my name's Jochen and I've been looking at building a basic studio/rehearsal room in my detached one car garage. I'm primarily a guitar player/songwriter and would be using the space to practice, record demos and some freelance guitar tracking stuff (acoustic/electric/banjo/dobro etc). I actually tracked the guitar tracks for our last album in the garage over the summer and it wasn't the most comfortable experience!!
The garage sits about 1 metre from our boundary and our closest neighbours' external wall is about 9-10 metres away.
At this point in time the garage is sitting on a concrete slab that I'm guessing is about 100mm thick. The whole thing is framed with 70x50 hardwood, sheeted in 6mm fibre cement sheeting on the outside (open studs on the inside) and has a new corrugated colorbond metal roof with insulation blanket http://www.insulation.com.au/products-1/permastop between the roofing sheets and timber frame.
The garage is 5860mm long, 3820mm wide and 2085 high at the top of the walls. Roof is pitched to a peak at 2900mm. There is a metal roller type garage door at the front and an access door at the front of the left side. I'm looking at building a wall across the room about 800 from the garage door to take that out of play. Below are a coulple of photos of the inside of the garage as well as a current floorplan.
I haven't had a chance to measure sound levels with me playing electric guitar yet but I did do some measurements with a stereo going in the garage to get some idea of where levels are now. I cranked the stereo up (U2's sunday bloody sunday) and added bass boost and it measured at 94.8db (peak over about one minute, C weighted, slow response). I then took measurements outside the access door (76.1db) and outside the garage door (81.6db). Also took some ambient noise readings: 48.5db inside, 55.3 outside the access door and 56.2 ouside the garage door.
I basically want to get enough isolation to allow me to a) play/track guitar in there whenever I feel the need and not annoy the neighbours b) isolate from the outside world so I don't get the neighbours lawnmower or my dog on that perfect take and c) then treat the room to get a reasonably accurate monitoring environment. I probably don't want to spend more than about 5000 AUD initially, though realise once I start...
My initial thoughts were to build mainly a control room with a booth big enough to isolate a guitar amp and maybe track vocals in, but it would be cool to be able to track a small kit (although this is not a big priority). I'm pretty sure the wife thinks she can use it as an extra "sleepover" room too when its done
My main reason for posting is to figure out initial construction of the walls/ceiling. I don't really have a lot of mass to start with here! That's causing me my main concern and I don't want to put time and effort into something that might end up a waste of time.
I have managed to score about 150 sesiliant clips though (leftover from a project my company was involved with) and was thinking of using those on the walls and ceiling with channel, two sheets of 13mm gyprock and 100mm soundscreen batts in the cavities (wall and ceiling. Also looking at vaulting the ceiling to gain a bit more height. That would give me about a 115mm air gap between the outside sheet and first sheet on the walls, about 195mm between the angled sections of ceiling and the roofing sheet and about 580mm from the flat section of ceiling to the roofing sheet.
I have followed alot of the builds here and understand the MSM concept, but I guess my worry is that i don't really have alot of "initial mass" on my external leaf to start with. Because of the negligible mass of the outer leaf should i be looking at a MSMSM system instead? Or should I try to "beef up" the existing external leaf of the system? Though this might be out of the question given the steel roof...
This will obviously never be a commercial recording facility but it would be cool to end up with somewhere i can go and play/create (and escape the wife and kids for a while
).Thanks in advance for looking over my late night ramblings.
Regards,
Jochen
That roof construction doesn't look like it was made to handle a lot more weight than what is already on it. It looks like it is trussed, but it's hard to tell from the photos. The truss also looks quite basic and not engineered to take the kind of load that you would be adding to them. 
for some input if possible. I have already begun building some "superchunks" for the front two and rear right corner (the other has the door) as its a given (from what i have learnt on here) that i'll need heaps of bass trapping but I'd really appreciate some help interpreting the REW data!!! I am more than happy to learn along the way as i don't want to have to come asking every time, but initially some assistance to help read and understand so that i can then continue to plan my treatment and come back for help as i need it.
