John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello everyone

After lurking here many times, this is my first post. I actually referenced this site in my last studio build, but I want to actually get more specific input on this new build.

So a little background, I record local bands, many genres from Jazz, to Rock, to Classical. In my old studio, I had a control room and a live room that took up most of my basement. Both were rectangle and I had traps in corners, walls and ceiling. this space worked fairly well, although the control room did have some low end issues.

I'm having a house built (only foundation is up as of now) and needing to figure out how to lay my studio out in the new space. One change is I really only want to construct a control room and leave the rest of the basement as multi-use (meaning kids could play, watch TV, etc). I plan on using rock wool in the ceiling and RC channel to minimize sound between upstairs and basement.

Based off my previous experience, I don't foresee sound volume being a problem with neighbors as it wasn't before and in the new space the houses are farther apart. Houses are about 10ft apart nearest I can tell.

Primary goals are to get an even sounding control room and functional overall basement. My budget is likely around $$6k maybe a bit more. I already own about 15 Ready Acoustics HF traps. that I can reuse

The dimensions of the basement should be visible here
My first question is, how should I position the control room? The dimensions of the control room is going to be 14ft X 16.9ft X 9ft high. I'd like to go with option A where the length is 14ft and the width is 16.9ft, but wondering if it would be better to go with option B where the Length is 16.9ft and width is 14ft?
I ran the dimensions through BOB Golds and I get

Room Dimensions: Length=14 ft, Width=16.89 ft, Height=9 ft
Room Ratio: 1 : 1.55 : 1.87

Here is the bigger picture plan for the entire basement. I intend to put XLR plates through the basement and use GOBOS to minimize some bleed. I also plan on putting a window to see into multi-use space.

Hmmmm, no response. I thought I had provided all the required info.

I've done some reading on here already, but maybe I missed something
Location - check
Overview - check
How Loud - I dont have an SPL reading to give as of now, but I provided some context
I gave detail
Dont want to float any floors
I provided 3-dimensions - 14X16.9X9ft High
Provided drawings - just edited down a bit, but I thought they fit before
I really only have one questions for now - how to position the control room in terms of desk/monitor. My next questions would be with regard to corner trapping, but I have a bit more to read on that.

Please let me know if I'm missing some key info. Thanks

Hi there "doylemusic", and Welcome!

Hmmmm, no response.

It can happen. The forum has over 20,000 members, several dozen of whom are active, and there's me. Sometimes other people help out with answering questions. Sometimes John himself is on the forum, when he is able to, but mostly it's just me. There's only one of me, unfortunately (or maybe "fortunately" ). So sometimes it can take a while before I get around to answering a thread. Sorry that you had to wait a couple of days, but I'm only human! I sincerely wish other people would join in and answer questions, especially those members how already completed their studios and got lots of help doing so from the forum. It would be nice if they would "pass it forward" so to speak, and help out others a bit. Some do, and I'm very grateful for that, but I wish more of them would.

Anyway...

I plan on using rock wool in the ceiling and RC channel to minimize sound between upstairs and basement.

That can work, provided that you don't need a lot of isolation, and that the other five sides of the room are isolated to the same level, as well as the doors, windows, HVAC system and electrical system. You can't isolate a studio by doing only one side of it: all sides need to be done to the same level. If not, then sound will simply leak out through all the other places that you didn't isolate, and get where you don't want it to be.

I don't foresee sound volume being a problem with neighbors as it wasn't before

Yes, but this is a different house. You can't extrapolate how that house performed and apply it to how this house will perform, unless both houses are built identically. Sound is a strange animal: even small changes in its "environment" can bring about large changes in the way it "behaves".

Primary goals are to get an even sounding control room and functional overall basement.

For an even sounding control room, you should aim to get as close as possible to the specs outlined in ITU BS.1116-2. That defines the acoustic properties you should be aiming for in a control room.

I already own about 15 Ready Acoustics HF traps. that I can reuse

Assuming "HF" is "high frequency", you probably won't need many of those. That's a small room you are talking about, so it will need mostly bass trapping. Lots of bass trapping: Large bass trapping. Those bass jobs will do a fantastic job of sucking the highs out of your room anyway, far beyond what is needed, and you'll have to add materials to them to prevent them from doing that, to keep your room balanced and neutral. It is unlikely that you'll need additional HF trapping.

I'd like to go with option A where the length is 14ft and the width is 16.9ft, but wondering if it would be better to go with option B where the Length is 16.9ft and width is 14ft?

