Sound proofing a room?

[_tom_]

All being well I should be buying/moving into my first house in a few months time :) exciting stuff but having always lived in a village with  no neighbours I haven't had to really worry about guitar noise much. Obviously I don't want to piss off the neighbours straight away plus it'd be great to have a "loud room"  :D

It's an end of terrace house so was planning on using the upstairs room that has an outside facing wall rather than the one separating me from the house next door. Annoyingly this is the smallest room but it'll have to do I guess! So what can I do on the cheap/diy front?  I know I'm not gonna get it perfect without paying a lot of money but even attenuating the noise a bit would be good I guess! Would also like to deaden the room a bit as well so it's better for recording etc..

[Alex]

It really depends on how invasive you want it to be and how large the room is. Unless you want to put up an extra wall of insulation in the room, in a terraced house your options will be limited.

The first step should be to reduce resonance from the amp, to make sure it doesn't become louder than it already is. Typically this involves making sure it isn't amplified by the floor and not reflected off flat surfaces.
http://www.amazon.de/Dynavox-Sub-Watt-Absorber-schwarz/dp/B0039I1DTC/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1382214933&sr=8-11&keywords=Schallabsorber
These spikes what you'd use on Hifi sets and subwoofers to prevent it from beaming - essential in England with the dominance of wooden floors. For guitar cabinets maybe some sort racks and/or rubber feet will do the same - plus the higher, the less loud you need it to perceive the sound the same way.

Carpets also help, and tapestries on the wall can help with reflection from walls. Large book shelves of course do the same (but take up more space). Also, place the amp where you think it will be heard the least by your neighbours.
Finally, it might sound silly, but it helps if you know the neighbours' pattern of room use on their side of the house. If you're playing guitar next to an unused storage room/their bedroom, they will be much less bothered (provided you don't play when they sleep). I lived in a terraced house and my neighbours on both sides were lazy fat couch potatoes, always in the front room downstairs watching TV. That made it easy for me to make noise upstairs in the back room.

[_tom_]

Yeah I think the room's a bit small for building a second wall around it, I also don't think my DIY skills are up to the task :lol: Luckily all the rooms are carpeted so I think it's just the walls that'll be a problem. Do those foamy pads you can buy actually help with this sort of thing or are they more to get rid of unwanted reverbs to deaden a room? I actually think they look pretty good so I don't mind having them up rather than tapestries etc..

[Alex]

Yeah I think the room's a bit small for building a second wall around it, I also don't think my DIY skills are up to the task :lol: Luckily all the rooms are carpeted so I think it's just the walls that'll be a problem. Do those foamy pads you can buy actually help with this sort of thing or are they more to get rid of unwanted reverbs to deaden a room? I actually think they look pretty good so I don't mind having them up rather than tapestries etc..

They're more a way to deaden it and to tame high treble reflection, e.g. cymbals and hi-hats.
Furniture does the same, to some extent.

[Dave Sloven]

Living in an upstairs apartment I also found that noise goes up through ceilings, which tend to be poorly insulated compared to walls. Same can be said for floors relative to people below you. Not sure what you do about this.  If I could hear toilets flushing and (ahem) amorous sounds from below and above then I'm fairly certain I could hear a guitar amp ...

I now live on a biggish block (1/2 acre) although it is narrow and we are fairly close to one neighbour. I don't tend to turn my Peavey up past 1 on the dial if she's home, and 2 is the loudest I've played in the house due to the possibility of neighbours being annoyed.  The Orange cab also has these rubber feet which transfer resonance into the ground.  I hope you have a decent sounding small amp for practice.  I only have the Peavey and a couple of dreadful solid-state amps, one of which is out of action for now

[_tom_]

Hmm ok, well the room below is only my kitchen and above is the loft that I can get in to add extra insulation. I have amplitube to play through and was thinking of getting a small living room amp (cube or something) but it'd be nice not to worry about playing through my Laney other than on weekdays when they'll probably be at work!

[AndyR]

I'm in the same sort of room, Tom. 3rd bedroom on the detached side of the house. Mine's above our hallway, loft above, our bedroom to the side.

