New Studio in Design Phase

[gabo]

Hi Gabo,

Thanks for the kind comments. Yes thankfully we're all fine, the country is in lockdown now but we've been in our own self isolation for a few weeks already as a precaution due to a lot of pre-existing medical issues. Which part of northern England? I am originally from Bristol in England. I hope you're all safe and well too.

Very glad you are good, stay safe for sure. We are also well and here it's pretty much the same, in lockdown now for just over a week. There are still no cases in the county I live in, so pretty safe here, but still locked down. I am lucky and have a few acres, a big workshop, a big music room (I'm a semi pro drummer), a small gym for workouts, and lots of toys. Plus we're the type of people who don't mind staying home, so it's no problem for us at all.

I actually worked at Pinewood studios in London for about a year, then at Alton Towers, the theme park for about 3 years building and installing a video system. A great project that actually led to a couple of video patents that I was a part of, so really cool stuff.

It's just rough, but how about something like this instead?

It would give you a bigger tracking space, and you would actually be able to utilise the entrance space to the studio as a second tracking space. The idea is there is a sliding door between this entrance tracking space and the control room, with a 3' door between the entrance tracking space and the main tracking space. You could easily put a small sliding door there too if you prefer, the main advantage being you can see through into the main tracking space, or use doors with windows.


On the control room side walls there are angled windows/sliding doors so that you can see into the tracking space/control room/outside. The angle will prevent flutter and also extend your reflection free zone.

My thinking is the roof/ceiling line won't be a problem since I neglected the fact that you have trusses and not a cathedral ceiling, so if you decide you want to fully isolate the space then the bottom of those trusses (-2" or so) will be your internal shell ceiling height anyway. If you decide not to isolate leaving the trusses exposed then you can fill that area with treatment anyway, so the angle won't be a problem, and the angle at the front of the control room will help with your reflection free zone.

I have one more idea that I'll try to draw up for you soon, I'm a little busy with my own build right now taking advantage of all the extra isolation time.

Paul

That's an interesting idea. I had thought of rotating the control room space before, but thought with the ceiling that it might not work. But Maybe it could. My original thoughts were that with that control space being naturally wider than deep, that it was going to be an issue trying to get it right. So flipping it 90 degrees solves that problem, but then you have the ceiling to deal with.

In my other rough attempt above, I had thought the room to the right could be used as a vocal booth. Which might still work. The openings on each side might actually be ok, with traps in the corners that are through and to the side of the opening it might actually work well, and even give a more open feel to the control space.

Sorry, all my drawings are "rough," I'm not the person who is doing the actual plans and haven't learned enough about drawing packages to do that right. So I'm just doing rough drawings and dimension in a non-cad drawing package that I already know how to use. It'll work to get a design, then we can go from there.

gabo

[gabo]

The more I study this, it seems to me that construction techniques are possibly more important than the actual design layout.

Does the following make sense? Am I off base on my thought process?

If I take the last layout I posted, with the side walls at an angle. The side walls and the walls to the live room are all internal walls, and as such can be constructed basically as traps. Actually they can be constructed to be dual sides traps, maybe 8+ inches thick. There are several different styles of doing the construction, I'm still learning what might be best. But right now I'm thinking about a wave guide style wall traps. John Brandt has some plans on how to construct these on his web site. If all that is built correctly, plus good/substantial corner trapping in the front, I think that's going to go a long way.

Then the problems shift to the back wall, which is going to need some substantial trapping to get where we need to be. Maybe membrane trapping there to deal with the low freq? The corners of the outer building, at the back of the control room, will also be super chunk traps.

The sloped ceiling might have some 4+ inch hanging traps, maybe down the centerline of the ceiling peak? The floor somewhat reflective, probably wood. The goal would be to get the RT60 down to around 0.25.

What are your thoughts and suggestions?

Thanks, gabo

Paul - You mentioned steel plate absorbers behind the couch. Do you know where there is a calculator for the frequency on those? I've found a couple of youtube videos of someone building them, but I've yet to find a calculator for the size, depth, construction, and membrane as they relate to absorbed frequency.

