Studio Sound Proofing.

[MARKEG]

Well I'm wanting to completely sound proof our studio. Obviously the lower the expense the better, but then again I'm not going to cut corners for the sake of a few hundred quid.

Has anyone got any good links to anything that will help?

[Jimfish]

http://www.auralex.com
very posh though

if you find other industrys that use the same materials and buy from suppliers within that industry you can often get things much cheaper..

[Si the Sigh]

Don't rip the piss, but the cheapest sound proofing I ever installed at home was egg boxes sellotaped to the walls...And believe me it ****ing worked wonders! That cheap enough for you Mr EG? Trouble is you and Chrissi will be eating egg with everything for months! Then you could be Mark EGG :lol:

[MARKEG]

ok had a look at this link and it seems to be for acoustic foam. it says on their site:

Acoustical foam (and fiberglass and acoustical blankets and mattresses and curtains, and so on) is an acoustical absorber. Foam is ideal for improving the sound in the room, but does little to stop sound from leaking into or out of a room.

I definitely need to know about reducing the sound leaking out of the room - not improving the accoustics in the room (although this will come later)

[Analbumcover]

First of all, you want to work on the doors and windows of the room, as that is where most sound will escape. Properly sealing the doors and covering up the windows will make a big difference.

After that you need to improve the soundproofing of the walls. Best bet is to effectively build a smaller room within your existing room. Stud walls with an air gap will cut down the sound going through the walls. For best results though you dont want to have the new wall attached to the old wall, as the sound will just travel straight through the studs. You need a the old wall, an air gap, then the new wall. That will cut down the sound transmitted considerably.

Personally I recommend moving somewhere where your neighbours make considerably more noise than you ever will, then you can just completely forget any ideas about soundproofing and turn everything up to full without worries.

[ampassasinbirmingham]

yeah room within a room with sound insulation within the cavities is a good idea if ure planning on doin it ureself. u would need two lots of doors . one to exit the mini room, one to exit main room. with sound proofing on the back of both doors.

[Barely Human]

My colledge just sound proofed their studio with these special sound proof boards, but they aint cheap at all. The whole thing with fitting cost nearly £60,000. Which included 3 sound booths, whole live rooma and the controll room. Obviously your studio is gonna be no-where as big as that, but it still wont work out cheap.

[audioinjection]

Well I'm wanting to completely sound proof our studio. Obviously the lower the expense the better, but then again I'm not going to cut corners for the sake of a few hundred quid.

Has anyone got any good links to anything that will help?

Well we should all know that is nearly impossible to completely sound proof a room, lower frequencies will always come through and it's only best to sound proof a recording studio because of mikes. I don't really think it's necessary for a project studio, IMO> :D

[daviec]

Try Studiospares (http://www.studiospares.com)

They do a sound isolation room within a room. 2m x 2m for £3500 and they can do up to 4m x 4m.

They do acoustic tiles as well.

[MARKEG]

wow..3500 is a little expensive for me for a 2x2 room! i think i need info on how to construct this 'room' within a room using perhaps plasterboard and the air gap etc etc. i could do with serious instructions on how to construct this if anyone knows where there is such a thing. then perhaps a firedoor and maybe a high density mass around the room too. sand? lead?

[Philth]

i too am interested in this actually..... i have found a decent link:
http://soundproofing.org/infopages/Music_room.htm

it has tonnes of information and am just picking through it right now.
as for egg crates, they only dampen the sound within the room and not prevent sound from leaving the room. if you are going to build a separate wall, there are some tips and instructions on the above site.

definately do not use high-density materials though... .that only makes the sound travel better through the materials. for example, if someone is talking behind a door and you can't hear them, you press your ear up to the door to listen in.... you have to have a dead-air space for best results i believe..... still reading.....

[Philth]

^^ i misread your post mark. i thought you meant a high density material pressed flush up against the exisiting wall.... that will work only on the new wall that has dead air space behind it i believe. and um... you can't buy lead in huge quantities and would not recommend having that around your house either....