I wouldn't even bother sound-proofing - there's not enough space. I can get my monitors bluddy loud before it p1sses Mrs R off. Her writing room is the back-bedroom on the same floor. With both doors closed, we can get by without bugging each other. I can even record with mics when she has music on - the only problem is doors closing on this floor and her heavy foot-steps on the landing just outside my door.

I understand that I am slightly audible from outside - especially when doing vocals - but not enough to be neighbour worrying.

The problem you're going to have is what it sounds like to you in the room. I use a valve amp downstairs in the living room for noodling/jamming... but those "safe" settings (from a neighbour perspective) are actually too loud for me personally up here in the "studio"! So I always use my vox tonelab through the desk and monitors up here... And pretty bluddy loud sometimes. Mrs R is happy with it unless she's in the room with me! Why I can cope with this myself, but not my amp "cooking nicely", I've no idea. But I've given up trying to get a decent guitar/amp sound in here (if I do mic an amp, I put it out in the hallway when the neighbours are at work).

The "cr@p" amp sound might be something to do with the next bit:

The 3rd bedroom size is SH1T for "acoustics". The overriding problem isn't top-end, it's bottom-end. And it's not reflections off straight walls, it's the complicated bass nodes set up by corners. Move around the room, you'll hear the bottom-end disappears and then comes back. It's caused by bass frequencies getting all messed up as they are reflected and interfere with each other. The problem is that the room isn't long or wide enough for the wavelength of the bass frequencies, they get messed before they've gone far enough through the air (early reflections), the reflections have as much energy as the original.

"bass traps" (thick panels of acoustic foam) across the room corners sorts it out.

You can live with the high-end stuff, it's not affected so badly, and you're used to filtering that out with your ears anyway. (The wavelength of the mids-highs is more likely to be inside the room, and the energy of the original waves is stronger than the reflections).

I have not done this bass-trap thing yet(!)... but my draperies - tapestries, old sheets, blankets, etc - have gone a long way to sort it out. Especially when I figured out you want to bridge the corners. BUT, bass frequencies go though the materials I'm using :lol: so it's probably not doing too much good.

This only becomes a huge problem for mixing and monitoring recordings - you can't trust the room enough to make sound judgements. Well, you can make the judgements, but you're not actually hearing the correct stuff to be making the judgements on. So, your mixes don't translate brilliantly to another system in another space.

Commercial mixes sound fine in your room because they were made in a good environment, and you're playing them back in a room you've got used to - your ears/brain compensate for it. But when you try to do your own mixes, you're trying to second guess what the room is hiding from you, you can't actually hear what it is you're fiddling with!

I suspect this also has something to do with my amp sounding naff in here (aside from the fact it's just too loud for me in here!!).

Look up "bass traps". There's a superb thread on the reaper forums about it...

Hope that helps :D

[Plenum n Heather]

There is lots of great, free info on the web. Lots of misinformation, too, but if the source is reputable (ie, NOT Wikipedia or, quite honestly, most Internet forums) you can learn a lot.

This is a great source of free info. It will take some time to read but is worth the effort, http://www.acoustics101.com/

There is a great site/forum that is dedicated to studio design and acoustics that you may also find helpful, http://forum.studiotips.com/

Oh, and one more thing: Vitune is your friend :) http://www.vicoustic.com/hifi-home-cinema/slideshow/vitune

[AndyR]

There is lots of great, free info on the web. Lots of misinformation, too, but if the source is reputable (ie, NOT Wikipedia or, quite honestly, most Internet forums) you can learn a lot.

BIG +1 to this...

Tom, take my waffle in this light, it is the way it's meant... it is internet "noise" describing what I've experienced and learnt myself... but it ain't gospel truth or hard facts backed up with my own experimental data!! :lol:

Think of it more as a chat down the pub where someone's else's experiences/views might be of some use for further thinking/research...

btw I found the reaper thread that helped me get my head round some of it (acoustics, not sound proofing):

(You're going to have to replace the "--" in "c--ckos" with "oc" in your browser, I can't con the secret police into creating a valid link with the word "c o c k" in it! :lol:)

http://forum.c--kos.com/showthread.php?t=11882

It's got some arguing and @rsery in it, you'll have to activate your own "bullsh1t" detector... But there's a guy called "yep" in there who seemed, to me, to be talking a lot sense that I could actually understand.

