Soundproofing

Hey guys, I am looking to soundproof my practice room, on a budget.

In this room I will be practising drums alot and recording.

I am aware there are many brands of acoustic panneling on the market, and are great for stopping overtones and reverb, but I have been told they do not actually block out much noise (practising 1 hours+ a day in a un soundproofed room is a bit harsh on the neighbours!)

The only problem I face is that I cannot put screws or nails into the walls at all.

Any reccomendations of products and methods of soundproofing would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
 
blankets, rugs, acoustic foam, bass traps, acoustic panels etc...etc...

will do NOTHING at preventing sound from escaping aside from attenuating some
higher frequencies

I hate to say it but there is no cheap soundproofing solution

preventing sound from entering or escaping a room is a serious challenge;
anywhere air can escape, sound will as well.

The lower frequencies are even harder as the sound resonates through walls
effectively making the walls another "speaker" that transmits to the outer world.

RWAR (room within a room) construction is expensive, there is no way around that
but constructing a room within a room is really the only beneficial way of
attempting "soundproofing"

Best thing you can do is
1. make friends with your neighbors and communicate that you play drums
give them all your phone #
2. Don't play earlier than 10am or later than 7pm
3. Don't play for more than 1 hour at a time
4. learn to play softer
5. play with light sticks or those lightning rods

Believe it or not, just playing lighter with lighter sticks can make a huge difference in how loud your drums are perceived and how far they project.

Not being able to put screws or nails in the wall - pretty much kills the idea
of placing rugs, blankets or acoustic foam on the walls...

but again all that would do is kill some reverb in your room and *slightly*
lower the DB level as there are less sounds "bouncing around" but you wouldn't notice much of a difference outside the room...

good luck,

I am in the same situation myself !
 
Thanks for the help!

Im good friends with my neighbors, and I never play after 7 or before 12- Im trying using blankets and cushions at the moment, theyre good for dampening overtones in a recording situation.

I might try adding a few layers of carpet underneath the drums in an attempt to stop the noise travelling through the floor,will this work?
Once again, thanks for the advice!
 
Thanks for the help!

Im good friends with my neighbors, and I never play after 7 or before 12- Im trying using blankets and cushions at the moment, theyre good for dampening overtones in a recording situation.

I might try adding a few layers of carpet underneath the drums in an attempt to stop the noise travelling through the floor,will this work?
Once again, thanks for the advice!

No. Carpets provide almost no additional mass, no isolation and no air tightness. Without at least one of those three ingredients, there will be little to no effect. To have a truly noticeable result, you typically need all three working in concert. This is why there is no cheap solution. Nothing you hang on your walls, short of hard core construction materials like sheet rock or MLV, is going to make a difference.

The cheapest thing is probably going to be to simply work on the air tightness of your room. Plug the holes. Door gaps, windows and ventilation are your primary weaknesses. making those things better doesn't cost very much and will have a far greater effect than any "miracle" product or carpets.

From there on out, everything gets complicated and costly.
 
The self-contained booths made by Esmono are your only viable option, as they don't require any additional contruction, they cost thousands though. I fear you may be stuffed on the sound-proofing option, sound-dampening is still a worthwhile option. Try using mesh-heads for after hour practice, they retain a decent amount of feel, especially on the bass drum.
 
The self-contained booths made by Esmono are your only viable option, as they don't require any additional contruction, they cost thousands though. I fear you may be stuffed on the sound-proofing option, sound-dampening is still a worthwhile option. Try using mesh-heads for after hour practice, they retain a decent amount of feel, especially on the bass drum.

That's probably going to be your best bet; the only way to get decent levels of soundproofing are like the others have said - decoupled floors, double walls, etc. In your situation where that won't be possible, mesh heads and cymbal mutes or plastic practice cymbals are the best inexpensive (and realistic) solution. Good luck!
 
Given enough room, I think the best option is a room within a room - building staggered stud walls and a floating floor. It wouldn't be that expensive as plasterboard/drywall is very cheap but you'd have to do a lot of research to do it right.

