Recording/practice room assistance

Hello - I have a basement room - exact rectangle - no angles - 21' L by 11 ' W by 7 ' H. My band practices in this room and I also use it to record my drums for our CD's. I currently have the room empty for new carpet/painting and trim work. I would like to make this room as acoustically sound as possible so I can achieve the best possible drum recordings. As you will see in the picture below, I do not have a seperate control room. The walls are drywall over concrete block. The ceiling is drywall with plaster top coat. The room is underground. If I could get suggestions on what type of muffeling or things like that I could add to deaden the room for practice/recording. My budget is not set as of yet since I am not even sure what I will need. thank you for your time

Hi, "dwkman0117", and welcome! First, I would switch ends. For the "recording desk" end, where you will be doing mixing, it is critical that you have acoustic symmetry, and you can't get that where you have the desk now, due to the door and closet. So put the desk where the drums are now, and the drums by the door. Second, your ceiling is very low: There isn't anything you can do about that, but you should be aware that recording anything in a room with a low ceiling is not going to sound great. BUt it is what it is, so if you can live with that, then that's fine.

I currently have the room empty for new carpet/painting and trim work.

Forget the carpet. BAD idea! The floor should be hard and reflective, such as bare concrete, or maybe laminate flooring, or perhaps ceramic. But NOT carpet. That will just make your room sound awful, since carpet is very selective in the way it treats sound: it only absorbs some frequencies, while not touching others, and it turns out that it absorbs exactly the ones that you DON'T want to absorb, and doesn't touch the ones that you DO want to absorb. If you want to make a room sound bad, the best thing you can do is to put carpet on the floor. The next thing you can do to make it sound bad, is to put carpet on the walls as well. And if you REALLY want it to sound terribly bad, also put carpet on the ceiling! :)

I would like to make this room as acoustically sound as possible

What do you mean by "acoustically sound"? Do you need to isolate the room (often incorrectly called "soundproofing") so that your family and/pr neighbors don't complain when you play? Or do you want to just treat it acoustically, so that it sounds good?

The walls are drywall over concrete block.

How is that built? On battens attached to the concrete, or on a separate stud frame? How deep is the cavity between the drywall and the concrete? Is there any insulation in the cavity?

The ceiling is drywall with plaster top coat.

How is that built? Drywall on resilient channel / RSIC clips plus hat channel, or directly attached to the joists above? How deep is the cavity between the drywall and the subfloor above? Is there any insulation in the cavity? What is above that room, on the other side of the ceiling?

If I could get suggestions on what type of muffeling or things like that I could add to deaden the room for practice/recording.

There are some fairly standard things you can do, but it would help if you described the problems you are hearing in there right now, and even better if you could do an acoustic measurement of the room and post the results. There is software to do that (for free!) called REW. It displays graphs that show the room response in both the frequency and time domains, and helps to understand the problems and design the solution.

My budget is not set as of yet since I am not even sure what I will need.

The answer there is: "Way more than you ever imagined!" :) - Stuart -

First off - thank you for all your feedback... Now - I will answer all of your questions.. - I don't have to worry about the noise to neighbors or family. I just want the room to sound better. - They put drywall pretty much right over the concrete block-very thin wood inbetween. No insulation - of course. - not sure how the ceiling is attached - just a plaster skim coat with lines... - the family room is above this basement room-the walls are next to - the earth/the unfinished section of basement/the garage/a full walkin closet - I can do acoustic measurements after I bring my equipment back in. I guess what I am trying to do is get the room to sound more like recording studios/movie rooms that I have been in before. No excess echo, very quiet and dead. I thought this would then give me the ability to control what I was recording more? Is it better to have an open sound? so, what you are saying is no carpet? lol oh one thought on that - I didn't think you could install hard wood floors below grade, so I will have to look at my other options

I guess what I am trying to do is get the room to sound more like recording studios/movie rooms that I have been in before. No excess echo, very quiet and dead.

There's a difference between "no echo" and "quiet" and "dead". Quiet is what you will get from having the room well isolated. In your case you already have excellent isolation (lucky you!!!), except up through the ceiling. So the room should be quite unless you put noisy things in it. "No echo" is definitely a good idea! "Dead" is probably not a good idea. A room that is too dead doesn't sound good, and gets to be unpleasant after a while: The ideal is to make it neutral, with a bit of liveliness. With such a low ceiling, you will most likely need to make the ceiling very dead, to help disguise the lack of height to a certain extent. Probably a thick layer of insulation up there, such as maybe 4 inches of 703 (or even thicker if you can afford the height), covering most of the ceiling, and hopefully with some air space above it, to increase efficiency. You don't have enough height to do clouds, so those are out. Your walls you could maybe "checkerboard" with panels of 703 to control flutter echo and deaden it a bit (build frames for the 703, and cover them in cloth to hide the "ugly".). Or better still, build some slot walls. I'd try to break up that parallel symmetry at the rear (where the drums will be), maybe by angling some short slot walls a bit. And of course, it is a small room, so you will need bass trapping in several of the corners. Cover those in plastic, in order to not kill the highs too much. That would be my basic approach. Maybe others might have additional ideas to offer... - Stuart -

ok so the room is almost done. I installed a laminate floor. made 2" 2x4 acoustic panels with 703 insulation. 2 on the ceiling above the drums, 1 behind the mixing desk and 3 just leaning around the room for now - until I get the couch and piano moved in next week. Then I will decide what to do. so far we have had one practice and the band feels the sound quality is much better than before. guitar levels that used to be a 4 are now set to a 2 on his amp... so that is really nice. the room has a very quiet sound. You speak and it fades quickly. my question, do you think it would be best to put 2 more panels on the ceiling toward the mixing area or on the walls? thanks again