Soundproofing a Garage

[Dirtyking]

I just bought a house and plan on using the Garage for a practice/recording studio. Half of the garage is already insulated and drywalled and I'm putting in a 2nd fusebox to power the shop.

Questions,
1. What do you guys think of foam to absorb any harshness from the guitars and drums.

2. Any tips on soundproofing a room?

[aleclee]

Re: Soundproofing a Garage

Depends on what you mean by soundproofing. For a rehearsal space, it can mean putting in enough stuff to attenuate the sound so you don't disturb folks inside the house. For a recording studio, you want to have folks be able to walk around and drop stuff without ruining a take. You want a delivery truck to be able to drive by and not have a mic pick it up. That's a lot harder and will take a lot more time & $$$.

Foam doesn't really do squat for either. The purpose of foam is to control the reflection of sound within the room.

My drummer just finished building a recording studio in his garage. It has a control room and two tracking rooms. There are double doors between rooms that give a nearly airtight seal--crucial for preventing bass bleed. The floor and ceiling are floating and the walls have double drywall with spacers to avoid transmitting sound through the studs. I can turn up my guitar amp in the tracking room and hear almost nothing in the control room, let alone outside. That's soundproof. I don't want to know what it cost, though. I imagine it'll be a while before his mixing/tracking side business recovers the costs.

[itbepopples]

Re: Soundproofing a Garage

All I know is that it's definitely not cheap or easy. I can't help you actually do it but I can ask my friend who interns at Tony Bennetts son's studio I remember it being a pretty good facility although I haven't been there in forever.

[Dirtyking]

Re: Soundproofing a Garage

I'd love to build a super studio with a control room and such, but I'm thinking of just soundproofing enough so the neighbors and my wife leave me be.

I was gonna use foam on the Garage door to absorb the harshness. I got the idea from a studio I recorded in awhile back. It took all of the harshness of the symbols away being in a 20'x20' room.

If I were to double the drywall, how much space should there be in between. A 2x2 maybe?

Plus, I have concrete floors with some cool throw rugs. Concrete shows no mercy with sound. Any better suggestions than rugs? Rubber Mat (like in a gym) maybe?

[Al.C]

Re: Soundproofing a Garage

forget the foam. You need something dense to absorb the sound energy. Foam and the infamous egg crates may reduce reflective sound but do little to reduce sound transmission. In my last house I built a music room with staggered studs, insultation, sound board, metal "floating strips" for the drywall and the problem was still the door. In my new house I double insulated the walls and used sound board and 5/8 " drywall. Problem still was the windows, so I took 5/8" particle board, wrapped it with dense carpet underlay and wrapped this with fabric and stuck it in the window openings infront of the double pane windows. I can still be heard by the neighbors, the 1 acre lot helps a little.

[Dirtyking]

Re: Soundproofing a Garage

The cool thing about my new pad is that my neighbor on the right of my house plays the blues at a local bar and jams all day and night . And 2 houses down on the left the neighbor kids have a punk band that practices at least 4 nights a week with the garage door open. My band is a hell of alot louder than both so I thought I would tone it down with a little soundproofing.

I'm real lucky the block has already been broken in as far as jammin goes. And I'm in a real nice neighborhood too.