Sound proofing a room

[reckless abandon]

my wife want new carpet. So I get the old stuff. I want to put it on the walls, ceiling, and floors of my guitar room. Will this make it pretty sound proof? I have drums that I cannot bring to my new house do to my liking the neighbors.

will it work?

[the.godfather]

Its best to use some sound proofing foam or something similar. Carpet wont really do much. But any kind of insulation should do the trick pretty well. Some other guys on here will have better knowledge of this though.

[reckless abandon]

What about using the egg crates that you can buy for beds and put that under the carpet?

[reckless abandon]

What about 2 of these? I can still do some carpeting but leave the ceiling and hardwood floor alone
http://www.markertek.com/Product.asp...&search=0&off=

[ChopTart]

Carpet does do a pretty good work of dampening sound, but it depends on the kind and type of carpet (as would anything else). A dense, thick carpet would transfer sound almost as easily as wood would, so try to figure out if it'll do a good job lowering the sound. Otherwise, you may wind up just doing a lot of work for no real return

However, pretty much ANYTHING will do SOMEthing. At my drummers apartment, the people downstairs have no complaints (possibly because of the carpet) but people 2 floors up have called several times, even though the neighbors directly above him have no complaints

[reckless abandon]

basically all I need is enough dampening where they will not hear it in their house. So it would at least do that?
I am starting to worry that I may never have drums in the house I just bought

[JESTER700]

All the treatments mentioned will cut transmission of highs somewhat. But they're really meant for cutting the reflection of highs within the room itself. That is, to make the room sound better (IF it needs such dampening), not soundproof it. They will do very little for the bass, within OR outside of the room. For that, you need mass. And it's generally bass transmission that's the problem - because most building materials act the same way.

So, try what you will - it can't hurt, and could help. But you could also make your room sound terrible without fixing the problem.

For real soundproofing, look to building a second room within the room that's isolated. A very expensive proposition.

[reckless abandon]

I guess I will do some dampening since there is no carpet in the room and find loud spots are try to rig up something.

thanks for everyone's help

[Ibanut]

Carpet wont work at all. It will absorb high frequencies a little. To get totally sound proofed you'll need to "float" the room the instruments are in.

You need to build a room inside a room. Float the floor off of the original floor. Build walls on top of the new floor and not connected to the originals.
The new room needs to be de-coupled from the old. You will need "resonators" and bass traps too. The low frequencies are the real problem,but decoupling or floating the room will do the job. If you want it done right. You could always do what most people do and that is get aurolex and cover every wall but that wont kill the lows at all. Good luck

[Gresh]

Carpet isn't going to do anything for eliminating or mitigating sound transfer, it's only going to make the room dead and absorb reflecting waves...they will still propagate. The earlier post said it when they referred to mass. Low frequencies are going to be the enemy to your neighbors and to combat that you need mass and dead space, meaning layers of drywall of differing thicknesses, false floors, rockwool, and acoustic caulk to seal up everything. Even using drywall screws to the studs nearly eliminates the effect of having the drywall as it provides a hard connection and allows soundwaves to travel straight into the framing of the house.

go to www.johnlsayers.com/phbBB2/index.php

It has a wealth of information on soundproofing.

[reckless abandon]

thanks everybody. I guess I will selling the drums since they will be no use to me anymore. I may ahve to get an electric kit

[rgr]

Yeah, it's really expensive to "soundproof" a room. It's actually pretty near impossible, even in good studios you can usually hear the drums coming through the walls. You can deaden the sound alot so it isn't so annoying to the neighbors or others in the house. My basement studio isn't bad, yes, it is audible outside, but not totally annoying. The room is basically a box, built on a frame off the floor and the ceiling doesn't touch the floor joists above. The walls are framed with 2X4s top and bottom and 2X3s staggered to mount the sheetrock to, so the outside sheets and the inside sheets are not mounted to the same piece of wood, the window has a piece of 4" foam in it, and I have hung some rugs and studio foam on the walls. The rugs are mounted with 1" foam between them and the wall, if they were hung touching the wall they wouldn't do any good other than killing some of the highs. The doors are exterior type french doors, so they have double glass, single glass wouldn't help. It's some work, and yes, it is still audible in the house, but it works well enough. Oh yeah, to make matters worse, my basement has a floating wood floor instead of concrete (which would have made it much easier), they have to do that where I live because the ground swells and contracts so much it would destroy a flat concrete floor. The drums are also mounted on a small riser which is on rubber isolators (the big black rubber stoppers you can get at Lowes).

Perfect, far from it, useable, yes, for now, I still need to get around to finishing the rest of the basment though.

The other thing is that it is so sealed, well there is one duct into the room (which also lets sound travel out), that it can get really hot pretty quick with a couple of amps and bodies in it.

<$0.02,
Roger