Hi Al, and Welcome!
I've practiced with my band (stoner/big muff/psych grooves) about 5 times and the garage might as well not even be there as far as volume goes...hella loud!
In order to determine how much isolation you need, you really should measure how loud you are in there with a sound level meter. They aren't that expensive: a good one will cost you around US$ 100. So measure how loud you are, and also measure how quiet you need to be: the difference between the two is how much isolation you need.
the third design I've made and seems like the most efficient and cost effective.
The overall concept looks good, but there are many details that need to be fixed, and some of them are pretty major. More about those later...
I'm planning on doing the construction with friends and having most of the costs go into materials.
Do any of those friends have construction experience? Framers, drywallers, carpenters, painters, HVAC installers, etc....
All that being said, I would like to keep this within a $5000-$8000 budget.
You have 480 square feet of space. 8 grand spread around 480 square feet works out to about 17 dollars per square foot...
Very much on the low side. 8 grand will be enough for the HVAC, about half the framing, and maybe a few sheets of drywall. For example, you are looking at upwards of 100 sheets of 5/8" fire-rated drywall (assuming good isolation, and roughly the plan you have). Those go for around US$ 10 each: there goes a thousand dollars right there. 480 square feet of decent laminate flooring plus underlay is going to be around US$ 2000. There's one third of your budget gone, and you don't have any studs, nails, insulation, glue, sealant, doors, windows, electrical, HVAC, acoustic treatment, lights, cabling, tools, ... You are showing some very nice large windows in between your rooms, which is great, but a pane of suitable heavy laminated glass the size and thickness you'd need for the control room to live room window, is going to cost you several hundred dollars. And you need two such panes (one for each leaf).
Etc.
You are underestimating the cost of your materials by a large margin.
Instead of guessing at how much you think it will cost, it would be much better to prepare a rough "Bill of Materials" estimating the actual type and quantity of all of your building materials, then take a look around your local Home Depot to get an idea of prices. On the other hand, if your budget is absolutely fixed at 8k and cannot move, then based on the prices of the materials, you can see how much you need to shrink the studio, which walls you need to leave out, etc. in order fit the budget.
My plan is to put 8' ceilings in iso room and control room with drop ceilings and leave the tress system exposed and vaulted in the live room.
That will get you about zero isolation! Your plan as you have it right now shows the correct basis for proper two-leaf MSM isolation walls (even though some parts of that do need fixing), but your ceilings MUST be done in exactly the same way. Sound moves in all three dimensions at once, not just sideways: if you only isolate the walls but do not isolate the ceiling/roof, then you won't have any isolation at all. That would be like trying to build an aquarium by putting glass on only three sides of the frame, and taping a piece of cardboard over the fourth side... Your room will keep the sound in about as well as that aquarium would keep the water in...
leave the tress system exposed and vaulted in the live room
I think you mean "truss system" not "tress system", but you can't do that if you want isolation. Unless you isolate the roof/ceiling to the same level as the walls, you get no isolation. Sound take the easiest path out of the room, so if your walls are great but the ceiling is lousy, it will ignore the walls and take the ceiling... and from there it will spread out all over the neighborhood, but now with the advantage that it started it's journey up high, so it will travel further and seem louder....
I would like to have 2-4 floating walls so I can have infinite possibilities with isolation.
I'm not sure what you mean by "floating walls", but it doesn't seem to be the same as what studio designers mean by that term. A "floating wall" is one that is acoustically decoupled from the floor underneath while still being firmly attached to it with some type of resilient mount, and perhaps also acoustically decoupled from the walls on either side and the ceiling above, while still being firmly attached to them too. I'm not sure how that would give you "infinite possibilities with isolation". Such a wall will give you exactly one option for isolation: the one it was designed for. It will isolate exactly as well as the laws of physics predict it will, with no other possibilities. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what you were trying to say.
I will be using the two leaf walling system through most of the garage.
