# Best way to turn a garage into a soundproof practice space?



## HumanFuseBen (Oct 13, 2010)

Hey guys!
Okay, so the better half and i are trying to find a new place to live so she can be closer to her work... the plan is for our place to become the new band practice space, too. we've been checking out this place that seems really nice, but the only problem is it is in a neighborhood where the houses are pretty close together.... lots of families that probably wouldn't want to hear ARC after dark.

the place has a good sized garage that would serve as the practice space. i just don't know how we would best go about soundproofing it. also, it has cement floors and block walls, so it would be bright as all fucking hell. what are the best ways to tame the sound and piercing highs all that concrete would offer?


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## pink freud (Oct 13, 2010)

Lean a mattress against the garage door or hang a heavy blanket approx. one foot in front of the door. Buy some cheapo foam pads (those ones that have the pyramid cut faces and come in large sheets) to put on the walls.


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## Evil7 (Oct 13, 2010)

Idk.. These things never work unless you want to spend a shit load of money building another room inside that garage.. Trust me.. If you play loud.. You might want to look into renting a storage room in an nonresidential area to jam in..

My band pays 130 a month for a 10 by 20 room that has a bay door, disklock, many cameras, fully fenced in with code entry gate.. Near an airport .. no noise laws.. no residential.....

We can jam 24/7 for as long as we like... Its PERFECT!

Dont do what i did and spend money trying to sound proof and the neighbors still call the cops..... Its a shitty feeling... Then after the cops come out a few times.. its... "Next time we come out you will pay fines!" lol 

I dont care what anyone says.. Unless you do it professionaly.. Room inside room with good professional sound blocking materials or the wall inside wall with air space technique.. Its all bullshit.. You may get lucky and have neighbors that you can work with.. 

I would advise talking with them and set up a time frame on a few days a week you can be loud... an agreement..


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## orb451 (Oct 13, 2010)

^^^^So much this.

If you're not building a room within the room, you're not going to get any serious sound attenuation. Blankets, mattresses, carpets and foam can all help... but nothing short of some serious time, money and materials is going to really tame things.

If I were you, I'd do the cheapest, easiest stuff first, see how the neighbors react (not at 3AM) and go from there. You might find that they're either cool or oblivious to it... or you might have really anal neighbors and need to go the full 9 to shut them up.

Good luck


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## Taylor2 (Oct 13, 2010)

As someone who has a decent amount of experience with dealing with soundproofing, you are going to have to spend A LOT of money to get it "soundproofed".
It isn't as easy as throwing some foam on the walls and throwing mattresses up.

I could write an essay on soundproofing, but let me give you some basic guidelines.

- Double to tripling the walls. Each wall having dead space in between along with insulation/soundproofing material.
- Lifted floors. This means separating anything that makes noise from the ground.
- A whole lotta math and experience.

The general idea, is to make the soundwaves have a harder time getting through materials. And you do that with layers upon layers.
Some of the best soundproofed rooms I've had the pleasure of experiencing were triple walled, floating rooms. 3-4 layers of material between the sound source and outside the room. Then, the inside was done in mostly hardwood, with some acoustic treatment to make the room sound great.


Acoustic panels are not the same as soundproofing material.
What I would do in your situation, is put up as much GOOD acoustic material as you can afford, it should make it QUIETER, but not soundproof.
And it will make the jamspace sound good.

I think a 4ft x 4ft square of GOOD material is about $30 or so.

Go to Auralex's website and read up.


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## Mordacain (Oct 13, 2010)

Evil7 said:


> Idk.. These things never work unless you want to spend a shit load of money building another room inside that garage.. Trust me.. If you play loud.. You might want to look into renting a storage room in an nonresidential area to jam in..
> 
> My band pays 130 a month for a 10 by 20 room that has a bay door, disklock, many cameras, fully fenced in with code entry gate.. Near an airport .. no noise laws.. no residential.....
> 
> ...



^^^Listen to this man's wisdom. Get a practice space... barring that, get one of those jamhub things. It'll be cheaper in the end than trying to soundproof. I played in a garages and FROGs for years and they are damn near impossible to soundproof and you'll waste lots of time and energy in the attempt.


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## MrMcSick (Oct 13, 2010)

When I was a teenager me and my bud made visits to all the local carpet companies and dug out all the extra carpet padding from their dumpsters. We then spent like $25 on tubes of liquid nails and glued them to all the cement walls. Threw some up in the rafters and on the doors as well. Someone even found us some insulated steel pieces of freezer room floor like in a resteraunt. They were like 20 ft by about 6 ft. fit perfect. Sound improved 10 fold and was cut down soooo much outside.


