I need Help with some soundproofing....for a shed

[BroderJ]

Alright, I have a:

-about 10' by 20' shed
-Traditional one layer of wood with a vaulted ceiling and two lofts
-raised about one foot off the ground by a couple of chunks of wood
-dirt underneath it
-i have free reign to do what ever i see fit


So, how do i make it so at 12 o'clock at night, my neighbors who live twenty feet away can't hear anything?????

[garageband]

make it so at 12 o'clock at night, my neighbors who live twenty feet away can't hear anything

This is an impossible standard. You could fill the walls full of concrete and barely get there. You will want to make a box within a box. Then add as much sound damping material and sheer mass between the inner wall and the outer wall. Try to connect the inner to outer structure by as few rigid points as possible. Make the inner box as airtight as possible. This means two doors between the inner room and the outdoors.

[BroderJ]

I figured it would be next to impossible.

[garageband]

Somewhere between there and Very Expensive, also not far from an Unimaginable Amount of Work.

[jagcmos]

Here's a crazy idea.

Buy a pair of sound cancelling headphones. Tear them apart and disconnect the wire to the internal speaker. Connect the wire to a amp and a speaker.

Set the heaphone/amp hack in the space between the inner and outer
rooms. This should create a sound that is 180 degrees out of phase with
the sound that in coming from the inner room.

Adjust the amp level for maximum cancellation.

[garageband]

Now you're thinking like a genius!

[brandondrury]

Yeah dudes, this whole soundproofing thing is tough. As I say in Killer Home Recording, you pretty much need a nuclear weapon-proof bomb shelter to keep sound in.

The worst part about soundproofing is you can't do a "pretty good" job sound proofing. Either you trapped the sound in or you didn't. If you've got a leak, forget about it.

Brandon

[BroderJ]

Well i have time. a lot of time.

All i really have a problem with is the money. But i dont need it done today. I can take a year or two.

[String7th]

Originally Posted by jagcmos

Here's a crazy idea.

Buy a pair of sound cancelling headphones. Tear them apart and disconnect the wire to the internal speaker. Connect the wire to a amp and a speaker.

Set the heaphone/amp hack in the space between the inner and outer
rooms. This should create a sound that is 180 degrees out of phase with
the sound that in coming from the inner room.

Adjust the amp level for maximum cancellation.

I'm so confused, I think my brain stopped for a few mins.

. . . Where am I?

[aharter]

Hi BroderJ,

I have tackled the same scenario as you described and have had good success w/o breaking the bank. I was able to abate and contain sound levels significantly to the point where a 4 piece band + PA can play with a hard hitting drummer well past midnight and not wake my next door neighbors.

It is not impossible to take the "shed" from frame to finished "studio" with reasonable levels of effort and good pay-off by using sound abatement and sound reinforcement techniques. Only the bass frequencies are the ones that permeate through, and even then after traveling through the dead-air space turned into heat and absorbed by the fiberglass they are not loud enough to invade my neighbors home 20 feet away.

Here is a post about my studio: Bash This

Here are pics of my studio:
Stand Alone Studio

Some Tips:
Always keep in mind about the "law of diminishing returns" when it comes to planning the amount of sound abatement you want. Adding more and more mass doesn't equal more and more sound abatement. There is a physical limit of mass vs sound.

The most effect way is to build a room-within-a-room with minimum 6" of dead air space between walls, ceiling and floor and filling in the vertical space between the studs with fiberglass insulation.

When surfaces come in contact with each other they provide a conduit for the sound to travel on. If the surface contact is reduced the sound has less pathways to travel and cause vibrations on. One mitigation principal is "floating" sheetrock (drywall/gypsum) walls using hat-channels mounted horizontally on studs rather that directly mounting the sheetrock wall to the stud. The hat-channel is what give the 6" dead-air clearance between the stud and the drywall wall and reduces the surface contacts.

The energy of sound waves can be converted to heat and absorbed to reduce transmission by using combinations of fiberglass insulation, dead-air space created by hat-channels sheetrock and Mass Load Vinyl (MLV) for doorways or thresholds. Sound abatement is a game of inches, so any minute opening between the outdoors and your studio doors will allow the sound to travel out. Special attention needs to be placed on how the doors are to be hung and how they close. Windows are a no-no in your "sheddy" studio.

Climate control also needs to be thought of. Window units are no good for obvious reasons, and conventional A/C units may not apply to the "sheddy". The answer is a common A/C unit sold in Canada and Europe called a 'split-ductless' or 'mini-split' A/C unit. They require only a 3" hole to run the lines through and are highly energy efficient and whisper quite. The only issue is (if you are in the US) that they are hi and lo side valves are metric and you'll need a thread converter before you can have an A/C technician work on or load the system.

The power also needs to be though of, but unless you understand how to patch into your house's console have your best friend, or better yet an electrician run the "sheddies" mains.

Theres lots of math and other stuff that make building "sheddies" more technical, but I hope these tips point you into the right direction

It worked well for me.