Soundproofing Advise?

[Ms.Huxtable]

The Huxies have been practicing in the unfinished basement of our keyboard player's newly built home. This has been a blessing for us all as it offers great flexibilty and is just so convenient and comfortable.

We're thrilled that Phred and his wonderful wife are expecting a daughter very, very soon. Cool people that they both are, they have offered to let us continue having practices at their place after the baby is born, if we can come up with a way to completely sound-proof the practice space. Perhaps Phred will see this post and offer some dimensions, but basically it's your average unfinished basement right now. Concrete floors, no drywall, unfinished ceilings, etc.

We're coming here, to the Scanks for some advise on soundproofing. Do any of you have experience with this? Obviously we don't have that much money to invest and we don't want to destroy his brand new home.

Thanks everyone for your advise and thank you Phred for being so accommodating. You're the best! I hope this works.

[gentlemonkey]

start collectin egg cartons and old blankets.

then wait for tungsten's response..

Congrats by the way!! nothing like a semi-permanent jamspace..

[bradm]

Egg cartons are bad as soundproofing. They don't work well, and (much worse) are a fire hazard.

You can get special drywall with soundproofing capability (it's thicker and heavier). Building a wall-within-a-wall (with insulation between them; I'm not sure what the best kind for this is) is also good; hanging heavy blankets is a form of this. Seal up any holes between the loud room and the to-be-quiet rooms around it (including around the doors; also, heavier doors will work better).

ISTR Jon Eakes talking about this kind of stuff on one of his episodes.

I did a quick Google search for "soundproofing", and this was the first entry; it might be a good place to start.

IIRC, you guys did your recording at Distortion Studios; you might want to talk to them to see what measures they've put in place (especially between studio rooms if they have more than one).

Aloha,

Brad

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

it's very hard to soundproof things without expense-mass is the only thing to stop low-end sound and in studios this entails specialized mounting methods and varying materials from lead-infused vinyl to multiple sheetrock layers. Sound also travels well within materials and resonates large panels and wooden beams easily.

Soundproofing a basement against a drumkit and bass wouldn't be worth it-you can put all the effort into it you want but you would need multiple layers of heavy materials + a 'room within a room' design that is completely sealed. This means magnetically sealed doorways, no windows, etc. as well as varying widths of sheetrock, and tons and tons of panel adhesive to glue the multiple layers together(using nails/screws would couple all layers together)

Then you have to figure out how to heat and cool this room-sound travels fantastically through metal ductwork(a mic at the far end of the furnace when it's off makes a cool reverb) and these metal ducts connect most houses.

It's an art and a science and also a reason i haven't bothered with a studio...lots of dough to implement properly. And then after all that you have to acoustically treat the room so it doesn't sound like shit.

[Phred]

The building a room inside a room idea is the only one that I know of that will work well, but it is expensive as hell and very hard to do. I also know that sound proofing drywall is expensive and heavy. I know this because I am currently finishing a room in my basement and am using regular .5 inch drywall and that is crazy heavy already.

The practice room is directly under my kitchen and family room, making the whole first floor in my house pretty loud right now when we are jamming. The space is probably 15 feet by 20. No bigger. The stairway up into the rest of the house is open to the practice room with only a door at the top of the stairs to block out the sound (which does little obviously).

Has anyone tried the blankets idea? Does it really work? What do you do? Hang blankets on the ceiling, and walls? Any ideas for the floor? I imagine that the bass travels pretty well through the foundation into the rest of the house.

[Phred]

I should have waited 5 minutes before I posted... Tungsten said what I suspected. Really hard to do so that it works.

Eric, do you think it is possible to sound lessen a room? Say enough so that only 50% of sound comes through or whatever?

Thanks

[Tooly]

you know what you do.... instead of collectin egg cartons or buying tons of expensive drywall, go to fabric land, and buy foam, thickest they got, preferably the shit with the points on one side, you know what im talkin about?

that works well, and its cheap, buy it by the yard, buy like 3 r 4 layers and itll cut it down somewhat, not as well as the room inside a room though.

but its chepa and it does cut down teh sound a lot.

[Asparagus]

I can't help with this problem.

However, I once went on a tour of the David Florida Labs in Ottawa, where they test and develop things like robotics for space exploration, satellites, etc. On this tour they showed us a room, more of an aeroplane hangar, filled with anechoic cones, making the room almost completely silent, while inside it . Very cool. The tour guide stood, facing me, no exaggeration, five feet from me, talking. I could hear him until he turned around, at which point I could hear only a murmur but not what he was actually saying. Needless to say we all tried this about 304 times before we got bored and moved on to something else.

Very cool.

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

absolutely. It should be ok since the baby's room isn't on the first floor.

Things to do in order of importance:

Find some way to put another door at the bottom of the steps-this is the most direct way for sound to get up stairs. It might involve some carpentry to make some partial walls etc to allow a doorway to be put in-these walls should all be insulated. Also, sound bounces like crazy in stairwells due to the deep dimensions-it would be worth it to get some acoustical foam or build panels from 703 fiberglass to help soak some of this up before it reaches the upstairs door. Even something as simple as siliconing around the upstairs door and putting in door seals or a sweep on the bottom of it will help. For that matter, if it's an interior door it's probably hollow. Replace it with a solid wood door(you'll need 3 hinges instead of 2) or at least use panel glue and glue a piece of drywall as big as the door to it.