[Plenum n Heather]

Andy, I was in no way indicating that your post had misinformation. In fact, your bit about room acoustics affecting critical listening was spot on. :)

[JJretroTONEGOD]

I went through a similar thing a few years ago, got really interested in acoustics and studied it for a while.

Bass traps work really well to even out the bass frequencies but can also help the sound from leaking out of the room, then there's the first reflection points... try and make the sides dead with acoustic foam and if you can the ceiling, the more bass traps the better. If you do these things you will be guaranteed to get more accurate mixes and a better sound within the room for recording too

[MDV]

Acoustic treatment isnt sound proofing (though depending what you do, sound proofing can help with treatment rather a lot). Traps and diffusors address standing modes and reflections in the room, improving low end consistency and reverberation (taking care of things like flutter echo and phase cancellations in high frequencies).

These do very little to stop sound getting through the walls; it only affects what bounces back off them.

I dont have much experience with space-efficient sound proofing so cant advise on specifics with any confidence. The general idea though is youre going to have to line the entire connecting wall (at least) with something very heavy, absorbant (to sound) or both. Isolating your sources (whatever they may be; cabs, monitors) from the floor will help as well, as a lot of transmitted vibration is mechanical through the floor first, rather than from the air to the walls.

Things I've seen used for isolation include sandwiches of rubber, ply wood or plaster board and rock wool, often with one or more air gaps, but I cant attest to how much benefit you can expect from them. Covering a wall with materials like that will diminish modes in the room as well, which is treatment as well as isolation, but putting bass traps in the corners and a few places along the wall wont stop any sound from getting out of the room (or the effect will be very small).

I know that 2 feet of sandstone does a good job of it, but my house was like that when I found it :lol:

[AndyR]

Andy, I was in no way indicating that your post had misinformation. In fact, your bit about room acoustics affecting critical listening was spot on. :)

Oooh, don't worry about that! :lol: I didn't read your post like that at all... but it did make me wonder whether my ramblings might actually contain "home-spun" ideas masquerading as established facts. There's so much stuff on the internet where someone thinks out loud and, before you know it, there are people elsewhere quoting it as if it came down with the 10 commandments!!

Then, when you're new to the subject, you have to sift through it all and figure out which bits are good and which bad

Eg the other day, my recording machine's hard drive was losing disk space alarmingly and finally went "HDD Full" during a take... It can't possibly be!!!

I went online, well known issue apparently, and most users were getting the screw-drivers out and sourcing new hard disks... felt very depressed for half an hour... it didn't seem right either... with a bit of digging I came up with a plan A to try first "back up the valuable stuff, then high level format the drive (3 minutes)" - this reclaims the lost clusters (any old DOS users out there? :lol:) and the thing's good as new now.

The info I learnt about bass-traps is quite recent for me, it's produced a "do-able" solution for me that sounds like it will get me some results... and it means I'll also attempt it at some point in the nearish future (you know, when Philly Q is building some of those guitars!)

Ah, I was waiting for MDV :D

Acoustic treatment isnt sound proofing

This was actually worrying me a bit... Tom's asked for sound proofing and getting a lot of acoustic treatment answers instead! (*guilty* :lol:)

My gut feeling (and we won't know until he moves) is that sound-proofing, unless he's a complete MONSTER on the volume knob :lol:, will actually be the least of his worries ... sound-quality inside the small room will raise it's ugly head quite quickly... and, if he's lucky, he'll receive no complaints and so the acoustic treatment will become the biggest issue...

Still, if he does get complaints (and thankfully I don't), that will be a show-stopping bummer of huge proportions. And I suspect rather expensive to sort out with just sound-proofing...  :?

[_tom_]

Thanks for all the help guys. Doesn't seem like it's gonna be worth putting much time or money into so I may just have to wait and find out when the neighbours are likely to be out so I can play through the amp! And probably acquire something smaller for the living room..