How can I reduce Bass leaking into the rest of the house...

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arcadeko

arcadeko

Illuminatius Overlordious
I do not have a dedicated studio, I have simply invaded and overtaken the living room and filled it with equipment. I recently purchased some Roland TD-4S drums so I can jam with some friends. I am running the drums and guitar and keyboards through a mixing board and using KRK 6's for a PA - We aren't playing super loud or anything but loud enough to drive my wife insane in other parts of the house.

So, I was wondering if there is anything I can do to reduce the bass which seems to travel through all the walls.

The suggestions I got from my local music store was to get Auralex mopads to put under the monitors - that is supposed to help reduce the vibration into the floor - the other suggestion was to get corner foam bass traps.

Do you think these things will actually help keep the bass in the room and reduce the bass vibration in the rest of the house?

Anyone here build their own corner bass traps? I am thinking about making one but I'm not sure if it will even make any difference.

Keep in mind - I am not trying to get any kind of prefect recording area, I am just trying to keep the sound from traveling out into the rest of the house... Any suggestions?
 
Bass traps are for making it sound better in the room, not so much for keeping it in. Concrete block walls will keep the bass in pretty well. How about using headphones/IEMs?
 
Buy the wife some lawnmower man type ear muffs. ;)
Or time at the spa while you practice / jam.


You need to decouple the bass amp from the floor. So mopads might help do that without a lot of extra thought into the task. The amp is kind of heavy and fragile, so hanging it in the air by some means probably isn't an ideal solution, but an option I suppose. You might try putting the bass amp on a couch or arm chair. Perhaps one (or two) of those memory foam pillow things under a piece of plywood and the amp on top of that. Roughly the same as the mopads. Make sure that it's not going to tip over and stuff. Safety first.
 
Another set of walls inside the room is generally the easiest / most effective way. Just because you stop something from resonating (a'la MoPads) doesn't mean that energy doesn't exist in the room anymore... It takes a LOT of mass to arrest the transmission of low end.
 
Open ear headphones would be the cheapest and most effective option.
 
I agree , get a headphone amp and make everyone wear headphones
 
CFox said:
Open ear headphones would be the cheapest and most effective option.
Click to expand...
If you've got a TD4, then you should be able to do everything DI and use headphones.
When I'm recording the bass I sometimes put the amp in the wardrobe and that helps a little, but that's in the bedroom, not the front room. I'm amazed at the way bass energy and sound travels through and along walls, doors, windows etc. I built a kind of isocab (2 MDF boxes, one within the other) to cut down the sound of my guitar amp as I mostly like to mic it. The idea was to be able to put the bass amp or the guitar amp inside and play loud~ish and mic the result and not drive the neighbours berserk. Well, it's in a kitchen cupboard and when I'm playing guitar, my wife can be in the kitchen and all she'll hear is a very quiet hum, like a fridge. When the bass amp is in there, it's quieter than when it's out but in the evening when it's quieter, the neighbour downstairs can hear that low thudding ! Same way that when this hall 200 yards down the road is rented out for functions, in the dead of night all we hear is 'boom boof booda booda boodoo boodoo'. Some great basslines at 1am. I'm convinced by the science ! Some kind of double isocab type thing may be a solution though, if you can be motivated to look into it and build such a contraption.
 
bass is the toughest man.
As Massive said, it takes mass to stop bass from traveling. Foam won't do squat and neither will the auralex. They will help the sound inside the room for recording purposes but will do about zero to keep it from going thru the walls.
 
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