Ideas for soundproofing a music room

rico

Hi all,

   About a month ago we got the keys to a project property and one of the spare bedrooms (the smallest one, natch) will become my home office & music room. As it's a terraced house I think it is best to install some kind of sound proofing, at least to the party wall and timber floor. The budget set aside for this is max £1k. It will be used for guitar practice at a reasonable volume, not full band stuff.

Any ideas?

spark240

 Think maybe a secondary stud wall in front of the part wall, basically wedged on all 4 edges with I.e. not actually fixed....stuff it with acoustic rock wool then double plasterboard.

Then make your own absorber panels, 2 x 2 timber frame about 1200 x 600, agin fill with rock wool and cover with hessian ...should be able to make 4 for £100 max.

Musicwolf

Soundproofing (sound attenuation more accurately because you will never truly ‘proof’ a room) – you are not going to achieve any significant attenuation for even 10x that budget.  The best that you can do for the least money is to fit secondary glazing and a heavy door / seal.  This won’t address any transmission through the structure of the building / party wall.  Best approach;

Buy some decent headphones

Limit the time that you play without headphones and pick your times considerately

My first house was an end of terrace.  I did a lot of recording, with a band (although not acoustic drums), and never had any complaints but we had a strict curfew.  I was also lucky that the room didn’t have a party wall.

Acoustic treatment, i.e. getting a more even sounding room, is realistic and you could do a lot with £1k plus some very basic DIY skills but don’t think that this will reduce the sound leakage in any way whatsoever.

Whistler

To add to the helpful advice already given, think about the sounds you make. For example, if someone was singing in the room, the sound would travel through the air and have a hard (but not impossible) job to travel through the wall to the neighbours. If you were drilling holes for some shelves in the wall then quite possibly all the attached neighbours would hear it.

Keep amps isolated from the floor. The simplest and cheapest method will be to buy a slab of mineral wool or fibreglass and put a board on top, onto which you can place your amp(s).

With a £1,000 budget I would foget any attempt to increase isolation of that room from the rest of your house. What you don't use for isolation you can use on acoustic treatment which will help you have a more pleasant environment, one in which you won't fatigued anywhere near as quick, and you will get up to 3db help with isolation, which is very little  but better than 0db.

May I offer one non textbook idea? If you have some earbuds, have them on, quietly, so that the amp does not need to produce so much of the volume you want to hear. That way you still get to hear the amp on the room, which sounds more natural, but by having some of the volume come direct through the earbuds you can turn your amp down a little.

mrkb

Use isolation platforms for any amps and cabs, like auralex gramma to prevent sound transmission into the floor.

Studiospares do cheap copies that seem very similar.

Caffeine_Vampire

All of the above but first of all place your amp/speakers in the position they’ll likely remain and ask a friend to play your guitars at your intended volume while you (and other potentially annoyed parties) search for and identify the annoying frequencies and where they emanate from, then treat accordingly.

I have extensive soundproofing in my garage but still have issues with bass frequencies in the house (according to the long suffering Mrs V). 

This method is time consuming and experimental but may save you money in the long run.