Excellent! That is, indeed, they best way to get high levels of isolation at the lowest cost. But there are several issues with the way you are showing that in your diagram right now: You are showing that the inner-leaf walls of the rooms are connected to each other, but that cannot happen. Each room must be built as an entirely independent, self-standing structure, consisting of the framing for the walls and the framing for the ceiling, with drywall on only one side of that framing, and no part of it can touch any other room, or the outer leaf. You will need to cut the mechanical connections that are shown on your plan, that link the rooms together. Those are major flanking paths that totally destroy your isolation. You also need to complete the missing parts of the inner-leaf in a a few places, notably in the Live Room.
I would like to leave the garage door as a functioning door
Then you can't have any isolation. Sorry. It really is that simple.
Isolation is only as good as the weakest point. If your weakest point is a gigantic hole in one wall with just a very thin panel of sheet metal over it, then the maximum amount of isolation you will get is the very, very poor isolation provided by that door. Which is probably not much more than about 15 to 20 dB, max. The final result will be exactly the same as it is now: "the garage might as well not even be there as far as volume goes...hella loud".
There is a gap on the side wall which cannot be double walled because of the garage track, but was thinking to use either green glue double drywall or resilient channel with iso clips.
That would be a waste of money, since it will accomplish nothing at all as long as the garage door remains as it is.
The usual way of dealing with garage doors when they have to remain in place due to local regulations, is to bolt and seal the door in place permanently, take out the tracks, motor, and mechanism, then build a frame just behind the door and drywall that to fully seal it off. Yes, that does create a 3-leaf system, but there's no choice here, and it is easy to compensate for that with more mass and larger gaps.
1) Do you think this is the most utilitarian, budget friendly use of my parameters?
Assuming that you do not want any isolation at all, and you are entirely happy with the very loud levels you are getting right now, then yes. On the other hand, if you
do need good isolation, then there are quite a few things that you need to add to your plans in order to accomplish that.
2) Will the Tress system be a problem if left exposed? It's way too expensive to remove and not in my
budget. But, it seems like the beams would be good for breaking up waves and keeping the "room" vibe
If you leave the trusses exposed then you have no isolation. But you don't need to remove them! You just need to build a proper inner-leaf ceiling on top of your inner-leaf walls. If you really like the look of exposed rafters, beams and joists, then you can build your inner-leaf ceiling "inside out", and if you really like the vaulted look, then you can build the inner-leaf ceiling to follow the same lines and angles as the trusses.
Of course, I'm assuming that you have either raised-tie trusses (collar-tie) or scissor trusses: those are the only two types that would allow you to do that. If you have horizontal tie joists as the bottom chords of the trusses, then you have no choice: you are stuck with a flat ceiling in your live room. Your inner-leaf ceiling obviously cannot be any higher than the lowest point of the outer-leaf trusses.
(a friend of mine who has built studios suggested leaving it open).
He has built studios where the roof trusses are open to the room below? That's pretty amazing: I've never heard of anyone doing that. And of course, such a studio could not possibly be a professional studio where isolation is paramount, because it would be impossible to record in there. I'm wondering how on earth you would manage to record in such a studio when it is raining on that roof, or hailing, or when the wind blows, or if there is any thunder, or if a plane flies over, or if a car drives past, or if the neighbor decides to mow his lawn, or if people happen to be taking outside, or if a dog barks... With a room that is open to the outside world like that, there is no isolation...
Perhaps you misunderstood your friend, and he was just talking about having exposed beams inside the room? That's a very different thing from having exposed roof trusses...
3) How would you tackle soundproofing the garage door and side which cannot be double walled?
I would attack that in the only way possible: double wall it. There is no other way (assuming you want good isolation).
Let me explain: the door is just very thin sheet metal. Mass Law is the principle of physics that describes how much isolation you get from a barrier with given mass. The equation goes like this: "TL = 14.5 log Ms + 23 dB", where "Ms" is the surface density. Most garage doors are 25 gauge, or something similar. 25 gauge steel is roughly 0.5mm thick, which is about 0.02 inches. The density of steel is about 7800 kg/m3, so therefore the surface density ("Ms") of your door is roughly 4 kg/m2 (about 0.25 pounds per square foot). According to mass law, that will give you about 21 dB of isolation. For comparison, a typical lousy house wall is about ten times BETTER than that, at roughly 30 dB. And that's assuming that the door is perfectly sealed in place when closed. If there are any gaps around it, then the isolation will be even lower.
