Soundproofed Room Within A Room Project

[Mike Foreman]

At long last, I completed editing of the videos taken during the construction of a soundproofed room in my garage. I hired someone for the construction but was involved from start to finish with the design and materials selections. For the project, we went with a double walled, completely decoupled room within a room design.

My only goal was to minimize the sound levels making their way out of my house and into my surrounding neighbors’ houses. Where I live, the county code makes it illegal for any “musical or rhythmic” sound from one property to make its way into someone else’s house. Unfortunately, I had a neighbor that decided to take advantage of that ridiculous code and caused me nothing but headaches with noise complaints based on my drumming. So, I considered my various options and decided to build my drum room.

While I do some home recording, I focused on sound containment over acoustics within the room. Due to the acoustic treatments I put up the room actually sounds pretty nice but it is nowhere near optimal for a studio-type setting.

Anyway, here are links to the 3 videos covering the life of the project:

Part 1: This video starts from the beginning & goes up to the point that we were ready for insulation installation

Part 2: This video starts after the insulation was installed and goes up through the time we were ready to install the carpet.

Part 3: This video is of the finished product and includes explanations of how the acoustic treatments (sound absorbing panels and bass traps) were made as well as video of the sound levels inside of the room all the way to outside of my garage while I play. Please ignore the sound & quality of my playing – both were bad for this exercise.

I apologize for the 3 videos taking 22 minutes to watch & the lame editing job, but perfection/professionalism were not the point. I just wanted to thoroughly document the process and think there’s a lot of good information and ideas in the videos for people considering a similar project.

[KyDrummer]

Looks good. I bet it gets toasty in there real quick.

[TalonTsi90]

Very nice job. Didnt even need the iPhony to tell it was a huge drop in sound. Through the wall though that Ref kick sounds like a cannon, in a good way

[Mike Foreman]

Looks good. I bet it gets toasty in there real quick.

So far that has not been a problem as it's been winter & the bigger issue has been lack of heat. It'll be interesting to see what happens this summer for sure.

As you can tell from the video, there is no ventilation in the room. That was part of the design to try to eliminate ways for sound to leak out. If things become unbearable during warmer months, however, I have a ventilation plan in mind. I don't want to have to go there because, quite franky, it's a lot of work & more expense. Here's hoping I can deal with the heat later on.

Very nice job. Didnt even need the iPhony to tell it was a huge drop in sound. Through the wall though that Ref kick sounds like a cannon, in a good way

Thanks. I was really hoping the drums would sound approximately like they do in real life on the video but that clearly was not to be. I'd never tried to record the drums with my camcorder so I had no idea how raunchy they would sound. I'm glad you thought the kick sounded OK but regret not having a good recording to show off how great all the drums sound.

[Mike Foreman]

One thing I think did not get mentioned in the videos was what we did to protect against moisture coming in through the floor. Before we did any construction, we put down two coats of a product whose name escapes me at the moment. It's usually painted onto the sub floor before installing a tile floor in a bathroom. It comes pink out of the can & turns red as it dries. It is the reason the floor looks red in the early videos. For the carpet padding, we went with the kind that has a water barrier film on the underside. We did all this because the people that poured my garage floor did not first put down a water barrier so I get moisture coming up through the concrete. My goal was to prevent that from coming up though the carpet and into the room.

Just one more thing to think about if building in your garage...

[PumaPhreak]

Great job, thanks for posting.

[Submariner Nick]

Really interesting watch

[Mike Foreman]

Great job, thanks for posting.

Thanks & you're welcome.

Are you seriously an Oregon fan in Tennessee? Good luck with that!

Really interesting watch

Thank you.

[Stoovey]

You should find a real decibel meter and take readings. The iPhone was showing around 40-50 outside at the end but I couldn't heard anything at all.

[Mike Foreman]

You should find a real decibel meter and take readings. The iPhone was showing around 40-50 outside at the end but I couldn't heard anything at all.

Thanks for checking out my video(s). One of these days I may get a real meter but I just wanted to finish up the videos rather than waiting for the always elusive "someday". For what it´s worth, by the time you get to the side of my house, any noise is pretty much just the ambient sound from my neighborhood and a highway that´s about 3/4 mile away. There truly is next to no drum sound for the camera to pick up.

[skullian]

Awesome job! If you're going to do something do it right, and you did!!

[TalonTsi90]

Thanks for checking out my video(s). One of these days I may get a real meter but I just wanted to finish up the videos rather than waiting for the always elusive "someday". For what it´s worth, by the time you get to the side of my house, any noise is pretty much just the ambient sound from my neighborhood and a highway that´s about 3/4 mile away. There truly is next to no drum sound for the camera to pick up.

Yea i was gonna say it was just ambient noise from the neighborhood, but you beat me to it

[scooterdavis]

When I did my room I put a somewhat decoupled floor in with insulation. I was really worried about moisture coming up through my garage floor as well. BTW, my room is almost totally sealed (I even caulked the drywall joints before taping them) and I use a portable heater in the winter and a fan in the summer and it isn't bad at all. I just open the door to refresh the air every so often Very nice looking room you have there!

[Mike Foreman]

When I did my room I put a somewhat decoupled floor in with insulation. I was really worried about moisture coming up through my garage floor as well. BTW, my room is almost totally sealed (I even caulked the drywall joints before taping them) and I use a portable heater in the winter and a fan in the summer and it isn't bad at all. I just open the door to refresh the air every so often Very nice looking room you have there!

Thanks.

By the way, I can see why you would have similar moisture concerns - I'm in the Lynnwood area. Soggy winters wreck havok on garage floors in these parts.

As for climate control, I have never even taken a heater or fan into my room. It stays consistently between 55 - 65 degrees year round. I do have a dehumidifier in the room & if I keep it running it will heat up the room. Once I accidentally left it on & it heated up the room to 85 degrees. Other than that I've never had any issues with the temperature in the room. Of course, it's always just me playing in the room & I rarely get to play for more than a half hour at a time. If I had a band in there or played for hours on end it'd be a totally different story.

[scooterdavis]

Haha, mine was 49 degrees when I went in the other day, but a tiny portable heats mine in a minute. In the summer, I'll just leave the door open at night and shut it in the morning and it's usually habitable throughout the day.