[Jimfish]

yeah and egg crates also only stop the very top end frequencys reflecting - they are virtually useless things..

i think auralex do have some soundproofing products - dont they have that sound barrier stuff that you buy on the roll?

anyways..

yeah - you need a room within a room, sunken ceiling, raised floor blah blah, its a bit of a ****in mission tho.. give dean a ring mark cos he had to soundproof his old studio so he knows the practicalities of it all, and he's a lovely chap so he'll be glad to help.

re. the acoustic foam, this is well worth getting into...

i can honestly say i would rather use a set of cheap hi-fi speakers from richer sounds that are well placed and in a completly dead space than a pair of £900 mackie monitors badly placed, in a room that reflects..
and only about 1 in 10 people seem to bother setting thier room up properly - such a waste

[Philth]

^^ any links for setting it up properly man? i am very limited with my space, but would appreciate reading some good links so i might be able to improve things a bit.

thanks.
phil

[iron maiden]

air is the best soundproofing (analbumcover...great name and great advice). the more air space between your old wall and yer floating room the better.
i cheaply made my place pretty soundproof by putting a sheet of that pink 2" compressed styrofoam housing insulation covered with thick eggshell mattress foam. i keep all my speakers a couple of feet from the walls as well. it isn't proper (the real sound proofing sheets are 200 bucks for a 2x2 and i have no space for a floating room) but i haven't had any complaints. but i think my neighbours may be too afraid of me to complain. hmmmm maybe they can hear after all...

i-ron

[John Vella]

I'm soooooooooo fukking tempted to take some of those pannels from the my audio booths at work.....


:twisted:

hehhe


-jOHNNY

[MARKEG]

yeah thanx for this guys. i'm reading that supersoundproofing link right now. superb!

any other tips from anyone else is much appreciated.

[Patrick DSP]

http://www.studiocovers.com/articles15.htm

[4play]

Mark, We used some loft instalation boards to cover all the walls (These are well cheap too!) then just covered everything in thick underlay stuck with some strong spray glue and staples. Then on top of that we got this lush black fabric almost like a thin leather what cost 25 quid a roll (one roll is all we needed) and that pulled really tight over everything and stapeld it round the edges and round the edges we put some nice beading to cover up all the stapels!!

Gives it a great finish, it's cheap and havnt had no complaints of yet!!

[davethedrummer]

don't bother
move to a studio which is sound proofed already with air con
don't **** about doing it yourself, it'll cost you , take ages, won't really work without serious structural work and totally piss you off.
take it from me
i did it.
no put your efforts into finding a pre built studio space ( there most be one in leeds there's hundreds in london) whith all the trimmings
it may cost you a little more but if you weight up the costs you'll probably find it cheaper in the long run.

(i reckon anyway)

but that is coming from a MISERABLE CUNT !!!!!!!!!
as you called me on friday which by the way i recorded and will play back to you for the next few years to come.

if you are going to do it though
go to the library and get a book on home studio design you'll be surprised at how helpful it'll be rather than listening to miserable cunts on the internet

[MARKEG]

cheers dave the incredibly miserable plummer.

i will take note of what you say. perhaps it'll be better getting studio space i can go to every day. hmm... good idea.... mind you, keep on coming with the tips cause they're making great reading!

[MARKEG]

oh for gods sake patrick. how do you always manage to go one better???????? hahahaha

[MARKEG]

wow this link is by far the most useful thing i've ever read on this topic:

http://www.uhfmag.com/Issue63/soundproofing.html

[Patrick DSP]

hahaha

in short you need to build a floating room within a room. double doors and angled windows if you got any windows. 2 panes of glass/plastic both 5 degrees off of eachother at lease.

it's pointless and cheaper to have a studio in the woods.

now proper acusics is a differant story

[Patrick DSP]

now if i could only spell!

****ing edit button

[MARKEG]

obviously you cant spell f u c k i n either!!!

[Patrick DSP]

yeah but i can spell C U N T!!!

[djTequila]

Huber and Runstein's book 'Modern Recording Techniques' has a chapter on sound theory, sudio design, reflection, isolation, etc. There's some amazing information in there, on how to build a room within a room, materials to use, properties of a variety of materials - reflectivity and absorption coefficients, room shapes to use (Mmmm... Parabolic reflection...) and how to do it the expensive or cheap way.