Failing that, it's amazing what just (correctly) boarding up the window can do and blocking the vents. One of the vents in my room is still open, but the air has to go round corners - which stops a lot of sound (it's how the professional soundproof vents work as far as I know from the research I did).

The problem is this doesn't do much for noise *inside* the house ;-) I'm very fortunate to have an understanding housemate..
 
On a budget....egg crate, the stuff people put on top of mattresses to make it comfortable its pretty cheap...also the first time i soundproofed a room i went to carpet stores and they gave me the stuff they were throwing out....two sided tape and a lot of it should do the trick...and yes sealing the windows and cracks around the door help dramtically just keep in mind when you soundproof not to "dull" the room if your gonna be recording in there take the time to move padding around and get the acoustics that make the sound really hit....hope this helps
 
On a budget....egg crate, the stuff people put on top of mattresses to make it comfortable its pretty cheap...also the first time i soundproofed a room i went to carpet stores and they gave me the stuff they were throwing out....two sided tape and a lot of it should do the trick...and yes sealing the windows and cracks around the door help dramtically just keep in mind when you soundproof not to "dull" the room if your gonna be recording in there take the time to move padding around and get the acoustics that make the sound really hit....hope this helps

Egg crates? No, sorry. Total rubbish. This doesn't work.
 
On a budget....egg crate, the stuff people put on top of mattresses to make it comfortable its pretty cheap...also the first time i soundproofed a room i went to carpet stores and they gave me the stuff they were throwing out....two sided tape and a lot of it should do the trick...

Ack! Egg crates and mattresses are a myth. Well, they do exist, but I would only bother with them if I wanted to store eggs and get some sleep in my drum room. Carpets are equally useless for stopping sound.

On a budget, drywall and weather stripping are the cheapest materials that can actually do something.
 
I can only echo what others have said.

Sound proofing is not easy, and it involves construction to do it even close to right.

Find the book "Keep the Peace" by Mark Parsons. It explains in greater detail what is involved than any internet post can.
 
Looks like I gotta do the same thing. I have a huge 4 bay garage. I use the 1st bay as my practice space, and YES my garage is finished (sheet rocked, painted, etc). I spent years in the garage door business and I know that my "beer can" non-insulated (pan) doors are pieces of shit.

I'm gonna try to cut down the sound that escapes from the garage so neighbors don't complain. I plan on getting some foam at Lowe's to block out the air from the small vents. I know that I can purchase insulation kits from Lowe's/Home Depot to place in my non-insulated garage door, but most people don't know that if you change the weight of a garage door more than 5 lbs., the torsion springs will need adjustment. DO NOT try to adjust those on your own. You can get seriously hurt! Call a reputable garage door service company for that.

I'm also thinking of building small walls of sheet rock (like those plexi glass walls) around the drum kit to help block sound. I plan on trying to get some carpet to lay down too. Hopefully this helps and doesn't cost me too much money. I just want to block out enough noise so neighbors won't complain.
 
Looks like I gotta do the same thing. I have a huge 4 bay garage. I use the 1st bay as my practice space, and YES my garage is finished (sheet rocked, painted, etc). I spent years in the garage door business and I know that my "beer can" non-insulated (pan) doors are pieces of shit.

I'm gonna try to cut down the sound that escapes from the garage so neighbors don't complain. I plan on getting some foam at Lowe's to block out the air from the small vents. I know that I can purchase insulation kits from Lowe's/Home Depot to place in my non-insulated garage door, but most people don't know that if you change the weight of a garage door more than 5 lbs., the torsion springs will need adjustment. DO NOT try to adjust those on your own. You can get seriously hurt! Call a reputable garage door service company for that.

I'm also thinking of building small walls of sheet rock (like those plexi glass walls) around the drum kit to help block sound. I plan on trying to get some carpet to lay down too. Hopefully this helps and doesn't cost me too much money. I just want to block out enough noise so neighbors won't complain.


