Learn Me Sound Insulation So My Neighbors Don't Burn My Drums

SVreX said:

Electronic instruments (guitars, bass, keyboards, etc) are super easy to control.  They are plugged in- turn down the sound to the speakers, and turn it up to headsets or monitor speakers.

Wind instruments are a little harder.

But if the drummer is naturally a hard hitter - or needs to be one (metal \m/), then the rest of the band’s volume is somewhat dictated by that. I had to buy an 1800-watt head just to be heard under the two guitarists & drummer in my last band. The drummer & one guitarist’s(son/father) new band just got signed to Sony last week, so I’m super proud of their accomplishment!

Yeah, you really can't  "turn down" acoustic drums and cymbals.  You can only do the best you can with sound deadening aids. 

Ever had the cops called on you for playing drums in the middle of the day? I know I have. It happened a LONG time ago, and the cop was a giant dink about it, but I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me. The people that called were even bigger dinks, and after my parents had a chat with the police, I found out that I broke zero laws and there was no problems going forward. (It was even sweeter watching the woman who called on me getting hauled off in hand AND ankle cuffs for decking a cop in the middle of the night during a domestic incident, but that's another story...)

For me, it's not just about tone, it's about FEEL. I've tried cymbal and drum mutes, and they are not quite the same. Zildjian does make some "quiet" practice cymbals that feel decent, but it's still not the same. I've never found a practice pad that is as satisfying to smack and has the same stick response as my drum kit. The closest I've come to a practice kit that sorta works is a high end electronic kit, like Roland's V-Drum line or some of the better Alesis and DDrum kits. Even then, it's not the same.

Pete Gossett said:

SVreX said:

Electronic instruments (guitars, bass, keyboards, etc) are super easy to control.  They are plugged in- turn down the sound to the speakers, and turn it up to headsets or monitor speakers.

Wind instruments are a little harder.

But if the drummer is naturally a hard hitter - or needs to be one (metal \m/), then the rest of the band’s volume is somewhat dictated by that. I had to buy an 1800-watt head just to be heard under the two guitarists & drummer in my last band. The drummer & one guitarist’s(son/father) new band just got signed to Sony last week, so I’m super proud of their accomplishment!

The only bass amp i can think of with 1800w is an Epifani, what was it?

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Hang on...

The idea of a drum shield isn’t to turn down the drums. It’s to capture stray sound, so it can be handled properly through a mixing board. 

Im just suggesting building a drum shield on steroids. 

In reply to Antihero :

It was one of the last Carvin bass amps they produced. I’ll have to check the model# next time I practice. 

Pete Gossett said:

In reply to Antihero :

It was one of the last Carvin bass amps they produced. I’ll have to check the model# next time I practice. 

Oh i know it, cool.

SVreX said:

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Hang on...

The idea of a drum shield isn’t to turn down the drums. It’s to capture stray sound, so it can be handled properly through a mixing board. 

Im just suggesting building a drum shield on steroids. 

True although shields can suck because the sound is reflected somewhere else, and since its bounced off something hard can seem even louder so its not exactly getting rid of the noise, but redirecting it.

He could build a totally enclosed drum shield but massive hearing damage would probably happen (i played in a small paneled room once with a drummer.....it was berkeleying painful)

Mass. It takes mass to absorb those frequencies. Unfortunately, you'll need to go another route for the cymbals. 

Would a drum enclosure built with harbor freight moving blankets do anything?

Antihero said:

SVreX said:

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Hang on...

The idea of a drum shield isn’t to turn down the drums. It’s to capture stray sound, so it can be handled properly through a mixing board. 

Im just suggesting building a drum shield on steroids. 

True although shields can suck because the sound is reflected somewhere else, and since its bounced off something hard can seem even louder so its not exactly getting rid of the noise, but redirecting it.

 

He could build a totally enclosed drum shield but massive hearing damage would probably happen (i played in a small paneled room once with a drummer.....it was berkeleying painful)

I wasn’t suggesting hard surfaces. That sounds suicidal. 

I was suggesting a small sound booth for the drums only, instead of the cost of trying to control the whole room. 

Small booth for the drums solves the immediate problem. Add some electronic instruments, and control them with the amps, monitors, etc. 

