Soundproofing a jam room

[Burg]

Wasn't sure which forum to post this in so feel free to move it.

My band are looking into doing up our jam room, seeing as our rent has bee bumped up recently.

We're thinking of getting some carpet or fabric or something to plaster onto the walls to create a nicer, more homely vibe and hopefully provide a bit of sound dampening in the process. Currently the walls are bare breeze block. Cold and grim.

Anyone any recommendations for where we could pick stuff up from on the cheap as we're on a limited budget.

Cheers

[skankdelvar]

Useful threads here:

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/152813-studio-build-need-some-help/page__p__1356326__hl__soundproofing__fromsearch__1#entry1356326"]http://basschat.co.u..._1#entry1356326[/url]
[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/135383-kitting-out-my-garage-as-a-rehearsal-space/page__p__1229033__hl__soundproofing__fromsearch__1#entry1229033"]http://basschat.co.u..._1#entry1229033[/url]
[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/97039-help-setting-up-a-studio/page__hl__soundproofing"]http://basschat.co.u...__soundproofing[/url]

If you search 'soundproofing' you'll find a fair amount of stuff here on BC.

Carpet - particularly a traditional floral pattern - might take a bit off the grimness but it won't reduce noise to the external world in any meaningful way. Council tips are good for cheap carpet. Buy some overalls and go skip-diving.

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Edited November 30, 2011 by skankdelvar

[Monckyman]

Possibly you could be more specific about what you would like to do.
Do you mean Sound [i]proofing[/i], as in limiting the amount of noise that escapes to the world outside, or do you mean Sound [i]conditioning[/i],whereas you are attempting to create a more sonically pleasing ambience by cutting down on unwanted harsher frequencies?

[BigRedX]

Carpet my help tame acoustic reflections, but will do little to prevent the music being audible outside the room. To do this you need to add mass to all the internal surfaces.

[jakenewmanbass]

I built stud walls inside my garage (dry lining) and put rockwool in the gaps, then a layer of plastic membrane all over all surfaces, then plaster board and a skim, the sound proofing effect is dramatic meaning that when my son is banging away on the drums that I can barely her him in the house...
The total cost was not cheap but massively less expensive than foam.

Edited November 30, 2011 by jakesbass

[RhysP]

[quote name='jakesbass' timestamp='1322663783' post='1454118']
I built stud walls inside my garage (dry lining) and put rockwool in the gaps, then a layer of plastic membrane all over all surfaces, then plaster board and a skim, the sound proofing effect is dramatic meaning that when my son is banging away on the drums that I can barely her him in the house...
The total cost was not cheap but massively less expensive than foam.
[/quote]

I helped the drummer in a band I was in many years ago do this to his garage. It took a lot of work but the result was superb.
As a thank you for all my help & hard work he f***ed off with my girlfriend.

[jakenewmanbass]

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1322674465' post='1454363']
I helped the drummer in a band I was in many years ago do this to his garage. It took a lot of work but the result was superb.
As a thank you for all my help & hard work he f***ed off with my girlfriend.
[/quote]
Sounds like a charmer!

[Burg]

Cheers everyone. I've been monumentally bad at following stuff on Basschat recently.

It was sound conditioning I was going for really. Council skips sound like a cheap option.

Thanks for the advice.

[charic]

Heavy curtains will probably do a better job of bother.

Can't get/afford curtains? Hang the carpet instead. The sound escaping to the outside world and also the reflections are reduced far further with air between the two surfaces. The larger the gap the bigger the effect.

[yorks5stringer]

Just worth mentioning if you take something from a council waste site without permission, it is actually theft.......

[4-string-thing]

I did manage to just about sound proof a garage once, carpet is no use for this at all. It's also not much good for sound conditioning either, except maybe at very high frequencies. At low frequencies you need bass traps and lots of rockwool. A couple of big, soft sofa's will help but would probably fill your average garage thus making it useless as a rehearsal space.