[Gregwor]

Paul - You mentioned steel plate absorbers behind the couch. Do you know where there is a calculator for the frequency on those?

f = 170 / SQRT (M * D)

where
M = lb/sq foot
D = inches

or

f = 60 / SQRT (M * D)

where
M = kg/sq meter
D = meters

Greg

[gabo]

Thank you Greg!

gabo

[Paulus87]

Thank you Greg!

gabo

Hi Gabo,

Yes you can use the formulas that Greg generously shared above. I would just use 1mm steel, 1m x 2m sandwiched between 100mm rockwool (1 layer per side) make sure the layer on the back of the steel is up close touching the actual rear wall panels. This is a simple design based on the RPG modex plate, someone online made them and found them to be extremely effective over a broad range of frequencies down to 40hz. You could also use Isobond foam for the back layer, but it’s a bit more expensive I believe.

Anyway. That’s getting way ahead of yourself. Your comment about the construction methods being more important that your design and layout in my opinion is worrying. Yes of course it’s important to learn how to construct things correctly but your design is the most crucial step in this whole process. You should design every detail, every stud, every seam before you even pick up a hammer. Otherwise you will make an expensive mistake.

Those John Brandt style wave guide absorbers are actually what I had planned for in the designs I shared with you, I just didn’t draw them in detail. Yes on the side walls. They’re good because they take up less space than hangers but work in a very similar way, the concept is the same, the main difference is the wave guides are fixed and rigid instead of freely hanging. I am also using them in my own studio build on the side walls. I’m using hangers on the front, rear, corners and above in the ceiling and then the slimmer fixed wave guide absorbers on the side walls.

The questions I have are 1. Do you want angled walls? And 2. Do you really want that extra wide space at the rear of the control room? If those are constraints then going forward I can incorporate them into some designs, but if they are not restraints then I would ask you why do you want to design it like that?

The very first thing we need to establish though is have you decided whether you’re going to do a fully
Isolated studio with double walls for every room or is every room just going to be single partition walls, all connected?

If the latter then that’s fine as long as you fully understand the implications of building it like that.

Paul

[Paulus87]

Here's another really rough idea using a geometric RFZ concept control room, it's a more complicated design to get right, and I haven't drawn in any details just some basic shapes to give you an idea of what else could be possible...

Paul

[gabo]

Hi Gabo,

Yes you can use the formulas that Greg generously shared above. I would just use 1mm steel, 1m x 2m sandwiched between 100mm rockwool (1 layer per side) make sure the layer on the back of the steel is up close touching the actual rear wall panels. This is a simple design based on the RPG modex plate, someone online made them and found them to be extremely effective over a broad range of frequencies down to 40hz. You could also use Isobond foam for the back layer, but it’s a bit more expensive I believe.

Thanks, I think I understand how to construct these, at least on paper before I actually start working on them. Which will be something like 5+ months down the road. There area a number of factors that have delayed the start of the house a bit, and even the start just means a bulldozer moving dirt. We're hoping to get much of the control room work finished within the next year.

Anyway. That’s getting way ahead of yourself. Your comment about the construction methods being more important that your design and layout in my opinion is worrying. Yes of course it’s important to learn how to construct things correctly but your design is the most crucial step in this whole process. You should design every detail, every stud, every seam before you even pick up a hammer. Otherwise you will make an expensive mistake.

No worries, not getting ahead of myself. In looking and thinking about the details of layout and design, I sometimes like to step back and understand what the bigger picture is and imagine how the construction and full project will play out.

Those John Brandt style wave guides absorbers are actually what I had planned for in the designs I shared with you, I just didn’t draw them in detail. Yes on the side walls. They’re good because they take up less space than hangers but work in a very similar way, the concept is the same, the main difference is the wave guides are fixed and rigid instead of freely hanging. I am also using them in my own studio build on the side walls. I’m using hangers on the front, rear, corners and above in the ceiling and then the slimmer fixed wave guide absorbers on the side walls.

Yes, for the walls on the side of the control room, my thoughts are to use those wave guide absorber walls. What I have in mind is to construct them 12" thick and have in my mind a method to easily build them that thickness. They really wouldn't have any sheetrock on either side, more likely rustic vertical slats/boards with space between them.

This also falls into part of the reason behind looking at construction techniques. Unfortunately this is not a multi-million dollar project. Everything that is done here will need to be things we can build. Buying very expensive panels and treatment is not going to be an option. So I'm trying to understand what can be done with hard work. Luckily, it's all doable by the people we have involved at reasonable prices.

