Soundproofing a basement

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Member Since: Sep 22, 2003

I plan to redo my basement because now it is basically a concrete floor and wall storage space. The basement is fairly large and has a weird shape to it. What I plan to record in is a small almost seprate room from the basement, but has no walls or doors that seperates it from the rest of the basement. It is kinda hard to explain. It is a square basement with a small room that juts out of it. First I plan to put drywall up to seperate it from the rest of the basement. Next I will put carpet down on the floor. I already have a desk to put a computer on down there and I plan to split the room in two two smaller rooms by using drywall again. I will then have a sound room and a place to actually play the instruments. I also hope to put a window in between the sound room and the place to play the instruments. Any ideas or comments on soundproofing?

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Chief Cook and Bottle Washer
Member
Since: May 10, 2002


Jan 27, 2004 01:12 pm

Not anything that isn't mentioned in the reference articles here really. If you can, make your room anything but square. Avoid parallell walls. From there it's; skys the limit. Double walls, floating floor, double ceiling..... whatever the budget and space allows.

Administrator
Since: Apr 03, 2002


Jan 27, 2004 01:19 pm

Sound proofing? Double walling with a 4" gap between them, both walls double sheetrocked and packed with R19 insolation. lift the floor a few inches of the ground, or, if that isn't possible, build the floor on one inch hard rubber pieces scattered under the joists, double pane the glass having each piece of glass out of parallel with each other, also suspend the ceiling...when it comes to good sound proofing there are no shortcuts.

...then we get to tuning the room...whole new batch of challenges...which, if a room is tuned properly, it will help make the overflow noise much less irratating to neighbors and wives and stuff...thereby being a sort of sound proofing, but not in the truest sense of the word.

Bottom line, go into it knowing that sound proofing and tuning are two very different things. Proofing just stops sound from getting out and outside noise getting in, period, tuning makes it sound decent inside the room.

Ex-Wookie
Member
Since: Aug 29, 2003


Jan 27, 2004 02:01 pm

Here is a link to a very good site explaining a lot of things in easy-to-undersatnd terms : www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

If you are really into making your room sound good, www.johnlsayers.com is a great place to ask questions.

Administrator
Since: Apr 03, 2002


Jan 27, 2004 02:04 pm

I have been giving serious thought to taking a couple acoustician classes myself. I find it a fascinating subject.

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Jan 27, 2004 07:30 pm

Well most of it is covered by the others so I will not re-state the facts. dB has a good suggestion there for the floating floor. That is a big deal for reducing the amount of bad low frequancies in the room. And the wall build he describes is the best way to go.

The floor can be floated in various ways, but check out Auralex. www.auralex.com/ These guys make the best in the business as far as treatments and construction materials for audio applications. The site is full of goodies to check out as well as acuastics 101 is there as well. The floor floats are called U-boats and they are not a bad price to do a medium sized room.

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