150 mm thick cold room panels for my soundroom

T

Thorney

New member
I recently scored a heap of old cold room panels off a job.
They are 150mm thick with 2mm thick colourbond steel on both sides.
Will these panels be good to use for my room.
I will be building the soundroom from scratch, I have a lot of space under the house so the room will be a totally seperate room to the house.
I want there to be absolutely no sound escaping as I live very close to neighbours.
Also I will be building a second room of the main practice space to act as a recording studio.
Mainly my question is, will the coldroom panels work.
Any help or advice would be great.
Cheers
 

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To make a room 'soundproof', you have to decouple the room from anything that would transmit sound vibrations through it (bass is tough to tame that way), THat usually menas a 'room within a room' construction, with rubber bushings or pads between things like room joists from building joists.
What are those 'cold room panels'? Steel on one side will not be good for room sound - very reflective.
 
This looks like styrofoam. I'm converting a cold room to a rehearsal studio, which was also lined with styrofoam. I'm now in the process of removing it, you might want to read some of the advice in this thread: Styrofoam walls and ceiling
 
mjbphotos said:
To make a room 'soundproof', you have to decouple the room from anything that would transmit sound vibrations through it (bass is tough to tame that way), THat usually menas a 'room within a room' construction, with rubber bushings or pads between things like room joists from building joists.
What are those 'cold room panels'? Steel on one side will not be good for room sound - very reflective.
Click to expand...

Yes the panels have steel both sides, my plan was to build the room using the panels for walls ceiling and floor so I saved money on framing etc.
Once the room was erected i was going to put carpet over the steel on the walls and ceiling and lay a fake timber floor. The panels are 150mm thick so I was hoping this would be thick enough for me not to have to build the room within a room.
 
Thorney said:
Yes the panels have steel both sides, my plan was to build the room using the panels for walls ceiling and floor so I saved money on framing etc.
Once the room was erected i was going to put carpet over the steel on the walls and ceiling and lay a fake timber floor. The panels are 150mm thick so I was hoping this would be thick enough for me not to have to build the room within a room.
Click to expand...

Not carpet IMHO that will just suck all the extreme HF out of the room making it very 'dim'. Ideally you want plasterboard on the steel decoupled with 'Green Glue' but others here are vastly better informed about this than I. GG is quite expensive I understand?

You want to start I think with a 'lively' room and then treat it to taste.

The R in a R concept is more about having a 'break' in the sound path. Sound is stopped by 'mass' and steel IS a good solution so long as it is very well damped, those panels should be but check for voids. 'Styrofoam' is known over here as Expanded Polystyrene and is pretty useless acoustically. It will however damp those panels IF stuck securely both sides.

And I ask again! SURE that is not asbestos? Looks 'fibrous' to me, not like EP.

Dave.
 
It is not asbestos.

It is not asbestos. No, it is not.

These are very common, very ordinary, freezer panels for building walk-in fridge rooms. I have a few, myself, but i'm using them to frame in a walk-in. Crazy, huh?

These would be medium-to-poor for studio work. Yes, there's some mass there. Yes, there's some dampening there. But perhaps the confusion is in the fact that many use 'insulation' for sound control and these, being full of 'insulation' would somehow do the same. Not really.

The surface is plywood with light sheetmetal covering it. Yes, covering it with carpet would be better, but it wouldn't really be optimal. Hanging carpet an inch or two away would be better yet, but still not optimal -- although maybe worth a try if you had some good mics and response software. I wouldn't trash the idea based on superstition, certainly.

If it's a choice to build a room or not build a room, then sure, use them to build a room and (try to)tune it in later. But they wouldn't be my first choice. In fact, given a choice of these or bare framing with dimension lumber, I'd choose (and have) the dimension lumber every time.

Ponder 5
 
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