[Count Bassy]

Classically sound proofing comes down to mass (I could have proved this mathematically 35 years ago), but I think techniques have moved on since then, so dampening materials, air gaps etc. all have a part to play.
You can get high density plaster board which will help some (mass again), but you can also get double skin plaster board with a 'guey' layer between, which is supposedly very effective.,

One of the bands I play with practice in the back of a prefab garage which has had the studding and heavy weight Rockwool treatment, and it is very effective.

Remember to seal all the gaps however, and around doors. If there's a gap the sound will find it.

Then remember to open the doors every now and then to refresh the oxygen supply!

[51m0n]

For improving the acoustic carpet isnt the way.

You need to build some broadband absorbers, to kill the flutter echo, and some basstraps to tighten up the low end.

If you do it reasonably well you end up with a double whammy, because you clear up the sound in the room everyone plays quieter, simply because they can hear themselves a lot better, so the sound is improved further.

Net result, less pain, less tiredness and better rehearsals.

The second bonus is you can put up a 2 track recorder in the room and get a really superb sounding recording of each practice.

Building these absorbers isnt difficult, there are loads of good examples of DIY absorption panels at gearslutz.com. Basstraps are equally simple too, superchunks are trivial but take a lot of rockwool, double layer across the corner basstraps require less material but are trickier to construct:-




Really low frequency bass trapping requires membrane/panel or hermholtz absorption, which is a bit trickier, but if you search backwards through the BBC whitepapers on their website they have plans for some excellent modular panel absorbers.

Just remember a simple rule of thumb, velocity based absorption is anything with foam, rockwool or pink fluffy stuff, and it works by slowing the air molecules down. As such it works only where the molecules are moving, so not right up against the wall. To work at its best it must be placed the same distance from the wall as its depth (not always achievable). Pressure based dampeneing (panel absorbers) work on the pressure wave, and so work best right next to the wall where the pressure is highest and the velocity lowest.

A crude example of a layout for aborbers and bass traps looks a bit like this:-



The absorbers in the middle of the room are hung from the ceiling. Make them all big, at least 2' by 4', but 4' by 6' is really good.

The green line represents internal double layered plasterboard though, which you probably arent looking to add to the room. It is laid out as it is here in order to help break up any parallel walls, thus heklping to diminish the effect of standing wave build up. Ideally you would go to the bother of building these too.

[51m0n]

You can get into acoustic room measurement very easily these days too, you would do well to read the info [url="http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/610173-acoustics-treatment-reference-guide-look-here.html"]here on the subject of sorting out acoustics[/url].

[Owen]

http://www.jamhub.com/

Cheaper to buy a cheap electric kit (I have one for sale possibly) and everyone else DI than do bucketloads of building. Also nicer for your ears. Not as much fun as thrashing along at 120dB, but that is expensive to contain.

My son's band practice in the room next door to the living room. We know that they are there, but it is not a huge issue.

[51m0n]

Yes you can get by with a cheap electric kit.

However drummers I have talked to hate them, with a passion. They dont feel the same or pick up the nuances etc etc etc.

In fact I have had the same conversation from a drummer over a top of the range Roland kit, and that is seriously expensive stuff, more expensive than doing a lot towards sorting out the acoustics within a space, which seems to be what the OP was really after.

Actually sound[i]proofing[/i] a room is very (I mean massively) expensive (proper floating floors on seperate concrete slab etc etc), you dont have to go that far, obviously, but if we are talking about doing a lot to help the acoustic in a room instead that tends to actually not cost anywhere near as much if you go down a DIY route and accept that you wont achieve the same results as spending a huge amount of money on a big build.

One thing you get from sorting out a rooms acoustic (at any volume) is a vastly improved ability to hear each other in the space. Now if you like working in cans then that isnt really a problem, but most would prefer to not work in cans if they can () if working towards a live gig I think.

The other thing to remeber is if you do sort out the acoustic (or significantly improve it) then you can use that space to track demos in without too much hassle these days.