soundproofing

bgdrum

Member
I practice in my basement which is the succubus of acoustics. Concrete floor, brick walls and wood rafters above. 6 feet high from floor to ceiling (I'm 6'4, so thats always fun) Anyway, my drums sound pretty bad down there, but real good at my bands practice pad.
Im more concerned about improving the acoustics INSIDE than how loud it is outside, since it's practically underground.
Whats a cheap way to improve? Can I just hang carpet on the walls and floors? what about the ceiling? I want less ring and more dead if that makes sense.
 
I practice in my basement which is the succubus of acoustics. Concrete floor, brick walls and wood rafters above. 6 feet high from floor to ceiling (I'm 6'4, so thats always fun) Anyway, my drums sound pretty bad down there, but real good at my bands practice pad.
Im more concerned about improving the acoustics INSIDE than how loud it is outside, since it's practically underground.
Whats a cheap way to improve? Can I just hang carpet on the walls and floors? what about the ceiling? I want less ring and more dead if that makes sense.

There's dead, and there's muffling the highs. Which is what most folks treatments do. This will create an unnatural "oppressive" feeling in the room.

The problem is one of reflections. Sound waves bouncing off one surface and interferring with the sound bouncing off another surface. If you have two parallel surfaces, and you probably have 3 sets, the sound bouncing back and forth between them will set up peaks and valleys according the the wavelengths and distances between surfaces.

The answer is diffusion, not high frequency absorbtion. You want to break up those waves bouncing back and forth. it sounds like the shortest distance is your floor to ceiling. Fortunately, you have joists to help a bit. One cheap thing you could try is getting some (flame resistant) rigid foam insulation and cutting it into shapes that will not reflect the sound straight back down. You can put fiberglass insulation between some of the joists, but try not to do all of them. Break it up. Now go to your nearer wall pair and see if there is something you can put in front of them that will cause the sound to bounce in other directions.

Many home brew "sound treatment" things (like carpet) are flamable, emit toxic smoke and can turn your practice space into a Great White death trap. So please be careful when selecting materials
 
egg cartons are the best thing that i have found. i have the main room in my studio covered almost head to toe with them. just fold them open and attach to the wall ( i used small furniture nails. also gallon milk cartons cut in half are good too, i have milk cartons in the corners of the room.

i also use studio foam panels in the vocal booth and they are great but kind of expensive. i didn't know if you where talking about DIY or just stuff on the market.
 
Aeolian is right. You just need to eliminate the standing waves that are created by a squared-off room. If you look at pictures of actual recording studios (the ones still in business), you'll notice that all the walls are not parallel to each other. They'll all be at some oblique angle so when a sound wave hits it, it gets deflected somewhere else and not directly back at the wall it initially bounced off of - that's a standing wave.

I bet if there was a way to make the walls "not parallel" that would probably improve your sound down there immensely, and you wouldn't have to deaden it with any kind of foam.

However, all of my suggestions require a substantial amount of money to do, so I'll stop there.
 
Aeolian is right. You just need to eliminate the standing waves that are created by a squared-off room. If you look at pictures of actual recording studios (the ones still in business), you'll notice that all the walls are not parallel to each other. They'll all be at some oblique angle so when a sound wave hits it, it gets deflected somewhere else and not directly back at the wall it initially bounced off of - that's a standing wave.

I bet if there was a way to make the walls "not parallel" that would probably improve your sound down there immensely, and you wouldn't have to deaden it with any kind of foam.

However, all of my suggestions require a substantial amount of money to do, so I'll stop there.

all correct, this is what egg cartons will accomplish on a budget, the rounded egg holders deflect sound so you don't get a back and forth phase rebound thing so much.
 
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