Help me soundproof this room. Pics inside

[Bjazzman]

Just moved into our new house and the room that i have for my music room has no finished ceiling. What are my best options for making this room as soundproof as possible on a budget. I've been told that egg crate foam doesn't work as well as other things out there

[ma4rk]

How much do you plan to soundproof?

I'll soon be moving to a similar situation - I plan to use as home studio & play drums with light weight sticks - a feble attempt at annoying upstairs mother-in-law too much in the daytime only.

What i'll be doing is stuffing those open parts with insulation batts & make a ceiling - I plan to use a sheeting product called Gyprock Sound-Check (i think in the USA it's called it 'dry-wall'?). Then build a room within a room by making a standard timber frame with the outside of the frame surrounded by maybe converbelt rubber & then some more sound-check for the inside of the room. Make a double door to the room with rubber seals or similar.

The new room-within-a-room will have weird angles (non-parralell walls) & sound dampening carpets etc.

By no means I'm anywhere near an expert but that is my 2cents worth.

[seamonkey]

Get somebody to spray in Quick Cure Two-Component Polyurethane
They'll get it done in a couple of hours easily
Sheet rock, then put on furring strips, perpendicular to the joists, then sheetrock again.
Then surface treat, like adding sound panels.

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by Bjazzman

Just moved into our new house and the room that i have for my music room has no finished ceiling. What are my best options for making this room as soundproof as possible on a budget. I've been told that egg crate foam doesn't work as well as other things out there.

Egg crate foam will do absolutely nothing to help much of anything.

I assume you want to keep the sound from going into the rest of the house, am I right? If the walls are attached to the floor joists, you already have a direct line to the rest of the house, so total isolation is impossible. If you want to keep as much as possible from going to the house, don't attach the ceiling to the joists or use hat channel to attach the drywall. If you insulate between the joists, install hat channel before two layers of drywall, it's about as much as you can do from a transmission standpoint. If you will be adding HVAC ducting, use fiberglass, not sheet metal. Also, de-couple the ducts from the rest in the house. Make sure to include at least one bend in the fiberglass duct- it will absorb sound traveling through the air but it won't absorb everything. If possible, use soft ducting for the whole music room.

Why is that wall plate so high on the wall?

As ma4rk mentioned, weather strip for any doors to/from this space. If there's a hallway leading from the room to the stairs, put a door at each end if you plan to make a lot of noise. Put a slot in the top one so they can pass food to you.

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by ma4rk

How much do you plan to soundproof?

I'll soon be moving to a similar situation - I plan to use as home studio & play drums with light weight sticks - a feble attempt at annoying upstairs mother-in-law too much in the daytime only.

What i'll be doing is stuffing those open parts with insulation batts & make a ceiling - I plan to use a sheeting product called Gyprock Sound-Check (i think in the USA it's called it 'dry-wall'?). Then build a room within a room by making a standard timber frame with the outside of the frame surrounded by maybe converbelt rubber & then some more sound-check for the inside of the room. Make a double door to the room with rubber seals or similar.

The new room-within-a-room will have weird angles (non-parralell walls) & sound dampening carpets etc.

By no means I'm anywhere near an expert but that is my 2cents worth.

The Sound Check may be called 'Quiet Rock' here in the US. Might be basically the same thing.

[ddnidd1]

Check this post out. Soundproofing in a major undertaking. Even just on a minimal level.

Good luck.

How to Build a Soundproof Studio

[Bjazzman]

Lots of good suggestions. Obviously if I want there to be zero noise it's going to get difficult. I'm just looking for inexpensive ways of doing what is somewhat feasible in the space I'm given

[Addni]

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

Read this forum, you'll find what you need there.

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by Bjazzman

Lots of good suggestions. Obviously if I want there to be zero noise it's going to get difficult. I'm just looking for inexpensive ways of doing what is somewhat feasible in the space I'm given

Any gaps between ducts, pipes, wires or framing members need to be filled. Attaching the ceiling of this room will increase the amount of sound transferred to the rest of the house. Sound is transferred in three ways- radiation from the source, conduction, from sound that causes vibrations in the houses' materials and by reflection. The sound traveling through the air is easiest to reduce but it travels a lot faster in liquids and solids. For comparison, it travels about 1120 ft/sec in air (sea level, 68 degrees F, dry air) but in steel, it's about 20K ft/sec. When the sound causes vibrations in the structure, it goes wherever it wants, via the most conductive route. The theater in the photos is attached to the floor joists, against the recommendations of myself and my friend and we did this in '08. We advised the client to insulate all of the walls, floor joists, fill any gaps and holes and told him why it was important. The wall to the left of the projector wasn't completely insulated and it caused huge problems in the room's response in the low frequencies. Once we found that it hadn't been filled, it was insulated and those problems were gone. On the back of the same wall is a small storage room that's open to the master bathroom. If you look up, you can see the floor, the plumbing to the tub and none of those holes were filled. Also, an HVAC duct was uninsulated, going directly to the Master Bedroom.

They soon complained that they could easily hear the theater when they were in the Master Bedroom and Bath and we reminded them of what we had recommended

This is the reasoning behind suggestions to build a "box inside a box"- a free-standing room will be isolated from the rest of the house much better than one that's firmly attached. The guy owns an insulation company! It costs him next to nothing for this and he STILL ignored the advice.