Wanting to make a drum studio in basement

Jeffrey99

Member
Hey guys. I have a small spare bedroom in the basement that I'd like to turn into a drum studio. In the end I'd like it to be the best sounding as possible. It'd start with youtube covers but long term I'd like to be able to record drums for my bands albums in there. So it may be a long term project. Right now it's pretty much a blank slate. We ripped the carpet up in there this past weekend, as it was pretty bad.

So right now it's about a 10x10 (guesstimate) room. It has a riser floor in the whole room about 4" above the concrete foundation below. So right now the floor is plywood and all 4 walls and ceiling are drywall covered.

My 1st question is for flooring, is carpet best for drums? Or if you were gonna do this yourself how would you proceed?

Thanks,
Jeffrey
 
What's anybody's ideas on a cork floor? I'm going to be doing this in the future so I will be following this thread closely
 
General rule is hard reflective floor, soft absorbent ceiling, especially right over the drums. Having the kit on a rug won't hurt.
 
Create a riser of 1" MDF that sits on top of some isolation foam strips. Essentially, try and isolate the vibrations through the floor - this would be my first port of call.

Then try and plug the gaps: Put a second door in, a heavy door, inspect the windows etc.

soften the ceiling, treat the walls (but not too dead) select ventilation type
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. What do you guys recommend for the walls?
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. What do you guys recommend for the walls?

Difficult - cellar walls may need tanking (a plastic membrane to ensure moisture runs into a drain and then pumped out) before any soundproofing is done. A cheap way of tanking is some kind of slurry that is painted on the walls (this was my first option when I didn't really care) but this is cheerful to go with the cheap. Really not worth it as the wall sweat quite a lot underneath.

Screw lengths of stud equally spaced into the walls, add insulation inbetween the studs. Then screw in your plasterboard over the top.

Now, that procedure can usually work for most applications, but if you want to be completely soundproofed, you would have to look into adding some soundproof layers over the top or building a room within the cellar.

So if you're not bothered about a bit of sound escaping, stick with the stud and insulation/plasterboard approach. If you want absolute silence, you're gonna need to build a room within a room.
 
Go to Gearslutz.com and cruise the Studio building/Acoustics forum. Lots of pros over there you can ask for advice. Rod Geevais' book Build It Like The Pros is really good too.
 
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