Just to be clear, since my joists are just wood boards, I would just screw the cleats into the joists, correct?
Nailing is easier and faster, but you could use screws if you want.
Something that concerns me about your current situation. You have small joists spanning long distances, supported mid-span on metal jacks and wooden. How do you plan to deal with that? Obviously, those posts are going to be a big issue! What are your plans there? You can't just take them out, and it's hard to see how you could keep them there, too.... Hmmmm...
Got it, definitely not expecting a book to be written on my behalf. It's just that this is one of the parts that I don't understand very well, and I've read a bunch on the site and elsewhere. I'll keep doing research and will talk with the contractor and report back with better formed ideas and more information
HVAC: Basically, the issue is doing some math to start with! Figure out how much are volume you need to move through the studio and cool/heat/dehumidify in CFM (CFM = cubic feet per minute), and how much of that needs to be dumped overboard and replaced with fresh air. Once you have those two numbers, you can check that against your existing basement system, to see if there's enough capacity in it to be able to handle that. That's the first sanity check. If your existing system doesn't have the capacity, then you'll either need to upgrade it (big job, big money), or create an entirely new, separate system to handle just the studio (slightly smaller job, by about 5 minutes, slightly less money, by about 28 cents...
). Second sanity check comes later.... Next step is to figure out, based on the above CFM data, your duct sizes, based on the air flow speed (not rate! Speed. Don't confuse them), in FPM (FPM = Feet Per Minute). You must ensure that the speed (or more correctly, velocity) is less than 300 FPM at the registers, so figure your register size based on that. Then work backwards, to figure the sizes of your silencer boxes, assuming that the cross-sectional area needs to suddenly change to at least twice/half the area, in at least a couple of places. Then, based on all of the above, estimate the static pressure drop that your system will create. Now for the second sanity check: if you decided that your current system CAN handle the flow rate for your studio, now you must also check if it can handle that static pressure. Right now, it is handling a certain amount of static pressure from the rest of the house, and it has a limit, a maximum rated static pressure that it can handle. If adding your studio system static pressure would take it past that limit, then you cannot use the existing system, and we get back to the same comment as before: "If your existing system doesn't have the capacity, then you'll either need to upgrade it (big job, big money), or create an entirely new, separate system to handle just the studio (slightly smaller job, by about 5 minutes, slightly less money, by about 28 cents...
)."
That covers the actual air movement issues: Then there's the heat handling issue to deal with as well: You need to figure out what heat load your studio will produce, in terms of "sensible heat load" and "latent heat load". Sensible heat load means just the amount of pure heat put out by your gear, your lights, your equipment, your instruments, and the human bodies that will be inside the room PLUS the heat that will be in the replacement fresh air that you bring in from the outdoors. The "latent heat" is related to the humidity in all of the air, that needs to be removed. The AHU (Air Handler Unit) that does the actual cooling of the air, has to first deal with the latent heat load, BEFORE it can deal with the sensible heat load. This is something that a lot of people don't get: They figure out that the total heat put out by all the gear, lights and people is, for example, 12,000 BTU/Hr, so they buy a system capable of cooling 12,000 BTU/Hr... but it then runs full time, at maximum speed, and hardly seems to cool the air at all! Because they forget the humidity: There could easily be another 4,000 BTU/Hr of latent heat load in the humidity, and the AHU cannot cool the air until it has first removed that humidity, so it spends 4,000 of the 12,000 that it has just removing humidity, then only has 8,000 left to cool the air. And of course, that's way short of what is needed. So the room stays warm and muggy and unpleasant, even though the HVAC is running full power.
Some people think that, OK, if that's the case, then just get a unit that has 36,000 BTU/Hr capacity, to be sure that there's plenty of extra to deal with humidity... but that's silly! To start with, the unit will draw many times the amount of electrical current that is actually needed, so you need to over-size your wiring, circuit breakers, meter, etc., to handle that, and then the unit will end up running in short, infrequent bursts, and you'll be blasted with powerful hurricanes of cold air for just brief periods, followed by the unit just idling along for a very long time before it kicks in again... so you get wild swings in temperature and humidity. What you need to do, is to "right-size" the unit, so that it can handle the "worst-case" situation of full occupancy with hard-jamming musicians, lots of gear, lots of lights, on the hottest day in mid summer, with high humidity, and not quite reach it's maximum capacity: it can still cycle on and off, but with long "on" cycles and short "off" cycles: maybe 80% to 90% duty cycle, when it is running at maximum speed. Then it will run at much lower speeds, and shorter "on" cycles, on a cool evening with low humidity, when there's just you in the studio, sitting quietly, but it still won't be doing the "sudden cold blasts" thing.
