John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi there,

I live in Berlin, Germany, on the first floor of a new building apartment. I sing rock music and I am a very loud singer. I have just moved into a new apartment and have a spare room in which i wish to practice my singing daily. I don't want to piss off my new neighbours!

If you would be so kind please, I would like a little advice as to how best help to prevent as much sound from leaving my apartment as possible.

Room dimension 245 x 400 cm. Wooden floors, I will be covering with as much rug as I can, below me is a pizzeria, no problem.

Inner walls are all pretty flimsy plasterboard I believe.. wall 1 faces to the outside, no problem. Opposite wall faces into my apartment, no problem. Wall 3 faces to my bedroom, no problem. However, wall 4 faces into the building stairwell.... not a huge issue, but it is a thin wall and the stairwell has immense echo... would like to treat this wall.

Ceiling is the big issue. It is the only surface that leads to a direct problem of someone else's apartment, and it is a low ceiling of 257cm. This is the main thing i would like to dampen my singing from leaving my room.

A room within a room is not an option, it's a rented apartment. A false ceiling is also one step too far as it is a low ceiling to begin with, and also in the eyes of my landlord.. this has lead me down the path of covering my ceiling with as thick rock wool or glass wool panels as possible. Will this help to stop my singing being heard by the neighbours above? I have thought of nailing long nails through the wool, with the heads of the nails holding it in place, perhaps with a washer attached, and first covering the wool in fabric. Is wool a good option? and this a good method of attachment? will it have a noticeable impact on sound leaving my room? I was then planning to cover the wall facing the stairwell in the same manner. Would you advise this? or am when it comes to sound proofing, would this be a total waste of time?

Many thanks in advance for any response. Any suggestions very welcome.

Hi Blondie. Welcome. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

That said, you are basically asking for the impossible. You want to isolate your room, but you say you can't actually do any of the things you need to do to isolate it! Unfortunately, your chances of success are slim.

First, isolating just one wall is useless. I often use the analogy of making a fish tank: Let's say you want to have an aquarium because you like looking at fish. So you buy a metal frame for your aquarium, but then you think: "Well, I only need to see them from one side, so I'll just put one piece of glass in the front of the frame, and fill it with water! Cheap and simple".

That's basically what you are proposing to do by isolating only one wall of your room. In exactly the same way that water will simply ignore the only glass wall in the fish tank, so too sound will simply ignore the only "good" wall in your room. It will just go around that wall, and still be heard everywhere else. Technically, this is called "flanking": the sound flanks around the good wall, and still gets to the other side.

So to extend the fish tank analogy, you then decide that you do need something on the other sides to keep the water in, so you get some pieces of carpet and glue those to the other sides of the frame: You can imagine how well that works to hold in water! But that is exactly what you are proposing to do wih those "thick rock wool or glass wool panels". Just like carpet won't hold water, so too insulation does not hold sound in. The reason is simple: insulation is mostly air! Air can travel through it. If air can get through then so can sound. Insulation is also very light weight, yet the only real way of stopping sound is with very heavy, massive materials, such as drywall, plywood, glass, metal plate, and other such things. Insulation is way too light for that. Yes, putting insulation in the ceiling in your room would help a lot with the acoustics INSIDE your room, but will do nothing at all to stop the sound getting out. Insulation does have major uses in acoustic isolation, but not by itself: it has to be part of an isolation system.

The ONLY way to isolate a room at reasonable cost is to add additional mass to all of the walls (where the ceiling and floor are also considered to be "walls" here), and to decouple that mass from the existing structure. In exactly the same way as the only way to make a fish tank is with glass on all sides of the tank, or at least some type of strong, water-proof material that does the same job as glass.

There is no such thing as a magic building material that is light weight, thin, flexible, cheap and stops sound. It just does not exist, because the laws of physics do not allow such a material to exist.

So basically the bad news in your case is that you can do nothing at all since you have eliminated the only possible treatments that would do what you want.

Wooden floors, I will be covering with as much rug as I can

That would be a bad idea. Take a look at the photos of professional recording studios, and specifically their vocal booths. How many of them have carpet on the floor? Roughly zero. There's a reason for that: it is lousy, acoustically. Our brains and ears are accustomed to hearing reflections from the floor all the time: it is what gives our brains the ability to determine the acoustic dimensions and limits of the room. If your floor has thick heavy carpet, there won't be any usable reflections for your brain to work with: it won't be able to figure out where the floor is, acoustically, so it will tell you that the room just sounds "strange" and "not right". You won't be able to sing well in there, because the acoustic clues that your brain is looking for, won't be there. Studios have solid, hard, rigid floors, maybe with a small patch of thin carpet partly covering it, and that's all. On the other hand, it is the ceiling that needs most of the absorption, plus the walls to a certain extent. That's what makes fora a good psycho-acoustic space.

Inner walls are all pretty flimsy plasterboard ... wall 1 faces to the outside, no problem.

It is a problem, even though you don't see it that way. With "flimsy plasterboard", that is the equivalent of carpet for the fish tank wall...

Opposite wall faces into my apartment, no problem.

Ditto. It is a problem.

