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Building a Practice room - How to make it QUIET!!!!

5K views 13 replies 7 participants last post by  shredmaster 
#1 ·
Hey guys, need some advice here, especially from you guys who have project studios.

I am about to turn my 25' x 35' metal building into a practice room.  I basically want to make it a comfortable place for the band to rehearse and not be bothered.  
Here's the deal, I live in a quiet area and don't want to offend my neighbors (when I was a kid my neighbor had a country band and I remember hearing boom boom boom all night from the drummer... everybody hated that guy!  I don't want to be "that guy" ;) ).  What can I do to kill bass and drum noise?  I know the foam route (and that mostly kills high end frequencies) and Bass traps (for low end)  but any body have any experience with floating a room?  Is it possible to totally kill all the bleed over noise?  
I'm tossing around making a isolation room for the drums, so I won't have to float the entire place (for $$$ reasons), but would really rather keep it open... I hate practicing with the drummer in another room.
Any thoughts, experiences????  Thanks.
 
#3 ·
Building a Practice room

Carpet & foam only kill highs. The kick & bass guitar will come through loud & clear. Floating's about the best you can do, and you have to make sure it's sealed well. Gaps for wiring & stuff will allow plenty of leakage.

For lows, mass is the best bet, but not many people can pour concrete in the wall space... ;-)
 
#4 ·
Building a Practice room

I just helped a friend do it. We did a 20x20 room (roughly) for about $350. Built an 11" airspace (used that figure because of the goofy sized 2x4"s that were on sale) and it's worked fantastic.

You -can- still hear it outside, but it's very, very quiet. Floated the walls/cieling and built bass traps in all four corners. Me and him did it in about 5 hours.

Worth the time/money if you are going to use it imo.
 
#5 ·
Building a Practice room

thanks for the input so far.

Jeffrey, did you guys basically build a room inside of a room? Can you give me an idea of how you guys laid out the wall structure? I've heard you should use varying lengths of wall studs, basically anything symmetrical is bad. Howd you guys do it?
 
#7 ·
Building a Practice room

I never heard THAT one. Basically, there's a school of thought that says non parallel walls are good because they break up standing waves. There's another school that says it'll break up flutter echoes, but standing waves will remain, and become less predictable.
 
#9 ·
Building a Practice room

oooo,

Basically we built it in 4x8' sections (per piece of OSB). We made a small frame that went around the perimeter of each sheet (simply 2x4"s screwed on edge) then screwed 11" (or whatever length you want, at least 6" I'd guess) 2x4"s perpendicular to the 'frame' to hold it out from the wall. These were toenail screwed to the wall and screwed directly to the floor. Since it's not load-bearing (or shouldn't be) strength isn't a huge concern.

We applied the same basic design precept to the ceiling as well. Except this time we built the frame intact and screwed it directly to the floated walls and existing cieling joists. Since it most likely wouldn't line directly up to the ceiling, we ran some 2x4"s along the cieling in various spots and screwed those to ceiling joists which gave us something solid to attach the floated cieling.

After that we did the 45 degree bass traps and put a layer of sound board around the inside (the inside of the soundboard is silver like aluminum foil, now the room looks like it's fulla mirrors hehe, kinda groovy).

Hope this stuff helps you some. ;)
 
#11 ·
Building a Practice room

thanks jeffery! Yup that helps. Thats more like the route that I want to go with.

Drestin, thanks also. I'm going to spend some time on that site. Seems like a ton of great info.

Two hands31, if I did the spring thing... would it make that great BOING!!!!! sound when I hit the walls?

thanks to everyone so far.
 
#14 ·
Building a Practice room

what jeffrey did will work great. i helped a friend and he didn't want to do all that to his spare room. we basically loaded it with foam. we bought tons of it from a home store...where they sell bed sheets and stuff. we tacked foam bedding, about 2" thick around the perimeter of the room after applying foam sheets to the walls... about 4" thick, that we got from home depot. we cut squares in the wall for the cold air return. so there is about 6" insulation all around the room. then we just took S-hooks to slightly hang a couple king-sized bed comforters from the ceiling. it does a good job. you can hear the drums from the outside but it isn't bad at all and it helps with the recording. cost us about $180.

when i get my studio i would like to do it right with auralex.... $$$$.... and the floating room idea.

i would do what jeffrey did and leave at least a 2" space between the real wall and the false wall. and insulate that space with 1" foam throughout. so sound would hit the auralex in the sound room, and whatever got through the false wall would hit another barrier of foam before escaping. not to mention, after going through the first foam wall, it was dissipate more once it hit that 1" space, and then hitting that 2nd foam barrier.

it's fun to do this stuff but it's $$$
 
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