Soundproofing for the neighbors

[Geniustoogs]

Now I know I don't HAVE to play loud... but it'd be real nice if I could! Lol. The other day I was playing he drums and I was told that I could be heard a few houses down. Anyone have any experience soundproofing? Even if it's not total soundproof, anything that will greatly limit the amount of sound that can leave my room. Thanks!

 

[24 track]

this totally depends on what you are trying to accomplish,
If you are sound proofing for drums a booth is the best with sound proofed walls, or pads on the drums these are neoprene pads that sit on the tops of the skins that deaden the sound, give the right feel ( but in my opinion its kind of like plugging in your guitar turning it up to 11 and not turning on the amp

For guitar I built this its an ISO box, it works by unplugging the speaker from your amp and directing the speaker output to the Iso box which has an 8 OHM 100 watt speaker sealed into a double insolated 3/4 plywood box with in a box then micing that speaker I used a Sennheiser E609 on axis and a Beyer dynamic off axis (in my case) back to my monitor system where I can control the level , but at the same time I can crank my marshall JCM800 or my Fender twin BFRI as loud as I want to get the sweetspot at 02:00 AM and not wake my neighbours or my wife.
This will not work with a Fender Super Reverb becuase they are designed to work with a 2-4 OHM load, unless you swap out the speaker appropriately




For all other instruments I can run headphones late at night

Room sound proofing is different basically you need to build a Room within a room, where the inner framming is staggered from the original framming and the is insolation is weaved between the studs then 2 layers of 3/4" gyproc that way the inner room is decoupled from the outer room, so vibrations will not resonate through the walls or ceiling structure and the sound remains contained, this sort of isolation is what you would need for a drum booth or proper vocal booth as well.

the last option is wall treatment heavey curtains etc.
sound baffle panels are used to deaden the room but are not sound proofing they just kill reflection from paralell walls

there is a lot of knowledgeable people on this site no doubt will have differece of opinion to what i have posted here , read what every one has to say and then decide on your course of action that best suits your needs, I have seen some absolutly Nutz solutions that have gone into major reording fascillities, a 10' dead space between the control room and the studio walls to isolate those two rooms, this was a CHIPS DAVIS design out of LA, A crazy waste of studio space

 

[Paul Jenkin]

Back in the mid-late 70s some school friends and I put a band together and, although I really wanted to play bass, I ended up drumming. My problem was that I had a small bedroom in an end-terraced property and I lived with my parents. We didn't even have double-glazing.

It was a constant battle to try to get to play my kit at anything like the volume I would do when we played a gig. However, my parents finally asked me do I want to play loud or play hard. The difference was that I could get pads for the snare and toms and stuff the bass drum with a couple of pillows.

This reduced the volume dramatically and I realised what I really wanted from practicing was to let loose - not deafen myself and the neighbours.

A month or two down the line, we found a cheap but available rehearsal space (a room above a vacant commercial property) that we could visit a couple of times a week and that removed the problem.

Sound-proofing is a great idea if it's practical to do it well, as per the earlier post) but, if you're in a property that shares a party wall, the low-volume percussive "thud" is very difficult to reduce to acceptable levels.

 

[Milspec]

The cheapest way is to move it to the basement if you have that option. Otherwise, stuffing the drums sounds like a pretty good option.

My neighbor's kid had a band and practiced in the detached garage about 50 feet from my living room. It was very loud, but even an old man like me can shrug it off if it is good playing. It is when the playing is poor that it becomes an issue.

How well do you know your neighbors? I bet that if you introduced yourself and explained that you play drums, you could probably establish a time of the day where most will not object. I actually had a kid do that once who played metal mostly. I was working nights and wanted to strangle him when he played around 9 am, but then he knocked on my day and told me he was trying to improve enough to join his brother's band, we adjusted his practice schedule to the afternoon and that was all it took. We worked it out.

 

[Mase]

I used to build enclosures for noisy machines.
If you are trying to stop sound from moving outside of a room or a booth, or any kind of enclosure, you need to line/clad that space with two things...
First up you need something that will stop/repel sound, think 3/4 chipboard/ply/MDF, attached to the walls for example.
When you have lined the space with this material, you then need to add another layer over the top.
This second layer needs to be a material that will absorb sound, thick housing insulation will work to a point, but there are better( and more expensive options), out there.
Just depends how far you want to go to attenuate the sound.