The questions I have are 1. Do you want angled walls? And 2. Do you really want that extra wide space at the rear of the control room? If those are restraints then going forward I can incorporate them into some designs, but if they are not restraints then I would ask you why do you want to design it like that?

Nothing special about the angled walls. And the wide space at the rear of the control room is desired. This is the source of why I've been looking at construction and how to deal with things. We have a few issues here that bother me a bit. The full outer space pretty much is what it is and changing it in any way that helps isn't possible. The issue revolves around the dimensions and ratios.

As you correctly pointed out in your first design, the proper way would be to make the control room much longer. But that takes too much real estate from the live room. Having a live room that size is highly desirable for many reasons.

So the next option would be to enlarge the space out the back. But due to budget and other issues around the entire structure, that's not possible.

The other option would be to shrink the size of the control room to build proper desirable ratios. But doing that shrinks the control to a very small size, and means that the ceiling would be too high to create good ratios as well. The ceiling could dealt with, but losing all the space around the studio is not desirable and having a big control room is very desirable. The style of music, and the way the producer/engineer likes to work, means that a lot of recording work is actually done in the control room. That work is all "direct in" work, so acoustics of the room don't come into play for the actual recording. But the size of the room, to fit 6, 8, 10, even 12 persons in the room while they work on parts is highly desirable.

Which brings me back to the angled walls and the construction techniques. The angled walls was my first (very novice) and poor attempt to try to create a space that had better room ratios while still preserving the space at the back of the room.

But after studying more and thinking about construction techniques, I now understand that doesn't really do anything for the room ratio to speak of, especially if we build the walls like I mentioned. With walls that are 12" thick and no sheetrock/gypsum or other full coverage on either side, the size of the room becomes the outside walls anyway.

The ratios still aren't great, but with 12" thick walls and a huge airgap of 5+ ft to another wall that will have treatment, maybe the modes can be controlled? None of that can be understood until you think about what type of construction you are going to use on those walls.

And with this latest thinking on the construction and size of things, then no the walls do not have to be angled at all and are possibly better just straight. Which for the most part, just puts me back at the same layout as the original that was in the very first post.

It all comes down to answering this question. Is it possible to build a really good control room space given the dimensions and layout in the first post? If the answer is, "no it's not possible," then we have 2 more questions. Are we willing to live with a less than good control room in order to have the space in both the control room and live room we desire? Or, are we willing to live with less live room space and constraints in order to have the great control room we desire?

In the name of "have your cake and eat it too," I started studying construction techniques, trapping techniques, and treatment options, trying to determine (in my own little pea brain) if it were possible to build a satisfactory control room given dimensions and space similar to the original layout. Which led to an initial bit of work using ray tracing, which is what originally led me to the angled walls. If you don't have the ability to do optimal treatment, the angled walls do appear to help create a better RFZ, or at least it seems that way using ray tracing.

But then learning more and studying the type of walls/treatment possible, and understanding as to whether they are things we can build, I have come to the conclusion that NO the angled walls really don't help. Because I think we CAN do proper treatment.

So that's all led me to believe, at least at this point, that with proper construction and treatment, a pretty good control room can indeed be done using the "less than great" ratios of the original room layout. Which preserves both the large live room and also the large control room space, both of which are very desirable.

Just another point... having had a previous studio with drum room, vocal booths, etc. The owner/engineer/producer has very little desire for those any more. His work wound up rarely using those, preferring the larger live room for drums/vocals/full bands. So the desire is to have a large control room and a large live room. Also just FYI, the owner/engineer/producer has been doing this for about 30 years and has owned his own studio for the past 12 years. He has a long list of clientele and a lot of repeat business. Believe it or not, he's actually recorded/mixed/produced 2 albums in the past 6 months working out of a rental house! Hopefully we're finally going to give him a proper place to work after all these years! He will probably do some amazing work if we can pull it off, he's already done some great work with terrible tools! I really think the guy could mix in a phone booth, it's uncanny how he can make things sound great no matter what the situation, but I digress

The very first thing we need to establish though is have you decided whether you’re going to do a fully
Isolated studio with double walls for every room or is every room just going to be single partition walls, all connected?

If the latter then that’s fine as long as you fully understand the implications of building it like that.

