HVACuous
pretty early on in the planning phase, i made the decision to put the studio on a separate HVAC system from the rest of the house. this would keep studio noise from travelling to the rest of the house and would also allow me better control over temperature conditions in the studio.
this is turning out to be a huge pain in the ass.
since a soundproofed room when closed is essentially airproofed as well, it's imperative to bring fresh air into the room to prevent musicians from passing out. but since the room is so sealed, you need to exhaust some of the return in order to maintain proper air pressure within the space. this is doable with some larger systems, but it's really hard to find conventional split systems for spaces as small as this, and probably even harder to work fresh air and balancing into the equation with them. lots of people have been talking about the mitsubishi mini-split, which requires no ductwork and is supposed to be sufficiently quiet that one can have it running while recording. however, the major drawback of these units is that no one has been able to find one that has a fresh air intake.
most of the other options i've seen people pursuing for spaces this size involve portable and/or window units. one common guerilla tactic is to put a window a/c in a really tiny room, chill the hell out of it, and run ductwork from there to the studio space. this isn't really feasible in my situation for a number of reasons, plus it's basically just a hack job.
then there's the whole issue of needing to maintain humidity in the 45-50% range year-round.
so all in all, it's sounding like it's going to cost an insane amount of money to do perfect climate control in the space, and i'm not entirely convinced yet that the benefits would be enough to justify the cost. i've decided to take a gamble with using the existing system in the house, with appropriate treatments to make it more studio-friendly.
for starters, all ductwork coming into the space is going to have to be insulated to reduce vibration. i might have them do flex duct as this helps even more with that. the ductwork will need to be oversized in order to help slow down the velocity, and will have to have more than 180 degrees' worth of turns. i'll also need to get a humidifier into the air handler, but that'll help the house as a whole--i hate waking up in the middle of the night during the winter feeling like i've been sleeping in a dehydrator.