Info on soundproofing a room

I like to listen to music. My wife hates when I listen to music at a level in which I can actually hear it. I also like to practice with my instruments, she hates that too.

I have decided to make my game/storage room into a music room. It's at the opposite end of the house from our bedroom where she spends most of her time. It is 11x11 not counting the closet that is common with my sons bathroom. It shares one common wall with the dining room. The other two are exterior walls. The door opens to a hall that is open to all of the common areas the house. The flooring is some type of laminate on concrete and the hollow door has about an inch gap above the threshold. The hall, dining room and kitchen are tile. The living room is carpet.

The goal is to allow me to listen to and play music at reasonable volume level without driving the rest of the people in the house insane. It's a rental so no permanent changes or construction. And I'm a cheap ass so things found on the side of the road or in the trash are perfectly acceptable.

I feel I would get the most gains by working on the common wall with the dining room and the door. That door is the major problem now, acoustically it's like it isn't even there. I mean the boy is in there right now with the door shut watching Youtube while playing a video game and talking to himself and it's like he's sitting right next to me.

What my best options for the least money possible too acoustically seal that room off from the rest of the house?

The no-construction thing is tough. Mass is your friend for stopping sound, but not having giant open gaps counts, too... Wish you could fill the door with sand and stick a seal on the bottom; I suspect that would make a big difference.

Very roughly, as I understand it, a lot of the stuff you can stick on walls is more effective for making sound not bounce around the room, but isn't so much for preventing it leaving the room. Hopefully somebody knows better on that front...

Is the door a standard size such that you could grab something from a box store to hang on the existing hinges while you're there, and put the original back when you leave? Having a solid door, or one that you can perform surgery on to make it a better attenuator would be nifty...

The other solution: I use a POD and headphones, so I don't really make more noise than an unplugged electric when practicing. But I also don't have the same conflict over being able to just listen to music on speakers in my office.

Be honest. You're actually Hannibal lechter. Thats why it needs soundproofing.

Good headphones and hang egg crates?

Get some surplus carpet. Secure the carpet to the header board of your likely 2x4 wall construction. Allow the carpet to just drape from the top. This will give you some airspace between the wall and the carpet.

At the door use a narrower piece of carpeting such that it can be rolled upward sort of like a manual window shade then secured with something like a tie or hook to keep it in a roll in your absence from the room.

Based on your willingness,this carpet could all be gotten for free (removed carpet) or buy the cheapest most basic you can find.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

It puts the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again

Brian wrote: Good headphones and hang egg crates?

I've thought about using headphones and that would work well for the music and electric guitar. However I also have the Banjo and acoustic guitars and would like to add some more acoustic instruments to the mix.

Free carpet- as long as you don't mind the smell of cat piss and roach droppings.

A bit of space will help some. Hang the previously mentioned carpet a few inches away from the common wall. Be sure it goes completely from the ceiling to the floor and wall to wall - no gaps.

For the door, here the air gap is the enemy. Add stick on foam strips to seal the door. Then get one of those foam threshold insulators that slide under the door.

It won't be perfect, but it should help a lot and be cheap.

Isolating sound in a structure that is architecturally contiguous is tremendously hard. It's not just about the absorbant materials you put on the surfaces- its about the resonance and reverberation of the structure itself.

A wall cavity can be better than a guitar body for resonating. Building materials like metal and wood can carry sound through them. Different wavelengths of sound will travel through different densities of materials. Attic spaces connect the varying rooms. Etc., etc.

Headphones really are your most cost effective option. Or maybe regular scheduled girl's nights out for your wife.

In reply to SVreX:

Headphones are hard to plug into acoustic instruments. I've played the Banjo for years without picks so that it doesn't ring out so much and annoy people. The problem with that is when I go to use picks it feels strange and takes a long time to become accustomed to them. I would like to add a Mandolin and possibly a Violin at some point. I can somewhat attenuate the sound with my playing style but those instruments certainly ring out.

I'm not looking for complete silence outside of the room. But if I can knock out enough of the sound so I can practice and listen to music at a normal level without someone yelling at me to turn it down then that's what I'll call a win.

I like the carpet ideas. I'll start with the door and be on the lookout for carpet.

