Soundproofing A Room For Rehearsal |
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Jan 11 2009, 03:45 AM
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Hey guys,
I wasn't really sure where to post this, however, I would like some hints and recomendations on how to soundproof a room which would be used for rehearsing. Basically me and some friends are turning an attic into a little rehearsing place, it's only a 3 piece band at this moment containg 2 guitars, vocals and drums. I guess a good part about it is a electronic drumkit, meaning that the volume is quite controllable overall and the person living under the room is more or less never at home during the weekends when we will play. Now I know this probably is not the best choice of a rehearsal place but it's literally the only place we could find right now, and all the furnished rehearsing studios around where we live are quite expensive. The room is roughly 20-25m² and looks a little something like this, marked out the windows with blue, and the door with brown, outside the door you have a long hallway connected to the staircase so I assume you want to isolate that door as good as possible. (yes yes, laugh all you want at my amazing paintskills!)  I was hoping some of you guys had some experience with sound isolation. Naturally we don't intend to hire some professional or buy a lot of expensive stuff but we just want hints and guidelines of what to pay attention to and what kind of cheap materials etc we can use to isolate things as good as possible! This post has been edited by Sigfridsson: Jan 11 2009, 03:47 AM -------------------- Guitars: ESP Eclipse I CTM Full Thickness, Ibanez RG470 with EMG81/85 pickups.
Amp: Vox Valvetronix AD50VT XL |
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Jan 11 2009, 10:51 AM
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Your main concern should be the floor, so try to raise a floor by a couple of inches and form an air pocket inside. This will prevent most sound energy traveling bellow. The important thing is the quality of the floor building material as well. UNfortunately, floor is always the toughest thing to isolate, so I would really recommend to save money and make a silent rehearsal studio.
Since you mentioned that you have electronic drums, you can do the following: Get this device:  Behringer amp800 - 40$ It has 4 headphone outs. Then find 4 cheap headphone sets like this:  Sennheiser HD201 - 20$You will need 3 kits of headphones which is 60$ Now this is only 100$ so far for silent rehearsals. ALl you need to get now is a small mixer to mix all the channels: guitar, bass and preamp. Guitarists should connect DI from amp to the mixer, or mic the amp. Bassist should connect the bass to DI Box, and then to mixer. Singer should connect microphone straight into the mixer. ALl that is left now is the mix the channels in the mixer properly, and send it to that Behringer unit. From there you have 4 outputs for headphones with separate volume control so every musician can monitor it's own signal. Hope this helps a bit mate. Cheers! 
This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Jan 11 2009, 10:51 AM -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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Jan 11 2009, 12:18 PM
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there was a thread on the same subject just a few weeks ago. If you can find that. Enforcer had some pro insights on the matter.
Do you own the attic? If you don't I wouldn't spend a lot on it. It takes time and money. If you're going to raise the floor and build new isolated walls mind you'd need quite a bit of wood etc and quite heavy pieces. I'd build both the floor and walls in layers. Meaning I'd build two floors to put ontop of eachother. Same idea as if you are building to avoid cold spots (where the cold travels through the wood and you can feel it's colder than the surrounding wall). Where the idea would be the same with sound. To keep it from traveling through one material but make it more difficult by shifting materials inside the floor or wall. What this is in fact is one wall of c-c 60 and ontop of this another wall of c-c 60 but dislocated 30 cm so that there's no place where the wood runs through the wall in one single place. Except around the doors. It'd take a lot of wood and a lot of insulation of different sorts and I suspect to make a semi-professional room, if you do all the work yourself, you'd end up around $10,000. Estimated from when I built my attic. (as a normal room) A good investment if you own the room and plan to use it for years and years but if you don't it's not. Otherwise just simple matters like carpet on the floor and walls, or cuirtains or similar dampening. Keep no square corners... A raised floor for the drummer (build like above principle) could be affordable. Keep speakers off of the floor so there's no direct contact. That way less lound will travel through the construction. The problem would be the sound traveling through the air but with carpets, e-drums and low volume or Ivans solution you could be alright. -------------------- My bands homepage
All time favourites: B. Streisand - Woman in Love, M. Hopkin - Those were the days, L. Richie - Hello |
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Jan 11 2009, 12:44 PM
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Since you have the E-drums, maybe you don't want to isolate the place much ? You can try playing really low in volume that won't bother anyone ? Isolating a room is big and can be expensive task..Ivan's suggestion about silent rehearsal is cool too..You could mix everything to be heard in headphones , that way you will hear everything perfect + you won't have hearing problems associated with louder rehearsal rooms..I would recommend looking towards silent or low volume rehearsals instead of complete isolation..
-------------------- For GMC support please email support (at) guitarmasterclass.net
Check out my lessons and my instructor board. Check out my beginner guitar lessons course! ; Take a bass course now! |
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Jan 11 2009, 09:02 PM
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Maybe this will help you
Attached File(s)
Acoustics_101__Practical_Guidelines_For_Building_A_Sound_Studio.pdf ( 601.75K )
Number of downloads: 322-------------------- |
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Jan 11 2009, 11:55 PM
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Thanks for the quick answers, some nice ideas here for sure!
I don't own the attic personally but it does belong to one of the other band members. The idea you got there Ivan is quite nice but we actually have a PA system and we felt we might as well use it, however if the noise level becomes hard to control we might just have to consider a solution like that anyway. I think we will go for trying to cover up the floor, windows and doors with carpet first thing.. I'm not even sure it's doable but do you reckon putting a layer of cardboard covering the entire floor, then the carpets on top would make a big difference? Naturally also trying to cover the walls with Carpet and such as well! Either way, I think we could just play as it is now on a quite low volume but naturally all of us would like to crank it up a bit as well. The better job isolating the room the higher volume we can play at without finding a mob of neighbours with pitchforks and torches outside the door once we are done playing! -------------------- Guitars: ESP Eclipse I CTM Full Thickness, Ibanez RG470 with EMG81/85 pickups.