Soundproofing the entire room is unnecessary, and costly. 

Sound waves don't like change.  In their path, offer multiple changes from hard/rigid to soft/squishy.

Soft stuff absorbs and diffuses sound waves, hard stuff reflects a portion of them back into the soft stuff.  In order for sound to travel through an object, it must make that object vibrate at its frequency and transfer the sound to the other side.  For this reason, weight also helps... the correct weight that is.

This is the reason why a passing car with subwoofers transfers a lot of its bass but not a lot of its treble.  The treble hits the inside walls, glass, and carpet, and doesn't have an easy time of transferring the vibes to those materials.  Bass on the other hand, shakes them easily.  Even when you're inside your house and that car passes by, it does a pretty good job of vibrating the large, heavy drywall panels in your house.

Dynamat works based on this principle.  By adding soft squishy weight to the metal panels in your car, sound waves have a harder time making the panel vibrate.  Any of the sound that can't escape from that upgrade means better/more sound inside the car.  On the same principle, any outside noise trying to get it encounters the same buffered panel.  Less sound getting in means you hear more of the tunes you're playing.

You probably already have insulation and drywall.  If I were doing it, I would get eggcrate mattress pads and line the walls.  Then add a layer of luan, then more eggcrate pads facing into the room.  That is 7 transitions from soft-hard-soft etc.  This is how I did a closet that I used for recording voice-overs and it did a nice job of keeping out the sounds from passing cars, lawnmowers, etc.

In reply to SVreX :

Thats good to hear, pun intended, really thought you wanted hard surfaces.

A sound booth would work well in a recording situation but less so for a live band practicing there, partially because having sound outside the booth defeats the purpose then, no one else will get to hear the drums and also playing in a band with a drummer you cant see would suck.

Sealing the whole room wont be terrible as long as its just making it better and not perfect. 60db in itself isnt bad anyway in the city

Can you find a restaurant supply place that throws out walk-in coolers? Those panels might be quite useful. 

In reply to Antihero :

Live bands record in recording studios all the time wearing headsets and with isolated drums. 

Why couldn’t it work in rehearsal?

Antihero said:

In reply to SVreX :

Thats good to hear, pun intended, really thought you wanted hard surfaces.

 

Hard surfaces alone would do a good job of attenuating higher frequencies.

Think about your microwave door.  Notice it has that perforated panel in the glass?  How is it you can see the food, but you don't get tumors in your eyes or start cooking just as fast as the hot pocket inside?  Super high frequencies have tight squiggly waveforms.  The microwaves get to that perforated mesh at the door and a very high percentage of them hit the mesh and get absorbed.  But lower frequencies like visible light pass right through and you can see the food.  That's also the reason why plugging your ears at a concert only cuts out the high frequencies.  The low frequencies just rattle your head and the sound gets to your eardrums anyway.

Sound waves are no different.  High frequencies hit a hard panel and usually get bounced off, but low frequencies hit the panel nearly dead on.  The low frequency sound wave has the mechanical advantage at making that hard panel move more than a high frequency does.  For this reason, treble is easy to attenuate.  Bass is hard to quell.  That's why you want a complex mix of soft and rigid.  Forcing the low frequency sound waves to change direction or give up their energy to moving a panel, the more you'll quiet it down. 

Have you considered rehearsing with a smaller kick?  That would shift the frequencies higher and whatever sound dampening you do will be more effective.

SVreX said:

In reply to Antihero :

Live bands record in recording studios all the time wearing headsets and with isolated drums. 

Why couldn’t it work in rehearsal?

It could, it would just suck a lot. No real feel or anything, you are well....isolated.

Ive recorded i think 6 albums now. The difference between seeeing you drummer is huge for energy and if you just start rehearsing....visual que's are big too

Curtis said:

Antihero said:

In reply to SVreX :

Thats good to hear, pun intended, really thought you wanted hard surfaces.

 

Hard surfaces alone would do a good job of attenuating higher frequencies.