Then, buy the green puffed rock insulation, not the pink stuff. Can't remember the name off the top of my head but home depot etc carries it. Put 1 layer in between all the ceiling joists down at the bottom(it should hold itself in) so there is an air gap directly underneath the floor above.

Drywall the ceiling-

Try and find a product called 'Resilient Channel' It's basically a long piece of 'Z' shaped metal that you use to mount the drywall to the beams with. This shit is tricky to put up as it involves relatively precise measurement but it's very very worth it in the long run as it will decouple the ceiling from the floor above.

If you can't find that the put a bead of silicone on all the ceiling beams and let it dry-then screw up the sheets of drywall with lots of extra screws and seal all the gaps.

Get the band in to practice and see how loud it is....then decide if you want to go further. Next step would be to use panel glue and a couple of screws per sheet to put up another layer of drywall on the ceiling. There's guides on the web to do this stuff. Use 2 different thicknesses of drywall to reduce resonance.

Those 2 steps should really help. After that it's building a slightly raised floor and walls...each a step towards 'room within a room'

How high is your basement? 8ft? less?

if you wanna send me some pics and measurements, email me at tungstengruvsten@jambands.ca ...

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

Hey Asparagus-how's it going?

those rooms-anechoic chambers, are freaky to be in....feels like your voice just falls out of your mouth. Compaq has a crazy ass one and so does dBx labs, but the coolest one is Murray Hill-real old one-

http://www.bell-labs.com/org/1133/Research/Acoustics/AnechoicChamber.html

check out the blue text links to pictures-it's crazy looking! walking on a mesh floor...

[Ms.Huxtable]

You're amazing Tungsten. Thanks.

[teetervillestation]

you could buy some MIDI drums and do headphone jams!

also - my daughter slept through a parade including marching bands and fire tucks...when those little people are tired they can sure sleep

[bradm]

Have you considered just soundproofing the baby? Which, of course, would have advantages both ways...

(Actually, that may not be as facetious as it sounds. If, during practise time, the baby will be in one room only, and if that room is a good distance from the jamspace, the sound levels will be less, and so the baby's room will require less soundproofing; the room would, I assume, also be smaller, making any soundproofing purchases similarly smaller.)

Aloha,

BRAD (Baby-induced Renovations: Audio Degradations)

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

I'm sure the Dr. is trying to get the midi-trumpets and pianos fired up for his space jam anyways, some midi drums can't be too far off-

[Phred]

Thanks Everyone.

The ideas are really good ones.

It is as I feared that the amount of work and expense involved to get a decent amount of soundproofing done will be considerable.

I think as a band we are considering other alternatives. (sigh)

Oh well, thanks any way guys.

[bradm]

Or just have Dr. Huxtable change formats...the first all-lullaby-jam-band...the only band that wants you to fall asleep at its shows...

Aloha,

Brad

[Hux]

midi drums, and a mixer with a bunch of DI channels for the instruments and headphone outs....hmmm....would it work? ie. could be get used to it? would be pretty cool....probably cheaper than renovate the room!

[arcane]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bradm:

Have you considered just soundproofing the

baby

? Which, of course, would have advantages both ways...

---

By default, babies can sleep through darned near anything. They *learn* to be light sleepers from the tip-toeing adults around them.

The problems are:

1) Babies don't sleep for long periods of time; and

2) Mom and Dad aren't used to it ...*they're* the ones that will need sleep. Babies crash out at will, once they learn *how* to go to sleep (and assuming that they're not full of colic like mine was).

[Phred]

True arcane. Although part of my concern is with the baby, the main part is with my wife needing to be home when the baby is there and how loud it is in the house when we jam.

Geoff, I think that the headphone jamming idea is a good one. My only concern, (apart from the price) is that we all need different mixes in our headphones. I know that you can't play well without really hearing yourself, and I can't play without really hearing myself. Our PA doesn't do that I don't believe so it would probably require a new PA.

The other option is for us to play way quieter.

We did this with my last band. We jammed in the basement of the bass player's house while his children slept. We had a cheap practise drum kit that we dampened to hell, and all played really quietly (I think the drummer even used mulltirods). We played so quiet that the singer didn't actually need a mic really. You could even hear cell phones ring.

The main concern is the loss of energy involved in that. It works, but you have to be pretty disiplined to not get loud when you get excited.

I would be concerned that midi drums and headphonejams might cause some loss of energyjams.

[Mr. Musicface]

Hey! Just a plug for the MIDI drum route, I know a serious funk combo that a friend of mine was in that used to do this, and they thought it was amazing! They didn't even need to use mics for vocals, so they could get close together to work out harmonies and stuff. And they didn't have to worry about positioning so everyone could hear well i.e. the "my head's beside the ride cymbal so that's all I can hear!" phenomenon.

It did take a little getting used to, but Phred if you're worried about energy loss, I can say first-hand these guys TORE it up when they got onstage 'cus they were so confident that they could knew exactly what everyone was playing 'cus of the fact they could hear so well in rehersal.

I'd suggest renting a decent MIDI kit and giving it a shot - hey what have you got loose right?

Oh and BTW Phred, in case I don't get to say it closer to the happy day, all the best to you and your wife!

Peace,

Mr. M.