Paul

So the above gives you some more info on the latest thoughts on the walls in the control room, albeit often changing based on gaining more knowledge. The walls in the live room will also be double walls, so the walls that are depicted are the "outside" walls and there will be walls inside those.

My current thinking on the live room walls is similar wave guide trap/walls, but the front of the walls might be alternating sections of diffusion and absorption. But of course that is current thinking without studying it enough.

Thanks so much for all your continued help! If nothing else it challenges me, and I've never backed away from a challenge


gabo

[Paulus87]

Ok cool, so that helps a little.

Room ratios are useless to dwell on too much as they are not scalable. I.e. if you take a good room ratio of 1:1.6:2.33 it won't always give you a great modal spread, it depends on the volume of the space.

Have a look at the room calculator here:

https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

Don't worry about the ratio, worry about the modal spread, the 3 critical tests, the room volume, the bonello criterion chart. Green = good, red = bad

You want your bonello chart to be a smooth curve gradually getting higher with no zig zags.

Room mode calculators also only work for completely rectangular rooms, they're no good for angled rooms.

You should only really worry about the room dimensions of your control room, not so important for your tracking rooms, although it's a good idea to avoid double incidences and multiples of each other there as well (10x20x15 would be pretty bad).

Once you have your room sizes then you can work out the details. There are 3 distinct types of walls/ceiling that you will use to construct your studio:

1. outer 2. inner 3. acoustic

The outer and inner are what actually do the soundproofing, and the inner walls is what defines your room dimensions. Your acoustic shell within the room itself do NOT define your room dimensions.

Sometimes the inner and outer shells are angled, sometimes they are rectangular, sometimes the acoustic shell has angled sections, sometimes it is rectangular, it all depends on the design concept (RFZ, NE, BNE, FTB, LEDE, CID etc)

When you are talking about building 12" thick walls I do not know whether you are referring to the outer and inner or the acoustic shell or all 3 combined... It is easier to talk about the solid inner and outer walls separately to your acoustic treatment walls.

Once these solid boundaries are established then you can work out your treatment.

So, can you clarify a few things:

So, your tracking room is going to be fully isolated with double leaf assembly through out?

Your control room is going to be just single leaf assembly?

The open area at the back of the control room is a constraint and cannot be changed? It cannot even be partitioned off?

Paul

[gabo]

Ok cool, so that helps a little.

Room ratios are useless to dwell on too much as they are not scalable. I.e. if you take a good room ratio of 1:1.6:2.33 it won't always give you a great modal spread, it depends on the volume of the space.

Have a look at the room calculator here:

https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

Don't worry about the ratio, worry about the modal spread, the 3 critical tests, the room volume, the bonello criterion chart. Green = good, red = bad

You want your bonello chart to be a smooth curve gradually getting higher with no zig zags.

Room mode calculators also only work for completely rectangular rooms, they're no good for angled rooms.

Yea, that's really what I mean by ratios, not really the book ratios, but the ones calculated from the room mode calculators. I like this one, https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc

Although I also really like the excel spreadsheet one from John Brandt's site as it gives you a lot more info. It's just a bit more difficult to run quick tests and what ifs.

You should only really worry about the room dimensions of your control room, not so important for your tracking rooms, although it's a good idea to avoid double incidences and multiples of each other there as well (10x20x15 would be pretty bad).

I worry about everything although I don't take it too seriously.

Once you have your room sizes then you can work out the details. There are 3 distinct types of walls/ceiling that you will use to construct your studio:

1. outer 2. inner 3. acoustic

The outer and inner are what actually do the soundproofing, and the inner walls is what defines your room dimensions. Your acoustic shell within the room itself do NOT define your room dimensions.

Sometimes the inner and outer shells are angled, sometimes they are rectangular, sometimes the acoustic shell has angled sections, sometimes it is rectangular, it all depends on the design concept (RFZ, NE, BNE, FTB, LEDE, CID etc)

When you are talking about building 12" thick walls I do not know whether you are referring to the outer and inner or the acoustic shell or all 3 combined... It is easier to talk about the solid inner and outer walls separately to your acoustic treatment walls.

The 12" walls are the walls on each side of the control room, the ones that don't go all the way back where the couch is in the back. Don't know if you call those inner walls or acoustic walls. Probably acoustic walls as they aren't really walls from the perspective of room modes, etc because they are basically constructed like a large trap.

