How To Make A Practice Room Soundproof

how's it going everybody so today i am super excited to teach you how to build a soundproof practice room if you're in a band and you have always wondered hey is it possible that we could practice in here all night long and not disturb our roommates or our neighbors or anybody outside the room the answer is yes there are some caveats to that answer but i'm going to go through all of that in this video and give you a detailed overview of how to build a soundproof practice room for your band this is something i would have killed for back in the days when i was practicing in my parents basement growing up and it was super loud i don't know how my parents dealt with it and then moving on to playing in bands in my 20s and we used to play out in a garage but we always had to stop early because the neighbors obviously did not want us playing past 10 o'clock at night because they had kids and stuff so if you're interested in learning how to do this i will teach you right before i jump in i want to let you know that i have a free soundproofing course this will go more in depth it'll give you a general overview of soundproofing and you'll learn a lot from that so definitely check that out in the notes below alright without further ado let's jump into the video [Applause] okay so soundproofing is based off of three pillars i i think it's a very complicated subject but i've always thought with my teaching that i want to simplify it and make it easy because at the end of the day you can do this and it doesn't have to be overly technical so the first thing we're going to talk about is mass mass means weight it means heavy stuff on your floor on your walls on your door on your ceiling your windows everything involved with soundproofing is about creating as much mass as possible to stop that sound from coming in your room the next thing is air we want to create a completely airtight space so when i say airtight i mean literally no little pinhole leaks the entire room will be sealed up and because there's no air transfer that also means there's no sound transfer because sound travels through air so if we can close up all the air gaps then we're good to go the last piece the third pillar of soundproofing is transmission so with transmission i'm talking about sound being transmitted from the outside structure to the inside structure so to reduce the sound transmission or completely eliminate it we have some techniques in soundproofing that make it so that sound cannot travel from the outside wall to the inside wall so we'll go a lot more in detail about that in a second so i just wanted to go over those three pillars of soundproofing again that is mass airtight transmission all right keep that in the back your mind as we go over this build all right so let's start with your floor the floor is a very important part of your soundproofing design and to be honest the best floor is going to be a concrete floor so if you're building in a basement or in a garage that already has a concrete floor this is going to be your ideal spot to have a soundproof practice room you certainly can build a soundproof practice room within your house on like a first story or a second story that doesn't have a concrete floor but it is more difficult and i'm not gonna go super in detail about how to do that in this video although i do have other videos so check into the youtube backlog about that alright so with a concrete floor we're just gonna make sure that we build it in that garage or the basement and your floor is taken care of this is the beauty of starting in a place like that with my own studio i built it up from the ground up so i poured my own concrete it's very costly not super highly recommended if you already have a basement or a garage but you know if you want to do what i did and you're crazy you can also pour your own foundation as well next we're going to talk about your walls so with a practice room you're gonna probably have drums and bass and you're probably really freaking loud now if you're just an acoustic folk band then i probably don't know why you're looking at this video but you wouldn't need this type of soundproofing so i'm assuming that you have a really loud band and you are trying to make sure that this thing is as quiet as possible on the outside so to achieve that i highly recommend doing the highest level of soundproofing which is what i call double walls so the double walls essentially are you're going to have your outside wall structure whether that's in your basement or in your garage walls and then you're going to build a second set of walls framing one inch from the outside of that wall so this is creating an air gap so we're going to frame your walls like you would build any house any structure just normal framing and you're just going to build it with a one inch perimeter around the inside of your room so those walls are not touching then what you're going to do is you're going to take 5 8 inch drywall this is the heaviest drywall that you can get it is super massive it has a lot of weight to it and you're going to screw that drywall into your inside wall then you're going to buy this stuff called green glue which is really funky and it's literally a glue but what it does is it creates a dampening layer i'm not going to go into dampening in depth but basically just know that this helps reduce the transmission of sound through that wall so remember the three pillars we have mass which is accomplished by the heavy drywall we have transmission which is accomplished by creating an air gap a separate wall so that the sound can't travel through the ins the outside wall to the inside wall and then we're creating that transmission layer with the green glue which is helping to stop any sound that got through to that point from transferring to the second layer of drywall so we're creating a drywall green glue sandwich so we have our first layer of drywall put some green glue on it screw in the second layer of drywall on top of that green glue and now you have two layers of 5 8 inch drywall with green glue in the middle and that is your double wall system so this is the best way to do sound proofing in my opinion for the walls this will give you the most amount of soundproofing now when you finish that second layer of drywall you can go around with acoustic caulk an acoustic the floor the the corners and the ceiling joints so that everything is sealed up now let's talk about your door the door is the weakest point in soundproofing and what i would highly recommend doing is what i did which is called the super heavy massive door which means that we are going to have a solid core door on the outside we're gonna then buy eight pounds per square foot of sheet lead and layer that on the back of this solid core door and then we're gonna put three quarter inch cabinet grade plywood on top of the sheet light so remember this is creating