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## bostjan (Oct 13, 2010)

Nothing can ever be completely sound-proofed, but you can improve things a whole lot with a lot of expensive materials or you can improve things just significantly with a lot of work.

A few cheap ways to improve sound absorption are to put heavy carpet on the floor, put heavy velour over the walls, put several layers of Styrofoam over windows, get a drop ceiling, place empty egg cartons in corners, add a layer of coarse concrete block to your walls, and put layers on layers of soft, squishy stuff with lots of surface area covering whatever you can. Padding anywhere you can will help a little, but it's much better to cover every square inch of surface that can transmit sound.


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## HumanFuseBen (Oct 15, 2010)

hmm, okay, gotcha... yeah, see, i don't want to dump a lot of money into building anything permenant as we're only renting this place. i dunno.

seems like drums are the biggest obstacle, seeing as everyone has to turn up so loud to keep up with the drummer. i know you can stuff cloth and pillows and stuff inside the drums to dampen them a bit, but what can you do about cymbols?


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## orb451 (Oct 15, 2010)

I'm sure someone else will correct me, but aren't high frequencies (generally) easier to tame than the lows?

My understanding is that high freq damping of things like cymbals can be done with carpets, mattresses, foam, etc. The more, the better. It won't cut down the volume *inside* the practice space, but it should help keep the sound from getting out. Or at least reduce the level of sound getting out to your neighbors.

My understanding is that the longer, low frequency sound waves go through material like shit through a goose. That is, without the tiered, leafs (layers) of material, free space and more material, they'll just keep right on going... like that asshole at the red light who's bumping his shit hop music. You always hear the bass before just about anything else.

So since you're renting, I'd get a grip of throw rugs, foam and whatever else you can lay your hands on cheaply and start with non-destructive sound dampening. See how that goes and adjust accordingly.

And if I'm wrong in my understanding of high/low frequencies, I'll sacrifice a live goat tonight to appease the audiophile gods.


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## bostjan (Oct 15, 2010)

orb451 said:


> I'm sure someone else will correct me, but aren't high frequencies (generally) easier to tame than the lows?



Generally, yes.



orb451 said:


> My understanding is that high freq damping of things like cymbals can be done with carpets, mattresses, foam, etc. The more, the better. It won't cut down the volume *inside* the practice space, but it should help keep the sound from getting out. Or at least reduce the level of sound getting out to your neighbors.



Actually, sound can only do one of three things:
a) Transmit - Think of playing in a huge open field. The sound is transmitted away, so it actually doesn't seem as loud to you on the stage. It does sound loud to the audience, though.
b) Reflect - Think of playing in a concrete block building with glazed blocks and a tile floor. The reflected sound hits everyone, so it will sound very loud to everyone.
c) Absorb - When sound hit something soft, part of it absorbs and no longer exists as sound. This dampens the loudness for everyone inside and out.

So, in short, a nice studio will sound less loud inside and out.



orb451 said:


> My understanding is that the longer, low frequency sound waves go through material like shit through a goose. That is, without the tiered, leafs (layers) of material, free space and more material, they'll just keep right on going... like that asshole at the red light who's bumping his shit hop music. You always hear the bass before just about anything else.



Sort of. Lower frequencies transmit easier through dirt, which is the most abundant soundproofing material there is. But they also are harder to reflect by many hard materials, so the guy or gal pumping bass in the car next to you hears a lot more highs than you do, because of the reflection of the highs off of the metal and glass in the car, but hears about the same level of bass that you do because the lower frequencies travel through the body of the car. If the car was made of wood, it wouldn't be so bad.



orb451 said:


> So since you're renting, I'd get a grip of throw rugs, foam and whatever else you can lay your hands on cheaply and start with non-destructive sound dampening. See how that goes and adjust accordingly.



This is good advice. A lot of old carpets, rugs, blankets, and drapes can dampen the sound noticeably for very little cash or for free.


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## rectifryer (Oct 17, 2010)

The best sound proofing is an electric drumset and everyone plays through headphones. 

Thats the only way to do it for cheap. Also, you wont go deaf. Its pretty awesome.


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## scottro202 (Oct 17, 2010)

rectifryer said:


> The best sound proofing is an electric drumset and everyone plays through headphones.
> 
> Thats the only way to do it for cheap. Also, you wont go deaf. Its pretty awesome.



