1. What materials to get.(approx.$$$)
2. What room I should use.
The basement mirrors the main floor (shown) and my kit is currently set in a very bad spot under the living area. Because of remodeling of the basement all of the bedrooms are up for grabs. I was thinking about using the bedroom closest to the foyer. Sorry for the vaugeness of my description and the crappy floor plan. I'm just horribly lost and confused in all of this. Thanks for wasting your time with this and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
FYI #1, bumpy foam and carpet isn't going to do squat. Nor egg crates. Those things all change the sound inside the room but they do very little to stop sound from transmitting through walls. It is one of the biggest perpetrated myths that they do. One of the things that leads to this myth continuing is that people tend to mistakenly associate sound brightness with sound volume. Carpeted walls make the sound less bright, which the brain interprets as "less loud," so the person who just spent all day hanging carpet on their walls hears dark tones and assumes success. Meanwhile, everyone within a mile can still hear you as if nothing has changed.
FYI #2, I disagree that you need to spend thousands to address this problem. First, let me confirm that you are still looking to stay in the basement but improve that situation by further isolating some section of it? I'll assume that is a yes for now.
So, the good news is that you are already in a basement and not some other part of the house. That cuts down drastically on the amount of materials and potential complexity involved.
As far as where in the basement, go with an area that is, A) farthest from the most commonly used or sensitive part of the house and, B) far from the weakest part of the basement itself: the stairs/doorway. You might have to pick one of those over the other, or you may find that you can split the difference. For my money, I would try to stay away from the stairs/doorway in order to cut back on build complexity.
As far as what materials to use, this will greatly depend on your design which tends to be driven by two factors:
- The dimensions of the usable area.
- Thickness of your wallet.
We can narrow this down further with a few more bits of info. We will want to know the largest area of contiguous space available for use within your chosen section of the basement. You also want to identify what you consider to the smallest usable room size and what your idea room size would be.
For instance, my kit won't fit inside a room smaller than w11 x d9 x h7 and I would prefer a room that was w12 x d20 x h16. The first size is my absolute minimum while the second is my ideal. Somewhere in the middle is what I'll actually end up with, but it is good know what to push for and when you might be giving up too much. Ceiling height is certainly going to be an area of compromise in your situation.
Also, you can cut down on costs by building something that conforms to standard material dimensions. For instance, drywall comes in 4x8 sheets. So, building a room that is 8x8x8 will be way more cost effective that building one that is 10x6x9.
Lastly, Wolvie56 states that "The professional soundproofing stuff is ridiculously priced." But this depends on exactly what
professional stuff you use. For instance, the most commonly used professional materials are plain old drywall and wood studs, which is pretty cheap stuff. Double 5/8 drywall on two sides of an 8x8x8 frame should doable for well under $500.00* and will beat the snot out of egg crates and carpet. Yes, there area other materials that you can employ that do cost a lot of money, but there is a lot that you can do in the way of a professional approach without involving those things (or limiting their use).
*quick forecast of 8x8x8 material costs based on pricing from Lowes:
Drywall: 20 sheets of 5/8 @ $5.98 per sheet = $119.60.
32 count of 2x4x96 studs @ $2.13 per = $68.16.
8 count of 2x6x8 joists @ $2.85 per = $22.80.
Basic materials = $210.56 for a 50-55STC wall.