Isolation on a budget

M

moho

New member
Hello all, i am new here but not really new to sound engineering, however i just got all my own gear and have set up a studio. The whole room is wood panelled but I want to isolate the amps and vocals as well as possible. I have alot of thick, hard, plywood sheets and i was going to cut them up to surround the amps and vocals, however they will obviously not be enough. What material can i put on the wood to isolate everything? I found acoustic foam for sale at 10 euro per square metre, however is this worth it? Will it be any better than say mattresses? Obviously what i need is heavy material with a lot of mass, but I just can't think of anything!

Thanks.
 
Acoustic foam will obviously be better than a matress but a good idea i was told about on a budget is to cut plywood upand effectivly make a box that is cut in half so you can hinge it open or close it.
Then insulate it with rockwool and mount on walls.
this allows you to choose how treated your room is by opening and closing the different "boxes" around the room (the more of them open the more dead it will sound the more closed the more reflective they will be and hence less dead they will be)

-Josh
 
fishkarma said:
Acoustic foam will obviously be better than a matress
Click to expand...

Have you ever stood inside a mattress fortress?

I had the 4-bedroom apartment to myself last summer, and took all the mattresses, put them on end in a cube, threw blankets and foam and other heavy material over it, and it was pretty damn silent in there as long as you made sure there were no openings.

Of course, 1) its a major fire hazzard, and 2) Its rather large and impractical considering what you could do with that wood :)
 
My bad. When he started talking about acoustic foam i assumed that he was talking about treating his room. Not silencing it to the world.
 
Well, the wording is confusing because terms are getting misused (as far as I can tell). Not scolding the OP - I've done the same thing myself plenty.

He says "isolation" and mentions that he knows he needs lots of mass to block sound, so I would imagine he means blocking out sound.

I think the common misconception here is that he mentioned acoustic tile, when acoustic tile will not silence the outside world, or even the rest of the room - it will simply help cut down on reflections, to get a more "dead" sound within the chamber. Unless you had some foot-thick blocks of foam to use, I think you will get about the same volume.

Check out the studio building forum - if you already have the wood and the tools, there are certain types of material that are better than others for literally absorbing and blocking transmission of sound, that can be had at decent prices. I just haven't explored this avenue enough to recall which is which.
 
cusebassman said:
Well, the wording is confusing because terms are getting misused (as far as I can tell). Not scolding the OP - I've done the same thing myself plenty.

He says "isolation" and mentions that he knows he needs lots of mass to block sound, so I would imagine he means blocking out sound.

I think the common misconception here is that he mentioned acoustic tile, when acoustic tile will not silence the outside world, or even the rest of the room - it will simply help cut down on reflections, to get a more "dead" sound within the chamber. Unless you had some foot-thick blocks of foam to use, I think you will get about the same volume.

Check out the studio building forum - if you already have the wood and the tools, there are certain types of material that are better than others for literally absorbing and blocking transmission of sound, that can be had at decent prices. I just haven't explored this avenue enough to recall which is which.
Click to expand...

Well basically I want to isolate the amps and vocals whilst keeping them in the same room as the drums, to do live recordings rather than tracking over and over again because i prefer the energy of live recordings.

I also would like the deaden the room a bit, so i might get acoustic foam for that.
 
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