using 2nd floor room as drum room - need help please!

hi i've just moved from a house with a damp horrible basement rehearsal room, where no-one ever complained about sound levels, to a top floor city centre apartment, where i have neighbours below me and to the sides. Advantage: the neighbours to the sides are musicians as well! Don't know about below, haven't met them yet... I have a spare bedroom, which is small, (roughly 12' x 6'), but has the added advantage that 3 of the 4 walls are exterior walls, and the 4th wall (and doorway) is adjacent only to my apartment. The walls seem to be hollow (I'm guessing fairly cheap) plasterboard on wood frames, with brick on the outside/exterior. The floor is carpet over wood, and below it is the neighbour's spare beroom. There are two very small, double-glazed windows (less than a foot square) in the far wall. The ceiling is like the walls - thin, hollow, but not directly next to anyone. The room is at the back of the apartment, at the front there is a very busy main road - so my neighbours presumably will not be supersensitive to noise. I also don't have that many residential neighbours around me - its mainly a commercial area. I need the room to be able to record drums (it will need to record guitars and trumpets and whatever else, but drums are always the loudest, right?). In the past, I have made my drummer record with a hybrid of electronic kick and toms, and acoustic cymbals and snare, for a number of reasons (I can record the whole kit with a pair of mics and a midi input, and also i dont think you can beat real cymbals!). We would like to be able to record full acoustic kit in this room if at all possible, however the drummer is loud. He's only playing indie-rock, but on a full acoustic kit, he's really really loud. So, My priority is managing the problem for my neighbours below me, and stopping noise going through my floor/their ceiling - I will try the tennis ball drum riser to minimize the vibration-borne problems of kick pedal on wood floor. However, I don't know what to do for the airborne problems. The first thing that occured to me would be filling the hollow walls with some kind of insulating foam - subject to landlords approval of course. However, I don't know and can't see how the walls have been made, how many panels/joints there are and, crucially, whether this would make any difference from curbing the noise of a loud drumkit. This would only stop noise from leaving via the walls, and does nothing to help my sound-leaking wood floor. I looked at various options (that seem to be discredited here) about MSV or soundproofing mats on the walls and floor, or various things from soundproofing.com but I understand that these are overpriced and sometimes completely unsuitable. I know not who to trust! My back-up plan, if its gonna be impossible to soundproof to any reasonable degree, is to get the drummer to record with the hybrid v-drum/acoustic drum setup, and mask the room for the higher frequencies of the acoustic snare and cymbals, with the midi drums (kick and toms) only being heard thru the headphones. Anyway, I'm really glad I found this site, its got so much more info than anywhere else, and I've spent the majority of today researching and reading others posts - and I will continue to do this, but I just need to know if I'm fighting a lost cause here or not. If anyone can help, I would be very appreciative indeed. My finance for all this is firmly in the 'budget' range. p.s. the drummers idea was to build a 'false floor', (ie wood frame) and layer it with as much old carpet as we could lay our hands on. I think i realise after spending all day on this site that that would not be very soundproof!!

Please enter your location: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7572 You could make a sketch, And maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it easier and cheaper to find a spot somewhere else to record? My belly superficially confirms your "lost cause statement" or you become at least completely dependent on the goodwill of the neighbors. :) It's fun that you call a trumpet not that loud. Hence you see that loud and silent are subjective notions.

ok, location entered - apologies. I will make a sketch when i get home, and I can properly measure all the walls, but it is pretty much rectangular shaped. Our other fallback option is renting a rehearsal room, but we've found these to be a proper finance drain, and you have to share with some band that 'borrows' half your stuff and breaks things etc etc. I'm used to the luxury of a rehearsal room in my house and don't want to go back!!

It's fun that you call a trumpet not that loud. Hence you see that loud and silent are subjective notions

Comparatively!! If you stood in a room with our drummer and our trumpet player, both playing away, with no amplification, you would definitely say the drums were louder!!

collen wrote:

It's fun that you call a trumpet not that loud. Hence you see that loud and silent are subjective notions

Comparatively!! If you stood in a room with our drummer and our trumpet player, both playing away, with no amplification, you would definitely say the drums were louder!!

:) I understood it that way. But it sounded a bit as: " That's more acceptable, not that bad". Sorry, I can't translate Dutch sayings, or they possibly mean something different. :D I've stood a lot in rooms with all kinds of musicians and instruments. :cry: But I hardly can play them.

Nothing is impossible, Collen, but circumstances are conspiring against your succeeding. Your friend's idea of a "false floor" with gobs of carpet is, to be honest, one of the worst ideas one can imagine. Third leaf. Resonance above and beyond what youlre getting now. Acoustic problems. Risk of overloading floor and causing catastrophoc collapse. Keep studying here. Read/reread all the sticky/announcement threads. Buy Rod's book, which will quickly bring you up to speed on many of the fundamentals. Note that the "sketch" has to be much more detailed than just the shape of the room - it would need to show all the construction details, much of which you likely do not have, and being in a rental, you won't be able to get. It's all probably moot because there's nothing you can do that won't be both expensive and permanent. Sorry... --Keith :mrgreen: