Welp, … here we go….
Greetings!!
My name is Jason. (*members- "Hello Jason").
I'm a musician, performer, instructor, engineer, and producer in Alpharetta, GA, outside of Atlanta. I've been running my studio in my home producing and engineering for the past 5 years. It is small and absolutely nothing special but its been getting the job done. Work has been steady but I've been losing business due to the fact that I don't have the space to live track a full band. Business is good and it is time to expand! I'm currently building a new studio from the ground up and I would greatly appreciate all posts, comments, suggestions, criticisms, and advice that anyone would care to share because I've never designed or constructed an acoustically sound structure before. I have a background in construction so I'm not completely green, and I have my father who is a construction guru as my partner that has been helping me get the ball rolling. This has always been a dream of ours and now we finally get to do it! We are making a facility that will be a recording studio and used as a place for small live performances and rehearsal space. Our plan was to erect the basic structure (slab/masonry, basic framing, roof siding, rough utilities, etc.) since we knew we could do it cheaply by GC'ing it ourselves, and then proceed to conquer the interior build out of the studio as we gathered more knowledge and decided on our build methods. The roughing in of the building is almost complete, I've gathered my thoughts, and I think I'm finally ready to post on this forum. All comments and verbal ass kickings are welcome and appreciated! I wasn't sure if I should post this in design or construction so please forgive me if I shouldn't have posted here. Overview:
The entire building (see pics) is about 2000 sqft (28'x64' with a 12x12' punch out on the back wall). 308sqft control room, 1180 sqft for live & iso space, and about 500 sqft for lounge/kitchen,bathroom/office. It is located on my property in Alpharetta near a somewhat noisy back road, but I have no neighbors to piss off!. Yay! I've done a complete drawing of it in Sketchup with my desired end design. I'm new to sketchup and got a little layer-crazy but the drawing is accurate to the current existing construction, -Also I cant figure out how to shrink the size of my sketchup file down to 500kb for sharing from its current size of 2.1mb... can anyone throw me a quick bone so I can resize and share?-- I haven't added the roof trusses to the drawing yet but will soon. My plan is to tackle this mammoth in sections because different parts of the building have different needs. I think I've formed a pretty good plan of action but am still indecisive and unsure on a few topics. After gluing myself to this board for the past month or so I've managed to answer a lot of my own questions, so thanks to all of you, but with so many ways to "skin the cat" its hard for me to decide what is right for my scenario. My budget for building out the interior of the studio is about $40-50K. My overall plan for the interior is to finish out the control room and lounge/bath area first so I can at least be mixing while the live half of the building is coming along. That being said, lets try to focus our posts on the control room for now.
CONTROL ROOM: L= 20' 6 1/2" W= 14' 3 3/4" H= 10' ceiling dropping down to 8' over the rear 4 feet of the room.
Current Status: The control room is on floor joists above a crawlspace with one layer of 3/4"plywood decking. The walls are double 2x4 walls with a 2" gap in-between. Unfortunately these walls are capped with a 2x10 due to certain structural needs of the building so they are not full decoupled from each other which totally sucks. When completed I will be outfitting the studio with a console/ workstation of some sort. Maybe an SSL AWS, but I've been toying with the Idea of making a modular tracking console out of miscellaneous outboard gear… thats a whole other post that will come out soon enough! As for monitoring I will have some NS10's, mixcubes, and dynaudio BM5a's to choose from for near-fields. As the studio grows I would like to add a pair of soffit mounted loudspeakers to the control room. Probably a pair of Augspruger GA115's with a single sub. I want to construct the soffits now but leave them covered and still working as traps until we get loudspeakers.
----- Areas of confusion: 1) acoustic design & components, 2) walls, 3) floors, 4)speaker soffits
1) Acoustic Design- When dimensioning this room, I knew how much space I needed to have a comfortable, decent sounding workspace but am still uneasy about choosing the different angles in the room and the treatment methods. After a bunch of research I think I'm close to what will work but could definitely use some help. Acoustics is a realm of the audio world that is still a bit over my head but im learning more every day. See the design pic below. On the sketchup drawing you can see that I made a rough footprint of the speaker soffits angled at 30. the front helmoltz absorbers angled at 12, and the rear absorbers angled at 6. Notice the bass trap across the back of the room that I plan to fill with hanger traps. If my calculations were correct my helmholtz's are about the size that they will need to be to help with the rooms frequency issues. I was also considering using clouds over the room and less absorption on the walls. There is a window looking into the live room on the right long wall of the CR. I know this window is in the RFZ which is a bad place for glass but am wondering if leaving it there would corrupt the sound in the mix position.
Questions for # 1 -A) is my design on the right track? Help me point out my flaws
B) Am I bat-shit Crazy? … Please take me to school on this one guys! any suggestions or comments would be a big help.
