Live room/exercise room & control room/home theater? | John Sayers’ Recording Studio Design Forum archive

Hi, I've been lurking for a few months, and have read Rod's book. I'm currently in the research/early planning phases for what will hopefully be a practice/recording/movement space. This will be new construction as part of architect-designed house so I don't have any dimensional constraints...yet. I have plenty of time for planning as construction on the house is not likely to start for at least a couple of years since some of the little details like picking an architect and buying the property are still on the "to do" list. The "studio" is for personal use; I have no designs on trying to make a career out of recording. In terms of loudness, I play guitar, keyboards, and hand drums (or at least I would if I had a place to do so without driving my wife crazy). Once I have the space, I would like to put together a rock band with friends. The best time for me to practice is late at night after the kids are asleep or early in the morning before they wake up. There's about a 50% chance the house will be in a typical suburban neighborhood where the houses are fairly close to each other so I not only need to prevent transmitting sound within the house, but also keeping it from reaching the neighbors. For these reasons, I'm planning on building a room within a room on an isolated slab with the ceiling supported by the inner walls so they are completely decoupled from the rest of the structure. The inner leaf of the Mass-Air-Mass system will be two layers of 5/8" fire-rated sheet-rock with Green Glue in between them. (See, I really have been researching :) ) My daughter sings, and my son has expressed an interest in learning to play the drums so I need to plan for them as well. I am envisioning a decent sized live room that could double as an exercise space (dance, gymnastics, martial arts). Obviously that introduces some compromises into the mix. Music and movement will both be more enjoyable in a larger space. However, dance and martial arts would benefit from a wall of mirrors which might wreck havoc on the acoustics of the space, and they need a more forgiving floor than concrete. I could avoid the compromises by building separate spaces for each use but then each room would by necessity be smaller and that wouldn't be as much fun. If I can combine the two uses into one space, I was thinking of a roughly 22W x 30L x 16H main "live" room. That puts it well in to the "large room" category in Rod's book so there shouldn't be as many modal issues to deal with. The main room would not be subdivided into smaller areas. If I need other rooms such as a vocal booth or control room, they will be separate and don't need to fit in that space. To deal with the mirrors I can think of two options: 1) Use portable mirrors and move them into storage when the acoustics need to be better. 2) Permanently mount the mirrors, but have have a large heavy curtain which can cover them when needed. From reading this forum, it seems that acid-washed concrete is popular as a flooring choice, but that won't bode well for body parts trying to move energetically in the space. My first thought for flooring was a "sprung" hard-wood flooring, which in studio design terms you might think of as a floating wood floor. Having read Rod's book I realize that would have serious acoustical issues with a likely resonant frequency around 100-200 Hz. So then again, I can think of two options: 1) Go with the acid-washed concrete for "live room" purposes, and have a rollout-mat or some other "portable" dance floor when using the space for movement. 2) Go with something like an activity floor which has layers of cellular polyurethane, semi-rigid panels, and is topped with a vinyl surface. Harlequin Activity Floor That would take care of the movement aspect but I don't know how it would work acoustically. I'm hoping that since the rigid panels are surrounded by high-density material with some give on one side and a vinyl surface on the other that they would be less likely to resonate than a wood surface that is floated. The downside of a permanent dance floor is that I'd have to make sure that whenever someone new visits or some equipment is brought in that the vinyl surface doesn't get damaged. I'd prefer to not do major "setup" to switch between uses since I'm likely to do movement in the morning and music at night and it would quickly become a pain to switch back and forth. Another "use" I had in mind was to have some sort of home theater so when my family watches movies, we could turn them into a family event instead of a mind-numbing experience for the children. At first I thought the live room, being larger would be ideal for a theater, but after further research I think the control room would be better suited since the listening environment should be symmetrical, while the live room should be asymmetrical. I don't have any dimensions in mind for the control room/home theater. Now that I've given you some background on what I'm thinking, I only have a few initial questions; although I'm sure there will be many more to come in the future. 1) Is it possible to design a control room that could double as a home theater on demand? Could the same monitors used for mixing, also be used for the theater experience? I know that Gulfo has recommended pitching the control room as a home theater when reselling a house so I'm hoping this isn't too far-fetched. 2) Are there any problems you see with trying to give the live room an alter-ego as an exercise space? 3) Does it make that much difference if the space is underground in a basement vs. a semi-attached building of its own? If we go with a suburban neighborhood I'll be stuck with a basement (but with higher ceiling than typical), but if we get a larger lot in the country I maybe able to fit a separate building on the property. Thanks, Jonathan (sorry I couldn't think of a clever moniker)