Merry Christmas Braddahs! the shaping room out back needs to be built and I’m wondering if anyone has good ideas about sound proofing the box??? Mahalo
Chrisupp, Home Depot has sound proof sheeting, lightweight. Mahalo,Larry
Ive dabbled in some acoustic engineering in the past.
Just about anything soft/absorbent will reduce sound levels.
I once visited a music studio that had dozens of empty coffee bean bags draped on the walls.
There are sound absorbing boards that you can buy at HD like Larry said,
but you have to be carefull with some products as they are quite flammable.
Proly the cheapest stuff is 2 in thick eps from HD.
Fiberglass insulation works well but doesnt look good exposed.
Chrissup, I used to be a drummer and my brother still plays the bagpipes so weve had plenty of complaints.
Theres sound proofing and sound dampening, soft materials used inside a recording studio like foam or curtains will slow the reflection of sound by absorbing it and making the sound clearer.
Soundproofing involves reducing the escape of noise from the room. That involves high density materials like brick,concrete, steel, lead. Soundproofing an inadquate structure requires sealing gaps and holes, ventilation ports and then adding to windows and walls with a continuous lining.
Even leaving a small window open a crack will not help and hanging one curtain or sticking egg cartons to the inside walls is useless. If you can see light or feel a breeze, it needs to be blocked.
Add-on soundproofing, to put behind the drywall, does come in solid foams blocks but they are often 100mm thick or so for residential.
Building from scratch, if you cant build with insulated double brick or concrete or dig it into the side of a hill, use 2 layers of concrete sheet (about 5mm thick) using spacers to form an air gap in between.
Or do a bit of everything as the budget allows.
Theres lots of options on the net.
SF.
In agreement with Surffoils…
Air-tight is requirement number one. And it needs to be 100% airtight. That will take care of most of the soundproofing.
The walls also need to be reasonably stiff…ie: if you make a room air-tight by making it into a big polyethylene bag, it won’t be that sound proof. But if you make the walls from concrete blocks, a roof of hardwood, sealed with resin, and an airtight, stiff, door, over a concete floor, it will attenuate sound pretty well. Be certain to silicone-seal the corners and joints. And that oughta cover any requirements for avoiding bothering nearby people.
We work out soundproofing by playing AC/DC over 100 dB inside the room. Then you go outside and figure out where the sound is coming out of the room. It is ALWAYS an air leak.
…I have a shape cove with brick walls that do not sound proof nuthin
f+++++g F30!
Air-tight is requirement number one. And it needs to be 100% airtight.
Oh Really?!
So ya’ll can forget about soundPROOFING…aint gonna happen, cuz Chris aint gonna spend 20 grand on his little shaping shack.
Note I used the word, reduce.
A little trivia, SNOW is one of the best sound controls there is…too bad it melts.
I also used the word, dabbled…which was an attempt at being humble…acoustics was one of my passions for a while in my life. Almost forgot, I still play drums to this day.
Sensibly, its unlikely to be 100.00% airtight anyway but if the air gets stinky in there after a session vent a 12V computer fan out thru a 6m length of plastic downpipe and point the exit at your own house.
Reverb succinctly alluded to the phenomena of a structure becoming a speaker, like in a car where you turn up the bass and the door panels fall off. Its got to do with harmonic resonance, all structures have a frequency and will vibrate in sympathy. Enclosed spaces are more vulnerable.
Hypothetically you could bring down a house with a tuning fork.
Theres a lot more to it…
Something to try over Xmas maybe.
SF.
At Home Depot they have 4x8 sheets of sound board. I not only sound proofed my shaping bay, the whole shop has sound board with xps 2" sheet stock over the top. This was done to keep the neighbors happy. I have a friend that did his in rubber. It is so silent. Kind of like a sound studio for music recording. 3/16 sheets of rubber really make a room quite. Ventilation is the next step (6" exaust) at least a 4" intake of fresh air and with an air filter you have a state of the art bay. Don’t forget a vacuum system for your planner.