In general, for small rooms, it is better to have the speakers firing down the longest axis of the room, not the shortest, for several reasons. One of those is to ensure that you can get good geometry for your speaker/mix position setup, such that you have minimize SBIR artifacts, as well as edge diffraction, reflections, comb filtering and other nasties, while maximizing the sound stage and stereo image, and also having a comfortable location for your chair, where modal issues are minimal. That's hard to do if the room is wide and not deep, as well as being small. The second reason is related to the Haas time and the negative effects you get from having the rear wall too close to your head: it's best to have it as far away as possible, withing reason. Third relates to the use of diffusion: You should never have any numeric-based diffusers within ten feet of your head, but you also probably do could use diffusion on the rear wall. So you should aim to have the rear wall at least ten feet behind you. Hard to do if the entire room is only 14 feet long, but the chances are better if it is nearly 17 feet long.

So if that were my room, I would set up with the speakers pointing down the long way.

I ran the dimensions through BOB Golds and I get...

Not too bad at all! It passes all three critical tests, is close to one of Louden's good rations, and the Bonello chart looks quite decent.

and use GOBOS to minimize some bleed.

Not sure I understand... Gobos are for use in live rooms, to partially isolate instruments from each other, or to modify the acoustics in some way. Why do you want to have them in your control room?

I also plan on putting a window to see into multi-use space.

Good idea. Just make sure that it is not at the first reflection point on that side wall. You could use a pair of back-to-back sliding glass doors there, to have excellent visibility and good access. John does that in several of his designs: take a look around the forum, and you'll see how he does that. One door in each leaf. You can get fairly high levels of isolation like that. Conceivably, you could be working on a mix while the family is watching a movie in the multi-use space, without bothering each other much. Provided that the doors and the wall are built correctly, of course.

How Loud - I dont have an SPL reading to give as of now, but I provided some context

One man's context is another man's lack of context: One mans "really loud" is another mans "doesn't bother me at all". And none of those can be plugged into the acoustic equations that you need to use to do the calculations.... You cant put the words "not too loud" into the mass law equation to see how what surface density you need for your walls to get "not too loud" decibels of isolation... Equations work with numbers, not words!

Dont want to float any floors

Smart man! If I had a dollar for every new member who cam here wanting to know how to float his floor, I'd have lots of dollars!

My next questions would be with regard to corner trapping,

It's a small room, so you will need lots of that. I would suggest "superchunk" style corner traps for your room, in as many of the room corners as possible, not just the obvious vertical corners on the rear wall...


- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:Hi there "doylemusic", and Welcome!

It can happen. Sorry that you had to wait a couple of days, but I'm only human! I sincerely wish other people would join in and answer questions, especially those members how already completed their studios and got lots of help doing so from the forum. It would be nice if they would "pass it forward" so to speak, and help out others a bit. Some do, and I'm very grateful for that, but I wish more of them would.

Anyway...

No worries, I was more paranoid that I didn't adhere to the requirement

That can work, provided that you don't need a lot of isolation, and that the other five sides of the room are isolated to the same level, as well as the doors, windows, HVAC system and electrical system. You can't isolate a studio by doing only one side of it: all sides need to be done to the same level. If not, then sound will simply leak out through all the other places that you didn't isolate, and get where you don't want it to be.

Hmmm, I was thinking RC channel and rock wool on the entire ceiling of the basement, not just the control room. And then just rock wool on the vertical walls of the control room. But if I read you correctly, the RC channel and rock wool would not be as effective on the non control room portion of the basement if I dont do the same for those vertical walls as well.

I am also planning to putty the electrical boxes in the control room.

So I guess the question I need to ask myself is what am I trying to control/tame...

Yes, but this is a different house. You can't extrapolate how that house performed and apply it to how this house will perform, unless both houses are built identically. Sound is a strange animal: even small changes in its "environment" can bring about large changes in the way it "behaves".

touche and noted!

For an even sounding control room, you should aim to get as close as possible to the specs outlined in ITU BS.1116-2. That defines the acoustic properties you should be aiming for in a control room.

Let me read further on that.

I already own about 15 Ready Acoustics HF traps. that I can reuse. Assuming "HF" is "high frequency", you probably won't need many of those. That's a small room you are talking about, so it will need mostly bass trapping. Lots of bass trapping: Large bass trapping. Those bass jobs will do a fantastic job of sucking the highs out of your room anyway, far beyond what is needed, and you'll have to add materials to them to prevent them from doing that, to keep your room balanced and neutral. It is unlikely that you'll need additional HF trapping.