Wall 3 faces to my bedroom, no problem.

That one is also a problem.

wall 4 faces into the building stairwell.... not a huge issue,

Just as much of a problem as the other three, and more so because of the possibility of resonance, reverberance and echo.

Ceiling is the big issue.

Yes it is, but no bigger than any of the others.

Think, for example, of what would happen if you were able to isolate your ceiling very well... in that case, sound from your singing would just go through the walls, around the edges of the ceiling, and upstairs to annoy your neighbor. You would spend a lot of money, and accomplish nothing. So you figure "Well, I'll isolate the top half of the walls to stop that: sound would then go through the bottom half of the walls, around the ceiling, and upstairs, just the same as if the ceiling and half-walls were not there. So you get even smarter, and say "OK, then I'll isolate the walls completely!" Good idea... but what about the floor? Sound can still get through the floor, around the bottom edge of the walls, and upstairs, just like before.

So then you get much smarter, and say "OK, I'll do the floor as well." Yup. That is, indeed, the only solution.

it is a low ceiling of 257cm.

That's not low. Many houses these days have ceilings at 240 cm, and many basements only get 200 cm... That's low. With nearly 260 cm, you have plenty of room for good isolation, and also good treatment.

A room within a room is not an option, it's a rented apartment.

Then I have bad news for you, because if you cannot do it right, then there really is no point in doing it at all.

However, a room within a room does not have to be an entire second stud wall with four layers of drywall on it! In your case, it could be as simple as taking off the drywall on the walls and ceiling, installing suitable insulation, putting resilient channel across the studs and joists, and putting a single layer of 16mm drywall on the RC. That alone would make a big difference. Whether or not it is enough difference, depends on how much isolation you are getting right now, and how much you need.

A false ceiling is also one step too far as it is a low ceiling to begin with,

No it is not a low ceiling: 257 is a decent height. Much higher than most new construction, in most places around the world, which is around 240 cm.

...covering my ceiling with as thick rock wool or glass wool panels as possible. Will this help to stop my singing being heard by the neighbours above?

No. Insulation does not stop sound. It absorbs sound, but that's not the same at all as stopping sound. Think of a kitchen sponge: When you spill water some place you didn't want it, the sponge is great to mop up the spill. But if you try to stop water coming out your tap by putting the sponge across it, nothing happens: the water flows right through, unaffected. Substitute "insulation" for sponge, and "sound" for water, then you have a perfect analogy. Insulation is great at "mopping up" sound that spilled some place you didn't want it, but useless for stopping sound from getting out.

Is wool a good option?

No. Only when it is used as part of a complete isolation system, then it is useful. But not just by itself.

will it have a noticeable impact on sound leaving my room?

No. The impact will be close to zero.

Would you advise this?

No. While it will be very good to make the room sound good inside, acoustically, it will do practically nothing to isolate the room.

when it comes to sound proofing, would this be a total waste of time?

Yes it would be a waste of time, in terms of isolating the room. All you would accomplish is to make the room sound nice internally, but there would be very little benefit in terms of isolation.




- Stuart -

Not to go counter to any of the 'sound' advise from SoundMan ...

I don't see mention of any type of recording need for the room ... just a singing/practise room [maybe I mis-read].

As a possible alternative, I've read about 'portable ISO-rooms]. Such as:
http://www.whisperroom.com/sound-booth- ... ording.php

I have ZERO experience about them, and no first hand knowledge of any possible claims they make, but offer this as a suggestion to be researched.

Soundman2020 wrote:Hi Blondie. Welcome. Please read the forum rules for posting (click here). You seem to be missing a couple of things!

That said, you are basically asking for the impossible. You want to isolate your room, but you say you can't actually do any of the things you need to do to isolate it! Unfortunately, your chances of success are slim.

First, isolating just one wall is useless. I often use the analogy of making a fish tank: Let's say you want to have an aquarium because you like looking at fish. So you buy a metal frame for your aquarium, but then you think: "Well, I only need to see them from one side, so I'll just put one piece of glass in the front of the frame, and fill it with water! Cheap and simple".

That's basically what you are proposing to do by isolating only one wall of your room. In exactly the same way that water will simply ignore the only glass wall in the fish tank, so too sound will simply ignore the only "good" wall in your room. It will just go around that wall, and still be heard everywhere else. Technically, this is called "flanking": the sound flanks around the good wall, and still gets to the other side.

So to extend the fish tank analogy, you then decide that you do need something on the other sides to keep the water in, so you get some pieces of carpet and glue those to the other sides of the frame: You can imagine how well that works to hold in water! But that is exactly what you are proposing to do wih those "thick rock wool or glass wool panels". Just like carpet won't hold water, so too insulation does not hold sound in. The reason is simple: insulation is mostly air! Air can travel through it. If air can get through then so can sound. Insulation is also very light weight, yet the only real way of stopping sound is with very heavy, massive materials, such as drywall, plywood, glass, metal plate, and other such things. Insulation is way too light for that. Yes, putting insulation in the ceiling in your room would help a lot with the acoustics INSIDE your room, but will do nothing at all to stop the sound getting out. Insulation does have major uses in acoustic isolation, but not by itself: it has to be part of an isolation system.

