A few questions from an underground bunker.

[James HE]

attached is a diagrahm of my rehersal / studio space. It's down in an underground level below a local music store. There's a big sign that says "fallout shelter" out in the hallway - everybody gets a kick out of that. I simply call it "the bunker".

The walls in red are the walls that are sheetrock within my space. The (lets call it) north wall and half of the west wall are brick. I moved into this space pretty much as it is. The office baffles were in there and there is sound deadening material on most of all 4 walls and on the cieling. It's this 3/4" black fiberglass stuff in 4x8 sheets, sorry, I'm not sure exactly what it is. This covers the cieling and the walls down to about 4 feet. At the bottom is this 2' x 4' slats of insulation. It is somewhat ridgid, about 1 1/2" thick. The room is, of course, very dead sounding. Lot s of problems in the low frequencies however. I would like to setup some bass traps to help this situation. My studio monitoring setup is on the south wall, centered.

The acoustics of the room aside, my biggest problem is isolation from the other rehersal spaces flanking me. The building and store owner recently removed some large piping that once ran through this level. I now have 6" holes in my walls. What little isolation I had is now out of the window. I need to patch those holes up first thing, which isn't too much of a problem. As a quick fix I stuffed some foam in the holes. helped a little. The band in the big space on the east of me is incredibly loud. We're talking A mesa AND a Marshall half stack, and (the big culprit) Some rediculiosly high wattage Ampeg pushing an 8x8 cabinet! I have a hard time rehersaing with my band, let alone record anything when they are next door. I haven't minded working around them much so far, they have been rehersing more and more and getting louder. They just went from a 4 piece to a 3 piece and actually got louder in the process lol.

The construction of the sheetrock walls is a single 1/2 layer on both sides screwed to metal studs. I don't believe the studs are staggered. It's maybe a 4" space in the wall, there is some insulation, nothing real think.

So patch the holes- guess I'll keep the foam in there and try to somehow get a piece of sheetrock behind the hole, screwing rock to rock, caulk and seal that, then cut a matching circle and glue or caulk the circle back in the hole, then mud. I figure I'd need to do this on both sides of each wall. I don't own the space, the landlord / store owner probably won't have the initiative to do this, hopefully I can trade labor with him, we've been talking about running DSL down to me from the router in his store- that'll be another issue, not a biggie though. Even after doing this the low frequencies are still an issue.

My door is the other big isolation factor. I'll look into proofing the door. I am a carpenter, so I feel like I could build pretty much anything I wanted If the materials weren't too expensive.

Now I think I have a problem. If i seal in my door airtight, and make sure that all the walls are sealed. I'M GOING TO RUN OUT OF AIR RIGHT!!!!!
There is no ventilation in these spaces at all. It's a very musty environment, horrible sometimes. Running ventilation is probably out of the question.

I'm not down here during store hours, so isolation from upstairs isn't that big a deal. One idea would be to get some air from there. (Just had a funny image of some tubing that came down through my cieling.) I'm not sure what the construction of the floor is.

I had been dreaming of possibly building a room within a room, but keeping the brick walls. But all that is moot if I couldn't breath in it.. lol. Imagine having to take "air" breaks in your studio. (It's almost like that as is!)

My question (sorry for the long post guys) Is there anything I could reasonably do to cut down on the noise from next door, short of floating the floor, and making a room within the room. Considering that I'm renting is it even worth doing? I've been here for almost 2 years, likely 2 more.[/img][/url]

[nice25]

..to be honest I did't read the whole story. You write toooo much.

[James HE]

just trying to be as detailed as possible, so that people can understand all the variables at hand here. sorry to waste your time.

so i'll aks again...

What, if anything, can I do to achieve some sort of isolation from the other rehersal spaces without cutting off all my air. It's my understanding that to have decent isolation, things have to be airtight. Or is that incorrect?