Ahh, this is where it gets good. So first of, part of the confusion is I'm speaking of the entire basement sometimes, so I'm not being clear. I WAS planning on using some of the High Freq traps on parallel walls and ceiling cloud in the control room as well as on walls of the multi-use portion of the basement where I would be tracking. My thought was it will tame some of the slap-echo in the multi-use room.

In reading your response it seems I should likely not worry about HF in the control room due to the amount of bass trapping I'm going to need to do. So I did have super chunks in my old control room. Rockwool cut into triangles stacked from floor to ceiling in all 4 corners (trihedral I believe). I did not do anything in the dihedral corners.

So it seems I need to read up on adding material to them so they dont suck up too much high end. I'm thinking slats. I'm not sure I understand how many and the logic to the spacing. Also if I shoudl have slats on all four corners. I'll look for some posts on that.

So you should aim to have the rear wall at least ten feet behind you. Hard to do if the entire room is only 14 feet long, but the chances are better if it is nearly 17 feet long.

So if that were my room, I would set up with the speakers pointing down the long way.

I knew this was the answer, I was just fooling myself. I'll do some reading up on diffusion. I like the visual aspect they bring, but want to make sure I do it the right way also.

Not sure I understand... Gobos are for use in live rooms, to partially isolate instruments from each other, or to modify the acoustics in some way. Why do you want to have them in your control room?

Here I go mixing tracking space thoughts into control thread. Ignore this, it was in regards to the multi-use room.

Good idea. Just make sure that it is not at the first reflection point on that side wall. You could use a pair of back-to-back sliding glass doors there, to have excellent visibility and good access. John does that in several of his designs: take a look around the forum, and you'll see how he does that. One door in each leaf. You can get fairly high levels of isolation like that. Conceivably, you could be working on a mix while the family is watching a movie in the multi-use space, without bothering each other much. Provided that the doors and the wall are built correctly, of course.

I've seen that in his designs. I'll check into it and see if I can swing that cost wise.

You cant put the words "not too loud" into the mass law equation to see how what surface density you need for your walls to get "not too loud" decibels of isolation... Equations work with numbers, not words!

Point taken

It's a small room, so you will need lots of that. I would suggest "superchunk" style corner traps for your room, in as many of the room corners as possible, not just the obvious vertical corners on the rear wall...

So you are saying not just the trihedral, but also dihedral. Let me read up on this further.

Thanks a bunch man, really appreciate the feedback. I know your time is limited, so I'm goign to try my hardest to read up on directions you send me to minimize questions that I can answer. I may just try to get confirmation. Thanks again.

Hmmm, I was thinking RC channel and rock wool on the entire ceiling of the basement, not just the control room.

If you did that as one single ceiling across both rooms, then built the dividing walls under that ceiling, that would be a terrible idea, as the ceiling itself would be a major flanking path for sound between the two rooms.

If you need good isolation (which will be determined once you get your sound level readings from your hand-held sound level meter), then you need to build the rooms using the fully-decoupled two-leaf MSM system. It's the only way to get good isolation at a reasonable cost. This is sometimes known as "room-within-a-room" construction. It works like this:
The corridor area on the bottom left is NOT isolated for the rest of the building, the three rooms on the top right ARE isolated from the building, and from each other. Not so clearly visible in that diagram is that fact that the inner-leaf walls of the three rooms do not reach all the way up to the outer-leaf ceiling above the entire area: they stop short, and each room has it's own individual ceiling, which rests only on those walls. No room touches any other room: all the rooms are fully isolated from each other: The only thing they have in common is that they all sit on the same floor, which should be a concrete slab-on-grade thing.

And then just rock wool on the vertical walls of the control room.

Insulation does not isolate. That's a myth. Insulation is not very good at all at stopping sound from getting through. As part of an isolation system, it works wonders, but on it's own, not so much. It is excellent at damping resonance inside the wall cavities, for example, and changing the way the sound dissipates energy as it moves through, and slowing it down, but just putting insulation on your walls will not isolate the room.

That would be a form of treatment, but if you use the same insulation all around the room, then the room will sound pretty terrible. You need to use the right type of treatment at each point in the room, and the right amount of it, in order to get it balanced smoothly in both the frequency domain and the time domain. That's what the ITU specs that I mentioned call for, and is the final goal for any control room: neutral acoustics.

