I need soundproofing advise.

S

soundmaster

New member
Does anyone know what I can use to sound proof a small garage?
I 'm on a buget Right know, I can't aford to buy that expensive studio foam.
Is there cheaper material I can get at a Wallmart, home depot, carpet dealers, ect.
I'm new at soundprofing, I realize its better to pay top dollar for soundprofing material, but I can't afford it right now.
Can anyone help me out with some advise, links, anything?:confused:
 
I don't know THAT much about sound proofing, BUT you need to know what you want. Are you sound proofing because your neighbors are getting angry about noise levels, or are you just trying to make your room sound better? There's different approaches to each of these.
 
soundmasters reply

I live in a small town that has a poupulation of about 20,000 people.
I live close to the down town area, & the law is pretty strick with the noise, like loud car stereos, loud parties etc....
I have a small 1 car garage, I don't think it would take a lot of materials to get the job done.
I don't want any noise to get out, & there is a train track thats runs about a block down the street, & the train can get really loud at times.
This garage is about the size of a storage unit that can fit one car.
If this makes any sense, & you can help guide me in the right direction, that would be cool!
Well I got to go. THANKS soundmaster
 
Wrong answer! Keeping the noise in seems to be the more expensive of the two. I've been dealing with the acoustics of my control room and it's actually not very expensive. (No construction required) You probably need to do the room inside a room technique. That should help a lot but I can't really offer any advice. Hopefully someone on here will answer because you can get a lot of good help...I know I have.
 
Executivos said:
Wrong answer! Keeping the noise in seems to be the more expensive of the two. I've been dealing with the acoustics of my control room and it's actually not very expensive. (No construction required) You probably need to do the room inside a room technique. That should help a lot but I can't really offer any advice. Hopefully someone on here will answer because you can get a lot of good help...I know I have.
Click to expand...

Very true advice!

Treating for "acoustics" in a room is a very different approach than treating for sound leakage. Unfortunately for you, you are definately picking the more expensive route, and to tell you the truth, I don't even think you have enough space in that garage to aborb much of the frequencies that are below 100Hz, which is the stuff that is getting you in trouble in the first place.

Let me illustrate.

I friend of mine built a new garage that he was going to use as a practice room. He double insulated the walls, and put double layers of top of the line carpet pad on the walls and ceilings.

Guess what? The neighbors a block away STILL heard the bass guitar and kick drum, just like I told him would happen. Poor guy, spend all that extra money on insulation and carpet pad for nothing....good money at stuff that is only rated to 100% absorb at best frequencies down to maybe 250Hz. And his room sounded like shit anyway because while damped the highs, the low end was still bouncing all over the place causing gross nods and phase cancellation in the room.

You are going to need about 3 feet on ALL sides of your garage to create "bass traps" to keep the noise from getting out. Still still might only work for about 75dB of volume, which will probably still allow about 30dB of low end to excape. Not too bad, but you cannot afford the real estate in your garage to do so. I am imagining that your garage is about 9X18', and that may be a bit generous. After subtracting the three feet from each wall, you would have a 3x12' area to work with.....:) Hope you are all skinny!

Sorry friend to be the bearer of bad news, but the bass is going to kill your efforts to contain sound. You HAVE to have double walls with space between them to contain bass from escaping the building, and you just don't have the space to do it properly in.

Good luck.

Ed
 
3 ' on all sides is a hell of a lot of space (cuz bass frequencies are so long, I'm guessing?). Okay, if you *do* build a bigger garage to house your present garage in :D, with 3' of space all around, can you use the 3' for storage space, or does it have to be empty? Filling the space up with empty beer bottles and old Penthouse magazines would just diffuse sound, right?
 
Sound Proofing

I just finished a Studio in my back yard. It's a 24'x14' building that started life as a pre-fab building. I researched it quite a lot and found this approach to be quite effective. It is wood frame with 2x4 studs, just like a house. I started with R-19 encapsulated insulation packed loosely. Then a layer of 5/8 drywall. next I used "Hat Channel" to create an air space between the next layer of 5/8 drywall. Then I used a 1 3/4 solid-core door with a layer of sonomat from Auralex and a layer of 5/8 drywall. I used industrial weather stripping in the jam. This technique is fantastic!!! Of course it will not eliminate all the sound completely. But if your neighbors are inside their house with their doors closed, they will never know you are there. It worked for me. Hope this helps you a bit. Go to soundproofing.org or acoustics101.com to get even more info.
 
Scott, you are of course correct, mostly. I would be interested in hearing how much low end leakage you actually have, and be assured that any there is will travel quite nicely outside.

I suppose I was thinking ahead in the 3' of space inside about also balancing the sound in the room. I suppose that if you kept all amps and speakers, and live drums facing towards one particular wall, you could get away with only one wall having a 3' bass trap. There would still be interesting problems in such a small room though. A space that small has little chance of actually sounding very good being a good sounding room for tracking AND a monitoring room for recordings.

'soundmaster'....what IS the intended purpose of this room?

