Practice Room Questions...please help save my ears

First, let me say right away that I am new to this forum so I apologize up-front if I am wasting anyone's time with this post. I tried to look for topics related to my questions, but after a couple of hours decided that posting this might be better. My wife and I just bought a house and I am going to use a bedroom for a home office/practice room. I play saxophone and when I'm really blowing, I can get pretty loud. We previously lived in a rental house and so I really couldn't do anything drastic to the walls and whenever I would practice for an extended time, my ears would ring quite a bit. Can anyone suggest ways I can reduce the decibels in this room a little to save my ears? It's an average 2nd bedroom - 10' X 12' with and 8' ceiling and carpeted. I do not plan on doing any kind of recording or anything that would require specific frequency adjustments...I just want to be able to practice without harming myself and, if possible, not bothering my neighbors too much. Any advice at all would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!

jazzsax - there are two issues here. 1) sound isolation - i.e the sound that gets out of the room and annoys the neighbours. The only way to stop this is with mass by adding extra drywall layers - or double leaf isolation (room within a room construction) 2) the sound remaining in the room bouncing around and ringing in your ears. This requires acoustic treatment to lower the reverb time of the room across the frequency spectrum. i.e. absorbers and traps. cheers john

Thanks for the quick reply! I looked for absorbers and found designs for corner, side wall and rear wall absorbers. Are there any in particular that you would recommend? Also, are there any specific types of traps you could recommend and how do I find designs for them? My main concern is the noise in the room. My neighbors have never complained (at least not that I know of) about my practicing, so the sound leaking out is not as major of a concern as the sound in the room. Thanks again and any ideas/help at all would be greatly appreciated!

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html Reading time :) cheers John