[59Martin]

With the entire family working and/or studying from home, I have no time to practice unless the youngest is napping or sleeping so I've decided it is time to commandeer a small area of the basement and build a somewhat soundproof practice room.

• The area I have is about 9' by 7' in a semi-circular shape.
• The floor is heated tile on concrete.
• One opening leads into a playroom the others are drywalled and insulated exterior walls (concrete) with a window.
• I'm closing off the interior wall and putting in a door.
• I'm going to repurpose an Andersen exterior french patio door.
• The interior wall will be a 2x6 frame with staggered 2x4s, soundproofing and two layers of 5/8 drywall with green acoustic glue between the panels.
• I'll be running speaker wires in the interior wall.
• The walls and ceiling will be covered with home-made acoustic panels.
• I will primarily be using it for saxophone but I have a drum kit that I will set up in there and my neighbor will be coming over to jam occasionally (guitar).

So those are the bare details, if I've forgotten anything just ask. So I'm laying all of this out there in case anyone has any suggestions or ideas about what they would like in a practice room before I start. I'm open to suggestions, comments or ideas about the structure, the design or even the kind of vibe I should be thinking about.

I appreciate all your advice.

If you want to send pictures of your own practice rooms I'd love to see them.

(Forgot to add i use an Ipad with Forescore, and was considering pugging it into a NAD amplifier. I also use music editing software in my MacBook so any advice regarding that setup would be helpful. I would eventually like to get a MIDI keyboard and maybe a Focusrite for recording...)

 

[claxton]

You mentioned home made sound absorption panels. Here is a quarantine project I am finishing up, using 4" thick open cell foam panels I found at a thrift store, some 3" birch play wood strips. I then had some of my nature photo graphs printed on 5oz acoustic grill cloth. Rock wool or Owens-Corning 703 would work maybe even better than the foam. The cloth tucked into the frame around the foam with no need for glue or staples.

 

[rcpayne]

No such thing as a sound proof room. Sound reduction, yes. Leave an small air space between walls, that will help reduce the sound.

 

[59Martin]

You mentioned home made sound absorption panels. Here is a quarantine project I am finishing up, using 4" thick open cell foam panels I found at a thrift store, some 3" birch play wood strips. I then had some of my nature photo graphs printed on 5oz acoustic grill cloth. Rock wool or Owens-Corning 703 would work maybe even better than the foam. The cloth tucked into the frame around the foam with no need for glue or staples.

That is a great suggestion, I love the idea of having stuff printed on acoustic grill cloth for the panels. I love your setup, such a nice big room!

 

[59Martin]

Thanks, Yeah I'm going for muffling rather than proofing. If I can practice downstairs while my youngest naps and my wife is on a conference call upstairs I'll be stoked...

 

[rek]

I have a 13 x 28 ft soundproofed area of my basement and my wife can watch TV above us during band practice. I can practice while she sleeps. I incorporated all methods into it's construction that weren't prohibitively expensive and am glad I did. We started with an unfinished basement which is easier. You probably don't want to rip things up too much.

Your wall construction sounds good. Soundproofing the ceiling is important (acoustical treatment has minimal effect on soundproofing). I used resilient channels and 2 layers of thicker drywall. That was 25 yrs ago, there might be better options now, especially for an already finished space. For drums it helps to isolate the floor, either by using a platform or in my case the walls are isolated from the floor.

Is radon a problem in your area? If so, it might pay to measure before building in case mitigation needs to be incorporated. In any case, proper ventilation is important in a sealed space.

 

[Pete Thomas]

The main thing that will help with soundproofing is sheer mass, so the 5/8 drywall sould be good if it's the heavy type of plasterboard. The other thing I found worked well if you have ceilings suspended on joists (with floorboards above) to to pour some sand in there between the joists. But only if your ceilings are in good condition and can take the extra weight. If not you can always add an extra layer of plasterboard. Decent damping will help very slightly, but as others have said, is not soundproofing and actual soundproofing is not viable in a home studio as it can require huge amounts of solid wall, and even then bass will usually get through.

I wrote a couple of articles on Media Music based on advice from a studio consultant back when I was building my studio.

https://mediamusicforum.com/home-soundproofing

https://mediamusicforum.com/home-studio-acoustics

https://mediamusicforum.com/high-frequency-absorbers

 

[59Martin]

Thanks to both of you for the reminder that the ceiling is important and that my acoustic treatment wont have any soundproofing effect. Right ow the ceiling is finished and I'm loath to open it up if I don't need to. The flooring on the main floor upstairs has 3" of concrete (with integrated heating). My thought was to try to deal with it as it is and if it really is too loud, add drywall as Pete suggests or hang a second ceiling an inch from the existing one.

I've been considering a platform for the drums but again, I was hoping to deal with that at a later stage. I play some and one of my kids has been hacking away at them...


Pete, thanks for those articles on Media Music, I've been devouring those kinds of articles of late and I must say yours are very informative and particularly well written.