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Building Sound proof garage?


Lucas S.

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Hey guys I'm thinking of building a garage 24x24 and making half of it a music room, but it needs to be sound proof. It wouldn't have to be 100% sound proof, but it needs to keep most of the sound in. Anyway I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions or things not to do. The music room would have no external exits, I figure that will help.

 

Feel free to post pics of your music rooms. It might inspire me.:D

 

Thanks

Lucas S.

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structural isolation and mass

 

learn about those things as they relate to sound isolation

 

to do it properly, you'll need to construct a floating floor and layered walls using alternating mass and dead air space with as little mechanical coupling between as possible...you'll spend for basically 2 times the materials as each surface will be doubled

 

blankets, mattresses, foam--that's all for controlling the sound in the room, it performs almost poorly enough to not bother hanging it as far as preventing sound from escaping...there's lots of sites online with info

 

good luck! i'm going to build an isolation room in my house in the future, and i can't wait!:thu:

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Originally posted by chevette



are you serious? Will that really work? I never thought of that...

 

It helps some. A friend of mine used this method in his garage some years ago and it kept the neighbors from complaining, most of the time. He nailed old "army surplus" style mattresses to the walls and ceiling and put thick plastic on top of the mattresses and used tape to seal everything. It got very hot in there.

 

Later, in a new house when he had his basement built in, he did the whole isolation room thing. That worked a lot better but to build that room the right way was somewhere around $20K. And it was still hot as hell in there. :eek:

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structural isolation and mass


learn about those things as they relate to sound isolation


to do it properly, you'll need to construct a floating floor and layered walls using alternating mass and dead air space with as little mechanical coupling between as possible...you'll spend for basically 2 times the materials as each surface will be doubled

 

 

Yes. I'm doing the same thing to my garage (20x20 split into a 12x20 room and 2 10x8 rooms). I've been planning this for years and have read tons. (suggest you start reading also). Careful though, there's a lot of misinformation out there. Best thing I ever read was an article in MIX magazine back in the 80's about LEDE construction by Malcom Chisolm(prolly spelling that wrong). In a nutshell, DON"T use drywall. It's only benefit is cost and when your dealing with a small space...spend a penny and beef it up. It's all about killing vibration being transmitted. Brick walls are best, but barring that, go with particle board. 1" won't resonate much, 2" won't resonate at all. As for the garage door...build two walls out of 2x4s, soundboard and plywood and hang on hinges ( really big hinges). It'll take two men and a boy to open. As a result, you won't open them that often. One day, your going to shut them and they are never going to reopen (because you've secretly lag bolted them to the frame of the garage, sealed and waterproofed the seam and thrown up more soundboard and then 2 inches of particle board on the inside) The roof is a problem since it probably has rafters and can't take the weight of particle. Laminate/decouple is a better strategy up there than mass. For AC, I'm planning on a split system (no big ducts, only 2 small holes in outer shell, quiet).

 

Matresses will do little to kill lowend (that's the hard part).

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You can't soundproof any structure like your garage. But you can make it more acceptable and tolerable for your neighbors. Here's some links.

http://www.quietsolution.com/

 

http://www.controlnoise.com/recording-studio-panels.html

 

http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/portable_sound_control_room.htm

 

http://www.soundsuckers.com/

 

Good luck!

 

Like Roy said. Start readin'

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Originally posted by Roy



Matresses will do little to kill lowend (that's the hard part).

 

True. But sometimes it's a matter of bringing down the volume enough to get by within your budget.

 

In my friend's case the matress system was enough to cut down on neighbor complaints but you could still hear it outside although it wasn't annoying loud and you couldn't hear it inside neighbors' houses if they had their windows closed. He just followed local laws and stopped banging on drums or playing bass at 10PM and the decibel level outside was always within legal limits as well.

 

His new basement soundproof room was a lot better since we could still be jamming at midnight. :thu::D

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I just finished (well, almost) a 12 x 30 music room in the rear half of my garage. The best source I found was the soundproofing.org link given above. I didn't do the floating floor thing which is universally recommended to get things up to pro specs. I basically went the cheap route. But even with that, there's a fair amount of added expense and a LOT of extra work.

 

I did use the resilient channel (RZ channel) to hang the 5/8" drywall, with a a layer of 1/2" soundboard between the drywall and the channel (that is, both drywall and soundboard hanging off the RZ channel). Between the RZ channel and the studs were 2 layers of rolled roofing for added mass. If you go with the channel (which seems to be pretty much a bare minimum), you'll be cursing it before you're done. You'll quickly discover that there are some very high tech materials made specifically for soundproofing, but they don't come cheap.

 

Have fun!

Bert

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