The walls that are on the very outside of the drawings would probably be called the inner/outer and possibly a combination as some of the decision on that construction might come down to taking measurements after the outer wall is constructed and seeing where we are. The outer wall will obviously be there and will have some type of treatment and the corners will have traps. Whether we then construct an additional wall in front of it, with more treatment might be a question that is answered after we get measurements. Adding those walls would not be too difficult, just expense and time.

Once these solid boundaries are established then you can work out your treatment.

Yes, this is why some of this will most likely remain in flux. Which is why I would like to learn and understand a lot about treatments, what they do, how they work and basically build a toolbox to be used to tweak things once we get there. All the acoustic walls, treatments, and design are being done by the same two people. So there is easily the ability to build, measure, build, measure, tweak, etc.

I want to be flexible and not say "we're going to build it like this." I'm more of a "here are some concepts and things we're definitely going to do for starters. Then we're going to test, measure, and evaluate and build a plan for what we're going to do next. rinse, repeat, until we get it like we want it.

So, can you clarify a few things:

So, your tracking room is going to be fully isolated with double leaf assembly through out?

YES. I assume by double leaf, you mean having an outside wall that is standard house construction and and inside wall that I would say is an acoustic wall, but maybe I don't understand. The three wall thing sort of throws me off a bit. The tracking room will have two walls. The outside wall, which will be standard house style wall construction with heavy insulation (which for here is standard). The inside wall will be solely for acoustic purposes. In addition to the inner wall, which will largely be acoustic in nature, there will also be treatments of varying types, corner traps, hanging panels, diffusion, etc.

Your control room is going to be just single leaf assembly?

NO. The control will have at least an outside wall and an acoustic wall. Those are depicted on the drawing. The front wall to the tracking room will be double. The walls down the sides of the control room will effectively be traps, then some 4-5' out from there is the outer wall. Whether there is also another acoustic wall immediately in front of the outer wall is what I'm not sure of yet. Build, measure, build, measure.

The open area at the back of the control room is a constraint and cannot be changed? It cannot even be partitioned off?
Paul

I assume you're talking about the open areas to the right/left of the back of the control room. The thoughts there are this.

The space on the left contains the hallway to the house/bathrooms. That space will also be a coat room, as we need big coats here in winter (and hats, gloves, etc.). The thought about leaving it open to the back of the control room is so people can come in without disturbing a session (to/from bathroom, outside people, etc.) as well as having additional space in case of larger groups. So no opening of a door or knocking or whatever, just come into the coat room and peek around the corner.

The space on the right, would be for storage/staging of musicians equipment. A place to put guitar cases, extra guitars, drum cases, whatever, as well as some storage for mics/cables/stands/etc. Again, the thought behind keeping it open was for easy access, spillover for musicians, etc..

Both spaces combined also would give the control room a more open and nice atmosphere.

So, is it a constraint that cannot be partitioned off?? NO. The question would be "what problem are we solving by closing it off?" The answer to that question would have to be balanced against the above.

Since room mode calculators and other standard tools don't really tell us what that open space is really going to do, it becomes hard to answer that question at this point. Although maybe people who've done this many times over can say, just from experience, "yea, that's not gonna work."

One likely scenario might again revolve around building and measuring. Build the walls to where they are in the drawings, do some measuring and see where we are. If there are bad things, then do some test to see what might resolve the issues. There are a few ways I can think of testing to see whether extending those walls would correct a problem. One way would be to stack packages of roxul to the ceiling from the end of the wall to the back wall and taking more measurements. Even if it doesn't solve the problems completely, it would give you a good idea what building the rest of the wall would do,and whether that addresses the problems you have. Of course if there are minimal to no problems, then you know you can just leave it open.

All just thoughts... Great discussion by the way, I'm learning a few things. By the way, another bit of personal info. Although I don't have experience building studios/rooms, I do have some knowledge in general acoustics and also a degree in engineering. I have used REW quite a bit, but actually have used a package called ARTA a bit more. It's a nice piece of software, but more for general acoustics, measuring speakers, etc. So there are a few things REW has specifically for rooms that are good, but ARTA also has some things that REW doesn't that are likewise very useful for rooms. Also as a hobby, I do a lot of electronics. Designing, building, modifying, amplifiers and the like. I just finished building a nice tube amp that is performing quite well in my house.