2) Walls - A few things are making my mind drift trying to settle on a wall method. Adjacent to the front wall of the CR is the hallway/air-lock leading into the live area, and adjacent to the right wall of the CR is the live area. When I'm tracking artists I'm not monitoring at high volume so the goal is more of keeping sound out rather than in. With the existing double walls of the control room being capped and coupled to each other and the floor decking (9' thick total frame) my plan was to put up another 2x4 wall from the slab to the roof trusses 6" outside the right control room wall that will be the resilient "spring" wall and barrier between the CR and Live area. With this in mind I figured I'd be fine if I constructed the inner CR walls using 4" of OC703 in-between the studs, 2 layers of 1/2" drywall glued with green glue and screwed directly to the studs, caulked and sealed accordingly. The outer spring/barrier wall will be constructed of 4"of OC703, 2 layers of 3/8" drywall, glued/caulked/sealed, screwed to resilient channel on clips. That will make out to be - Inner Leaf / 4"insulation / 12" air space \ 4" insulation \ Outer leaf on spring. If i studied correctly this will be a very effective sound barrier between the zones because its two differently constructed leafs with 12" of air in-between with one of them on a spring. I'm pretty sure that will stop any sound from the live area from getting into the control room if installed properly. If I end up turning the hallway/airlock into a vocal booth I was planning to do the leaf on the booth side with 3 layers of 3/8" drywall glued/caulked/sealed on a spring for better isolation being in closer proximity to the control room.
Questions for # 2- A) With my existing CR double walls being coupled to themselves by the 2x10 cap and coupled to the floor decking with no spring, do you think the way I intend to finish the walls will achieve my desired isolation? Am I doing to much? More/less wall mass? More/Less air space?
B) Any thoughts on working a mass loaded vinyl or audio mute material into this equation to improve it?
3) Floors - I'm gonna keep this one short since I'm pretty sure I know the answer. The 3/4" CR decking sits on 2x10 joists 2 feet above the slab below that is a crawlspace. I'm planning on adding an 1/8" layer of MLV and another layer 1/2" ply to the existing floor before the finish flooring to add mass.
I'm gonna say it…"Do I need to float my floor?" Honestly, I sure as Shit don't want to!!!
I figured that by building the barrier between the CR and live area the way I described it in #2 above that It would provide enough isolation between the sounds of the live room and the sounds of what is seeping through the floor into the crawlspace under CR. If I turn the hall into a vox booth, I would probably float the floor off of the existing decking to better isolate it from the CR if I absolutely had to.
Questions for # 3 - A) Given the crazy added costs and weight of floating floors and in my scenario. I really don't wanna float my floors.
Do I need to float my floors, and why? (please say no, please say no, please say no…)
B) Do I even need to bother adding MLV to the floor or will 2 layers of ply on some felt do the trick?
C) Would it be smart to plan on insulating the cavities between the floor joists to help with the leakage?
Again, while I'm recording clients I'm not monitoring them at 100 db. Trust me, I like to blast it just as loud as the next guy. But when I'm actually recording someone and am listening critically its not at high volume.
4) Speaker Soffits - Never done this before! Definitely need some help!
As described above, as the studio grows I'd like to upgrade to a pair of soffit mounted loudspeakers. I'd like to construct the soffits framing now and just have them operating as hangar traps covered by a cloth finishing or solid piece of ply until I get loudspeakers. Once speakers are chosen I'll remove the cloth covers or cut into the ply and rework the cavity to properly house the speakers. Good idea? bad idea?
In the end, my speakers will have to be angled down at the mix position because they will need to be more than 4' 6" from the floor. I can't figure out exactly what angle to use for the slanting of the soffits because Im not exactly sure of a good ballpark distance for loudspeakers to be from the mix position. I've worked in studios with great loudspeaker systems but never thought about how far away they were from the mix position. I know it probably varies from speaker to speaker and room to room. Right now I have it designed where the face of the soffits will be about 7 feet away from the mix position, a little over 60 degrees from phantom center and slanted at 30 degree angles off of the front wall allowing for a 24" wide, and 16" +/- deep cavity at its lowest point. I'd like the speakers to be 6' +/- high and angled down to the mix position. I've sorted through lots of posts and reference material on the soffit subject but still cant put it together.
Questions for # 4 - A) Is the idea to "rough in" the soffits now a good idea, or should I wait until I actually have the speakers i'm going to mount and then construct the soffits in what will be an existing, working control room?
Wheeeewwwhhh!!!
I just scrolled up and realized how long this post is and how it spans over several discussion categories so I hope I don't get a lashing for posting this on the wrong board, and hope I didn't break too many rules. I hope I didn't go too overboard with this first post but I've just been bottled up with questions I've been waiting to ask! Thanks to all that have taken the time to read my post. Skimming all of your posts for the past months has been intriguing and educational. Any existing threads, links, or reference material that might answer some of my particular questions would be greatly appreciated. I'll be eternally grateful to anyone who downloads my sketchup file and helps me work with my design. I also am not opposed to hiring someone more experienced to work with me directly and consult the build. Any beacons of light in all of this himiny-ha are welcome. I'm open for all questions and suggestions..
Thanks again to John and all of the senior members for their free wisdom and the time and effort they put into their posts, and keeping this board alive!
Jason
There I was saying I would get back in a couple of days, and then I went on vacations without ever bothering to reply! 
(I kid you not...) So as far as I'm concerned, you did great with that! Makes it MUCH easier.
There's no easier way of saying it. That crawlspace is nothing but a large resonant cavity, and it will cause you endless problems. The floor is a resonant membrane stretched across a resonant cavity: ie. a drum. This is a 
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Are you 
Yup! If you weren't crazy, you wouldn't even be here on the forum, taking about building your own studio! 
Standing in the currently constructed space and stomping my foot on the floor told me this loudly! It actually had such a good sub bass thump that I wanted to record a sample of it, 
, before realizing how much of a problem it would cause. I feared it acting as a "drum" that would not only resonate the control room but also resonate what bleed might come from the live room. Along with the floors, there's issue of walls not being true inner and outer leafs since they are capped with 2x10"s and coupled to the existing floors. 