Amp: Vox Valvetronix AD50VT XL |
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Jan 12 2009, 12:45 AM
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QUOTE (Sigfridsson @ Jan 11 2009, 11:55 PM)  I'm not even sure it's doable but do you reckon putting a layer of cardboard covering the entire floor, then the carpets on top would make a big difference? No it wouldn't make a big difference. It would only make the floor a little thicker but the sound will still be allowed to travel through the wood easily. I'd recommend buying THIS and put these planks across the floor (the short distance according to your drawing). If you have a carpet to spread out underneath it's good. Lay the planks with center to center measure 60 cm This gives you 4,5 cm to work with sound proofing the floor. Not a lot but better than nothing and it's easy since they are square it will lay steady. Get foam boards and put on the floor, on top of this you put 2cm of this. IF you can put air inbetween that'd be great. Then the sound that would travel downwards through the construction would have to go through... just a second, for floor put this... then the sound would have to travel through the floorboards, through the plasterstuff, then through 1 cm of air, through foam and finallyt through the carpet everything rests on. Only where there's the 45x45 mm planks the sound will travel directly through the construction. If you want to go further you can get more of the 45x45 planks and put c-c 60 in the other direction. Then sound will travel freely through the construction only where the planks cross which will be a lot less places. You have to stick to c-c 60 for your floor to be stead or it will bend. Hope that was understandable with all the "this", "this", "stuff" explanations but I don't know the terms for material in english  . Of course, now that you have fixed the floor the sound can still travel down the walls but I think with the floor you have come a long way.
-------------------- My bands homepage
All time favourites: B. Streisand - Woman in Love, M. Hopkin - Those were the days, L. Richie - Hello |
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Jan 12 2009, 01:46 AM
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I agree with MickeM mate, the carpets and cardboards wouldn't do the job of containing the sound within the room I'm afraid. It may do some about making a room reverberation a bit pleasant perhaps. But since this is the most convenient option for now, you can try and see if it leads you somewhere, why not.
Also Bogdan has a point as well - if you have PA system and e-drumkit, you don't have to play loud at all, so I guess you can get used to play low volume rehearsals. -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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Jan 12 2009, 09:51 AM
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Now that's quite an interesting Idea actually right there MickeM, I might actually give that a try will just have to speak to the others and see what kind of cash they are willing to spend on soundproofing this place.
As far as the terms in English goes, it's not that big a problem for me at least as I'm Swedish  It's true tho that even if not even spending a single cent on soundproofing the room, we could get away with playing up there at rather low volume! I'm personally hoping that in time we can find some place to play where we don't have to worry all that much about the volume, however living in Milan that's not quite as easy as one might think 
-------------------- Guitars: ESP Eclipse I CTM Full Thickness, Ibanez RG470 with EMG81/85 pickups.
Amp: Vox Valvetronix AD50VT XL |
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Jan 12 2009, 12:18 PM
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Jan 12 2009, 12:24 PM
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QUOTE (Sigfridsson @ Jan 12 2009, 09:51 AM) I'm Swedish *snip* however living in Milan that's not quite as easy as one might think lol ok and guess what, I was in Milan with my family thursday - saturday. Maybe we ran into eachother without even knowing
-------------------- My bands homepage
All time favourites: B. Streisand - Woman in Love, M. Hopkin - Those were the days, L. Richie - Hello |
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Jan 12 2009, 04:37 PM
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QUOTE (MickeM @ Jan 12 2009, 12:24 PM) lol ok and guess what, I was in Milan with my family thursday - saturday. Maybe we ran into eachother without even knowing Ah how did you like it? hmm was it snowing a lot then? can't remember when it actually started, but it's been snowing quite a lot the last few days, even still some snow on the ground which isn't all that common around here! But yeah, I must admit I feel a little out of place, especially since I could probably be mistaken for dead due to the fact that I'm so pale and on top of that I'm 2m tall I work in the center of Milan btw, really close to Duomo, so If you were there around lunch time Thursday-Friday It's not impossible that we might have passed each other without knowing! -------------------- Guitars: ESP Eclipse I CTM Full Thickness, Ibanez RG470 with EMG81/85 pickups.
Amp: Vox Valvetronix AD50VT XL |
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Jan 12 2009, 05:10 PM
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QUOTE (Sigfridsson @ Jan 12 2009, 04:37 PM) Ah how did you like it? hmm was it snowing a lot then? can't remember when it actually started, but it's been snowing quite a lot the last few days, even still some snow on the ground which isn't all that common around here! But yeah, I must admit I feel a little out of place, especially since I could probably be mistaken for dead due to the fact that I'm so pale and on top of that I'm 2m tall I work in the center of Milan btw, really close to Duomo, so If you were there around lunch time Thursday-Friday It's not impossible that we might have passed each other without knowing! It had stopped snowing and it was above zero so it was melting. We stayed in a hotel by the central station called Statzione or something lol. The square around the station was so full of salt I had a feeling it had been snowing and they'd poured it out in huge amounts. I passed the Duomo a couple of times though. Around lunch on friday so prossibly then lol But I didn't see a pale dead head moving above the crowd so no... might have missed you
-------------------- My bands homepage
All time favourites: B. Streisand - Woman in Love, M. Hopkin - Those were the days, L. Richie - Hello |
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