Sound Proofing

[ninriggs]

Hello all,

Quick question about studio design.... (Moving house so going to redesign studio but need to make it sound proof)

Has anyone got any ideas on good soundproofing solutions (That wont cost the earth)

The room i will be using only requires two walls and the floor to be sound proofed (Internal walls and floor....cause its a bedroom)

I was thinking of raiseg the floor but i think this would cost a small fortune....

what im looking for are ideas on soundproofing areas and poss past experiance?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[SteveHanlon]

Hi,

Go here:
www.auralex.com (\"http://www.auralex.com\")

They will have what you need.

Contact Jeff Hedbeck. He\'s great help.

ironjaw@auralex.com

[composer22]

Ou may want to concider a soundproof shell.

These are like the practice rooms in some community colleges. They come in a variety of sizes and can be quicky put together inside your room and are totally soundproof for recording. and they can be knocked down and put back together again within an hour if you chance to move.

They are relatively inexpensive. And I know there is a manufacturer in england that supplies. You will have to search the web as I dont remember where...

[ninriggs]

Composer22,

Thanks for the response,
i will look at that link....(Marty)

Composer, im sure ive seen them rooms before...looks like a great idea...

im looking at various ideas at the moment.

i have a feeling im going to to be taking an extended visit to a wood warehouse......had bad experiances from MFI (Aggggghhhhhhh, some one else recomended using wood panels and foam. Im having the house re wired to give the room plenty of power so until thats done im zooming round looking at idea....its funny how many people advise egg cartons images/icons/smile.gif

[Ernstinen]

Hi Ninriggs,

I\'ve built three sound booths over the years, and by far the biggest problem is low frequencies. Staggering 2x4 studs in the walls helps, weaving your insulation around them, so the inner and outer walls don\'t touch. (You use 2x6\'s for the bottom and top). Also, a solid core door is a must, as well as double glass at slightly different angles. My current booth is a \"room within a room\", but still loud, low frequency sounds (jets, garbage trucks etc.) still leak through slightly. It\'s no big deal when recording electric guitar amps, for instance, but when real sensitive micing (acoustic guitar, soft vocals etc.) is in order, I usually stop until the noise passes.

Of course, we\'re talking fairly low budget construction (no floating floors, concrete walls etc.), but this stuff does help alot.

BTW, egg cartons only cut down on high frequency reflections, and don\'t \"soundproof\" much, if at all! images/icons/tongue.gif

Good Luck!

Ernstinen

[thesoundsmith]

An equal part of making a recording environment is the sound of the room. It should have no extra-live or dead spots (nodes or modes, depending on who\'s talking) and the reverb time should be appropriate for the size.

I would up using Auralex for almost all of my treatment, but only after verifying that the proper amount of absorption in all the frequencies (octaves from about 30 to 500 Hz) could be reached with their product. I wrote an Excel spreadsheet for calculationg the nodes and Sabins (absorption factor.) The spreadsheet is on my web site at The Soundsmith (\"http://www.thesoundsmith.com\") , but I don\'t believe it translates to the newer Excel versions well. If you have Excel 4 for the Mac and perhaps 5 on the PC it should be fine, but it\'s more work than I was willing to undertake to get it to format correctly in Excel 2K (the lower section has figures for common building and room treatment materials with 2-cell high graphs, but they graphs seem to have gone south...

But you\'re welcome to download it, FWIW.

I should also mention-it worked really well for my current room, the room is small but plays pretty flat and does great voice-over and overdubs.

Dasher

[Ernstinen]

Hey Dasher,

Good ideas!

How\'s Rudolph, by the way? We haven\'t communicated in a while! images/icons/wink.gif

Love,

Ernstinen

[Ernstinen]

Riggs,

I took your post as meaning sound not getting \"in or out\" of your isolated room, not the control room sound itself --- big difference!

Lemme know,

Ernstinen

[ninriggs]

thesoundsmith,

Ive just grabbed the xls sheet i will look at it very soon... I like the idea of room in a room...although the floor may be a bit of a problem.... im thinking of filling in the cavitys under the floor then raising the level as well to sort of double the thickness.

Ernstinen,

Sorry if my explanation was a little poor...im uncertain if i should split the room for a studio and a recording area....or have just one main room....(All soundproofed) most of my query was to find out about a good way of making the room/rooms soundproof... (My biggest problem is that the room is above another one) so it has to leak as little as poss.

many thanks for the responses so far though.

[thesoundsmith]

My studio started life as a 19x21\' garage with tall roof (10\' at the edge with 15\' center ridge). As most of my production is electronic, I used half the space for my equipment, and half doe the players. With no floor isolation (money and it\'s a concrete slab on what appeared to be a quiet cul-de-sac) I built double wall, double ceiling (1/2\" and 5/8\" sheet rock so they had different resonance fqs) and with CAREFUL construction (NOT your standard slap-em-up contractor, this was my bass player, who\'s a professional building contractor in the day, he DID understand what was needed, and it made a HUGE difference!) even the line-of-sight airport seldom is audible. BUT:

My next door neighbor dies, and the house was purchased by a very nice Fijian family. Lovely folks, except the head of household is some kind or religious or cultural personage. One morning, I woke up to a series of dull, thudding sounds, as if a piledriver were at work. I went into the studio, and to my horror, it was MUCH louder. At this point my daughter awoke complaining about a headache, and went off to search out the problem. She went to the house next doo, and there was this gentleman sitting in his garge with the door open, and a large mortar and pestle between his legs, slamming the pestle into the mortar over and over. She asked what he was doing, and he replied with a big smile in his beautiful Indian/Fijian accent, \"Oh, I am pounding my ROOT!\"

He takes fresh kava root and crushes it to make a mildly intoxicating beverage, it takes hours to get the roots pulverized, and meanwhile, recording is out of the question. So we discussed the problem, and happily came to an agreeable solution. But \"ponding one\'s root\" has become a stock phrase in the family dirty joke collection.