This is a very simple description of what is required, and I have left out a lot of info.
If you want to go down this path, feel free to ask questions, I'm happy to help you.
Cheers,

P.S Pretty much all of what 24 Track has said is correct, he has just chosen a different approach.

 

[Anode100]

I read the title, and thought you neighbour's wife was a screamer...

Why reinvent the wheel? If you want to really open your kit up, a dedicated, purpose-built studio might be the only way to go.

 

[Mistercharlie]

Some tips to reduce noise without rebuilding your home:

- Close the doors to your practice room. This will cut out a lot of the noise that spreads though the rest of your apartment, and out through other walls, and the front door.

- Get the amps off the floor. An amp on the floor will boom through to the downstairs neighbour. An amp raised up is also easier to hear, so you can run it quieter. I have my amp on a sideboard, which has the bonus of letting me slide my pedalboard underneath.

- Use a stereo amp. If I'm playing late at night, I use a Yamaha THR 10 modeling amp. It's stereo, which makes the sound really fill the room at low volumes. Bonus tip: if you go for headphones, stereo makes them sound way better.

- Turn the amp up and the guitar down. The way you get some of the sound of the amp when opened up, but without the volume. Be careful, though, as it's easy to let the volume creep up after a while.

Also, talk to your neighbors. You want them to come to you if they have a problem, not call the your landlord, or the cops. I work from home, and my neighbors are out at work all day, so I never get any complaints. also, pay attention to what you can hear from your own neighbors. If you can hear their TV, then they can hear your amp.

 

[uriah1]

Lucky
I have basement, 1/2" barnsiding., old fashion cork ceiling and glass block windows...
Nothing gets in or out..neighbors extremely close

 

[jvin248]

.

Good notes so far. Here's a picture of wall construction methods, the middle staggered wall is discussed previously.
"the Best Soundproofing solution combines both decoupling, damping and materials of different densities."

If you have any cracks that a dollar bill can slip through then that will be a source of noise transmission (around a door or window or the door sweep), or un-mudded drywall. Don't forget HVAC ducts and vents as sound ports, nor ceiling and floor.

.

 

[SacDAve]

^ I like the Double Stud Idea I was thinking of doing that in one of my rooms , making a foam Rubber inserts for the windows and adding insulation to the ceiling & floor. Right now I crank my Amps up so far no one in the court has conplained maybe being the free repair guy pays off.

 

[Geniustoogs]

Wow, lots of great info here! Thanks so much. I was looking at some soundproof curtains as well, I've got three large windows surrounding my practice area, so perhaps putting some rubber seals around the window and then covering with a soundproof curtain?

Apart from the drums I also want to be able to turn the amp up a bit more as some of you were talking about. So maybe I'll line the walls with a whole lot of thrift shop quilts? lol just an idea

 

[24 track]

Wow, lots of great info here! Thanks so much. I was looking at some soundproof curtains as well, I've got three large windows surrounding my practice area, so perhaps putting some rubber seals around the window and then covering with a soundproof curtain?

Apart from the drums I also want to be able to turn the amp up a bit more as some of you were talking about. So maybe I'll line the walls with a whole lot of thrift shop quilts? lol just an idea

A friend of mine in Vancouver secured some double canvas curtains from a golf store that went belly up and with the double density it killed all the reflective sound and quite deadened the room as he is still building I havent heard the outcome but during my walk around there seemed to be a definite lack of reflective sound

 

[24 track]

two issues also missed when doing these designs is, 1) parralell walls bounce the sound around the room if you look at major stuios the control room almost seems funnel shaped with padded baffles on the wall in Key places, the placing of the baffles can be determined where in the refection of a mirror you can see the cone of your monitor speaker , that is where the sound will hit first and where to place a baffle.
2) glass windows are placed in the wall flat and square causing the sound to reflect off of the glass at the same angle it hits the glass( angle of reflection = angle of incident) so even a sheet of plexiglass placed over the window on an angle ( say flush at the top and a 1" gap at the bottom will kill the reflection comming off at 90 degrees)

 

[HotRodSteve]

Too bad nobody makes a "Cone of Silence" that would fit over a drummer. There might be a market for this.

