Early planning stages for basement studio | John Sayers’ Recording Studio Design Forum archive

So, I've been lurking for a while, and reading, and reading, and reading - but I still have some questions of my own. I bought a house last week (!) and still haven't unpacked. In my wife's words, "we need to have a house first" before she loses me to the studio. :) So there's no real rush - just leisurely planning. The basement is fairly gigantic, especially considering the age of the home (built in 1906). I'm 6'1", and I can't touch the bottom of the floor joists for the first floor. Unofficially, that's about 7'6" high or so. For Pittsburgh, this is highly unusual. Most Pittsburgh basements, I need to duck. The basement is about 1150 sq ft, by my math, though not entirely rectangular. There's a huge bay window shaped bumpout in the house that goes from the basement to the third floor. I'm hoping that'll be where the mix location is. I still haven't figured out entirely how much of the basement gets to be the studio - that's still up in the air a bit. Also up in the air is whether to move the boiler, the water heaters, and some of the pipes that are below the joists which would make things extremely awkward for putting up a ceiling. The walls are about 16" thick sandstone. The basement is only 50% underground, and the above ground bit has block glass windows every so often. I'm thinking that those will get bricked up eventually. It's rained fairly hard here the past few days, and I seem to have bought the only house in Pittsburgh with a dry basement! The floor looks like poured concrete, which would have been added later. It's a french drain, so the floor is not level at all, which would need to be dealt with at some point. So, now to the questions. My plan for the floor is to get used floor joists from a torn-down building (2x10s, 2x12s) and then use a plank planer and a biscuit joiner to make a nice thick wood floor. I'm not planning on sealing them (maybe mineral oil) because I want a wooden floor, not a plastic one. Beer stains add character. Should I level the floor by having leveler / more concrete added, or by framing something and leveling that way? Framing gives me space for wire runs, a definite plus, but I'm concerned about losing too much ceiling height. Conversely, I'm worried about placing wood directly on the slab - dry basement or not, that's asking for trouble, no? Question two deals with wall construction. It looks like drywall is the generally reccomended facing - is that because it's easy to do, or because it's easy to predict reflections? Or is it just superior? I'm hoping to get some salvage bricks for one or two walls of each room - behind the console, and then probably a wall or two of the live room. This is pretty much entirely because I like the way old red brick looks, but also for some free diffusion. The STC looks like it'll be adequate. Is there something I'm missing? And finally, we get to the ceilings - oh, the ceilings. Sigh. Apart from the fact that all the pipes are below the ceiling, and will need to be moved out of the way somehow, the floor above is worthless as soundproofing - it must have an STC of -2. Conversations in the rooms above are clearly audible in the basement. I like the look of the exposed beams, but it seems like a world of hell to try to soundproof by filling the cavities. A lot of pipes and wiring would need to be moved. Realistically, how much could I gain by putting in 2 or 3 inches of rockwool and then drywall between the joists? Drywall would be the exposed face. Would the exposed joists just transmit all the sound and make all my efforts purely cosmetic? Beefing up the floors from above is not an option - they're the original hardwood floors (100 years old!) and I really don't want to disturb them. I could, of course, do the RC and drywall solution, probably with rockwool in the cavities as well. I just like the look of the older wood. So, expose your wisdom to me! Thanks in advance MPEDrummer