One more time: foam doesn't work. You will accomplish nothing by filling spaces with it. You will make the sound inside the room better by cutting down on flutter echo but that is it. Want to stop sound from exiting those vents? Cover them with something that has some mass, like sheet rock or MLV or even sound board. Sheet rock is most effective.

Second: carpet does nothing. It does the same thing as foam, actually. You will notice a difference inside. Your neighbors will hear no difference. Think about it: you are adding carpet, which is a low mass material to concrete. The amount of mass being added there is trivial. As such, the results will be trivial. Mass is your friend.

The one thing you did mention that will have some effect is the idea of building new walls inside your garage. Room within a room, is a proven concept. But you need that room to be air tight before it will start having any kind of measurable impact.

Short walls will make not one sliver of difference to your neighbors because they are not standing directly in front of the short walls. What they mostly hear is structural borne noise. That is sound that is hitting the inner structure of your garage, transformed into vibrations, when then turn the outside of your garage into a giant speaker, the vibrations from from which hit the outside of their house and begins the same process in reverse. The only way to impact this process is to cut down on the sound that is hitting any part of the inside of your garage structure (save the concrete slab, which is already the best sound proofing asset you have).

Build four walls and a ceiling. Slap a solid core door on it. Weather strip it to seal it up tight. You should be able to build an 8x8x8 room for ~$500.00. Leave the garage door alone. Do nothing else to the inside of the garage. And for that, your neighbors will enjoy what they perceive to be a 50%-70% noise reduction.
 
The room within a room idea got me thinking about those Clear Sonic isolation booths you see at churches. It's basically a plastic room with a roof and foam panels all around. I was at a church that had their drums in one. I wasn't more than 20 feet away and I couldn't hear the drums at all when the music started. They didn't have the mics turned on. I wonder how much the neighbors would hear if I put one of those around my drums in the garage?
 
The room within a room idea got me thinking about those Clear Sonic isolation booths you see at churches. It's basically a plastic room with a roof and foam panels all around. I was at a church that had their drums in one. I wasn't more than 20 feet away and I couldn't hear the drums at all when the music started. They didn't have the mics turned on. I wonder how much the neighbors would hear if I put one of those around my drums in the garage?

They help, but they have their limits. Also, consider the cost of one of those vs. building a room from sheet rock at $8.00 per 8x4 panel.
 
The room within a room idea got me thinking about those Clear Sonic isolation booths you see at churches. It's basically a plastic room with a roof and foam panels all around. I was at a church that had their drums in one. I wasn't more than 20 feet away and I couldn't hear the drums at all when the music started. They didn't have the mics turned on. I wonder how much the neighbors would hear if I put one of those around my drums in the garage?

Those isolation booths are more to isolate the drums from onstage microphones and the drum mics from onstage sound; they do roll off some of the highs from your kit, but it's not the highs your neighbors hear. It's the lows. And the lows are still getting through. Like Brundle said, it's an improvement, especially over foam or blankets, but we're not talking enough difference that your next door neighbor will stop complaining.
 
alparrott is correct about the isolation panels, they do very little in terms of overall noise limiting.They are a hard surface and what they really do is to just reflect the sound away from from the rest of the players or vocalists. The sound is still present but most of it now falls back on the drummer instead of it being dispersed in basically a 360 degree field of sound. All the sound is still there and a difference outside of the immediate space won't be noticed. In other words, the isolation panels will disperse the sound differently, but you won't hear a difference outside of the room in it's intensity.

If we were talking about an actual isolation both were all six sides were treated this would be a different story. The studios where I work have isolation booths big enough for vocalists or a complete drum kit. These booths will basically isolate any sound on either side of the glass.

This is a small isolation booth I built off of my control room in my home studio to quiet a room for the spoken word. This is used for commercial copy reading and audio books. This is actually a room within a room within a room.

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Dennis
 
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