Examine your space carefully, there may be no reason to isolate the floor-but if you suspect there is, definitely do it. Look into a magazine called Tape Op. It\'s a free publication for at-home studio weenies, and a recent issue had a great tip on how to float the floor cheaply-sorry, it\'s too late for me, so I didn\'t pay much attention, but they had a substitute for the $5 apiece floor blocks.

To get to what I was STARTING to say, if you\'re mostly recording electronically and system noise isn\'t too big a problem, keep the space in one piece and give yourself bigger, better, cleaner bass response.

Dasher

[ninriggs]

Thesoundsmith,

Thanks a great deal for the reply i will have a good look around at the various materials to use.... i think i may need to get a few quotes from a local builder to see what the options i have.

Shame about the root problem. images/icons/smile.gif

[thesoundsmith]

Riggs-we worked it out, and \"I am pounding my ROOT!\" is a great punchline!!!

Ernstinen-don\'t ask me about the other reindeer-all I can tell you is-Comet\'s in the sink! images/icons/grin.gif

Dasher

[thesoundsmith]

Forgot to add-if you use a local builder, be 100% SURE he understands that \"normal\" construction tolerances are NOT acceptable (pay a premium, but get a \"no gaps, no sheetrock repair\" clause.) 1 square inch of air gap loses 3dB of soundproofing.

Dasher

[ninriggs]

Dasher,

Good thinking... i will make sure he understands my requirements.

thanks very much for all your help.

[ninriggs]

Nice punch line....

good at parties.....

Q: \"So, what do you do all day?\"

A: \"I enjoy pounding my ROOT?\"

----silence---

heh

[pantonality]

It may be a bit late to join this discussion, but I\'ll give it a shot.

I built a room in my basement that is physically separate from the rest of the house except being connected to the concrete floor. I used two layers of sheetrock on the inside and that made a big difference. The idea was that more mass reduces sympathetic vibration. I even glued the two layers together. making 5/8 sheetrock effectively 1.25\". I also made sure the seams didn\'t line up.

After I did this I saw that Auralex has something that allows you to put a second layer of sheetrock up, but separates it from the first with a layer of foam. That may be pretty helpful.

Steve

[Ernstinen]

Something that I forgot about that I spent MANY hours doing --- caulking! Make sure that all seams are completely sealed.

Ernstinen images/icons/cool.gif

[MisterBlue]

Auralex and their web site are a great resource of information. Please realize, however, that their \"pyramid or triangular shaped foam\" doesn\'t do ANYTHING to soundproof a room images/icons/shocked.gif ! It eliminates reflections inside the room real well by absorbing the energy but to prevent sound from getting in or out of the room you need a different approach.

I had a very satisfactory success with building a \"room inside the room\" (actually the garage). The floor is floating on Auralex \"U-Boats\" - rubber buffers that hold 2x6\'s (total investment was about $100). I filled the walls (4 inches wide) with regular R37 (I think that was the number) from Home Depot. Inexpensive stuff in between the inside and outside layer of sheetrock. A solid core door with insulation tape around the frame and some well insulated prebuilt windows (all from Home Depot) worked well and were easy to install at a good price.

With everything you do, make sure to \"think fishtank\". It doesn\'t matter how well you do with caulking around the corners and windows if there is a gap under your door ... (OK, I know this one is pretty obvious).

A nice side aspect was that by doing everything myself I could put all the electricals on one separate circuit (no clicks from the fridge starting up) and operate my entire studio with one main switch.

Oh, and one more piece of advice : Make sure to get some kind of cooling system in there ! Depending on the size of your room and the equipment, temperatures can go up by as much as 30 Fahrenheit. Pay attention not to put a hole in the \"fishtank\" by installing the AC the wrong way, though ... images/icons/rolleyes.gif

MisterBlue

[Ernstinen]

MisterBlue,

You are correct, sir, about the bottom of the door. I don\'t remember about the actual construction terms, but I ended up with almost a \"snow door\" (I live in L.A., but grew up in Michigan images/icons/tongue.gif ). One booth actually had a foot (?) nailed to the floor, and the door had two rubber \"sweepers\" attached to seal it up! It worked great.

Ernstinen

[thesoundsmith]

Mr Blue tells it true!
Oh, and one more piece of advice : Make sure to get some kind of cooling system in there ! Depending on the size of your room and the equipment, temperatures can go up by as much as 30 Fahrenheit <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I was unable to do this, for various reasons, and it gets HOT in here. We generally open the doors between takes, and keep a fan handy to recycle the air. HVAC is not cheap, and setting up the baffles and soundtraps would have made the price of the room well over the top-as it is, I spent over $10K on a 19x21x12 garage. The room sounds great, but I pant a lot...
One day, I\'ll finish it-in the meanwhile, I can hire out to the local Native American community as a sweat lodge!
Dasher