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We’re putting together a post on soundproofing a home studio, and would like to include as much of your advice as possible. How did you soundproof your home studio? Where did you purchase the materials? What plans do you have for the future? What issues need to be dealt with? What tricks and tips can you share?
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By Adrian Try
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I did some homework on sound control when I built my home studio 10 years ago. One comment I came across was not to “over treat” the room. The item was specifically geared to the small project studio and the recommendation was to view the room as a whole, after you’ve “dressed” the the space: laid carpet (if going that way), final paint, and gear and furniture in place.
The space I created ended up being very neutral – in the mix chair there was little room affect noticable, but if you sat back at the kit, there was a bit of a live sound to the room. Worked out well.
More important to me was containing sound in the room, but also in the house. the window in the west wall was 15 or 20 feet away from a sidewalk, and I didn’t want street noise leaking in, nor letting studio sound out ( so not to attract attention to the large amount of equipment). You could stand on the sidewalk and, under the cover of normal street noise, not be able to make out the source of the music, if you could even hear it.
The biggest “treatment” we took on was isolating the cliening of the studio from the living room directly above. We used a layered approach: acoustic tile, airgap, landscape cloth, air gap, Tentest ( the black fiberous-like material that sheathes houses), air gap. pink insulation then was the final layer and wrapped the joists. Very little noise transferred thorugh the house.
My issue is budget, and application. I am a full fledge design studio, but on a very small scale. Meaning, I am not a robust firm where Im pushing out tons of clients daily, so my office / studio doubles as a regular room as well.
I know trying to run my business out of my home is a big foepa but its what I have. The biggest issue I currently have is trying to figure out how I am going to dampen the sound from my office so that my wife does not keep yelling from the living room “I CAN BARLEY HEAR THE TV.” I am one of those while working I have to have my music playing loud, when Im editing or creating audio / video, I have it turned up. Its just how I work.
What would you say or anyone say to help me figure out a way to dampen the music / sounds from my office from the outside as well as leaving the room into the rest of the house?
Thanks
When building a basic home studio budget costs can add up. The best way to battle these nuances at an affordable cost is with DIY projects. (Do it yourself). There are many sources online for building cheap gobos and the like.
The biggest tip I can give you for isolation is Density. The denser the materials you use for your studio the more isolation you’ll get. I’ve heard of many engineers covering their home studio walls with 4inch foam wrapped in linen cloth.
Another huge issue in most peoples’ studios are the air gaps. Any hole the size of a pencil tip can transmit a lot of sound pressure. My recommendation would be to purchase some Acoustic Caulk and fill all the holes up in your mixing room. Definitely start at the window seals!
When all else fails, use heavy blankets. Cover the walls in your mixing room with blankets. The most essential place to throw your heavy blankets is on the floor at your door seal. The air gap between your door and carpet/tile makes all the difference in how much sound is leaving and entering the room. You’re noise floor will have a dramatic decrease.
You could teach a whole class on this stuff, I hope some of these basic tips can help you out!
Few to say but that I found a nice way to have a great sound inside and quite no sound outside.
I’m a furniture maker. I built a room within a room. The room within is “suspended” and it “floats” on tennis balls put on the floor within a special frame. No need to invest tons.
Contact me if you want the building map! ;-)
uhhhhhh… building map, please!
chris dot grannen at gmail dot com
–
i’d love a map too
gene at genepensiero dot com
Id really like that building map aswell thankyou! sounds great
ianjohncousins at hotmail dot uk
cheers!
I would also like that map.
I’m moving into a new built apartement in 6 months and i don’t want to disturb the neighbour above me so i’m looking for a cheap but easy way to soundproof my studio room so that i don’t have much sound going to my upstairs neighbour.
If there’s a good way without having to build a room in room solution i would be glad to hear it because i have 2 windows in my new room wich would probably make it very complicated to get the room-in-room solution done ..
if you could send me the building map as well, planning on moving again, and will be living in an apartment as well, so trying to figure out how to best do this lol. email is berwin9 AT yahoo DOT com
ahh yeah forget the email:
p_thoenes AT yahoo DOT de
This sounds nuts to a lot of people but anyone who’s been in my studio is amazed…
I stapled/glued acoustic foam to the cavity under my table/desk where i have mic stands, mixers computer etc. It eliminated so much static noise from the vibrations it was nuts!