The ONLY way to isolate a room at reasonable cost is to add additional mass to all of the walls (where the ceiling and floor are also considered to be "walls" here), and to decouple that mass from the existing structure. In exactly the same way as the only way to make a fish tank is with glass on all sides of the tank, or at least some type of strong, water-proof material that does the same job as glass.

There is no such thing as a magic building material that is light weight, thin, flexible, cheap and stops sound. It just does not exist, because the laws of physics do not allow such a material to exist.

So basically the bad news in your case is that you can do nothing at all since you have eliminated the only possible treatments that would do what you want.

Wooden floors, I will be covering with as much rug as I can

That would be a bad idea. Take a look at the photos of professional recording studios, and specifically their vocal booths. How many of them have carpet on the floor? Roughly zero. There's a reason for that: it is lousy, acoustically. Our brains and ears are accustomed to hearing reflections from the floor all the time: it is what gives our brains the ability to determine the acoustic dimensions and limits of the room. If your floor has thick heavy carpet, there won't be any usable reflections for your brain to work with: it won't be able to figure out where the floor is, acoustically, so it will tell you that the room just sounds "strange" and "not right". You won't be able to sing well in there, because the acoustic clues that your brain is looking for, won't be there. Studios have solid, hard, rigid floors, maybe with a small patch of thin carpet partly covering it, and that's all. On the other hand, it is the ceiling that needs most of the absorption, plus the walls to a certain extent. That's what makes fora a good psycho-acoustic space.

Inner walls are all pretty flimsy plasterboard ... wall 1 faces to the outside, no problem.

It is a problem, even though you don't see it that way. With "flimsy plasterboard", that is the equivalent of carpet for the fish tank wall...

Opposite wall faces into my apartment, no problem.

Ditto. It is a problem.

Wall 3 faces to my bedroom, no problem.

That one is also a problem.

wall 4 faces into the building stairwell.... not a huge issue,

Just as much of a problem as the other three, and more so because of the possibility of resonance, reverberance and echo.

Ceiling is the big issue.

Yes it is, but no bigger than any of the others.

Think, for example, of what would happen if you were able to isolate your ceiling very well... in that case, sound from your singing would just go through the walls, around the edges of the ceiling, and upstairs to annoy your neighbor. You would spend a lot of money, and accomplish nothing. So you figure "Well, I'll isolate the top half of the walls to stop that: sound would then go through the bottom half of the walls, around the ceiling, and upstairs, just the same as if the ceiling and half-walls were not there. So you get even smarter, and say "OK, then I'll isolate the walls completely!" Good idea... but what about the floor? Sound can still get through the floor, around the bottom edge of the walls, and upstairs, just like before.

So then you get much smarter, and say "OK, I'll do the floor as well." Yup. That is, indeed, the only solution.

it is a low ceiling of 257cm.

That's not low. Many houses these days have ceilings at 240 cm, and many basements only get 200 cm... That's low. With nearly 260 cm, you have plenty of room for good isolation, and also good treatment.

A room within a room is not an option, it's a rented apartment.

Then I have bad news for you, because if you cannot do it right, then there really is no point in doing it at all.

However, a room within a room does not have to be an entire second stud wall with four layers of drywall on it! In your case, it could be as simple as taking off the drywall on the walls and ceiling, installing suitable insulation, putting resilient channel across the studs and joists, and putting a single layer of 16mm drywall on the RC. That alone would make a big difference. Whether or not it is enough difference, depends on how much isolation you are getting right now, and how much you need.

A false ceiling is also one step too far as it is a low ceiling to begin with,

No it is not a low ceiling: 257 is a decent height. Much higher than most new construction, in most places around the world, which is around 240 cm.

...covering my ceiling with as thick rock wool or glass wool panels as possible. Will this help to stop my singing being heard by the neighbours above?

No. Insulation does not stop sound. It absorbs sound, but that's not the same at all as stopping sound. Think of a kitchen sponge: When you spill water some place you didn't want it, the sponge is great to mop up the spill. But if you try to stop water coming out your tap by putting the sponge across it, nothing happens: the water flows right through, unaffected. Substitute "insulation" for sponge, and "sound" for water, then you have a perfect analogy. Insulation is great at "mopping up" sound that spilled some place you didn't want it, but useless for stopping sound from getting out.

Is wool a good option?

No. Only when it is used as part of a complete isolation system, then it is useful. But not just by itself.

will it have a noticeable impact on sound leaving my room?

No. The impact will be close to zero.

Would you advise this?

No. While it will be very good to make the room sound good inside, acoustically, it will do practically nothing to isolate the room.

when it comes to sound proofing, would this be a total waste of time?

Yes it would be a waste of time, in terms of isolating the room. All you would accomplish is to make the room sound nice internally, but there would be very little benefit in terms of isolation.


- Stuart -

Thank you so much for the in depth reply. It is massively helpful to me, and much appreciated. I find it amazing that thick rock wool would not dampen the sound so that less escapes.. physics are amazing i guess... I thought even a thick curtain on the walls might help noticeably.. guess i better learn to sing very quietly lol. Thanks again.