Please help my poor neighbors!

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swindle

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Well, I've found myself in a new situation. I'm going to be moving my studio into a small (2-300 sq. ft.) commercial office space in New York City. Now, even though most of our recording work will be done after hours (6pm on) I am concerned that we will not be able to freely 'blast' our music as you all know sometimes needs to be done. Any ideas on hwo to turn this small room into a fairly soundproof (or at leat deaded) workspace for as cheap as possible? One idea I had was to get one of those "whisper rooms" for recording vocals but even the smallest ones (which really don't allow for any expressive movement room for the artist) are around $2000!!! You're ideas will be hugely appreciated.
 
Are you looking to build a Stand Alone room? Can you attach material to the walls? Any windows in the office space? You might want to check with local building and fire codes before you put in any sound proofing in a rented space. (speaking from past problems I had)
 
The only way I see is to build a modular "room with a room" setup but that's going to cost $2000+ :)

cheers
John
 
I am free to do whatever I want with the space. There are large windows on one side only but they surprisingly don't let in too much noise, especially for New York City. What I am concerned with is soundproofing the one wall between me and the neighbor. All other walls are fine the way the are, no other neighbors except this one and she is NOT feeling the idea of having a recording studio next door. The wall between us is currently very thin. It's about 11 feet wide and about 16 feet tall (maybe taller). So the main goal ideally is to allow us to work freely with out feeling constrained to keep the volume or bass under a certain level. As far as recording, I'll deal with that seperately by building a small iso booth ont he other side of the room. As for this wall, I'm thinking I should build a second wall over it but what should I use to proof it as best as possible to eliminate sound, especially bass frequencies from passing through to her space? I currrently have sheet rock studs, a fair ammount of standard insulation (probably not enough though) and soem plywood (also not enough to cover the entire wall, but most of it). How can I do this cheaply and effectively?
 
Mass=peace

Well this is a tough one. After the fact, complete sound proofing is difficult at best, and almost impossable in the worst scenarios, so its really best to completely analize exactly what your trying to achieve, what you are working with, and what is really existing,so as to not waste money and time on things that are really usless if certain conditions exist. Sound proofing is achieved by one or more techniques which include but are not limited to- deterance by mass and/or decoupling one structure from another. For one thing, almost all bass freq. transfer through a common shared floor, and if the amps and or bass drum is sitting on a wood framed floor you have to decouple the transducers from it. Build small, dry sand filled platforms(2x6 framed boxes & 3/4" ply or pb on both faces. Float them on (4) 1/2"x2"x 2" neoprene pads or cones contact cemented to the bottom corners. This will inhibit structural conductance. Do the same for the drums.(Larger) For airborn coupling, build gobos, which are the same construction, except, line them with fiberglass insulation and cover one face with 3/4" particle board, and fabric on the opposite. Imagine (3) or (4) sided small room(the gobo's) around the amps/drums. The gobos are the walls around the platforms. Build for tight fit against the platforms You can mic them, and monitor through headphones.(studio technique) You can mount casters on the bottom of each gobo and hinge these panels togeather to form an enclosure high enough to block the sound along a direct path to your neighbors adjoining wall. Face the amps toward the fabric side, but directed away from thier wall. But this sounds like a practice studio to me not a recording studio so I imagine you want to hear loud, live sound, Investigate LIMP MASS products. They might be helpful in this situation. Not knowing the layout and existing construction makes offering any real help difficult. But understand this, structural noise conducts first and faster and is harder to isolate, airborn is next, so measure how much are you trying to keep in/out. 50db, 75 db, 150db? Investigate the different construction methodologies for each 20db increase of airborn noise . But remember, complete isolation requires every detail to be thorough in its application, and can create hazardous safty and fire conditions. Check with your local building inspection and acoustics/construction organizations for info. If you build some types of enclosures without permits, your asking for trouble. Especially in a commercial building.(They can shut you down) I hope this has been of some help. Email me if I can be of further assistance, at rfmrdesign@rcsis. Good luck with your project
Rick Fitzpatrick
 
I just emailed you Rick using that adrress you gave in your last post but it got sent back to me so I'll just post the message here. Anyone else, feel free to chime in as well!

The room I am working with is a pretty cool, raw industrial space.
It's a small room, probably 200 sq ft but the cieling are extremely
high. There's only one side with a neighbor and that's the wall I am
planning on soundproofing. My idea so far (unless I find out
something better and still affordable) is to build a new second wall
about 3-4 inches away from the existing wall. The existing wall is
simply sheetrock panels on metal studs (not 2x4s). It's as if the
wall is made out of paper the way sound travels through it, but this
is also due to the fact that there are pipes running through from my
side to their side that create small openings so ofcourse sound is
going through. I intend to seal all of those up, make this existing
wall as sealed as possible then go to work on the new wall. The
new wall will be sheetrock also but it may be on 2x4s instead.
What do you think, 2x4s or metal studs?

there's also these things called resilient channels. these are
metal channels that go onto the wood studs and the sheetrock
attaches to the resilient channels so as not to touch the wood
frame directly. Here's where I learned about this (it's under the
heading 'Resilient Channels and ‘Sound Board’) :
http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/channel.htm



Also, is it better to insulate the walls or not? I've heard
contradicting theories. 1, insulation actually transmitts sound
through to the other side and it's better to have just air and 2,
insulation actually helps to prevent sound by  giving it another
obstacle to move through. What do you think?