You wouldn't even really need to play through headphones. Just have all your amps set to not-pissing-off-neighbor levels, have the drums as quiet as they can be, and don't use a PA for vocals. That should keep it pretty tame.


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## 74n4LL0 (Oct 19, 2010)

rectifryer said:


> The best sound proofing is an electric drumset and everyone plays through headphones.
> 
> Thats the only way to do it for cheap. Also, you wont go deaf. Its pretty awesome.



I'd go for this 
The vocalist may have some problem to sing without PA or without headphones...


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## Mordacain (Oct 19, 2010)

74n4LL0 said:


> I'd go for this
> The vocalist may have some problem to sing without PA or without headphones...



As long as they are singing properly they should be fine. Its people who don't know how to project or use their diaphragm properly that would run into problems...of course this depends on what kind of vocals there are. I only know about singing cleanly so my knowledge stops there.

However, the jamhub has mic inputs too. If I was still playing in a band, that's what I would be looking into. Of course I've also eschewed having a conventional amp recently as well, so that leap is probably not so far for me as for others.

There have been some good suggestions for sound dampening, but its always been hard in my experience to get it to tolerable levels and I've had to use earplugs that last few years I've played with people.


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## bostjan (Oct 19, 2010)

Heck, when I was a kid, our singer plugged his mic into a Fender bass amp.

The only problem with playing quietly is that *everyone* has to be on board. One band member starts cutting loose and there goes that idea.

I honestly think that carpets, drapes, and egg cartons (while keeping volume reasonable)are cheaper than a good electronic drumkit, good preamps, a mixer, and a headphone distribution amp with good headphones for everyone, but at least if everyone was playing through headphones, you'd have several advantages:

1. No matter how stubborn anyone is about being loud, it no longer matters.
2. You are halfway to having an ameteur recording studio.
3. Much less heavy gear to lug.
4. You could all look like the guitar player from Linkin Park with your snazzy headphones.


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## scottro202 (Oct 19, 2010)

bostjan said:


> Heck, when I was a kid, our singer plugged his mic into a Fender bass amp.
> 
> The only problem with playing quietly is that *everyone* has to be on board. One band member starts cutting loose and there goes that idea.
> 
> ...



Or, better yet, Paul Gilbert.


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## SAWitall (Oct 19, 2010)

i second the electric drumset. amp attentuators, running direct..etc 


as a plus itll allow you to lay down some good sounding recordings without the high cost


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## rectifryer (Oct 20, 2010)

bostjan said:


> 2. You are halfway to having an amateur recording studio.


 Judging by your past posts, I would say that is what really gets you going for this.  Your inner engineer wont let you compromise. Any excuse to go one step closer to all out studio is good enough. Its called GAS, bostjan.  

In my defense, not every isoheadphone out there looks like LP's guitarist's. And there are some decent drums out there for around 1500 used. You couldn't make a sound proof area for that.


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## JohnIce (Oct 21, 2010)

Indeed, sound is a lot harder to block than one might think... you're looking at walls along the lines of 3m thick if not more for a typical medium sized studio.

Taming the frequencies and reflections inside the room is another, easier task though. High frequencies require smaller/thinner absorbants and the idea of putting carpets or mattresses in the room is not a bad idea at all. Just remember that the floor and ceiling reflect every bit as much sound as the walls do, so don't forget about them.

Even better than carpets on the walls is putting a thick drapery all along the walls, hanging a few inches away from the wall. This way, the sound will be absorbed on its way to the wall, and the reflection will be absorbed on its way back from the wall. In fact, high frequencies are even somewhat absorbed by the air itself (which is why a plane flying by high up in the air sounds a lot bassier than it would if you were standing right next to it). This is a simpler (and of course less effective) version of the "layer upon layer" principle that's been talked about already. But it can do a lot of good for practical purposes.

A general principle of sound reflection that's good to keep in mind is that the softer and more irregularly shaped the material, the better. Dense, flat surfaces create lots of reflections, whereas soft and porous materials reflect less. When a sound wave goes into a soft material, and isn't reflected right back into the room but instead maybe reflected 102 degrees within the material, then reflected once more inside the material, you're creating absorbtion. You're also creating diffusion, which means that even though you still get reflections (reverb), it's smoother and less characteristic of the room and the surfaces. In most cases that's beneficial.

I'd vote for the electric drums route aswell, if you want to keep the outside noise down. I know it kinda sucks but I think it'll sound a lot better than trying to muffle your drums or whatever.


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