Tips for finishing my shed drum booth...

[technominds]

Ok, so i had an old crappy shed full of rubbish and I wanted a drum kit... and i was offered a kit for £50 that sounded pretty decent.. so i didnt turn it down...

After fighting the mass of 8-legged crawlers i finally managed to empty the shed and begin work..

* first of all i covered the entire inside space with waterproof lining...
* then i smashed out the remaining windows as some of them has previously been broken
* i boarded the windows up from the inside with hardwood
* filled the window frames with insulation and boarded them up on the outside
* i re-boarded the entire inside of the shed using the framework and filling the gap with insulation
* i then insulated the door and covered it in carpet
* i made overlapping extensions onto the outer door and added seals to door edges
* i carpeted the floor
* hung fabric on the inside to cover all the messy hardwood

at first the drum kit could be clearly heard from inside my house but now you can only really hear the kick drum and snare

what can i add to the shed / kit to make the drum kit quieter? Ive even put silencing pads on the kick drum without much difference

any solutions?

-tm

 

[technominds]

* bumpy bumpy bump? *

 

[daav]

tough one, short of doing more sealig and lining with absobant material (703 fiberglass, movers blankets that sort of thing) you will probabaly have tons of sound coming out of the cracks and thinness of the walls.

Sond is absorbed by mass (or reflected if you ahv ehte wrong stuff, filling the shed with rocks won't help). You want stuff in there that the sound will go into, get trapped and vibrate material and get trapped (like 703). With low end noise like from a kick drum, you have additional challenges because the wavelength of the low end frequency is long enough that is passes by your material before it gets absorbed.

I have heard of people building a wooded riser and filling it with sand, the sound that travels down gets absorbed by the sand (read a thread about that recently here as well- too lazy to find and link it right now).

Alternately, build another shed around your shed for another layer of sound containment.

Daav

 

[lomky]

Careful about ventilation though, don't suffocate yourself in there.

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

what can i add to the shed / kit to make the drum kit quieter? Ive even put silencing pads on the kick drum without much difference

MASS,MASS, and more MASS. Decouple one leaf(usually interior) by isolators, Resiliant channel, or double/staggered stud. However, since this is a shed, the BEST thing you can do is ADD DRYWALL Layers to wall/ceiling/and even floor with OSB or MDF over it. Here are the caveats to its performance though.

Isolation is only as good as your weakest link. This could be an UNSEALED outer envelope. a wood framed floor, thin outer shell, hollow core door, vents and other flanking paths. Drums create a high pressure wavefront, that will easily propogate through the tiniest of holes. Hence caulking everything you can. Think AIRPROOF. Except for a properly interfaced vent system. Once you have a SEALED EXTERIOR, then sheithing the interior with MULTIPLE layers of drywall should help. This assumes your roof/ceiling framing can support it, as well as the shed SUPPORT system(foundation) supporting the additional weight. Never know how someone builds a shed you know.
However, if you have a wood framed floor, thats a biggie.. adding mass like MDF can help, and decoupling the drums by a THICK rubber pad may also help by dampening the floor membrane as well as decoupling direct impact transmission. But it MAY very difficult, depending on how its built. If you can get under it, adding insulation may help as well, but that may be impossable.

short of doing more sealig and lining with absobant material (703 fiberglass, movers blankets that sort of thing)

I'm going to say it for the THOUSANTH TIME...Absorbant materials does absolutely NOTHING for transmission LOSS. Total different use. Lets put it this way. ALL "resistant" absorption materials ONLY ABSORB IF THEY HAVE BOUNDARY behind them. Otherwise, most of the sound waves go right through them, ESPECIALLY LOW FREQUENCY as wavelengths engulf the room. Although it seems like a contridiction, it is the REFLECTION off the wall that you are trying to absorb, but the reality is some of the energy transmits through the boundary, depending on its mass and stiffness. The more mass and stiffness, the HIGHER the db profile of the reflection. Thats why it takes MORE absorption material in a concrete room, as more energy is reflected back into the room.
The best description I can offer is by a fellow member named knightfly...

