Soundproofing.

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IntertheEvident

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My drummer and I are going to be renting a house soon. We will be turning either, the garage or the 3rd bedroom into our Rehearsal/Recording room. We want to keep the sound in as much as possible so that the music won't disturb the neighbors at all. We'd like to rehearse and record as much as possible without having to worry about a call to the police for noise disturbance.

Suggestions?

We're also on a pretty low budget, so we dont mind getting creative :) .

Thanks!

Justin
 
Yup. You can do some acoustical treatments that are somewhat effective for fairly cheap, but sound "proofing" (keeping sound from getting out of the house) is going to be a very expensive affair! You will need a mix of density of materials and open space between walls to do this right.

Sorry to break the bad news to you.
 
Ok, So it's obvious I've never attempted this before..haha.

Any idea on a pricerange for soundproofing? What kind of material and procedures are required ? Lets asume is a 20x20 room.


Justin
 
Sound treatment and soundproffing are like ying ang yang man....if you don't want to your neighbors to hear...then put drapes/pillows/comforters/bass trapes and all that crap in the room...but if you want to record in a dead ass room like that...thats a bad idea....your kinda screwed
 
chestwick91 said:
if you don't want to your neighbors to hear...then put drapes/pillows/comforters/bass trapes and all that crap in the room
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I'm sorry, but that's totally wrong. Pillows and blankets will not stop enough sound to keep your neighbors from complaining. You need mass and airspace decoupling to effectively minimize sound from escaping.
 
I suggest you register on John Sayers forum and read a bunch. There are a bunch of senarios just like yours there. Then once you read a lot, go ahead and post your problem, and see what the good people there can help you do. You're going to need to be specific.

Also, do you know how high the ceilings are, because I'm guessing the vertical space will decrease significantly. And, you should find out how close the neighbors are. It's impossible to take away all noise coming from the room, and there is quite a range as to how much you can take away, so I suggest you find out how much reduction you need, and some genious can plug it into his equations to find out everything you need to know. Also make sure you and a few guys who are handy are willing to help you out, cause there is very little room for mistake in this.

Good luck,
Ben
 
chestwick91 said:
Sound treatment and soundproffing are like ying ang yang man....if you don't want to your neighbors to hear...then put drapes/pillows/comforters/bass trapes and all that crap in the room...but if you want to record in a dead ass room like that...thats a bad idea....your kinda screwed
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Heh...if only all that stuff would work!
 
IntertheEvident said:
Any idea on a pricerange for soundproofing? What kind of material and procedures are required ? Lets asume is a 20x20 room.
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you'll pretty much have to do a total reconstruction of the room.

there's a section on this board for studio building...research in there to start off (don't post yet until you read)...also http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html
 
A lot depends on the specifics. The type of house construction, location of windows, proximity of neighbors, ambient noise, etc.

The real biggie is the ambient noise. If you live on a busy street you can get by with a lot more noise then a quiet suburb. Being able to rehearse at home is all about finding the right house in the perfect location.

To be as soundproof as possible you are going to have to build a smaller room withing our garage or bedroom. Not easy to do in a rental.
 
I had friends who turned a "living room" on the second floor of a duplex into a studio. They put up a second set of walls with double density dry wall and allowed about 1' of air space between the walls. They poured about 1' of sand on the floor and then built a second floor over the sand (air and mass).
They covered all the windows and had a lot of treatment on the walls, etc. etc.

I could still hear them whenever I walked up to the house. Now it was not as loud as it was before they did all the work - but I'm not convinced the amount of work they put in was worth the end result. Soundproof is almost impossible without entensive and expensive design and construction.

In this case it was a very urban area with houses next to each other - less than 10' away. The good news was, the neighbors weren't the type to call the cops if you made noise. The bad news was, the neighbors were the type to break in and steal the gear (which did actually eliminate any future noise problems).
 
my soundproofing experience, 20x 30 room, ~$1200-$1500

I read up a lot on the sites that have been posted above, and I wound up doing a room with a full layer of insulations in the studs, then a half inch of soundboard (sawdusty stuff) then 5/8ths sheetrock.

It didn't decouple, and a little sound still gets out (and in-- I can hear it on my new ribbon mic), but my 5 piece jazz group can play pretty loud without being too audible in the next yard/house (1/10th acre plots)

There's a garage underneath, so I didn't have to worry much about the floor.
 
just get a high watt generator and go rock out in the desert.

just kidding...


I used some out door rugs from lowes. 6'x8' is $15.00 I hung it with about 6 inches of space parrallel with the wall. It works fairly well. I doesn't soundproof by no means but at least it helps. You could probably double up on it and do better. You also have the floor and celing to deal with.

warning the outdoor rug stinks for a week or so.. I would let it kure outside for a few days.
 
gcapel said:
I used some out door rugs from lowes. 6'x8' is $15.00 I hung it with about 6 inches of space parrallel with the wall. It works fairly well. I doesn't soundproof by no means but at least it helps. You could probably double up on it and do better. You also have the floor and celing to deal with.

warning the outdoor rug stinks for a week or so.. I would let it kure outside for a few days.
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And while this may do "something" to the acoustics within your room (and probably none of it desirable), it will do NOTHING to keep the sound from reaching your neighbors!
 
Can't you just turn it down????


Oops...sorry, I was my Dad for a second, there. That's just kooky talk.:eek:
 
Ford Van said:
And while this may do "something" to the acoustics within your room (and probably none of it desirable), it will do NOTHING to keep the sound from reaching your neighbors!
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nobody said anything about acoustics in the room? I said it would help. I did not say it was a solution for sound proofing.


On the acoustics thing. If he's only got a very small room, it would be much more desirable than the sound slapping you in the face off the walls.
 
gcapel said:
nobody said anything about acoustics in the room? I said it would help. I did not say it was a solution for sound proofing.


On the acoustics thing. If he's only got a very small room, it would be much more desirable than the sound slapping you in the face off the walls.
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He was asking about soundproofing, and you posted something concerning how to control acoustics in the room.

I do not know how that can possibly "help".

On another note. Most rooms, but is NOT the higher frequencies that are the culprit of the "bad sound" in the room, it is lower frequencies. So, in light of that, hanging a blanket WILL NOT help that either! You will just kill more high frequencies, when what you really needed to do is balance the reverberation times in the room.

Drywall rooms seldom have high frequency problems. In fact, drywall itself does a fairly effective job of absorbing 4khz and above. The reason you don't see much drywall in the tracking rooms in nice studios is because it DOES absorb high frequencies, and thus would kill the sought after reverb time in the room, and make it more expensive to absorb all other frequencies in the room to match the not muted higher frequencies. Thus, drywall is not used in the tracking rooms much.

You can accomplish the same thing as blanket simply by using a bit of eq on the your instrument, or PA system.

Anyway.........
 
Ford Van said:
You can accomplish the same thing as blanket simply by using a bit of eq on the your instrument, or PA system.

Anyway.........
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ok ford this i have a problem with. Over powering room reflections in a small tight room cannot be tweeked out on a eq.

That was good info on the drywall though. Thx
 
gcapel said:
ok ford this i have a problem with. Over powering room reflections in a small tight room cannot be tweeked out on a eq.
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I disagree.
 
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