Music room soundproofing and design advice please.

Flanging_Fred

Mrs Fred and I are in the middle of working with architects to remodel the ground floor of our house. Part of the remodel will be to convert an internal garage into a utility room and at the front of the house, a study/music room/man cave for yours truly (yay!). The room won’t be large, roughly 3m square.

The room is adjacent to next door’s dining room and underneath my daughter’s bedroom.  This means that I’m going to want some level of sound insulation for the room as part of the design.  I don’t play particularly loud at home (tv volume really) but even at sensible home volumes it’s likely to disturb others, especially if I’m playing bass.

Can anyone point me to any good online resources about soundproofing and also the installation of electrics that won’t cause noise/interference problems. I’m not aiming for a full on, room-inside-a -room, recording studio solution, but enough to minimise disturbance to others and allow me to do a bit of basic home recording on a computer.

The architects are not experienced at doing music rooms/soundproofing but a have a basic understanding of it. If I can provide some direction in our discussions then it would help a lot.

Any experiences, do’s and don’ts or advice very welcome.

sweepy

Install a second double glazed panel in the window frame and fit a second door with a decent air gap, these 2 mods make a massive difference in sound transmission

octatonic

I've built several studios now, including a couple from the ground up- what you're trying to do is expensive to do right and a waste of time to do any other way.

To do it properly you need to physically decouple the room from the adjacent structure- a room within a room.
I know you don't want to do this but it is the thing that works and other things do not work that well at all.
I've done it before, spent the money and in truth it was a waste of time.
This is why my studio space is now in the countryside, with no shared walls.

Sound will travel through walls and an opening as large as a pinprick is enough to compromise the isolation properties.
Unfortunately you need holes because we have to breathe and completely isolating a room will mean you can't get air in.
For this reason HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) is incredibly important to do well.

Have a look at the John Sayers forum for studio design.
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/

Everything you need is there but it is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down.

If you don't want to do it properly (and I can imagine you won't because it is a five figure proposition) then a false adjoining wall, double glazing and second door will help a bit. Not a lot though, especially with bass frequencies.

ToneControl

neighbours can be very strange about guitars
at our last 70s detached house, the neighbour opposite was going nuts with us when I was playing a Carr mercury with the wattage turned down at 8pm. Wife and kids downstairs did not even know I was playing

Whereas for some reason people can use petrol mowers, pressure washers, etc all weekend and expect no reciprocal complaints

So: it may be TV volume, but my experience is that some neighbours won't tolerate instruments at TV volume

As Oct says, you can't properly insulate in a semi or terrace, for significant volumes an Isolation booth is needed, e.g. Esmono. Studiospares sometimes have a used one in, expect to pay £5-£10k

Bass is harder to contain than higher frequencies

I would recommend investing in an AxeFx or Kemper, and a good set of headphones

 

Jimbro66

Flanging_Fred said:

Mrs Fred and I are in the middle of working with architects to remodel the ground floor of our house. Part of the remodel will be to convert an internal garage into a utility room and at the front of the house, a study/music room/man cave for yours truly (yay!). The room won’t be large, roughly 3m square.

The room is adjacent to next door’s dining room and underneath my daughter’s bedroom.  This means that I’m going to want some level of sound insulation for the room as part of the design.  I don’t play particularly loud at home (tv volume really) but even at sensible home volumes it’s likely to disturb others, especially if I’m playing bass.

Can anyone point me to any good online resources about soundproofing and also the installation of electrics that won’t cause noise/interference problems. I’m not aiming for a full on, room-inside-a -room, recording studio solution, but enough to minimise disturbance to others and allow me to do a bit of basic home recording on a computer.

The architects are not experienced at doing music rooms/soundproofing but a have a basic understanding of it. If I can provide some direction in our discussions then it would help a lot.

Any experiences, do’s and don’ts or advice very welcome.

If you really are going to be playing at TV levels (and are not kidding yourself) you can probably get away with less than the room-in-a-room solution that would be essential if you played at anything like band rehearsal sound levels, including having some mates round for a jam   Bass frequencies are going to be the most difficult to address because the only solution is isolation. For other frequencies your architects should be fully conversant with Building Regs Part E requirements for which there are standard construction methods.