Thanks for the details. Got the plans all dialed in now and will begin construction soon. Will sound dampen as much as the budget allows. Good feedback with plenty ideas - I hope to return the favor some day. Merry Christmas to all Swaylockians!
Howzit chrisupp, There was a time when sound proofing a shaping bay was done with card boards egg crates on the walls which resemble acoustic systems.Aloha,Kokua
Yeah I was gonna say…
if youre really on a tight budget…
and if you know a good busy breakfast restaurant nearby,
around noon their trash bin out back should have 10-15 of those egg crates just about every day.
Hallo chrisupp,
I hope this helps you. And mostly I hope you’ll understand my english…which is technically poor.
The most important thing is that sound reaches our ears through air (ok, everybody knows it, I don’t want to make a lecture, sorry, it’s just the only thing to keep in mind throughout all the building procedure).
High frequencies, like the ones generated by tools like planers or other hand-tools that scrub blanks, can hardly been propagated through solids (like walls or ceilings or other structural parts of the building) unless they have lot of power (volume). These frequencies travel mostly through the atmosphere.
Low frequency sounds, on the other hand, need less power (volume) to go through walls or shields.
For example see what happens when you get out of a club or a disco: you hear mostly the bass drum’s hits and not the hihats or cymbals.
So, if you want a soundproof shaping room you have to make a room that is separated from the building: we call it “floating room”.
It’s a room built inside another room.
Consider your room like a box. Instead of lying it on the floor you have to put it on four legs, like on a short table.
The legs can be made of wood or metal, the important thing is to make them very thin. And they should lay on soft plastic (styrofoam -extruded polystyrene that we use to isolate thermically buildings- could be great, but also a thick piece of neoprene or any soft plastic material).
Your “box” must not touch the building’s walls or ceiling, just the floor - through these legs.
This prevents sound spreading through the structure of your house.
To avoid sound spreading through air there is only one solution: there mustn’t be air exchange through the room and the outside. Maybe you should install an air conditioning system, which has enough filters to prevent this problem.
If you do not want to have an a.c. system, you should use a vent and build a maze where the air blows in (nothing complicated, the air must pass from the outside to the inside throuhgh a forced zig-zag path made of wood.
The walls have to be made of several layers: soft materials to avoid high frequency sound spread and hard materials to stop low frequencies.
From inside to outside: a thick layer (5 to 10 cm) of very soft material like “gommapiuma” (i don’t know the english word sorry, try a google image search and you’ll understand). Gommapiuma is the material they use to make pillows, it’s a sunthetic sponge. You should cover it with a plastic layer (pvc is great but it could easily be substituted with paper) so the dust doesn’t get inside the sponge.
Then you need a hard layer, like mdf, the wood they use to make hi fi speakers. This is the best, otherwise you could use any other heavy plywood.
After you should seal with silicone and leave 5 to 10 centimeters of air, then put another layer of mdf or similar and seal again with silicone. You have to make a wall of “sealed air”.
Very important: the two mdf layers must have different thicknesses, otherwise they could go in resonance with the noise you make on the inside and your work would be useless.
The same goes for the ceiling.
The floor: instead of the gommapiuma use a layer of eps,it’s good enough. Then cover the upper surface with linoleum or any other finish material you like.
The door shoul be made like the walls. Use wind-stopper tape to seal where the door hits the wall.
Be careful and seal every hole: a single little hole can let sound out.
Egg cardboars do not help at all, believe me, if they are well glued on the walls and they have some soft material on them they might help to cut the enviroment’s natural reverb. By personal experience they do not work well. Especially in small rooms they are not useful at all.
Ok, I hope this was helpful and that you understood my technical english :). If you need any other advice feel free to pm me.
Cheers,
Stefano
Hi Chrisupp!
Here goes another soundproof solution by a drummer: Buy a used sea-container, dig it partly into the ground and put the soil around and on top of it. If you have a garden, that is. The entrancearea has to be insulated conventionally. Used sea-containers go a little over 500 us$, and once the lawn is on there it won´t look to bad…
cheers - d.