances prohibit it. Find out what your legal options are, and then we can discuss the pros/cons of all of your options within your budget. Better to know what you can do before getting to excited about any specific direction and then getting let down when gravity sets in. Don't let the "ruralness" of the area lull you into thinking that nobody cares what's going on out there. --Keith :mrgreen:

Thanks Sharward, I'll look into it. I assumed that since I'll probably be surrounded by a million acres of soybeans that it wouldn't make much difference what I did with my barn. I'll look into it. In the mean time, I'm curious if anyone thinks this is obtainable from an isolation standpoint. Brandon

Well, I would think your "room to room" isolation might be fairly good depending on how beefy the inner walls are... but that metal building will be crappy and may actually shortchange your efforts inside. I'm not "expert" enough at this point to be able to comment more than that. As far as the planning/zoning goes, I would think you would be able to find out in five minutes what's surely doable and what's surely not doable on that property. This just occurred to me -- since the land isn't developed yet, you might have to do an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Ew! :shock: