John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I have a 32x30 pole barn. With metal walls and metal roof. The sides are roughly 10ft tall and the peak of the roof is around 16ft. Trying to think of the first steps and figure out if I sprayed the outside of the roof and the inside of the roof with spray foam if that would be enough to keep the wind and rain quiet enough to record in. As you can imagine it’s loud as Metallica in there right now. My thoughts are building a studio, nothing crazy fancy just a control room and a drum room. This would be for myself and a few friends to record in. The reason I ask is I don’t think I could add drywall to the roof line because of weight loads. So this would be a pretty big expense if I have to add a lot of construction just for the ceiling. Thanks in advance.

worst case, if you add the exterior coating and the interior insulation, and it's still too noisy during rain or hale storms, then don't record during those times. but at least the efficiency for cooling (and perhaps heating) will be much higher. for isolation you could build the rooms/booths without attaching to the building directly (you'll always need side stabilization - prefer isolation mounts) and this could even be cathedral or simply flat. build those room inside out with 2x6 walls, 6x6 posts, 2x10 joists (2x or 3x 5/8" type X drywall on the outside of the room) and fill the insides with semi-rigid fiberglass and cover with fire re-tar-dent cloth. add wood slats for some resonant treatment and some life in the room(s).