As well as exact specs of a load of real mics, including frequency response, polar patterns and best uses, general info on recording technology, miking techniques for different instruments, really interesting info on miking up vocalists to avoid high frequency phasing effects from floor reflections, and a bunch of other useful stuff. A lot of it's very 'analogue studio' based, but it covers a big chunk of the digital world, and getting your head around analogue techniques can help you make sense of what digital technology is trying to emulate...

I would say:

If you're building a studio for professional use - out of your house, to be used for yourself and paying customers - go for it... But read it up properly! Absolutely DO NO go in half cocked.

If not, use near-fields and cans, and balance your h/f absorption and h/f scattering. And strike a deal with the neighbours.

All the advice below is not about sound proofing, but I think it'll be more handy for the people who use this board.

You're not going to get rid of bass, as has been stated. What you need to do is remove standing waves, and get a good balance of bass and high-frequency reflections in your room. If you put h/f absorbing foam everywhere, you'll lose all your detail, and your sound will be thick and muddy.

You need to place alternating thicknesses of foam blocks exactly behind, in front of and above your monitors. This will help avoid the sound colouration standing waves produce. (If your room isn't square, you won't need as much of this...)

Your furniture and and other hard/soft surfaces in the room will act as reflectors, absorbers and scatterers. Moving things around will help. Also, putting a few more foam blocks up will help deal with h/f nodes. (These are points in the room where the sound gets louder or softer as waves from reflections cancel out or reinforce eachother). In severe cases, they can seem to drag the music out of tune, or make it sound like you're in a pipe... Or sound like a muddled mess - depending on the room shape, dimensions and materials).

Never sit in a corner, or put speakers in a corner! Corners collect bass... Try it! It's nutty stuff. You want to be sitting in the middle of one wall, with your near-fields at least a foot away from it. Plot any reflective paths of sound from the cones, and make sure that either there are no reflections between you and the near-fields, or any reflections are the same on both sides. (Not ideal, but better than losing your stereo image in a certain frequency band). If you can't avoid reflective, hard surfaces getting in the way, cover them in foam block. Again, not ideal...

A friend of mine has his KRKs on a glass table. When they're pushed back to make a good listening position, you get your head in the right place, and the kick drum suddenly sounds like it's on a pogo sitck! Putting a pillow in the way had no effect, but bringing them forward to remove the reflections from the glass completely cleaned up the sound.

Isolate your near-fields from any hard surfaces they're in contact with. So:

Use speaker stands instead of a table, and couple them to the floor with spikes rather than feet or a base.

If you must use a table, get spikes or ceramic eggs or something similar to minimise the contact.

If you can't do that, use blu-tack. Little balls, rolled up.

If you're not renting, or have permission, you can build bass traps to get rid of particularly troublesome bass nodes. One type is a semi-flexible board, like wood, firmly attached to the wall by four long spacers... The gap between the wood and the wall allows the wood to vibrate in sympathy with the bass and convert the sound into heat.

Other types include wave traps that remove reflections of a particular frequency and its harmonics by clever shaping, creating a hole that reflects that frequency exactly out of phase with itself.

Finally, putting your monitors at the 'base' of a sideways-on, 3D parabola will cause all reflections to avoid the listener. (Then it's a matter of engineering the back wall!) I've heard of people pouring concrete over a weather balloon to create a wall for their studio...

None of this is sound isolation! Doing that properly requires lots of money and a few feet of space around all the walls, the ceiling, and maybe the floor. Depending on whether you're going for the 'room in room' approach, or the 'big load of baffles, dead-air and sound absorbers' method. (This requires lots of false walls, layers of air, cloth, rock-wool, and brick).

;)

Tequila

[daviec]

All this talk of soundproofed rooms reminds of my last hearing test at work. The company doctor had a portable sound proof cupboard.

Once I was in and she shut the door it was ****ing eerie :?

You can't imagine what silence sounds like till you've (not :?: ) heard it. Fuc.k I'm confusing myself. You know what I mean though. :lol:

It was quieter than night, and gives you a weird feeling.