just bought a house, planning to build small project studio

hey everybody, last week I've bought a house and I intend to build a small project studio. Up to now I've been recording with a mobile setup in rehearsal rooms, bedrooms, kitchens etc... Now I've got the chance to start from scratch. What I want to do is build a control room and a small live room/booth. The live room will mainly be used for tracking vocals and guitars. I'm aware that I won't be able to build a nice drum room (with my budget and the space I have) but it would be nice though to be able to record drums in the booth every now and then. the part of the house where the studio will be has to be built from the ground up so as to floorplan my only restrictions are the dimensions of the final building. the house itself is approximately 21' x 60', the studio will be attached in an L-form at the back of the house and will be divided from it with a corridor. at the other end of the extension there will be a garage. now what I need to know: I will have a total surface of approximately 21' by 12' and the height will be approximately 7.5' how would you divide this space into a control room and a small live room. both rooms have to be thoroughly insulated, so there is no noise in the house itself and no noise outside (neigbours house at approximately 18'). what do I have to keep in mind as to wall construction, floor construction, etc... I'm having a meeting with my architect this Thursday, are there any things I can tell him that would make my life easier when it gets to constructing the studio (I will probably be doing this myself after the building is finished. thanks very much for your time and help! Kurt

anyone?

With that ceiling height, a CR of either 12 x 10 or 12 x 13 is modally usable; this would also leave enough for a booth big enough for at least a basic drum kit, and the booth would have better sound than a smaller one. This is assuming your REAL, FINISHED ceiling height is really 7.5 feet; have you taken into account a true mass-air-mass construct between studio and upper floors? If not, ceiling height may get even lower. Main thing at this time is to NOT let anyone finish your space inside - you do NOT want anything but STUDS showing from inside the space, you will need to take it from there. This will likely include adding a couple layers of drywall "beef" inside the studs, then insulation, and (depending on just how MUCH isolation you need) possibly separate inner frames; at the least, RSIC isolator clips and hat channel to mount at least two layers of 5/8 drywall on. Any chance of pix or sketches so we can see what's what? Steve

here is a quick floorplan I made with sketchup (first attempt) the blue part is the existing house the green part has to be built. so the total available width of the control room + the booth will be approximately 18 feet, the depth appr. 12feet and the ceiling height appr. 9 feet. These measurements are not fixed so they can be changed so as to get a good room mode. I found the sketchup file of Scott's small studio, and that seems to be corresponding to my situation except that it has to be mirrored and that the entrance door to the control room has to be put somewhere else. can anyone help me out with a new sketchup file or aother possible design. I want to build a floating room to give me enough isolation to keep my neighbours happy. their house is approximately 20 feet away from the booth. drums and amps to be recorded in the booth!! thank you very much! kurt

so say the studio will be built in concrete, do we also have to build the dividing wall between CR and booth in concrete or do we keep the space totally open and make the division later by means of two double walls? thanks