Hi Brian, and Welcome!
That being said, I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of an already existing design to get me going.
There are many, many designs right here on the forum, some by John himself, some by other studio designers, and many by members. You could use all of those to get ideas on how you could build your place.
That said, all studios are different. It's nowhere near as easy as saying "I like how that room looks: I'll do a 'cookie cutter' on it, and duplicate it for my own studio". That would only work if you had the exact same identical needs as the original builder, and the same budget, and the same starting conditions. If not, then you'll have to do like everyone else: start from scratch. You might be inspired by a certain design or layout, and you could use that as the basis for your own design, but unless you build it identically, and have identical needs, then it very probably won't work out for you.
This is something like cars: There is no one single design that serves all purposes and meets all goals for everyone. Some need larger cars, some need smaller cars. Some need low cost cars, others need expensive cars. Some need 2 seats, some 4, some 9, some need a bus. Some just need a motorbike. Some need a high speed car, others need one that can carry a heavy load. Some need just one door, others need 5 doors. Etc. When you buy a car, you look at what YOU need it for, not what your neighbor needs his for. You look at YOUR budget, your garage, your driving needs, your loads, your distances, your speeds, and even your laws.. then you decide on the best compromise, and you buy that.
Designing a studio is exactly the same: You need to start out by defining what YOU want it for, how YOU will use it, how much isolation YOU need, how good YOU need the acoustics to be, YOUR budget, etc. You might then look at studios built by people with similar needs, and use some of their ideas in your studio. And you'll certainly want to research the basics of studio acoustics, so you know how to lay it out correctly, where to put things, what dimensions are good / bad, etc. But in the end, it will be tailored specifically to do what you want it to do.
I wish it were as easy as just taking a "standard" model and inserting it into your space, but really it isn't that easy. On the other hand, I'm actually GLAD it isn't that easy, or I'd be out of a job!
And this forum would not exist, either... So from that point of view, it's good that all studios are different...
OK, so your basic question is: "Where do I start?".
Start by deciding on your budget. Then look at construction costs in your area. Now you will have two numbers: "xx-thousand dollars" to play with, and "yy--dollars per square foot" construction costs. Divide A by B, and you have the maximum size that your studio can be. It could be smaller than that, but never bigger.
For example, let's take a typical case: you have a budget of $50,000, and building costs in your area are around $100 per square foot. Therefore, your studio cannot be bigger than 500 square feet. (I'm making hypothetical assumptions here: I have no idea what your real budget is, nor how expensive construction is in Wisconsin.) (On the other end of the scale, if you decide that your budget is no more than $2000, and building costs in your area turn out to be $500 per square foot, then clearly you are waaaay out of luck! A studio of four square feet ...
: )
So in this case, you would then need to look at studios of less than 500 ft2.
Then you would need to define what you plan to do in here: is this just for tracking? Or will you be mixing in there too? And what about mastering? Three different scenarios.
Then you add in function and genre: Is this for just voice-overs? Is it for Foley work? ADR? Is it for music? If it is for music, is that for single acoustic guitar plus one voice? Or maybe for a typical rock band? Or perhaps you need to record, mix and master an entire symphony orchestra, playing the 1812 overture, complete with live canon fire and live church bells?
Then there's the question of: pro or amateur? In other words, will you be using this studio professionally, to produce albums for commercial bands, and charge for your services? Or is this just a place for you and your buddies to jam a bit and mix simple demo tracks?
Those are all VERY different things.
That's the way you should start out: by clearly defining your goals, and your budget, then looking at basic layouts that would fit both.
I am hoping we can come up with a room that is well tuned from the start and will not need too much expensive acoustic treatment on the inside
Unfortunately, there is no such thing. Or actually there is, but it's not what you'd want. The only room with perfect acoustics that needs no treatment, is no room at all: just sitting on top of a 50 foot pole, out in the middle of nowhere, with your speakers laid out perfectly in front of you. That's the only "room" that is well-tuned from the start, and requires no treatment.
All other rooms require treatment, no matter how well designed the walls, floor and ceiling are. Yes, it is possible to design in some treatment as part of the room shell itself, such as with RFZ, NER, and CID designs, and similar concepts, but even then they still need extensive treatment. Here's one rule of thumb for you: the smaller the room, the more treatment it needs. Very small rooms need huge amounts of treatment, and even thene will never sound great. On the other hand, very large rooms can also sound bad. That's why organizations such as the ITU, EBU, AES and others have put out specifications for the minimum and maximum sizes that a room should be, if it is to be used as a critical listening room. The minimum floor area is about 20m2 for ordinary stereo sound, and about 30m2 for multi-channel sound. The maximum floor area is about 60m2 for stereo, and about 70m2 for multi-channel. That's from the ITU specs: EBU and AES are similar, but not identical. For you, that means roughly 200 ft2 minimum, up to 750 ft2 maximum. Minimum height is about 8 feet, and more height is pretty much always better. The standard reference room volume for acoustic decay calculations is 100 m3, which is roughly 3500 ft3. For most cases, a volume of 1500 ft3 is about as small as you want to go for a world-class control room that needs only moderate treatment.
However, there are also recommendations regarding the relationship between control room size and live room size, such that the control room acoustics do not mask the sound of the live room: about 5:1 is a good ratio. In other words, the volume of the live room should be at least five times greater than the volume of the control room. If they are similar in size, then the decay times of the control room itself will "hide" some of the sounds of the live room: you wont be able to hear what the live room is really doing. The effect is subtle, but if you want a world-class studio, you do need to take that into account.
So that's the situation: There is no such thing as what you are asking for. There is no standard design that needs zero treatment that you can just "cut and paste" into your warehouse. If you only want a sort of OK nearly mediocre place that might work, some of the time, for very simple things, then you could indeed just copy an existing design and hope for the best. But if you want a high quality studio that works great and that you can charge good money to other people who want to use it all the time, then you'll need to go the whole nine yards, and design it from the ground up.
I'd suggest that you start out on your quest for learning how to design a studio, with two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. Also download the ITU specs and EBU specs for studios, so you know what you should be aiming for in your control room acoustics, in terms of frequency response, decay times, layouts, geometry, etc. You need ITU-R BS1116-1, and also EBU-3276. AESTD1001 might also be useful. There are several others, but any of those is plenty good for what you need.
You do have a nice sized space, with good high ceilings, so there's an excellent opportunity, and a really good chance that you can have a world class studio in there, if you design it right and build it right.
I'm really just trying to find a control room design that will be a comfortable and accurate listening/mixing environment.
That's sort of like saying: "I'm really just trying to find a vehicle design that will be a comfortable and suitable traveling environment.": Car? Train? Bus? Plane? Blimp? Spacecraft? Bike? Caravan? Boat? Submarine? All can meet the criteria you set, if designed and built suitably. But none can serve the purpose of another, if your goals are different or defined wrong...
- Stuart -
If this post is too vague, please let me know and I can ask more specific questions.