First, the way bass traps work is that they present an "acoustic resistance" to sound waves.
This is the function of the rigid fiberglas inulation board. Moving air (sound wave) can't get thru the insulation board as easily as it can move in free air, so the energy it uses
to pass thru is partially converted to heat. Less sound energy, less sound.

Every sound has its own wavelength, which is expressed in (normally) either feet or meters; in feet, the formula is Wavelength=1130/f, with 1130 being the speed of sound in feet per second (approximate) at sea level, and f being the frequency in Hertz.

A wall, floor or ceiling is referred to as a "boundary" in acoustics - if we consider these boundaries to be impenetrable for sake of discussion, then at any boundary the air velocity from a sound wave striking it perpendicularly, will be ZERO, while its sound
PRESSURE will be maximum.

If you move away from the wall a distance of 1/4 wavelength of the sound (just one frequency for this example) at that point, the sound VELOCITY will be maximum, and the sound PRESSURE will be zero. This is important, becauseThe only place it does any good to place an acoustic resistance in order to trap sound, is where there is air movement, or velocity. The
more velocity, the more sound energy is converted to heat.

This is why absorbent traps need air space behind them - the more distance included in the trap cavity, with all other things equal, the
lower frequency the trap will attenuate. The closer to 1/4 wavelength the absorbent is placed from the boundary, the better that frequency is absorbed.

Using the wavelength formula, if we plug in 100 hZ we find that the wavelength is 11.3 FEET ?!?!! sooo, 1/4 wavelength would be 2.825 feet, or nearly 34 inches. That would be the optimum depth of a trap that would work at 100 hZ - just one example, so you can see
some of the problems of making low bass traps.

One of the benefits of a corner trap is that the depth is varied, so the trap works at a broader range of frequencies.

fitZ

 

[technominds]

Nice one, thanks for the replies. Unfortunately i cant really do much more to the shed as the roof is weak and i dont want the thing to look too horrific from the outside. The shed was sitting on a cement block so i didnt see much point in doing anything to the floor (except carpeting it... but that was for sound issues..).. anyway i think im gonna deal with it as it is as ive had no complains from neighbors yet and the parents dont seem to mind. My best idea is to add a few of those sliding locks to the inside so when i get in and lock them up the door is pushed firmly closed, because at the moment that seems to be my weakest point, by far.


Il post a picture of what ive got so far....

ps: any ideas on light? I cant think of a way to get electricty perminantely out to the shed so i was thinking solar/battery? anyone got ideas.. or maybe ways to get electricity outside?

thanks again everyone!

 

[technominds]

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

I cant think of a way to get electricty perminantely out to the shed

I dug a trench and added a 30 amp breaker to my supply panel and ran about 60 feet of #10 wire in plastic conduit out to a small sub panel out in my shed. Two 15 amp breakers and VIOLA! Power. Took about 4 hours and was fairly cheap.

 

[technominds]

Only problem is, i dont know anything about electrics and how my house is wired. I wouldnt know where to dig, drill or add box's. If only i could find some place i could drill i would just run wire in tubes out to the shed!

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

You could always draw a graphic of it.

 

[technominds]

But of what, my whole house?! dont I just need to know how home electronics are wired in and if there is a place on most homes where you can reach electric from the outside?

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Hello technominds.I don't know about UK electrical systems, but in the States, power comes from a pole usually, into a meter/supply panel with circuit breakers. Thius is usually on the outside of the house although modern supply panels can be found indoors. Maybe visit your local building inspection department and ask some questions about adding a sub panel. I'm sure they can tell you what the restrictions are as it might not even be allowed in your neck of the woods.

 

[technominds]

Hello Rick. I think im going to try and link something up with the exterior house lights as they are on most of the time, shouldnt be too difficult either!