Think about your microwave door.  Notice it has that perforated panel in the glass?  How is it you can see the food, but you don't get tumors in your eyes or start cooking just as fast as the hot pocket inside?  Super high frequencies have tight squiggly waveforms.  The microwaves get to that perforated mesh at the door and a very high percentage of them hit the mesh and get absorbed.  But lower frequencies like visible light pass right through and you can see the food.  That's also the reason why plugging your ears at a concert only cuts out the high frequencies.  The low frequencies just rattle your head and the sound gets to your eardrums anyway.

Sound waves are no different.  High frequencies hit a hard panel and usually get bounced off, but low frequencies hit the panel nearly dead on.  The low frequency sound wave has the mechanical advantage at making that hard panel move more than a high frequency does.  For this reason, treble is easy to attenuate.  Bass is hard to quell.  That's why you want a complex mix of soft and rigid.  Forcing the low frequency sound waves to change direction or give up their energy to moving a panel, the more you'll quiet it down. 

Have you considered rehearsing with a smaller kick?  That would shift the frequencies higher and whatever sound dampening you do will be more effective.

The bouncing off means in practice its doubled over and over again making it sound way way way more trebly and bringing out the higher frequencies.

Bass frequencies are hard to tame but his kick is the quiestest thing on the whole set. BAss drums usually have to be miked way before anything else on the set.

Agreed... if you're sharing the airspace.   But as far as what makes it through a solid wall, bass wins.

Bass is lost in distances of air faster than treble.  Its the same reason why when you put a microphone closer to your lips it gets boomy, but the further away it is, the less bass it reproduces.  That is why kick drums need more amp than hats, snares, and toms.

It's just physics.  If you are inside a room with a speaker and measure db from a tone sweep at 3', 9', and 12', you'll see that the lower frequencies drop db faster than the highs as you move away. (standing waves notwithstanding)  But now step outside the room and close the door.  The low frequencies will continue to change pretty linearly, but the highs will all but disappear.

The properties of sound in air are completely different than what they are in liquids or solids.  So what you hear while sharing the airspace with the source is very different from what you hear when you aren't sharing the space.

How about soft foam insulation panels from your neighborhood Big Box store?  The blue kind

You mean the 4x8 sheets of extruded polystyrene that Lowe's sells in blue and HD sells in pink?  I think it would help, but not ideal.  Its light weight would be highly sympathetically tympanic unless it was mounted to a very rigid structure, but its non-porous surface wouldn't do a very good job of absorbing sound energy.

Better than nothing, but probably not a good decibel-per-dollar investment.

The foil-backed polyisocyanurate foam would be a little better (the tan, rigid foam panels with aluminum on one side) with the non-foil side toward the source, but not ideal on their own.  Transitions from highly rigid to highly diffuse material is a good way to attenuate.  

Ever yell under water?  If your friend is underwater with you and yells, it's loud.  If that friend then goes above the surface and yells again, you hear much less.  The transition from air to water attenuates the sound.  Viscous fluids do a great job, hence the effectiveness of Dynamat.

Used mattresses would work if you turn the stained sides towards the walls. 

Canoe

If you beat on a canoe with a stick, what sort of sound does it make?

Acoustic foam probably won't do you much good in the way of soundproofing (even though it's quite often referred to as soundproof foam), although if you do decide to go that way buy the thickest tiles you can. Also, take note of the NRC rating of the foam. The closer it is to 1 the more sound wave energy it absorbs. Highest I've seen is around 0.8.

I concur w/the other suggestions:  foam squares you can slide into/over the window openings.  Actual sound-deadening tiles are massively expensive, but there are cheaper alternatives.  They may only work 50% as well, but they probably cost 10% as much...so there's that.  I know the sound tiles in theaters/auditoriums are strategically placed.  You don't need to cover everything, but tiles in the right places can have a bigger impact.  

 Probably not too useful for your block shop, but others may be surprised to know they do make sound deadening drywall...it was at least 3x more expensive when I investigated a few years ago.  

I didn't read all the comments to see if this was suggested yet...but Electronic drum kits may be viable.  One of my neighbors has had a really high-end set ($10k at retail, he paid a fraction) for years.  Every once in a while he'll hook it up to his PA and play loud, but I presume he usually just used headphones.  I sold my electric gear, the noise was too disruptive to my family than my neighbors.