I only did it because i had some spare foam left over too :D
a lot of carpets, blankets and pillows on the floor and along the walls above the level of the microphone
Soundproof?? Are you serious? This is a site for audio production tutorials and you’re using imaginary words like “soundproof” on it?
Hi Truck. We have readers from all over the world, so “soundproof” might be an imaginary word where you come from. But here are a few English dictionaries that have the word in them:
http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soundproof
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-cobuild/soundproof
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/soundproof_6
http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/soundproof.htm
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/soundproof
http://www.yourdictionary.com/soundproof
Now that we’re past that, do you have anything constructive to add on the topic of soundproofing, acoustic treatment, frequency absorption, or anything related? If it’s helpful we’ll be sure to include it in our upcoming article.
I’m sure it was obvious that the point of my comment is that only a clueless person would think he can “soundproof” a room. Short of putting a room inside a room inside a room inside a room and so on for eternity, you will not stop sound waves. Perpetuating the myth that you can soundproof a room (and that soundproofing is a desirable quality) is harmful to the general audio profession. I can’t even imagine what kind of a website would post a poll asking people how they soundproofed their studio, but I’ll just guess that it’s one that wants clueless ad-viewers rather than insightful content.
Hi Truck – thanks for clarifying your position.
I’d like to ask for some evidence before I decide who the clueless one is. The word “soundproofing” is commonly used in the audio and building industries. The word has been used by our top authors including Bobby Owsinski and Mo Volans. I trust their opinions, and you’ve given me no reason to trust yours. Can you point me to some discussions about the term that back up your opinion?
I don’t think anyone is going to argue with you that absolute soundproofing is impossible, but you might get a few objections about it being undesirable. Most people prefer to keep traffic noise off their tracks! ;)
I used Roxul AFB Mineral Wool encased in a 1×4 frame and speaker fabric for the wall treatments. I had to build quite a few as the room had all hard surfaces including a wood floor. I used an area rug that covers about 80% of the floor. It’s not acoustically perfect but it has made for a better listening space for mixes. The next project is to use the same Roxul AFB and cut it into triangles and stack it to fill the corners for bass traps.
We bought quite a few duvets from a local supermarket and carpet glued them to the wall. excellent and totally soundproof.
we did our home theater and used acoustiblok. it is similar to mass loaded vinyl, but works differently by changing the sound energy to thermal energy. One thing I like about acoustiblok is that it may very well be the last american made product out there.
If you are speaking strictly sound isolation, I went with the build the right wall approach. My live room in my home studio is physical decoupled from the rest of the house and the control room. Two walls surround the live room. They are 2×4 construction on both sides, with two layers of 5/8 sheetrock on the outside of each wall, with rock wool insulation on both walls and no sheetrock between the walls. There is 4″ air gap between the walls. The total wall thickness is over 1′. For doors and windows I bought 1 3/4″ solid MDF doors, there are two doors between the control room and live room, the window is two 3′x6′x1/2″ tempered glass panes, the live room window is perfectly vertical with the inside window tilted a few degrees inward at the top to reduce glare.
Now you might be saying that this is not a home studio, but it very much is. It’s in my garage, I built it myself, and spent less than $5,000 on materials. That’s basically a nice Les Paul and a Marshall Amp. The moral of the story is build it right, build it well and don’t skimp on the room. The end result is provides enough isolation that with someone playing acoustic drums in the live room, you can have a casual conversation in the control room and you can’t hear anything whatsoever inside the house or standing in the driveway a few feet from the garage door.
If you would like to see, there are photos on my blog ( http://projectk2r4.com/gear/ ) and I have a video on the blog giving a demo of the sound isolation between the live and control room. If you are interested in more, I would be glad to provide more info on how I did it and what books and reference materials I used for the design.
Hi Jason, thanks for your detailed post – it’s very helpful. Besides isolation, what other issues would be worth including in the article?