interior finish ideas

Greetings! It's been a while, folks. Been out of the game for about 3 years now, but had a group come into the office asking for design services for a recording studio. Should be a great space - 20x60 industrial space with 16' eaves. Lots of potential. I'm thinking at least 10 or 12 foot ceilings in the control and main tracking rooms. After years of designing studios in basements with 7' ceilings, this is a breath of frest air. What I'm looking for is advice on how to finish the studio walls. I'm going to try to convince them to use inside-out wall construction, and I believe they'll be receptive to it. The only thing I can think of that would torpedo that idea is the finish on the inside. If they build the walls "normally", then all they have to do is paint the drywall - but then they have to mount all their room treatment stuff to the face of the drywall. Building the walls inside out gives them a lot better structure to put up the sound treatment, and generally makes our lives easier. I see a lot of people using fabric (one studio I worked on used carpet, but I guess they liked the look) but the trouble is that this isn't someone's basement... it's a commercial space, therefore has to comply with commerical building code. That means if I use any textiles on the walls or ceilings they have to have a particular flame-spread index AND we have to protect the room with an automatic sprinkler system. Obviously these guys are not going to install a sprinkler system just so they can build their walls inside out. So what I need is a relatively low-cost, good looking, and non-fire-hazardous wall and ceiling covering system that will allow sound thru it. I think I'll recommend they use USG ceiling tiles of some kind - they could easily surface mount those to the bottom of the ceiling joists (sound isolation barrier will be on the top, so we can stuff the joists with insulation) but I need to come up with something for the walls. If we use tested fabrics for just the walls, the sprinkler requirement drops, but those fabrics are expensive too. Just paying UL for the flame-spread test drives the price up. I suppose we could use ceiling tiles mounted to the walls as well, but I don't know how good that would look. Thanks in advance! Kase [removed]

one option is to build the upper ceiling as normal to get the desired isolation, then put in the fire suppression plumbing, electric etc, then a lower ceiling built with plastic, cloth, slats etc. to create a large overhead treatment with the fire suppression poking through where needed. chances are very good that regardless of the construction used, they'll need fire supression in a commerical space. with 16' ceilings they can easily add a 3' or 4' drop with lots of hangers and all the electric and plumbing needed. do inside-out on the walls.