I will be carpeting the whole floor which should help at least to kill
some reflections and maybe, just maybe stop some bass
frequencies from transferring through the floor boards.

I guess I really should explain what the space will be used for. It IS
going to be for recording but mostly vocalists and digital
equipment (no instruments). I will be building a small vocal booth
wich should be fine. My main concern is being fairly free to blast
my Event ps8 studio monitors as loud as I want without feeling
guilty. Or even work on a subsonic bass loop, or heavy pounding
kick drums for 2 hours straight. these are extremes but I figure if
I'm able to do this I will basically be free to do anything.

So back to the wall issue. Do you think this idea to build the
second wall is a good idea. Even if I do put a new wall up what
about the wall facing the hallway, will sound still go through that
one, into the hallway and in turn back into thier hallway side wall?
Or is it basically only the dividing wall that we must worry about.

Lastly, I don't know if it was a sign from God or what but the other
day, I was waliking down my block and I found 5 huge stacks
(about 4 feet tall each) of clean egg crates so I lugged them back
home. Now, I've also heard contradicting info on this stuff as to it's
effectiveness. I know it's not a sound proofing material but I have
enough now to pretty much cover all the walls (except the large
window side). Will this be effective in 'deadening' the room? At
least I could use them inside the vocal booth right?

Thanks a LOT for your willingness to help, you must know what it's
like to be in a situation where you need real advice/info as
opposed to rumors and experimentations. I'm not trying to reinvent
the wheel here I just want to effectively sonically seclude this
space for as cheap as possibe.
Thanks again,
Swindle
 
I know the feeling!

Hi, Rick again, well I'm not an acoustics authority, but I'm willing to give suggestions.
First, I remember using eggcrates myself once. All four walls of a garage. Some over sheetrock, some over ply, and what I do remember was the high from the contact cement!lol Cool, till I passed out. Dangerous. I remember it did warm the sound in the room up. Cozy kind of. Probably acts as an absorber to some extent, and a one depth/frequency diffuser to some extent. Nothing drastic. And your right. It does nothing for soundproofing. Best suggestion. Throw it away. Remember your in a commercial building, and it has other clients. This stuff is a fire waiting to happen. and the building inspector would probably have a field day. Besides, it won't do enough to warrent the work. And it looks stupid. Cheap. And amature. So there. I don't think thats what you want. Hold your horses a bit, and lets get this animal licked correctly, at least look at it a bit. I know money issues. Hell, it took me years to get what I have, and it's really not what I would like to have. So lets spend what money and time you do have on the best bang for the buck. And time, nobody has that to waste. Ok, investigation time. Is the ceiling sheetrock, or a grid/acoutical tile type. I don't understand INDUSTRIAL- to me that implies concrete. This sounds like office material. I could be wrong. I've seen lowered sheetrock ceilings hung from unistrut. The walls didn't even meet the structure above. Same wall construction as grid/tiles. The sound just goes right through the ceiling, and over the wall. Investigation is in order. But first, let me say, your doing this to ultimately have fun. Make a little money.(maybe big bucks) So hang in there, and LOOK at every detail of what is existing. Tell us about the ceiling and floor. Can't solve the walls till we really know whats there. Hope this helps. And I hope other people respond. Don't just listen to me.
GET ALL ThE INFO YOU CAN. You'll be armed with the best tool there is.
Rick
 
Your problem may also be you are using the wrong amps if you have too crank them hard to get the tone you want. A 10 watt amp records the same as that 100watt but gives you the same tone at a lower dB level. That will win half the battle.

Bass sounds better going in direct. So Investing in a big bass amp for recording isnt really nessesary. Money there is better spent on the right prosessors to get you the variety of sounds you want.

which leaves accoustic drums which are loud and the best you can do is to construct a tent from moving blankets over the kit and also cover the front of the bass drum with another moving blanket to reduce bleed to the overheads.

These three things will help to reduce the problems with disturbing the neighbors. and will help you keep you ears intact for mixing. the less dB to deal with the more effective your soundproofing will be.
 
to make the egcrate effective you need to mount it on the walls and then 6" in front of it hang carpet.

What it does is whatever the carpet lets through the surfaces cause the sound to bounce in alot of different directions weakening it before it hits the foam in the nap of the carpet effectively deadening the sound. they dont do much good without the carpet to hang in front of it.
 
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