I like to think i can play the drum's but unfortunatly my neighbour's don't seem to agree with my delusion's.

I currently have a set up in my garage which owing to a complaint about 2 years ago i don't get much use from. What i am thinking is soundproofing the garage door as i see this as a great big metal amp, that fire's the sound out in to the street. Does any one have any ideas how i can do this cheaply and simply as i hope to have the garage converted to a room a some point in the near future

I don't need it studio quality as i think metallica are quite happy with Lars Ulrich at the moment

I just need to lower the overall volume in the street because at the minute my kit can be heard about 100 meters up the road and round the corner !!!!!:eek:

If its a sheet steel door, then get som damping material on it. A thick well bonded rubber or similar dense foam/lead, stuck to the flat bits will deaden the door shell emissions. This should also act as a bit of a reflector, and bounce the noise back in. You can buy stuff called 'brown bread' I think, from car audio shops, but its damn expensive. Self adhesive lead flashing may work, but not too sure about that.

Secondly, a few inches of spun fibreglass or rockwool slabs (from B&Q) attached to the inside of the door will absorb a hugh amount of sound energy.

Also, I assume you have muted drum skin cover thingies (those neoprene circles on top of the drums) and a bag of somehting fluffy in the bass drum? If not, get yourself to a music shop.

Finally, make sure there are no gaps around the garadge door, as this will be the main source of noise leakage. Use door strips or brushes to close these up.

Phil

Uni used to use carpets on the wall, however from some cinema/theatre work, and I'm no expert here, what I believe you need is:

- a) 2-4mm of heavy layer such as dynamat or brown bread etc.

- Some dense foam, about 1-2cm thick

- c) Some open foam (not very dense), ideally with an `egg box` pattern on the top.

Layer these in that order and you pretty much have the same as some very expensive sound sheeting to coat the surface of your choice.

For movable stuff we used to fix that on 3mm hardboard, then used hooks and industrial velcro to position it where needed

Sounds good (geddit)

The door is the "up and over" type so it has rigdes running across it so sticking stuff to it could be tricky

Also it needs to be a usable door so i need to consider weight

How about rockwool in strips in between the ridges ??

Make up the thing i suggested on some hard boar and place some hooks above the garage door.

Hang the hardboard with stuff on it over the door when playing (you can make it in 2 or so pieces so you can move it) and take it off when not using.

That would work about as well as you could without adding weight to the door.

I never found ridges an issue, but I guess you could pad it out before sticking stuff over.

If you have counter weights you can add small weights to the top of it to counter the increased mass of the door.

dynamat is useless for stuff like that because it's too expensive

rock wool is your best bet... you can buy it in huge squares, and you just glue it on to the walls

Make up the thing i suggested on some hard boar and place some hooks above the garage door.

Hang the hardboard with stuff on it over the door when playing (you can make it in 2 or so pieces so you can move it) and take it off when not using.

That a good idea cheeze

Its on runners with spring type counters so i could use the runners to hang the boards on

Excellent suggestions keep them coming

I don't know if they're still going, but there used to be a company called "Acoustikit" who made sound deadening kits for cars. They also supplied (relatively) bulk material, including "anti-drum padding" (no joke) which stops metal panels resonating. This stuff was about 5mm thick, and self-adhesive.

ignore the neighbours?

ignore the neighbours?

Another useful reply babs lol:rolleyes:

You ain't met the battleaxe that is my neighbour funny thing is that she lives up the other end of my street no-one who lives by me is bothered

lol - here to help!

digital drumkit? can play on headphones then!

digital drumkit? can play on headphones then!

Good call but too expensive for me at the moment

plus i like the real kit sound

done underestimate the sound quaity of the roland v-drums... they are class!

Good call but too expensive for me at the moment

plus i like the real kit sound

real kits do sound better!

I don't know if they're still going, but there used to be a company called "Acoustikit" who made sound deadening kits for cars. They also supplied (relatively) bulk material, including "anti-drum padding" (no joke) which stops metal panels resonating. This stuff was about 5mm thick, and self-adhesive.

What I was suggesting is pretty much a thicker version of what you are mentioning, only a lot cheaper

What I was suggesting is pretty much a thicker version of what you are mentioning, only a lot cheaper

Anti-drum padding's only maybe one layer of your construct, if my understanding was correct. Anyway, I was suggesting it as a suppliment to the other ideas, not instead of any or all of them.

a quick search on tinternet

Q I've heard that sticking egg boxes or acoustic foam to walls will help soundproof a room. Is this true?

Egg boxes can make a marginal improvement to some aspects of a room's acoustics by breakingup reflections from hard surfaces, but they are virtually useless for soundproofing. The same is true of lightweight suspended ceilings, acoustic foam and even Rockwool (Rockwool tends to be used for acoustic treatment or for damping out resonances inside partition walls. All these materials have their uses, but they're mainly for acoustic treatment, not for soundproofing).

Q So, what are the requirements for soundproofing?

The term 'soundproofing' is rather misleading, because in most real-world situations, you can cut down on leakage but you can't get rid of it altogether. Sound isolation is a more accurate term.

The simplest way to attenuate sound is to put a solid wall in its way -- the more solid, the better the isolation you'll get. As a rule, if you double the mass of a wall, you halve the amount of sound transmitted through it. Unfortunately, sound isolation tends to fall with frequency, so even though you may be able to get the mids and highs under control, the chances are that you'll still be able to hear the bass drum and bass guitar thumping away from outside. That's why when you walk past a club, all you can hear from outside is bass.

To give you some examples of what to expect, a single brick wall might have a quoted Sound Reduction Index (SRI) of 45dB (this is averaged over a range of frequencies, so the bass-end isolation will be rather worse than this figure) while a domestic panel door might only give you around 10dB of isolation. Because the degree of sound isolation depends largely on mass, lightweight solutions such as partition walls work noticeably less well than solid brick or concrete. However, there's another useful fact we can utilise -- two walls are always better than one.

If a single wall can reduce the sound leakage by 45 or 50dB, you might imagine that two separate walls spaced apart might give you 45dB for each wall, or 90dB altogether. Sadly, unless the walls are separated by a large distance, the air between them couples energy from one wall to the other and reduces this figure considerably. However, and this is the important bit, two walls with an air gap in between will always give better results than a single wall of double the thickness. The wider the gap, the better the sound isolation, especially at low frequencies.

The thick layers at the bottom are for the mass, then the dense and more open egg shelled foam layers help at other frequencies.

SOunds like hanging an extra wall on chipboard, might be a better solution than using the door itself

:thumbup: Thanks for all your input on this subject i now have few ideas to play with

cheers:D

That's ok... if you do it and your neighbours still complain you should introduce them to the soundproofing... head first

That's ok... if you do it and your neighbours still complain you should introduce them to the soundproofing... head first

Aye it's only the one old gripper up the street, everyone else is fine with the calamity that is me trying to play the drums.

I think your idea may be most suited to my requirements......now need to get off fat backside and do it before i forget what little i have learnt about drumming