I am also planning to putty the electrical boxes in the control room.

Fine, but that all needs to be decoupled too. There are procedures for that, and you cannot chop holes in the wall to put outlets, switches and light fittings in, nor to pass cables through... any hole in your wall, even a small one, trashes your isolation.

So I guess the question I need to ask myself is what am I trying to control/tame...

You should be trying to do two things: 1) Isolate both rooms from the rest of the house (and also from each other), and 2) add the correct amount of acoustic treatment to each room to get the desired result. In the case of the control room, that means neutral acoustic response as per ITU BS.1116-2: In the case of the tracking room, that means whatever acoustic response is appropriate for the instruments you are recording in their. Tracking heavy metal drum kit is rather different than tracking a light jazz rum kit, for example, and tracking an acoustic guitar is rather different from tracking a trumpet. All of those are different acoustic environments, so you have to design the treatment to get the acoustics you are looking for. If you need to track various different instruments, then you can either create "zones" in the room that are "deader" or "liver", or you could build variable acoustic devices that can be opened, closed, slid, rotated, flipped or whatever to change the room acoustics.

I WAS planning on using some of the High Freq traps on parallel walls

That might be needed, but you wont' know for sure until you already have the initial treatment in place and have done some acoustic testing with REW. That will reveal what additional treatment is needed.

and ceiling cloud in the control room

Your ceiling cloud will likely need to be hard-backed, and will need more than just HF absorption on it, since part of the purpose is to control vertical modal issues, to a certain extent.

My thought was it will tame some of the slap-echo in the multi-use room.

If you want to use that as a live room, then perhaps diffusion would be a better option. Slap echo is more of a mid-range issue than high frequency issue, although it can be both. On the other hand, slap echo can sometimes be useful, for some instruments, to give a feeling of natural spaciousness. Drums and percussion, for example, can sometimes sound good with a bit of echo going on, if it is controlled by careful placement of the instrument and the mics.

In reading your response it seems I should likely not worry about HF in the control room due to the amount of bass trapping I'm going to need to do.

Right. You MIGHT need a little extra, if you happen to over-compensate on the bass traps, but in that case even a thick throw rug placed judiciously can be enough. One control room I did in Canada ended up like that, and the first throw-rug w tried actually was too much! We had to go down to a thinner, smaller one.

So I did have super chunks in my old control room. Rockwool cut into triangles stacked from floor to ceiling in all 4 corners

so you did one third of the corners... There are twelve corners in a rectangular room. Four of them are vertical, the other eight are horizontal...

So it seems I need to read up on adding material to them so they dont suck up too much high end. I'm thinking slats.

Slats can be used, yes. But they would have to be "un-tuned", just to provide a bit of life. You can't do a bass trap that is also a tuned slot wall.

But it's a lot easier to just cover the front face of the superchunk with suitable plastic, where the thickness is calculated to reflect the right range of frequencies, and the percentage of coverage is calculated to provide the right balance between absorption and reflection.

I'm not sure I understand how many and the logic to the spacing.

For non-tuned slats on a bass trap, just make them broad and widely spaced. I usually put them at strategic heights to protect the fabric behind from bumps, dents and tears: elbow height, shoulder height, hip height knee height, chair back height, sofa height, etc. Once again, the width of each slat can be calculated to return a specific frequency range to the room, and the percentage open-area-to-slat-area can be calculated to provide the right overall balance between absorption and reflection.

Also if I shoudl have slats on all four corners.

Not at the front of the room. They can create problematic reflections, SBIR, comb-filtering, and other not-so-nice things.

Thanks a bunch man, really appreciate the feedback.

- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote: If you need good isolation (which will be determined once you get your sound level readings from your hand-held sound level meter), then you need to build the rooms using the fully-decoupled two-leaf MSM system. It's the only way to get good isolation at a reasonable cost. This is sometimes known as "room-within-a-room" construction. It works like this:

MSM-two-leaf-WallChunk-conventional-.png

Ahhh, lights are coming on and off.

Insulation does not isolate. That's a myth. Insulation is not very good at all at stopping sound from getting through. As part of an isolation system, it works wonders, but on it's own, not so much.

Good to note.

Fine, but that all needs to be decoupled too. There are procedures for that, and you cannot chop holes in the wall to put outlets, switches and light fittings in, nor to pass cables through... any hole in your wall, even a small one, trashes your isolation.

