Opinion needed on building a recording studio

[kenseh]

Hi to all,

I planned to build a soundproof recording studio in a second floor of a business building.

Now the unit space is totally empty and it is a corner unit with a trail of windows on single side of the room.

There's no plaster ceiling or whatsoever on top, it is just plain steel grill on the bottom of the zinc roof.

While for the flooring, it is concrete cement floor.

I'm planning to build single staggered wall around the entire space and then a Mass-Air-Mass drywall on the single staggered wall.

Now my questions start here.
1) Instead of using solid wood to build the staggered wall frame, what is the difference of replacing the woods with bricks. As I learned from several info, brick is heavier than solid wood therefore it has more mass. Is this correct? We will include absorbent materials in between the air gap of the woods and the bricks as well. So, do these make any difference?

2) I planned to build a single staggered wall outside of the double staggered wall to improve the mass. What is the propose gap between the single staggered wall and the double staggered wall. *I planned to do another single staggered wall of top of the double staggered wall because two sides of the room doesn't have a thick walls but only two thin walls with many windows. The other two sides of the walls are thick.

3) The height of the room from floor till the roof is around 16 feet while the height from floor till the top of the beam is 12.5 feet. If I build the staggered wall on top of the beam, will it good enough to soundproof the ceiling part from heavy rain and thunders.

4) For the windows, is it good enough if I seal it off with 2 layers of gypsum board before starting to build the single staggered wall and the double staggered wall?

As we speak, I am facing these questions from my contractor that is assigned to help me build this studio.

Thanks.

[supersoundproofing]

1) Instead of using solid wood to build the staggered wall frame, what is the difference of replacing the woods with bricks. As I learned from several info, brick is heavier than solid wood therefore it has more mass. Is this correct? We will include absorbent materials in between the air gap of the woods and the bricks as well. So, do these make any difference? Yes and no..For ambient noise yes the more the mass the better but, when your dealing with LF the reaction of material changes:example: speed of sound in engineering material - Brick=13,700fps  hard wood=13,000fps concrete=10,600fps.  (fps=feet per second )        so you can see once the sound is in these materials how fast it travels.More important would be to put the barrier closest to the sound source this way you already reduce the sound before it gets to the structure.

2) I planned to build a single staggered wall outside of the double staggered wall to improve the mass. What is the propose gap between the single staggered wall and the double staggered wall. *I planned to do another single staggered wall of top of the double staggered wall because two sides of the room doesn't have a thick walls but only two thin walls with many windows. The other two sides of the walls are thick. the larger the gap the better reduction.

3) The height of the room from floor till the roof is around 16 feet while the height from floor till the top of the beam is 12.5 feet. If I build the staggered wall on top of the beam, will it good enough to soundproof the ceiling part from heavy rain and thunders.yes

4) For the windows, is it good enough if I seal it off with 2 layers of gypsum board before starting to build the single staggered wall and the double staggered wall?You should at least add SSP foam mat to help equal the overall STC rating...windows already have little to none compared to the current walls.