John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi guys!

I am very glad to discover this forum! Been lurking on the internet for a while searching for information on how to isolate a drum room, and now I think I found the right source for info.

I will be moving for a new house soon and for the first time will be able to have a place to play the drums!!

I am familiar with the room inside a room concept, and now just discovered the two leaf wall concept. But before starting something this way I would like to confirm if MAYBE it would be possible to try one more modest approach.

the room is on the second floor (but with an empty room under it).The walls are 30cm/12" thick made of bricks like these: The window faces an open area away from the neighbors. The nearest neighbor faces the back wall and the bathroom window. But the first open room in the neighbor is an service room (I think the bedrooms are on the other side). You can see the neighbor door on the blue "house" on the sketch. It is more or less 3 meters from my walls, facing the bathroom window.

So I thought that maybe putting an additional heavy door on the room corridor and a acoustic window would be sufficient to isolate the drums.

The door would be where there is the one in clear wood on the sketch. The window would be like the one below. It is an "over window" that goes over the existing window. The room dimensions are (in cm)
height:268
Width:400
length: 630 (considering the corridor for the bathroom and the original room door... if i put the new door this measure would be 420)

I thought that if this do not work I can build the inside room and keep the door, putting one more door in the inside wall.

The wardrobe in wood on the sketch is there. Assuming that I need to make the room inside the room this would be to go away right? Is there a way to preserve it? It is a very good piece of furniture and would be very sad to take it off.

PS; just received Rod Gervais Book today. A lot of info to learn!

Sorry for any english mistakes (this is not my language) and hoping for your thoughts!!

Regards,

JH

Hi JH, and Welcome!

I am familiar with the room inside a room concept, and now just discovered the two leaf wall concept.

It's the exact same thing, actually! If you build a "room inside a room" correctly, then you will ALWAYS have a two-leaf system. If you don't have two leaves (and ONLY two leaves), then it was not build correctly as a proper "room in a room". For example, if you end up with three leaves, or four leaves, or another number, then it was built wrong, and will not isolate well.

The walls are 30cm/12" thick made of bricks like these:

Are those filled with sand, mortar, or something like that? If they are still hollow after the wall is complete, then there's not much mass there. They won't isolate very well. If you have one single brick like that, then weigh it on a scale and measure the dimensions of that brick (length, height, thickness), then we can calculate the density, and based on that calculate the isolation.

So I thought that maybe putting an additional heavy door on the room corridor and a acoustic window would be sufficient to isolate the drums.

It would probably help to a certain extent, yes, but to figure out how much it would help, and to decide if that is enough for what you want, we'd first need to know three things: 1) How loud you are inside that room, in decibels (dBC). 2) How loud you are outside that room right now, in decibels (dBC). 3) How quiet you need to be. You will need to measure those three things with a proper hand-held sound level meter, set to "C" weighting and "Slow" response.

Sorry for any english mistakes (this is not my language) and hoping for your thoughts!!

Your English is MUCH better than my Portuguese! En el mejor de los casos, casi puedo lograr que me entienden en Brazil con mi bastante pobre "potuñol"...


- Stuart -