a ton of mass this is like 300 pound door and you're gonna sandwich all that together hang your door with some heavy duty hinges and screws into the side of your building and that is how you build the massive door now we want to make sure this door is also you guessed it airtight so to accomplish that we're going to put weather stripping all the way around the inside of the door and then finish it off with some magnetic weather stripping around the inside of the door so that when you shut that door it seals up like a and it really sucks in the air so literally no air is coming through that door whatsoever so the combination of mass and airtight is crucially important if you don't get it completely airtight you might still hear like little bird sounds and things like that which could be totally annoying so you definitely want to make sure it's weather stripped up all right so that is the door now we're going to talk about the ceiling so the ceiling is a little bit trickier but not too bad and i would recommend doing what i did in my own home studio which is to do a hat channel system ceiling so a hat channel system ceiling is a little bit different than what we did on the walls you're essentially going to frame your ceiling like you normally would just with roof rafters and instead of drilling your drywall directly to those rafters we're going to use what are called ib1 clips they're acoustic isolation clips and you can check out a link for them below this video and then we're going to attach 7 8 inch furring channel to those ib1 clips so what this does is it helps with the transmission remember back to the mass airtight and transmission we don't want sound to transmit from the roof rafters or our ceiling rafters into our soundproof room so we're going to decouple those the drywall the two layers of drywall that we're about to put on our ceiling from the roof rafters using these hat channels so the 7 8 inch hat channel just clips into the ib1 clips it's actually really simple design and then you can screw the 5 8 inch drywall just like we did on our our walls into the hat channel system so we're drilling directly into the hatch channel not into the wood beams and then you're going to put green glue on your second layer 5 8 inch drywall stick it up there screw that into the ceiling as well and then again acoustic caulk any perimeter any place where that drywall is touching the walls you're going to use acoustic caulk to seal it up so now you've got a completely airtight room we've got two layers of drywall on our walls and our ceiling everything is decoupled nothing's touching the outside technically so we are actually getting it so that there's no transmission it's airtight and it has a ton of mass there's still a couple of things that we need to talk about here so you will also need to worry about heating and cooling your room so to heat and cool your room i would highly recommend putting in a mr cool mini split and the mr cool mini split is something you can install with a little bit of construction experience by reading the manual but you do not need to hire an hvac specialist this is huge because it will save you a ton of money so we used a mr cool mini split in my studio and it's worked great it's super quiet which is amazing it even has a silent mode so it is a great option for a simple design and you can just simply install it on the wall send it through your double wall system and then out to the compressor on the other side so that that is a huge awesome thing for soundproofing because it makes it a lot easier than having to run ductwork and all this stuff like that lastly you're going to need to think about ventilation ventilation you might think comes from that mini split or opening and closing the door but you're wrong because this is a completely airtight room therefore there is a buildup of co2 there's a buildup of smells you want to make sure that there is airflow to and from your room especially if you're playing in a band you're going to have five six people in there at a time and you want to make sure that there's not this buildup of heat and co2 everyone could get kind of sleepy and tired if you have too much co2 so all that said the ventilation system is slightly complicated but i'm just going to give you a quick overview here so what you're going to use is what's called an erv or energy recovery ventilation system and what this does is it sucks in air from the outside sends it through this little box which you can see right here that air is then sent through some tubing that we have and then runs through what are called baffle boxes the baffle boxes are essentially a soundproof box that has a bunch of 90 degree turns that the air travels through before being shot directly into your soundproof room and you're gonna have a one foot by one foot hole for the air coming in and you're also gonna have a one foot by one foot hole for the air going out you might say holy cow that makes a huge hole but because of those baffle boxes on the outside you're extending the soundproofing into your adjacent room and therefore it doesn't sound you have no sound coming in and in my studio it's honestly more soundproof having the ventilation system in i had no ventilation before and then added it after the fact and i think it's definitely great you don't hear anything you don't hear the air so this is a great system for creating ventilation in your studio now for the exiting air the air is going to be sucked out with your erv and it's going to be pulled through the exact same system in reverse and then sent to the outside the cool thing about the erv is that it also heats and cools the air and dehumidifies it so that the air coming into your studio is not hot and sticky or super cold depending on the time of year so that's really important as well you have all these people practicing in your room you definitely don't want them to be like getting all like humid and hot and gross and the gear gets gross yeah it could be really bad so stick to this system and you will have an awesome experience with your soundproof room now that was a lot of information if you want to go more in depth definitely check out that soundproof free soundproofing course that i have below in the description and make sure to like subscribe if you enjoyed this quick overview of how to build a soundproof practice room i'm here every monday every week guaranteed to help you build your dream studio all right until next week i'll see you later [Music]

Channel: Soundproof Your Studio

Views: 22,427

Keywords: Green Glue, Building, Construction, Producer, Production, Soundproof Studio, How To, Drywall, Noisy, Neighbors, Soundproof Room, Noise, Loud, Concrete Blocks, Music Production, Home Recording, Basement, Soundproof, Soundproofing, Backyard, Studio, Recording Studio, Drum Room, Drummer, Drums, Rehearsal, Practice

Id: UrqTZYVwHys

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2022