Soundproofing a basement room

[coreysMonster]

So I'm moving into a house soon with friends, and my room is going to be in the basement. since the room is 24 square meters and my current dorm room is only 10, I figure I'll have 14 sqm left over aside from my bed, desk and cabinet to set up a small section for recording drums and amps.

Now I was thinking I could go about it two ways: I could try and soundproof the entire basement, or I could pull up two plywood walls and have a little recording "cabinet" in my room, so the neighbours and my housemates won't kill me after a week.

The thing is, I've never done anything like this before. Will packing a bunch of pyramid foam on the walls do any good, or is there more I need to think about when doing this?

 

[::XeS::]

Loud amps and drums polverize your pyramid foam.

 

[waltz mastering]

Foam on it's own will do next to nothing to help stop sound from penetrating walls. Using a lot of mass with different densities, like drywall/green glue sandwich, sound stop http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/5...-sound-barrier, air lock with resilient channels, etc. will help.
http://www.soundisolationcompany.com...FcPd4AodfwsU_g

Here is a site to check out: http://johnlsayers.com/index.html

 

[coreysMonster]

Loud amps and drums polverize your pyramid foam.

yeah that's what I figured.

Anyways, here's a quick overlay of the room and windows/doors:



My place it at the end of a terraced house, and the wall to the top goes out to a patch of forest, so I won't have to worry about that one. The main concerns are the door to the stairs and the wall to the neighbours and backyard.

Foam on it's own will do next to nothing to help stop sound from penetrating walls. Using a lot of mass with different densities, like drywall/green glue sandwich, sound stop http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/5...-sound-barrier, air lock with resilient channels, etc. will help.
http://www.soundisolationcompany.com...FcPd4AodfwsU_g

Here is a site to check out: http://johnlsayers.com/index.html

I'll check those out, thanks!

 

[Trevoire520]

To be honest with you soundproofing is INCREDIBLY difficult to do well. You have to think of sound like water, if there's even the tiniest sliver of a gap then it will get out. And even if you can seal a room perfectly the walls, floor and ceiling are going to resonate, so you have to add mass to stop them from vibrating. Pyramid foam on the walls will do absolutely nothing.

 

[::XeS::]

Mass and isolate the existent walls, ceiling and floor = PITA

 

[TheDriller]

You can't just "soundproof" one or two walls and be done with it, you need pretty much a sealed environment with lots of mass and decoupling between it and the 'outside' world for there to be any effect.

For acoustic isolation, it's literally all or nothing.
(in both the physical and the financial sense, you either spend nothing on it or take out a mortgage, there is no middle-ground )

 

[coreysMonster]

You can't just "soundproof" one or two walls and be done with it, you need pretty much a sealed environment with lots of mass and decoupling between it and the 'outside' world for there to be any effect.

For acoustic isolation, it's literally all or nothing.
(in both the physical and the financial sense, you either spend nothing on it or take out a mortgage, there is no middle-ground )

Okay, so say I were to do the two-wall thing (because I just realised that the back wall goes to the ground, and the wall to the furnace room is about a meter thick of pure concrete), from what I've been reading, I think the best way to go about it would be to make walls and a ceiling out of a layer of plywood, then mineral wool, then plywood, mineral wool and plywood again, and completely encase the corner of the walls to the ground and furnace, how does that sound? Would I need to treat the floor as well?