Ed
 
Soundproofing

Dear Sonusman,
First of all, I never claimed to be a soundmaster, I was only leaving what I had done as one of a million possibilities that could possibly work. I did quite a lot of research including hiring a commercial architect to help me with the project. Air space and unlike densities are what stops sound. 3 feet is a bit overkill. I have done sessions in some of the most famous studios in L.A. and have never seen walls 3 feet thick. Ever. The cost factor balanced against the loss of workable space is like putting a kickstand on a Sherman Tank. Why?
I live in a very nice neighborhood in Southern California and did factor in the noise of drums into the equation. Is it completely quiet when playing drums? No. Is it a reasonable volume even for late evening tracking? Yes. Trying to completely kill the noise is unreasonable. Stop by the Record Factory in North Hollywood some time, get out of the car, and if they are tracking you will hear drums coming through the walls. And plenty of hit records have been made in there. If you live in such a neighborhood that the houses are so close together, then you can go the extra mile and use Sonomat or Acoustilead. Then it will freaking dead silent. Period.
Sound leaks more through spaces than walls. If your doors or room have tiny spaces where they join, the sound will leak there and seem like the walls are ineffective, even with low end. Also the more reflective a room is the louder it louder it will seem, and cause rumble making the low end seem unmanageable and out of control. Treat the room right and the low will diffuse a lot before it leaves the room. Of course I never get a whole lot of Tuba or Timpani players in, so I'm not sure how the room would react in my situation. I guess it's becuause a goood Tuba player is hard to find these days, as is Timpani players. Or should I say Timpani-ist?
Finally,.......... Whatever.

Scott
PS, Ever heard of the Harmonized Major Scale?
 
Soundproofing

Okie Dokie then...............
Something has been telling me I wasted my time building a studio. I knew there was a better way. Thanks for enlightening me! I'll just go ahead and rip it all out starting tonight. Gosh, If only I had asked you first.....darn it!
Scott
 
I didnt mean to discourage you It sounded to me that with that train and the possible traffic you wernt going to get any good tracks unless you did that thing with the 3' room inside the room stuff.

My room is going into my basement so most of those problems dont exist for me. But I still only mic up vocals , b3 organ and harp because room constraints are too much of a hassle while I could just use a plate reverb to controll the sound. Ive never had a bleeding problem with going direct and tracking that way.
 
I have nothing to add to this thread. Except, it seems very confused. soundmaster is the original poster with the train and the garage, Scott Oliver is the other guy who built a seperate building.

Hope that clears things up.
 
Scott...I agree with the statements you made about a little bit of drum leakage being acceptable in most areas. The problem is that how much is different in each situation....soundmaster said because of laws (and fines I'm sure) that he didn't want ANY sound out. That train doesn't sound like it helps either. It just sounds to me like the room is small as it is, and anymore space taken out of it will make it REALLY small and probably won't sound very good.

As far as direct bass....maybe I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to get a good miked bass sound, but I get awesome bass tones direct (sansamp plugin helps to) :D
 
It's me, the guy with the garage!

OK guys break it up!
Executivos-----& ScottOliver It sounds like you both know something about soundproofing. The information you gave me does help out a little.
This little project I'm doing with the garage, I don't expect to get all the sound from the inside or outside taken care of, just enouff
to get by, so the poeple next door don't bitch about the noise.
& to keep the sound bouncing off the walls,
I don't think I'll have a real big problem with the inside of the garage.
I'm more concerned about the poeple next door, these poeple are senior citizens. These pople are really difficult.
I'm always looking for new ideas, Thanks for the responses.
 
For the record, I know almost nothing about constructing studios. (if you read my posts I never mentioned anything about 2x4s or drywall, and it's because I have no clue) I just know about old people that get angry and call the cops when you're practicing. :mad: I also know how bad it sounds and how hard it is to work in a small room. :D
 
I got another question,
What about egg cartons, someone told me I could try useing egg cartons on the walls. I have never seen this or heard of it, it sounds a little silly, but if it works.
I just came back from wallmart, and found this foam matress material, I gues people use it on there beds to get more comfort, & the material looks alot like the foam you find in couches, or recliners( a light tan color). This foam isn't as thick as the couch foam,
& and it has bumps on it that look a little like that studio foam with the piramid look, accept these are rounded off.
Would someting like this work.:confused: :confused:
 
Its called egg crate. It can be useful to cut down on echo from the room but will not keep the noises in or out for that matter. the room will be quieter for using it . because the echos wont be overwelming. You can use peg board in the corners covered with cloth to trap the bass.

It will Improve the room but it wont soundproof it.

Old pepole piss me off.
 
Scott, you seemed to have taken my post totally in the wrong way. The original statement was:

"I don't want any noise to get out, & there is a train track thats runs about a block down the street, & the train can get really loud at times. "

soundmaster, feel free to follow other advice. But, I have treated a few rooms in my time, and have watched it done the wrong way by many. I am telling you that you are going to need a lot of dead space to absorb low frequencies, the very same low frequencies that your neighbors are going to complain about.

There is going to be no cheap way to go about this. You are in a bad situation with not only your budget, but the size of you space, as well as the promixity of your neighbors.

Please feel free to re-read my above post, and to research this subject with professionals in this area of expertice. I don't think you are going to find consensus much different than what I posted.

Egg crate, foam, carpet, blankets, curtains, whatever is not going to help you. Space, rockwool, and dense materials will, and the cost of those even for your little space is going to add up in a hurry.

Reality check.

Ed
 
foam does look cool and helps with the wow factor. but apart from reducing echo its not going to help.

You just may need someone to kill those neighbors.

I cant help you with that but you can still track in that garage when they arent there.

Dont worry they will be dead soon.:D
 
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