Drum Room in Gran Canaria

Dear All, I would be grateful for any help and advice in designing small room in the basement for drum practicing. Drums generate a lot of noise and my neighbors started complaining. Therefore acoustic isolation is the most important for me. Following the recommendations for the forum I updated location - it is in Gran Canaria/Spain. I have created Sketchup model up to the scale with all available to me data. However the file is 4.5 Mb and I get the message that it is too big for uploading. I don't know how to work around that problem and therefore include below public link to Dropbox where the file is at the moment. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16849772/Drum% ... n%20GC.skp I also include few pictures (small size files) for better understanding of present situation. I live in a complex of adjacent houses and my house is in the middle. Basement is fully underground with reinforced concrete walls and thick ceiling (also concrete) that serves as a floor for the garage. Being very inexperienced on the field of sound transmission I'm amazed how the noise generated by the drums can be heard all around. Recently went to the shop and bought some matts that I glued to the walls. It actually only worsened the situation - sound quality has improved (in the area of drums) and my neighbors have now "high quality" noise that irritates them even more :( . Therefore I have to isolate drums from outside world as much as it is possible. I would expect my budget to be around 2-3 thousand Euro (2.5K-4K USD) - hope that would be enough. If not then I would have to consider increasing that budget. Most of the details are included in the Sketchup plan, but here comes small resume. Present area occupied by the drum kit is about 2.60 x 2.10 meters. Thanks to irregular shape of the basement it seems to be natural to situate the new room in the cavity 2.88(W) x 3.20(L) x 2.53(H) meters. The whole basement has double ceiling made, but it can be broken in the area of the new room. The height of the double ceiling is abt. 0.3m so the total height to the concrete ceiling would be abt. 2.83m. There are some kind of composite stone tiles laid out on the floor. Reading through the forum I learnt already a lot, but the whole issue is too complex and I'm afraid that even contracting some kind of local company to do the work will not give me any guarantees that the drums will be properly isolated. It seems to me that proper design is the core of the issue. I checked some of the designs available on the forum and they are all different. Making design on my own exceeds my present knowledge that is very minimal. I know already that right angles are bad, but don't know what it good thought. Have seen on some plans that walls are angled by 12deg, but which ones and which way remains mystery to me. Then I have seen all sorts of traps and absorbing matts - all in all I'm lost "in translation" :) . I presume that such room should be closed as tightly as possible, but then again how to ensure air circulation and proper lighting? Will be the air-con with outside motor unit a good solution? Are LED lights suitable for such rooms? Please help. If any more info is needed I will try to get it as accurate as I can. Kind regards, Jan

Hi Jan, and welcome! :) It looks like you have a nice area for your rehearsal space, so the challenge is to isolate it.

Drums generate a lot of noise and my neighbors started complaining.

Yep! Drums are, indeed, the noisiest instrument of all. A kit can easily put out 115 dB, or even more, and that is loud by anyone's standard. In fact, if a drum kit were to be classified as an industrial tool, and the player were an employee in a workshop, then he would have to wear ear protection all day every day while playing: the level of a drum kit greatly exceeds the level allowed in any workplace. OHSA charts say that 15 minutes of exposure to 115 dB is enough to cause permanent, irreversible hearing damage.... :) In other words, drums are LOUD, and hard to isolate. But it can be done, and you are starting from a good position, with your basement. So, the challenge is to get that down to levels that are acceptable to your neighbors, and also legal. Most municipalities have regulations governing how much noise you can produce, so that is also a concern. Finally, drums are the hardest instrument to isolate not just due to how loud they are, but also because much of that energy is in the low frequencies, which are the toughest to stop.

I have created Sketchup model up to the scale with all available to me data. However the file is 4.5 Mb and I get the message that it is too big for uploading.

Yeah, SketchUp is notorious for that. It actually does not delete anything when you hit "delete", so everything you ever did and then removed is still in the file, just as accumulated garbage. You have to purge that, to reduce the file size to manageable levels. Open the "model info" window, select the "Statistics" option, then hit "purge unused" to actually get rid of the junk. That will reduce the file size considerably!

