Sound deadening for warehouse

[Tekker]

The church I go to just just recently bought a fairly small warehouse for our youth group (don't know the exact size but it seated 106 chairs with a center and side isles with some walking room up front then the stage) and it is all concrete walls and very reflective. The youth pastor was thinking about stacking up a bunch of junk like chucks of wood and whatnot (that was left in the warehouse I guess) up on the back wall to absorb/diffuse some of the sound, but I don't know how much that will actually absorb, plus it'll look really tacky. So what would be some good "inexpensive" ways to treat the walls? Plus maybe some bass traps in the corners (I'll have to go check out John Sayers' site to see how to build them).

Any suggestions would be very muchly appriciated.

-tkr

 

[sonusman]

I am thinking heavy curtains about 6" off the wall will help clear up speach in the the room pretty well. If you are going to amplify stuff and play music in there, and are going to get even a bit loud with it, well, you have a whole other issue to deal with, and curtains are probably not going to be the best thing.

Fully absorbing the wall behind the people will go a long way towards takes care of a lot of nodes in the room. I don't think that is the wall to be using diffusion on. Save that for the side walls.

I am sure John will be along shortly to set it all straight. But I will give a little warning, "good" and "inexpensive" usually don't work together too well when it comes to treating rooms. One has a problem with price, and the other has a problem with not creating other annoying problems. I am sure that the room can be fully treated for maybe around $1000 US in materials and some volunteer work.

But for ANYBODY to suggest anything, you are going to need to provide room dimensions. A decent drawing, even something hand done and scanned would be better than nothing.

Good luck.

Ed

 

[Tekker]

If you are going to amplify stuff and play music in there, and are going to get even a bit loud with it, well, you have a whole other issue to deal with, and curtains are probably not going to be the best thing.

We are gonna get pretty loud in there with the worship band (especially cause I'm the drummer ).

But I will give a little warning, "good" and "inexpensive" usually don't work together too well when it comes to treating rooms.

Maybe I should have said "decent" and inexpensive. But I think you get the idea, I just didn't want someone to tell me to put egg crates up on the walls.

But for ANYBODY to suggest anything, you are going to need to provide room dimensions. A decent drawing, even something hand done and scanned would be better than nothing.

I'll have to find out the exact measurements, but here's a little doodling I did of it (hopefully).

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

That's what I thought.

Let's try that agian......

.....Ahhh, there it is.

-tkr

 

[John Sayers]

I agree with what Ed said totally...for me good and decent are the same thing.
Unfortunately you didn't give dimensions but I'd shift the stage to start with so it's in the top left corner aiming at the sound booth. Then I'd treat the bottom wall and the wall under the sound booth. I'd also treat the back of the stage and have heavy drapes on either end of the stage.

Hope this gives you start.

cheers
john

 

[Tekker]

Thanx guys.

What types of materials would you suggest for heavily treating the back walls? We can start with that and then see where to go from there.

Everyone told me afterwards that the drums weren't that loud, but I was playing extremely soflty (and I hate having to play like that ). There was also a lot more people in there then there will be on normal yough nights because we had our Sunday night service in there, so we had alot of adults there too. We're also gonna put up a plexi-glass drum wall, so that should tone the drums down quite a bit.

So any more ideas for some "halfass and incredibly cheap" sound proofing? (Is that better? )

-tkr

 

[John Sayers]

Take a look at the fibreglass that Joe Egan has used in his studio. It's 4" fibreglass from Cornel I think.

Make 4" x 2" frames along the walls and place the insulation in between the studs. Then cover the whole thing in cloth. If you can afford to use 6" frames it would be even better.

cheers
john

 

[sjoko2]

I'd suggest using one of the acoustic sprays, as in those provided by, for example Thermocon http://www.thermocon.com/ This is a spray applied to the interior of the building, providing good insulation (out-and-in) of both sound and noise. In addition it is designed to absorb sound.