I think my statement was incomplete, but I understand what you are saying here.

You should be trying to do two things: 1) Isolate both rooms from the rest of the house (and also from each other), and 2) add the correct amount of acoustic treatment to each room to get the desired result. In the case of the control room, that means neutral acoustic response as per ITU BS.1116-2: In the case of the tracking room, that means whatever acoustic response is appropriate for the instruments you are recording in their.

Definitely understood. The approach I'm taking is to have a multi-use space that will have a combination of diff treatments to cater to diff instruments in conjunction with moveable gobos to help achieve the desired sound(s).

Your ceiling cloud will likely need to be hard-backed, and will need more than just HF absorption on it, since part of the purpose is to control vertical modal issues, to a certain extent.

This is something I need to read up on. Thx

But it's a lot easier to just cover the front face of the superchunk with suitable plastic, where the thickness is calculated to reflect the right range of frequencies, and the percentage of coverage is calculated to provide the right balance between absorption and reflection.

I just ran across this concept and need to read more on that.

For non-tuned slats on a bass trap, just make them broad and widely spaced. I usually put them at strategic heights to protect the fabric behind from bumps, dents and tears.... and the percentage open-area-to-slat-area can be calculated to provide the right overall balance between absorption and reflection.

Got it.

Not at the front of the room. They can create problematic reflections, SBIR, comb-filtering, and other not-so-nice things.

Great, thx

Ok, so I've been off doing my homework. Couple more questions and I think I'm done until I start building.

1) Can you point me to more info on hard backed clouds. I did a little searching but couldn't come up with a narrowed down result. Specifically wanting to know about what materials to use.
2) corner bass traps...filled 100% or hollow. Meaning triangles stacked or hung the long way?
3) you mentioned covering the traps to reduce HF loss. What is a good starting place for covering material and how thick? Also do I cover all corners or just some.

I realize some of this will take some actual tests in the room to flush out. Just trying to find enough info to get me started. By all means point me to thread(s) that have the answer when possible. Thx

Ok, a little closer reading and I think I found some answers.

1) 20mm thick plywood. I assume I would still face that with rock wool/703. How thick should the face be if I'm correct. Im also assuming I need to angle it
2)I'm assuming filled 100% due to needing the mass for absorption.
3)6mil plastic and just the super chunks in vertical corners.

1) Can you point me to more info on hard backed clouds. I did a little searching but couldn't come up with a narrowed down result. Specifically wanting to know about what materials to use.

Well, I could, yes, but then I'd have to shoot you, as you'd know too much!

Seriously, there's not much to it, in basic principle. It's just a frame with some type of dense, solid, rigid backing on top, such as OSB, MDF, plywood, etc., and insulation below (703 is good) as well as above. Hang it on chains (it will be heavy!), and angle it at least 10°, or more of you can, such that it sends first reflections way back behind your head, high up... not towards your head! You can include lights too, if you wish. Or separate it out into several smaller individual parts, instead of just one large part. You can leave off the hard back on some portions, where it is not needed.

There's an example of a cloud I designed for a large control room, here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=20471 (Must be position of the planets or something: I've linked to that same thread about four times today, on four different threads, for four different reasons! it seems to be magnetic....): You can see that the cloud is done as several individual sections, each hung at a specific angle. The central one has lights in it, but the "wing" ones don't. Some are hard-backed, others are not.

2) corner bass traps...filled 100% or hollow. Meaning triangles stacked or hung the long way?

Depends on what the room needs, but most likely completely filled. The easiest way is to carve up panels of OC-703 into large triangles, and stack those floor to ceiling.

3) you mentioned covering the traps to reduce HF loss. What is a good starting place for covering material and how thick?

Plastic is good, if you are just missing the very high end. Thicker plastic is good if you want some of the high mids back too. Or you could also put broad wood slats across some parts of the traps, to reflect broadly and strongly, above a certain frequency range. Leave wide gaps between them, so as not to tune them as a slot wall. You can also cut holes or strip in the plastic if needed, to tune them better, in terms of % coverage. Lots of options.

I realize some of this will take some actual tests in the room to flush out.

Yup!

One comment: It seems to me that you are getting a bit ahead of yourself here: I don't think you can be at the stage where you need to be worried about the details of treating the room yet, as you haven't yet designed it! Or maybe you have, but haven't posted that yet? It's best to post every step in your progress, so people can correct you if the see a problem, or maybe suggest a better way of doing something... What basic design philosophy are you using for your room?


- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

1) Well, I could, yes, but then I'd have to shoot you, as you'd know too much!

Seriously, there's not much to it, in basic principle. It's just a frame with some type of dense, solid, rigid backing on top, such as OSB, MDF, plywood, etc., and insulation below (703 is good) as well as above. .

Ok, so it's a sandwich.....absorption/hard surface/absorption?

3) Or you could also put broad wood slats across some parts of the traps, to reflect broadly and strongly, above a certain frequency range. Leave wide gaps between them, so as not to tune them as a slot wall. You can also cut holes or strip in the plastic if needed, to tune them better, in terms of % coverage. Lots of options.

Ok, that gives me some options

One comment: It seems to me that you are getting a bit ahead of yourself here: I don't think you can be at the stage where you need to be worried about the details of treating the room yet, as you haven't yet designed it!

[/quote]

Yes, you are of course correct. I'm big into conceptualizing, so I want to have an idea going in. I now have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, so I'll work on drawing it up and posting here for feedback.

Ok, so it's a sandwich.....absorption/hard surface/absorption?

Yep! That's pretty much it. The absorption on top helps damp any stuff that might be going on between the top of the hard back and the actual ceiling, which is fairly close above. And the absorption below is for several purposes, but mostly as first reflection point absorption.

- Stuart -

Ok, so after a few days of trying to figure out Sketchup (graphic artist I am not) here is a rough start to my proposed build.
It's really close to being actual scale (yes, I know close is probably not good enough).

As far as orientation, I'm position the mix position to be facing the window (if I read the architect layout correctly, the window is 36X48 dead center of the 14ft width. Mix position would be roughly 6'4" from the wall with the window to achieve the 38% rule (room depth is 16'9"). these measurements are all before walls.

So in getting back to the main thing, my budget is shrinking before I even start....typical. In order of importance I think even sounding control room is number 1, isolation is 2. I did some reading on some wall info that has been posted and came up with this

Outside wall where the foundation is. I assume the space is air gap? IF so, how much gap and do I bother with any insulation? wall between the control room and basement

Soundman2020 wrote: I don't think you can be at the stage where you need to be worried about the details of treating the room yet, as you haven't yet designed it! Or maybe you have, but haven't posted that yet? It's best to post every step in your progress, so people can correct you if the see a problem, or maybe suggest a better way of doing something... What basic design philosophy are you using for your room?

- Stuart -

Sorry, I didn't answer this. I'm going for RFZ design as it seems to make the most sense from what I've read and experienced.

Here is a rough draft of the proposed room layout.

It's coming along! I love to see progress with studio designs.

Mix position would be roughly 6'4" from the wall with the window to achieve the 38% rule (room depth is 16'9").

38% is more of a guideline, not a real rule. It's a starting point. I often move away from that in the final design.

these measurements are all before walls.

Then they are wrong! All of your room interior measurements, and especially your ratio calculations, are done with respect to the final surfaces of the inner-leaf walls: what you see as you stand inside the completed room, after nailing up the last piece of drywall, but before you put any treatment in.

So in getting back to the main thing, my budget is shrinking before I even start....typical.

Then you are now officially a qualified home studio builder! If things went the other way, I'd be worried...

First room of home studio building: It will always cost you a lot more than you ever could have imagined, and take at least twice as long as your worst nightmare, most pessimistic deadline.

Outside wall where the foundation is. I assume the space is air gap? IF so, how much gap and do I bother with any insulation?

Yes, the space is air gap, and you need as much as you need! Sorry to be cryptic. The size of the air gap depends on how much isolation you need, and the lowest frequency that you need it at. It also depends on the mass (surface density) of the walls. There are equations for calculating that.

And yes, you most definitely do need insulation: The wall is a resonant system, technically called a "Mass-Spring-Mass" system. The leaves of drywall (or other dense building materials) on each side of the air gap are the two "Masses", and the air trapped between is the "Spring". So it resonates. The insulation is the damper that stops it resonating. It acts very much like the shock absorber in your car suspension.

So yes, you do need it. It also needs to be of the correct type and density, to maximize the damping effect.

wall between the control room and basement

I'm going for RFZ design as it seems to make the most sense from what I've read and experienced.

Yep! Absolutely.

Here is a rough draft of the proposed room layout.

Ummmm... that isn't RFZ... Far from it...

- Stuart -