I am in the process of making a room in my basement that is well damped for sound so we can jam in there and not wake the dead.

I am planning:

• all walls insulated with expansion foam
• 1/2 homasote 440 in place of sheetrock (or under it maybe?)
• all walls covered in cheap foam acoustic tiles
• foam drop ceiling / more acoustic tiles
• haven't quite figured out how to damp above the ceiling yet in a way that gives access to wiring/plumbing in the future but window/door expansion foam and homasote that extends the walls between the rafters and seals them should be pretty good.

It probably won't be 100% sound proof for the drums w/o stuffing towels in them but I should be able to use an electric guitar, watch surround sound movies at proper levels or dismember a victim without anesthesia. So... good enough on a budget.

In reply to Huckleberry:

Ok, but he said no permanent changes or construction.

SVreX wrote: In reply to Huckleberry: Ok, but he said no permanent changes or construction.

We aren't talking about him anymore. This is all about me now.

Let's all talk about huckleberry and his dismemberement room some more.

In reply to dculberson:

Should we ask if he has a rubber floor and a floor drain?

Homosote is kinda absorbent.

I realize this is all about him, but there might be some things I don't actually want to know.

Does your wife do things that would be hobbled by her wearing the soundproofing? 100$ with get you a sweet set of shure se215 earbuds. Killer sound, amazing isolation, and form fitting for 95% of wearers. Seriously I couldn't hearesist my 3 year old right next to me. When he was 3.

I'm thinking it would be worthwhile to address not only the music room door but also the bedroom door. Less sound coming from the music room, traveling through the rest of the house and then harder for it to enter her room.

Then I can work on addressing the problem of the rest of the house.

With all due respect to Huckleberry's torture chamber of course.

mndsm wrote: Does your wife do things that would be hobbled by her wearing the soundproofing? 100$ with get you a sweet set of shure se215 earbuds. Killer sound, amazing isolation, and form fitting for 95% of wearers. Seriously I couldn't hearesist my 3 year old right next to me. When he was 3.

I like the way you think.

Like somebody said, mass is your friend. carpet, moving blankets, stuff like that works really well. Skip the acoustic foam tiles. They do little to nothing for sound absorption, they are to quell reflections.

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

The proper way to obtan sound isolation is by building a room within a room, ensuring they're both well sealed, and as physically disconnected from each other as possible. Since you can' do any physical construction, maybe you could find discarded office partitions and use them to build a "room" within the existing room? If you can do anything to help seal the existing doorway, then also add a 2nd layer of isolation by building at least a wall or 2 out of partitions, that should help.

In reply to Huckleberry:

If you are building out a room, you have more options, although it will depend some of how much height you have to work with. As Paul mentioned, you want to minimize the transfer of vibrations. One technique is to double the wall construction, studding the wall in a sort of zig-zag configuration, insulating between. The inside covering is attached to the inner studs, but not the outer studs. Basically building Pete's a room within a room. If you have the height to work with, do the ceiling as well. The dropped ceiling might work as well.

Minimize penetrations. Surface mount receptacles rather than recessing them. There are a number of surface raceway options to do this. They don't look great, but the goal here is functionality over appearance.

Would your landlord even notice if you put another layer of sheetrock over the existing stuff on the two common rooms? Pull trim, put up drywall, tape, mud, paint, cut trim a bit and reinstall.

Otherwise, build yourself a little booth for the room, like the one for hearing tests.

I had a boss once who was paranoid about being overheard. His office was typical dropped ceiling,steel studs and drywall. I eventually satisfied his soundproofing needs by lining the entire room, ceiling and all, with 1/16 lead sheet and a second layer of drywall over some strapping.

Nick (Bo) Comstock wrote: I like to listen to music. My wife hates when I listen to music at a level in which I can actually hear it.

Yeah, I'm an old man, but that statement infers you play your music pretty loud...be careful, long term hearing loss and tinnitus are not much fun, I speak from experience.

Now that that's out of the way...I have a neighbor across the street who runs a recording studio out of his home. He does some music recording, commercial and industrial work, etc. Anyway, he basically built another room inside an existing room of his house. That way he was able to do a pretty good job of acoustically isolating it from the house structure. However, considering the size of your room that may not be very easy to do. Something to think about, anyway.