You'll get dozens of suggestions for bass frequency isolation but, in the context of house remodelling costs, an Auralex Gramma  pad below your bass amp would be fairly effective. It has the added advantage that you can take it to gigs where you might want to isolate your amp from a boomy timber stage.

Jetfire

I have a similar situation, my sons bedroom is right above my music room, any form of music goes directly up, even keyboard typing can be heard. 

Save your money for a Kemper/Helix/AxeFX and a good set of headphones.   

Flanging_Fred

Thanks guys for the suggestions. So far the advice is what I expected really; do it properly or it’s not really worth it.  Up to this point, I was considering a false isolated wall on the side adjoining the neighbours and some treatment for the ceiling.  From what I’ve read so far, this would be a waste of time and money?

ToneControl

Flanging_Fred said:

Thanks guys for the suggestions. So far the advice is what I expected really; do it properly or it’s not really worth it.  Up to this point, I was considering a false isolated wall on the side adjoining the neighbours and some treatment for the ceiling.  From what I’ve read so far, this would be a waste of time and money?

yes

I tried everything to damp the cabs, power sinks, etc
in fact I have an amazing ISO cab to be able to mic up amps with almost zero room noise, but ultimately the solution was an AxeFx, and a detached house with very thick walls, to which I added secondary glazing for the music room

octatonic

Flanging_Fred said:

Thanks guys for the suggestions. So far the advice is what I expected really; do it properly or it’s not really worth it.  Up to this point, I was considering a false isolated wall on the side adjoining the neighbours and some treatment for the ceiling.  From what I’ve read so far, this would be a waste of time and money?

In practical terms, yes.
Save your money and put it into a top shelf modeller and get used to headphones or keeping monitoring levels very low.

Danny1969

I did the garage on my last house. Getting enough isolation to play guitar loudly isn't a massive problem as stopping frequencies down to around 100Hz isn't that difficult. I was able to record guitars at night at deafening volumes with no complaints from the wife, kids or neighbours. 
Bass is a different animal to tame ... the lower the frequency the harder it is to stop. That's why you mainly hear the boom boom of a loud car stereo when goes by or you mainly hear the bass when you walk past a nightclub. Low frequencies have more energy and travel further. This is why the nearer you get to a speaker the more treble you will hear. 

Basically you stop sound traveling using mass, change of material impedance and isolation. Basic materials are plasterboard, Rockwool acoustic slab and acoustic caulk. Attention to detail is everything. Things need to fit with very small tolerances and any gaps need to be filled accurately and completely. 

For my garage I built a frame within the room and hung a high density ceiling off it which was 18mm MDF with 4 layers of 12mm plasterboard with 100mm rockwool slab above it then a small air gap to the garage roof

I built a concrete wall behind the garage doors which was then rockwool slabbed and plasterboarded
I fitted a double glazed window with the widest cavity then installed another double glazed window 6 inchs in front of it. The plastic window sill was completely filled with sand before installation. 
The entry door was UVPC filled with sand and then another hardwood door with an extra coating of 18mm MPF installed around 12 inches further inside. One doors not enough

All 240V sockets and switches were surface mounted .... you can't cut into the plasterboard for pattress's ... sound will go straight through

The downside is you lose length, width and height in the room. I lost around 200mm in height and about 250mm in width and 380mm in length due to the concrete wall 

It was a lot of work but worth it just for the joy of being able to crank up music and enjoy a beer after a gig at 1am in the morning knowing it wasn't hurting anyone else. I couldn't however use bass amps at high volume or track drums at night as the level of isolation I achieved wasn't effective enough below 90Hz or so 

PolarityMan

I recently converted my garage and came to the same conclusion that its not worth trying soundproofing unless you go the whole way I dont have the skill do do a great job myself..so instead I have a nice room that has concrete walls so keep a little more sound out than a normal room but at night i jsut use headphones.