First Post: Soundproofing my Basement

I live in a townhouse and the neighbours could hear when I was recording. What I did was build a small room that was big enough to hold a guitar amp and player, had a double glass door and wired for mic and headphones. The walls and roof are isolated and heavily insulated. Works really well. I can hear the amp at high volume (nearly blew my wife away when she opened the door while I was playing). I insulated the floor joist spaces, covered with dense mdf board, created about 3 inches of air space and then insulated the roof of the room and covered with drywall. I can sit at my board and play the guitar while recording from the room. It's too small to contain a drum kit, but I have drum surrounds for that and the neighbours don't complain. I usually only record one or two players at a time. All this cost me about $300.00 and 20 hrs of work (over the course of 2 weeks).
 
These are old pictures, now. I have since added some sound absorbtion foam and bass traps. The room sounded really ugly with all the hard reflective surfaces but I expected as much. I can play reasonably loud and Cindy can't tell I'm playing when she's on the second floor.
Now I need to work on the rest of the room............
 
domvac said:
I live in a townhouse and the neighbours could hear when I was recording. What I did was build a small room that was big enough to hold a guitar amp and player, had a double glass door and wired for mic and headphones. The walls and roof are isolated and heavily insulated. Works really well. I can hear the amp at high volume (nearly blew my wife away when she opened the door while I was playing). I insulated the floor joist spaces, covered with dense mdf board, created about 3 inches of air space and then insulated the roof of the room and covered with drywall. I can sit at my board and play the guitar while recording from the room. It's too small to contain a drum kit, but I have drum surrounds for that and the neighbours don't complain. I usually only record one or two players at a time. All this cost me about $300.00 and 20 hrs of work (over the course of 2 weeks).
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Looks nice! I live in a duplex and I'm planning out a similar basement room, but the clearance is very low (the bottom of the joists are about 6' 4" from the cement floor). I'd love to put in a glass door like that if it doesn't leak out too much sound. I only ever play through small 15 watt practice amps anyway.

Did you have to cut your door down any to fit it, or did you just build the door jamb to the measurements of the door?
 
I bought the door from Restore, used and reclaimed building materials. I bought the main door with the jamb and sills, and then bought a slightly smaller glass door and attached it to the front of the main door. I used caulking to seal the second door and screws to secure it. Before I added the second door, the sound leaked out badly and worse, leaked in. With the second door attached, I can have a singer in the room and have my monitors active and the sound won't leak through. Before the second door was attached, I actually got feedback through the mic that leaked through the door. That kind of defeated the whole purpose. I also installed some heavy door striping around where the door closes and that helped a lot. These pictures are just after the completion of my initial construction and don't show the second door attached or the room treatment that exists now. Most of my materials came from Restore and from construction site junk piles (yes, I asked). I own a vacuum sales and service store and I install central vacs and as a result, I'm around construction sites alot. They don't mind if I take stuff they're going to throw out. Saves them a little work. I did buy the electrical supplies and the mic jacks, etc. I had to add an additional circuit to my electrical panel as well. This cut out a lot of extranious noise from other devices in the house.
 
It's funny.
I rarely look at the posts & rep level of a contributor until I've read their input.
I have noted however, that the correlation between almost nonsensical and <20 posts is astounding.
It's not an axiom or a given but there are some very definitive opinions that survive the test of reality merely as opinions rather than correct information in that range.
PLEASE remember, everyone: vents are vents for a reason.
 
The main reason I built this room is because I was getting frustrated at the phone calls from the neighbours while I was playing in the studio. After a while, I was afraid to turn up to any decent volume and that inhibited my creativity. I always was thinking "is this too loud?" Since I built this room, the phone calls have stopped. I even called the neighbour who complained the most and asked if he could hear me playing. I was playing quite loudly at the time and he was completely unaware of it. I know that you can't soundproof completely, and doing a proper job of it is something that costs big money and requires extreme attention to detail but I don't have a lot of money to play with and my time is always in demand from life's other concerns. I did what I had to do and it worked out rather well. My philosophy has become "Listen to what the people who know have to say, weigh it against what you can do and proceed as you must." This forum has been a great help to me and I would have made mistakes that probably would have made the room less effective.
 
rayc said:
It's funny.
I rarely look at the posts & rep level of a contributor until I've read their input.
I have noted however, that the correlation between almost nonsensical and <20 posts is astounding.
It's not an axiom or a given but there are some very definitive opinions that survive the test of reality merely as opinions rather than correct information in that range.
PLEASE remember, everyone: vents are vents for a reason.
Click to expand...

I don't understand what part of this thread you are replying to; are you trying to emphasize the need for ventilation in the room? What opinions are you talking about?
 
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