Sound proofing my basement drum room

clay1g

Junior Member
My drums are currently in a room with an outside wall in our daylight basement. As a consequence my neighbor hears everything. He's nice about it but I would rather just avoid having my neighbor hear anything if I can help it.

I'm going to move the drums from that room to another basement room that has 2 concrete walls. For all intents and purposes it's a finished room deeper inside the basement with no outside walls. I have looked into different sound proofing materials (moving blankets, etc) but I was wondering if moving to that room and closing the door would suffice? Has anyone else made a similar move and were you able to minimize the amount of sound coming from the room?
 
Won't help inside the house much, but from my experience, yes, depending on construction and distance it might even block everything from your neighbours.

I'd just set up the kit and some people to walk around.
 
Moving blankets, egg crates, acoustic foam, all of those thing do nothing to control sound from escaping they only help control internal room reflections (room verb) If you want to stop sound you have to build there is no way around it. Room within a room, decoupled walls, mineral wool insulation, resilient channel, green glue, 5/8 dry wall. It's not a cheap adventure by any means. I did a lot of research before building my drum room and I'm glad I did. Check out Auralex.com and they have an entire section on this very subject, it's worth a read.
 
Try moving to the alternate room and treating the walls with either sound blankets or acoustic sound panels (not foam).

Go to your neighbor and let him know that you're working on a solution. Ask him if there are specific hours that are better
for you to practice when he won't likely be around or hear you if he is.

Touch base with your neighbor in a few days and see if things are cool. He sounds like a reasonable individual and if he knows
you're working on a solution, it may be good enough without you spending an arm and a leg on additional soundproofing materials.
 
other option that would be cheaper is silent stroke drum heads and the zildjian L80 low volume cymbals. I've played both and the cymbals feel surprisingly natural, the heads have a little more rebound but not crazy like a v-drum
 
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