Thanks again for all your help!!

gabo

[Paulus87]

Hi Gabo,

Okay, so I think I am understanding more of your concept and needs.

First, let's go back to basics - you need to get your head around how double leaf assemblies are constructed. These assemblies are what people are talking about when they say "room within a room".

They consist of an outer leaf and an inner leaf. (this is what I am referring to with inner and outer wall)

A typical construction of such an assembly would be like this:

Outside world - Cladding - OSB - Drywall - Insulated air cavity - Drywall - Drywall - Inside room

So you would have two timber frames, separated by an air gap (which is the insulated cavity) and you would ONLY have paneling (the drywall, osb etc) on the outer and inner most faces. Nothing in between. This is a fully decoupled 2 leaf wall (or double leaf) which is what you need. If you have 3 leaves, or 4 leaves, or 5 leaves etc then your isolation (sound proofing) will be much worse.

See the assembly on the far right in the attached diagram? That is how all your walls/ceiling should be built.

I'm mentioning this because from what you've just told me in your post above you are planning to build two sets of normal residential partition walls, with panelling both sides of the studs on each wall, with bass trapping and other treatment in between those walls.... That would be a 4 leaf assembly with acoustic treatment in the wrong place!

All your treatment (acoustic shell) is not really a wall, it's just a third frame that holds all your treatment inside of your space. But for now let's just concentrate on the inner and outer walls, and the dimensions of those.

If you only have your acoustic shell walls on the sides of your control room then you will have absolutely zero isolation between your tracking room and control room, so those 12" trap walls you're talking about would need to have proper solid walls behind them.

Paul

[gabo]

Hi Gabo,

Okay, so I think I am understanding more of your concept and needs.

First, let's go back to basics - you need to get your head around how double leaf assemblies are constructed. These assemblies are what people are talking about when they say "room within a room".

They consist of an outer leaf and an inner leaf. (this is what I am referring to with inner and outer wall)

A typical construction of such an assembly would be like this:

Outside world - Cladding - OSB - Drywall - Insulated air cavity - Drywall - Drywall - Inside room

So you would have two timber frames, separated by an air gap (which is the insulated cavity) and you would ONLY have paneling (the drywall, osb etc) on the outer and inner most faces. Nothing in between. This is a fully decoupled 2 leaf wall (or double leaf) which is what you need. If you have 3 leaves, or 4 leaves, or 5 leaves etc then your isolation (sound proofing) will be much worse.

See the assembly on the far right in the attached diagram? That is how all your walls/ceiling should be built.

I'm mentioning this because from what you've just told me in your post above you are planning to build two sets of normal residential partition walls, with panelling both sides of the studs on each wall, with bass trapping and other treatment in between those walls.... That would be a 4 leaf assembly with acoustic treatment in the wrong place!

All your treatment (acoustic shell) is not really a wall, it's just a third frame that holds all your treatment inside of your space. But for now let's just concentrate on the inner and outer walls, and the dimensions of those.

If you only have your acoustic shell walls on the sides of your control room then you will have absolutely zero isolation between your tracking room and control room, so those 12" trap walls you're talking about would need to have proper solid walls behind them.

Paul

Ah, thanks for that lesson I see said the blind man, now we can talk in the same terms! Sorry for my ignorance.

But, yes that wall to the far right STC-63 IS what the wall between the studio and tracking room will have, I just didn't know what to call it.

However, for the other exterior walls, at least at this point, would be like the STC-50 example. The reason being that the general contractor will build those walls using standard construction, which would be the STC-36 style wall. Then after they finish, we would come in and do the next wall inside it, creating the STC-50 style wall.

I guess if it were necessary, we could talk to the contractors and have them do both walls. Or we could remove the drywall first, which still wouldn't quite give the STC-63 walls due to not have double sheetrock on the outside.

Sound isolation to those outside walls would be to keep minimal outside noise from entering the studio as opposed to the studio creating a problem outside. You could literally fire off a cannon here and nobody would notice. Someone 5 miles off might wonder what it was, but it wouldn't be a problem I have attached a nice sunset photo of the site, taken on March 6th.

gabo

[Paulus87]

Hi Gabo,

Okay, so I think I am understanding more of your concept and needs.

First, let's go back to basics - you need to get your head around how double leaf assemblies are constructed. These assemblies are what people are talking about when they say "room within a room".