I live in a complex of adjacent houses and my house is in the middle.

Do you share walls with your neighbors? Do you share the same floor?

Recently went to the shop and bought some matts that I glued to the walls. It actually only worsened the situation - sound quality has improved (in the area of drums) and my neighbors have now "high quality" noise that irritates them even more :( .

Yep! So you just discovered one of the common misconceptions about acoustics! You cannot stop sound getting out by using acoustic treatment on the walls! There are two very different, and totally opposite aspects to acoustics: One is isolation (stopping sound from getting in and out) and the other is treatment (making the room sound good). You bought what is essentially a form of treatment, expecting it would isolate, but it does not and indeed cannot. Isolation and treatment are exact opposites, and use exact opposite materials. To stop sound (isolate) you need heavy, massive, dense, solid, rigid, stiff, hard materials. For acoustic treatment, you need light, soft, flexible, porous, fibrous materials.

Thanks to irregular shape of the basement it seems to be natural to situate the new room in the cavity 2.88(W) x 3.20(L) x 2.53(H) meters.

That's a reasonable size, but it will get a lot smaller with your isolation plan.

The whole basement has double ceiling made, but it can be broken in the area of the new room. The height of the double ceiling is abt. 0.3m so the total height to the concrete ceiling would be abt. 2.83m.

That's excellent. Drums need height to sound good, especially if you ever plan to record in there. Get as much height as you can. By taking out that drop ceiling you'll also gain access to the sub-floor above, which you will need to get to in order to isolate it properly. This also give you a bit of extra height, in case you also need a drum riser to isolate impact noise from the floor. Possible, but hopefully not necessary.

There are some kind of composite stone tiles laid out on the floor.

Excellent. Your floor is finished already!

Reading through the forum I learnt already a lot, but the whole issue is too complex and I'm afraid that even contracting some kind of local company to do the work will not give me any guarantees that the drums will be properly isolated.

The concept of what you need to do is not that complicated. Basically, you just have to build a fourth wall across that end of the basement to close it off, then build a new room inside that existing room. The new room cannot touch any part of the existing room, except the floor. That's it, basically.

It seems to me that proper design is the core of the issue. I checked some of the designs available on the forum and they are all different.

They all look different, but that's mostly due to the treatment inside, which can change considerably depending on the needs. The basic concept is the same in pretty much all o the successful rooms you see here.

Making design on my own exceeds my present knowledge that is very minimal. I know already that right angles are bad, but don't know what it good thought.

Not necessarily. It helps to have non-parallel walls, since that automatically decreases the problem known as "flutter echo", but that can be dealt with in other ways too. Simple rectangular rooms can also work very well, and they are a lot easier to design and build that rooms with angled walls.

Have seen on some plans that walls are angled by 12deg, but which ones and which way remains mystery to me.

12° is the minimum angle that you need between two opposite walls, in order to eliminate flutter echo. So if you angle your left wall by 12° then the right one does not need an angle. Or you can angle each of them at 6°. Or one at 3° and one at 9°, or any other combination. The same applies to your front and back walls: Angle one, or both, or neither, if you don't feel like it. This is basically a "live" room that you are building, not a control room, so it does not need to be symmetrical, and you can angle your walls any way you want. In fact, non-symmetrical can sound better. On the other hand, angled walls eat up space, and waste a lot of it, so if you have limited space, then don't angle them!

Then I have seen all sorts of traps and absorbing matts - all in all I'm lost "in translation"

That's the "treatment" part of your room. I would be concerned first about maximizing the isolation of your room, which is totally unrelated to treating it afterwards. Isolation is your priority, since your neighbors are already complaining, so that should be your primary goal here: Maximum possible isolation, whatever shape that leads to. Then worry about treatment afterwards, as the next step.