So if that door stays exactly as it is, then it really does not matter what you do to the rest of the building, your total isolation of the entire isolation studio will be about 21 dB: You could encase the entire building in 6 foot thick concrete, and the total isolation would still be about 21 dB: Because isolation is only as good as the weakest point, and that huge gaping hole of a door is certainly, without any doubt, your weakest point.
You cannot add any mass to the door because the tracks, motor, and mechanism are designed to handle only the amount of mass it already has, and even if you were to DOUBLE the mass, you'd only get an increase of maybe 4 or 5 dB (according to empirical mass law). If you were to replace the door with steel that is four times thicker, even then you'd only get about 29 dB of isolation. Still not as good as a typical lousy house wall.
So there is your dilemma: you can keep the door if that is what you want to do, but then would have effectively zero isolation. Or you can fix and seal the door in place, remove the mechanism, build a proper two-leaf wall behind it, and easily get 50 or 60 dB of isolation, which is about ten thousand times better (and I do mean literally ten thousand times better: 60 dB isolation is blocking ten thousand times more sound energy than 20 dB)
4) Would it be better to put up a second door to the entrance, or replace it with a super door? Super doors
throughout?
Yes, it would be better. In fact, it is the only option if you want good isolation.
5) I need cost friendly, realistic ideas on the best way to provide A/C and fresh air. Heat is not necessary,
as I can use oil filled, no noise, radiating space heaters.
You won't need much heating in there, that's for sure! If you isolate it properly, you are basically wrapping your studio in multiple layers of thermal blankets. Put a few people in there, some instruments, gear, and lights, and the temperature will rise pretty fast. Lack if heat is not the issue... To much heat is the problem.
Your least expensive option is to put a mini-split system in each room to take care of the cooling and humidity, plus a simple ducted venting system to bring fresh air in to each room, and extract stale air from each room. Those will need suitable silencer boxes (which you can build yourself) on each wall penetration. That is the cheapest way of doing it.
6) Would it be better acoustically to wall of the top of the control room and iso booth? That space could
also function as an attic or HVAC storage. Seems like I could run ducts very easily if it were sealed.
I'm not sure what you mean by "wall of the top of the control room and iso booth". Each room will have its own separate ceiling, which will be placed at the most advantages height, acoustically, determined by calculation. If there is any space left over above that inner-leaf ceiling, then yes, it usually is used for the HVAC ducting. But in general, it is desirable to have the ceilings in each room as high as possible, for better acoustics inside. However,m you also need to check the modal response to make sure that the ceiling height is not going to cause modal problems, and if the calculations show that it would, then the height needs to be changed.
7) Will the control room be a mess with these parameters, or can I trap it out and have a reliable,
pleasurable listening environment?
There are no dimensions on your images, so it's hard to calculate anything about the acoustic response of the control room, but it does seem to be a reasonable size, and corner-control rooms can be done successfully. They are a little more tricky in the treatment on the rear walls, but they can still work great. You should design the control room so that it meets the ITU-R BS.1116-2 spec, or gets as close as possible to it. That's the ideal. EBU-3276 is very similar.
So in general, you do have a decent space where you can build your studio, but there are some major issues with the design that need fixing, and you should also re-think your budget, since it isn't realistic right now.
Sorry to dump all that on you at once, but I'm sure you didn't come here to have folks tell you lies! That's the honest truth about your studio. It can be great, and the basic layout is good, but the details need work, and so does the budget.
- Stuart -
. I'm on roughly a $10000 (construction only) budget, with no delusions of mixing Taylor Swift "quality" records. I think my question About online examples and advice for internal framing w vaulted ceiling is legit. I'm asking for examples and design/construction direction towards a one room studio/live space w a vaulted ceiling.