They consist of an outer leaf and an inner leaf. (this is what I am referring to with inner and outer wall)

A typical construction of such an assembly would be like this:

Outside world - Cladding - OSB - Drywall - Insulated air cavity - Drywall - Drywall - Inside room

So you would have two timber frames, separated by an air gap (which is the insulated cavity) and you would ONLY have paneling (the drywall, osb etc) on the outer and inner most faces. Nothing in between. This is a fully decoupled 2 leaf wall (or double leaf) which is what you need. If you have 3 leaves, or 4 leaves, or 5 leaves etc then your isolation (sound proofing) will be much worse.

See the assembly on the far right in the attached diagram? That is how all your walls/ceiling should be built.

I'm mentioning this because from what you've just told me in your post above you are planning to build two sets of normal residential partition walls, with panelling both sides of the studs on each wall, with bass trapping and other treatment in between those walls.... That would be a 4 leaf assembly with acoustic treatment in the wrong place!

All your treatment (acoustic shell) is not really a wall, it's just a third frame that holds all your treatment inside of your space. But for now let's just concentrate on the inner and outer walls, and the dimensions of those.

If you only have your acoustic shell walls on the sides of your control room then you will have absolutely zero isolation between your tracking room and control room, so those 12" trap walls you're talking about would need to have proper solid walls behind them.

Paul

Ah, thanks for that lesson I see said the blind man, now we can talk in the same terms! Sorry for my ignorance.

But, yes that wall to the far right STC-63 IS what the wall between the studio and tracking room will have, I just didn't know what to call it.

However, for the other exterior walls, at least at this point, would be like the STC-50 example. The reason being that the general contractor will build those walls using standard construction, which would be the STC-36 style wall. Then after they finish, we would come in and do the next wall inside it, creating the STC-50 style wall.

I guess if it were necessary, we could talk to the contractors and have them do both walls. Or we could remove the drywall first, which still wouldn't quite give the STC-63 walls due to not have double sheetrock on the outside.

Sound isolation to those outside walls would be to keep minimal outside noise from entering the studio as opposed to the studio creating a problem outside. You could literally fire off a cannon here and nobody would notice. Someone 5 miles off might wonder what it was, but it wouldn't be a problem I have attached a nice sunset photo of the site, taken on March 6th.

gabo

Just ask them not to drywall the inside face...

then you erect the second wall in front of that. Simples

If you needed the extra isolation on the outer wall then you can install drywall in between the studs, pressed up against the drywall that the contractors install. Or simply ask them to install two layers of drywall... it won't cost any more since they were going to put a layer of drywall on both sides of the studs anyway.... same amount of materials and time, just both drywall layers on the same side.

But, what is going to be on the outside of that drywall that they install? Surely there will be some weather resistant sheathing and cladding? Or is the studio surrounded by the rest of the house?

Paul

[gabo]

Just ask them not to drywall the inside face...

then you erect the second wall in front of that. Simples

If you needed the extra isolation on the outer wall then you can install drywall in between the studs, pressed up against the drywall that the contractors install. Or simply ask them to install two layers of drywall... it won't cost any more since they were going to put a layer of drywall on both sides of the studs anyway.... same amount of materials and time, just both drywall layers on the same side.

yes, simple and easy.

But, what is going to be on the outside of that drywall that they install? Surely there will be some weather resistant sheathing and cladding? Or is the studio surrounded by the rest of the house?

Paul

Ah yes, of course there will. But to answer that will also require getting his wife involved. She has all the say on the way the outside looks. Knowing them, probably not logs! haha, too much work.

Last house had some type of high tech siding, probably something similar as it's maintenance free (or at least low).

gabo

[Paulus87]

Ok once you have the details, let us know. Depending on what is used and how its applied it could add significant mass to that leaf ad the extra drywall might not be necessary.

Paul

[Gregwor]

Ok once you have the details, let us know. Depending on what is used and how its applied it could add significant mass to that leaf ad the extra drywall might not be necessary.

The issue with siding/cladding/sheathing/whatever you want to call it, is that it isn't snug to the sheathing. My house has Hardie Board siding on it which is super heavy, but there are voids between it and the OSB sheathing. Having said that, I highly suggest just adding the extra sheathing mass before the siding goes up. As anyone who's done it can testify, beefing up from the inside is a ton of work.

Greg