Hi there "farmboy", and Welcome!
My only real sound-proofing consideration is my wife sleeping approximately 150' from my drums. I am open to any suggestions.
There's two sides to isolation: Out-going sound annoying neighbors, and in-coming sound trashing your recordings. That might be in the form of traffic on the road you mentioned, or your neighbors mowing their lawn, or it might be rain, wind, thunder, hail, or it might be aircraft flying over, or even sounds in your own house, such as vacuum cleaner, dryer, food mixer, water running in pipes, toilet flushing, phone ringing, radio, TV, or even just people walking around, opening and closing doors. What you really need to do is to take measurements of the typical ambient sounds around your place at various times of day and night, to figure out what the loudest, most complicated, or most persistent sounds are, and put a number on that (decibels). You also need to take a measurement of how loud YOU are when you have a typical recording session going, and finally of how quiet you need that to be in order to not disturb your wife, your neighbors, or the cops who might come knocking on your door...
To do all of that, you need a proper sound level meter. Not an app on your iPhone! A real meter. Decent ones cost around US$ 100 on Amazon, ebay, etc. Don't get a cheap Chinese "toy" though: they go for around US$ 50$ or less.
When you have all of that data, you can figure out how much isolation you need, in terms of decibels, then we can help you decide on the type of construction you need, the materials, and the techniques.
with .... metal siding
That might be a problem, since that type of thin metal panel on widely spaced supports tends to vibrate, ring, and resonate at various frequencies. You might need to damp that in some way: perhaps some type of spray foam, or perhaps rubber pads applied at specific points. You could do a test using the REW acoustic software package (free!) to see if the metal or the structure has that problem.
well-pump room in the SE corner.
How loud is that? There's a noise source that you should be concerned about, right there. Two noises: one is the pump itself, the other is possibly the noises made by water in the pipes, perhaps even when the pump is not running.
Will this east side make a good sounding drum room
The acoustics of the drum booth does not depend on the shape/size of the existing building: it depends on the shape/size/treatment of the actual booth itself. The bigger it is (volume) the better it can sound. For drums, a higher ceiling is better than a low ceiling. The construction materials you use for the floor, walls, ceiling, door(s) window(s) etc. all have an influence on the overall sound, and most of all, the acoustic treatment you put inside the room, which "shapes" and colors the sound the way you want it to be.
The rough dimensions would be 12'W x 22'L x 12-15'H.
That's quite a reasonable size for a drum booth, especially the height. That can, indeed, sound pretty good.
(plus the air space over the utility room)
That would be irrelevant, since it will be outside of the isolation shell for the drum booth, and therefore would have practically no influence on the internal room acoustics.
I realize that these dimensions will change when I build the inner walls.
... and the inner ceiling! And the floor...
I already purchased enough lumber/insulation to build a wood floor (hope that wasn't a mistake-this is why I am consulting you).
Probably! Floating a floor is a bad idea. Here's why:
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... f=2&t=8173 . Your very best bet for a studio floor (and especially for a drum booth!), is concrete. Just dig a bit, then pour yourself a nice solid concrete slab. There simply is no better floor than that, acoustically.
I have looked around a bunch of websites and you folks seem to be quite intelligent.
Thanks! We think so too!
(But perhaps "modesty" isn't high on the list of our attributes...
)
There is a ton of misleading information out there.
Yep! Absolutely. If I had a dollar for each YouTube video on "how I built my studio" but shows stupid, dumb, mythical, unsafe, or illegal construction, I'd be well off!
Math is not my forte,
That's OK. Most of the math you need for building a studio is pretty simple. Ordinary high-school stuff. Nothing more complicated than simple logarithms, at the most extreme. No calculus required! Most of it is just adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. And the "adding" and "multiplying" is mostly about figuring how much more money you'll need to do it!
but I am willing to put in the time necessary.
Great! I'd suggest that you start with two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. The both give you the basic background you'll need to design and build your place, and they only use basic math. They both start out very simple, and explain the concepts fairly clearly. With those two, you'll have a good basis, and if you get stuck, well, that's what the forum is for!
- Stuart -