 

[Mase]

Some good stuff in here, but overkill for a practice room in IMO. Unless you want to spend many hours and many dollars......follow the basic principles. Timber battens fixed to walls and ceilings>sheets of hard reflective material fixed to battens>absorbent material fixed to sheets.
Cheers.

 

[SolidSteak]

Lots of questions:
What floor are you on in your house? (Basement is best)
How many exterior walls in the room? (Those are the ones leaking the most to the outside)
What kind of house? (duplex, townhouse, detached, etc.)
How much money can you spend?
How much construction are you willing to do to the room?
When do you usually practice?

I'm not sure putting up some heavy curtains is going to have much effect on stopping sound that can be heard a few houses down.

It's really difficult to make a room that is 100% "soundproof" for drums without building a decoupled double stud wall with double drywall and green glue or something crazy like that, double doors, sealed up double-paned windows, etc. Like a hermetically sealed laboratory (don't forget HVAC!)

Sometimes it's easier to just tell your neighbors, "Hey, is it okay if me and some friends play music for one hour from 2-3pm this Saturday?" Then try having someone else play drums while you walk around the house to locate the trouble spots. There might be something you can do there, like put a mattress in front of a door, or block up a window and move closer to the interior of the house, etc.

Good luck! I feel your pain. I've been trying to learn drums for a year and I live in a duplex. My neighbor is cool though, and will be like, "Hey, I'll be out of town for a week, so feel free to let loose!" Can't emphasize that aspect enough - get in good with the neighbors!

 

[randomhitz]

sometimes you can find surplus office cublcle dividers for next to nothing that would help to put close around the drums. For me it helps to think about sound as a wave having a certain amount of energy that can get transmitted two ways, either directly through the air or setting a structure such as a wall or window vibrating and acting somewhat like a speaker transmittlng the sound on.

Sound gets controlled multiple ways. 1.-being trapped by the topology of the surface it hits by being reflected back in a way that the energy of the wave is turned out of phase with the original wave so that it cancels itself out. This is part of the process of how rooms get tuned acoustically. The second is having the sound wave set the molecules of a given material in motion so that the energy of the wave gets transferred into heat rather than passed on. The third is to minimize the mechanical transmission of wave through a membrane like a window or wall by having another membrane decoupled from the first like the wall construction examples shown above. Another, and the most difficult and expensive to achieve, is mass. Only mass will truly stop bass frequencies. Lastly are direct airborne leaks that can be controlled by gasketing around doors.

I've not tried it but I would think that thick memory foam mattress toppers would work well as window covers. You sometimes see them cheap on craigslist. If your guitar amp is open back any kind of damp material close in behind it should help. Make sure the amp is not pointing directly at the windows if possible.

It's all incremental. It may be that you will have to use all of the techniques mentioned above. I can tell you that have a music space where you do not have to worry about your sound levels impinging on others is a wonderful thing.

 

[Dismalhead]

I did a garage one time and it worked great. I did a 1.5" layer of foam board insulation (not sure what the R value was) and then an R30 layer of fiberglass insulation over that. Then covered it with 3/4" firewall sheetrock and textured the walls. It was a normal suburban tract home and we could play drums at 2 in the morning if we wanted to.

 

[screamin eagle]

Just last year we renovated an area of the house and we built an office (guitar room) and wanted 'some' sound proofing. We had a drywaller and contractor discuss with us all of our options and pricing. Considering we really just wanted to cut down the db to not wake the sleeping babies or neighbors, we weren't shooting for studio style sound proofing.

What we did was use special soundproofing insulation that is much denser and we used hat rails to mount the drywall to the studs, effectively decoupling the drywall--this is really the ticket. We also used a solid core door--this is the other big thing.

Going further would have cost exponentially more. This included decoupling the framing of the room from the foundation and the rest of the house, and a few other things. These things would have significantly raised our cost of the project.

The hat rails are cheap, the insulation was only a little bit more than regular insulation. The solid core door was the same cost due to our contractors relationship with his supplier. The costs were only marginally more than just building a regular room, but the difference is very noticeable.

Footnote, our contractor initially figured he use 2 layers of 5/8" sheetrock to accomplish our goal, but we consulted with a career drywall guy who said it would be much cheaper and more effective to use the hat rails to decouple for the framing and use the denser insulation.

We're satisfied with the results.

 

[MDent77]

Soundproofing for the neighbors

I love this idea. Make the neighbors soundproof THEIR houses.