In other words, you need to do the math to make sure that you size the cooling capacity of the AHU correctly in BTU/Hr, AND ALSO the air moving capacity, in CFM, AND ALSO the static pressure handling capacity. If you do all that, and figure that the normal AHU units with the right BTU and CFM ratings just can't handle the static pressure from your system, then you might need to move up to "high static" units, that are specifically designed to deal with higher static pressure. Or re-design your duct system and silencer boxes so that the produce less static pressure...
But I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I could see myself getting very frustrated trying to model this whole studio without knowing the program well enough. But hopefully I'll have something to post fairly soon.
SkethUp is great for modeling studios. But it does have its quirks, and it takes a while to figure your way around them. However, once you have done that, you'll feel the power of it, and the ability to do almost anything you want I have designed some pretty complex studios, in great detail, using SketchUp, and it does the job well. It bogs down on speed once the model gets to a certain size, but there are ways of dealing with that too. Key issues are: As soon as you create any geometry, immediately put all of that into a "component", and name it! Name each component, using a logical, simple naming system. Then put it on a "layer". Also use a logical consistent naming system for your layers. Layers just control visibility: that's all. You can put a component on a layer, then group it with others into a DIFFERENT component, with a DIFFERENT name, and put that one on ANOTHER layer. so you can have four walls, each on a layer of its own, with the layers called "CR: Wall - Left", and "CR: Wall - Right", and "CR: Wall - Front" and " "CR: Wall - Back", then you can select all of those at once, and create a new layer called "CR: Walls: ALL" for them. That way, you can make individual walls invisible if you the happen to be obscuring your view of something, and you can also make them all invisible at once if you need to.
You can have a whole hierarchy of layers and components like this, many levels deep: For example, you can have a component called "CR: ALL", assigned to a layer of the same name, and inside that one have your "CR: Walls: ALL", as well as your "CR: Ceiling: ALL" and "CR: Floor: ALL" and your "CR: Acoustic Treatment: ALL", then you can control the visibility of your control room in various ways. You can also go down to even lower levels, such as having each wall built up from other lower-level components and layers, such as "MATERIALS: Framing: 2x4" and "MATERIALS: Framing: 2x6" and "MATERIALS: Sheathing: Drywall" and "MATERIALS: Sheathing: OSB" and "MATERIALS: Insulation", etc., giving you even more control. So by turning off the "sheathing", you can see the framing inside ALL of your walls, and then also turn off JUST the left wall, to get a better view of something inside.
This is where the true power of SketchUp resides: the ability to group components and assign them to layers, then create "scenes" to look at them. A "scene" is just a camera viewpoint combined with a set of things that are visible/not visible. You can then set up many such scenes in a sequence, and create an animated "walk-through" or "fly-through" of your studio, turning on and off various parts as the sequence advances.
Spend the time to learn it! It is VERY powerful. That's how I do ALL of my designs these days.
Gotcha, thanks. I'll look around to see what I can figure out, or if anyone else has any opinions, please feel free to chime in
Cork flooring is fine, but I have heard that it doesn't wear too well over time, and you'll still need to level your slab first, even if you use cork. It doesn't remove the need for leveling.
I made it through about 20 pages last night but I must confess science and physics is not my strong suit.
MHoA (the book that Greg linked you to, "Master Handbook of Acoustics"), is very light on math. It just touches the basics of what you need to know for acoustics. It's not complex. If you want complex acoustic math, then try "Architectural Acoustics", by Marshall Long! Also a great book, but a little more math... or maybe "Acoustic Absorbers and Diffusers" by Cox and D'Antonio... The math can get a lot more complex that MHoA....
But I'll keep at it, and just bought Build it Like the Pros too. As if my brain wasn't swimming enough already trying to figure this all out
If your brain is not swimming, then there's a BIG problem!
You aren't working hard enough at it, or you aren't delving deep enough.... "Swimming Brain Syndrome" goes along with acoustic design. Once you have caught that disease, there's no cure, and no going back... it never goes away! The further you advance, the more your brain swims... But it's a good thing, actually!
- Stuart -
All you'd have to do, is dump the storage, bathroom, and spare bedroom. Not a problem! 
