Need help w/ 2nd Floor Drum Room!!!

[PaulieSkiDrum]

After all the time and $ spent on planning/blueprints/etc for our new basement drum room/ practice area, we've had to "put on hold" for at least a year unless(I win the lottery). I'm very dissappointed . Our only option right now is to optimize our 11' x 11' 2nd floor drum room to minimize sound to outside.

Currently the room has custom "window plug", extra weatherstripping around door, flexible doorsweep, 3/4'' acoustic board on inside of door, and 5/8" thick recycled rubber gym flooring under drum kit, and velux blankets hanging 2" out from all walls, and a number of Aurelex pyramids on ceiling and walls.

The Sound Meter hits around 60-65db outside between us and our neighbor with drums full on. I'd like to drop another 10db if possible both inside and out the house.

Is there anything i can do to make this work? I know it's a tall order as there currently is little decoupling happening.

Thanks for your input....

[kendale]

Aloha and welcome to the forum,

Is there anything i can do to make this work?

The first step (of which there may be several ) is would you mind:

Edit your profile to include your location. This is very important, because this is a worldwide resource, and as such, material costs and availability vary widely. For example, masonry is cheaper than gypsum in some parts of the globe, whereas it's the exact opposite in other regions.

(Forum guidelines.) Thanks.

This might also prove useful to you as well:

This is the closest thing we have to Frequently Asked Questions on this resource at the moment. Many common questions are covered there, and it is required reading in terms of our being able to help you with your project.

Use the search feature to look for threads that may contain the answer to your question. There is a wide variety of projects represented in this forum -- everything from relatively low-budget residential rehearsal rooms to full-scale, professional recording studios. If your searches return too many results, try multiple terms with "Search for all terms" enabled.

Currently the room has custom "window plug", extra weatherstripping around door, flexible doorsweep, 3/4'' acoustic board on inside of door, and 5/8" thick recycled rubber gym flooring under drum kit, and velux blankets hanging 2" out from all walls, and a number of Aurelex pyramids on ceiling and walls.

Most of what you are describing falls under "acoustical treatment" and while it may provide noticable changes to the sound in the room, they have a minimal effect on your STC (sound transmission loss) levels leaving the room through the walls, floor, ceiling, as well as windows.

Isolation I believe, is the term to describe what you (and many of us) are after. One of the key principles to accomplish this is referred to as: M-A-M, or mass-air-mass.

A very important side note is that M-A-M results in a really heavy load on the structure supporting it. Please be sure to check with your building codes and possibly a structural engineer due to the fact that you are considering a second story location. Failure to do so may be hazardous to your (and those around/under you) health.

Here's a good link to one approach in process: http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... ght=#20903

Happy reading!

Aloha

[sharward]

Another thing to consider, since you're only looking at a temporary and less than ideal solution anyway, is to focus less on the room being noisy but rather the instruments within it.

If you need a 10db reduction, consider reducing the noise level inside the room by that much or more. That means (I know this is hard to fathom, being a drummer myself...) turning the volume down when inside the room.

I discuss some products to quiet drums down in the "$0 soundproofing" thread.

Sometimes the only way we can be quieter is to, uh, be quieter.

--Keith