I presume that such room should be closed as tightly as possible,

Exactly. In fact, it has to be sealed absolutely air-tight. If air can get through, then so can sound. Sealing is critical.

but then again how to ensure air circulation

You use silencer boxes, also called "baffle boxes". They maintain the isolation of your room while also allowing the airflow that you need to stay alive in there.

Will be the air-con with outside motor unit a good solution?

A "mini-split system" is normally the best solution for keeping the room cool and controlling the humidity. That works exactly as you described. It is "split" into two parts, with the quiet part going inside your room (basically just a cooling cool and a fan), and the noisy (with teh compressor and motor) part going outside. A pair of copper tubes join the two units, along with an electrical cable and a drainage pipe, for the condensate. This is the easiest way to handle the cooling part, but you still need the silencer boxes and fans to bring in fresh air and exhaust stale air. Your room is not that big, and you'll only have a couple of people in there, so this should not be very complicated.

Are LED lights suitable for such rooms?

You can use any kind of light you want! :) OK, so, to summarize, I would suggest that you concentrate first on isolation. That means closing off that one end of your basement with a wall, which you can anywhere you want, but do try to maximize the size of your room, for better sounding drums after you are done. You are sort of limited by the stair case, but it might be possible to work around that a bit, if you would like to gain a few extra inches of space. So with that extra wall built, now you need to build your actual room inside the space the you have closed off. That room will be very simple: stud frame with drywall on only ONE side of the studs, for all four walls plus the ceiling. It really is that simple! Then, once you have the final interior dimensions of that room figured out, you can predict the acoustic behavior of the room, to a certain extent, and plan the treatment that will need to go inside it, to make it sound good for your drums. The process is not that complicated: it just takes a little while to get your head around some of the concepts. So welcome, once again: You are in the right place to get this done, and now you at least have a basic plan of how to proceed! - Stuart -

Thank you tons Stuart, With that reply you explained me so much already. First I went to work on the Sketchup model and "purging" don't have much effect. After checking few things I decided to delete imported from 3G Warehouse model of drums set and "Bingo" - this was the bugger. Here it is attached :D Hope for more feedback once you had a look on the sketch. And now will start digesting all the info that you gave me so far. Jan

Soundman2020 wrote:

The process is not that complicated: it just takes a little while to get your head around some of the concepts.

I hope it could be like that. :) And actually that's exactly what I missed on your site - the basic concepts, probably by my rush to get help "now,now..." and "I want, I want..." - so please excuse me for that. Again, thank you for taking your precious time to look at my little problem with such a great extend, Jan

And actually that's exactly what I missed on your site - the basic concepts,

Well, it's not "my" site! It belongs to John Sayers. I'm just one of the moderators... :) The basic concepts are explained here too... the problem is that it isn't easy to find them! The "search" feature works, but isn't very useful as it doesn't provide important options. The best thing I can suggest is to find some recent build threads of people who are in the same situation as you, building a drum practice room, and read through their threads. You'll probably find most of your questions answered. I'd also suggest two books: "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest (that's sort of the Bible for acoustics), and "Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros", by Rod Gervais. And also read John Sayers own work @ http://johnlsayers.com/Recmanual/index.htm Between all of those, you'll find the basic concepts explained in more detail, with practical examples and also the theory of why things work. And of course, the forum itself is a great place to ask for help with specific issues. That's what the place is all about! :) - Stuart -

Thank you Stuart, :) I'm kind of stuck on page 114 of the bible "Master Handbook..." and thank you for the hints on the next ones to go :D I'm sure that anybody reading our conversation will benefit a lot from your replies. Jan

¡De nada! Aquí estamos para servir... :)

I'm kind of stuck on page 114 of the bible "Master Handbook..."

P.114: Harmonic distortion? You can safely skip that for now, and come back to it later. Skip over the next few pages, and start again in chapter six. - Stuart -

All the best for the New Year, I'm afraid that I have to park the project for a while. I will be going for a temporary assignment abroad. I will resume once I'm back, or maybe if I have to stay longer there will need another solution for a different location :) Thank you Stuart for all the help so far - I learned a lot in a very short time. Jan