RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

One word: mass

Another word: seal all openings (wait, that was three words)

Do you have any intention at all of making this a multipurpose space? Do 
you have the ability/desire to use any construction techniques available 
to you?

If I were building a box solely to keep sound in, I'd do the following:

1) slab-on-grade construction
2) walls made out of ICFs (Insulating Concrete Forms): http://www.forms.org/
3) no windows (sorry! no view for you!)
4) Doubled doors (one framed to be flush with the exterior wall & the 
other to be flush with the interior wall) with heavy weatherstripping

The roof/ceiling structure might actually be trickiest, but if you use 
double drywall on the ceiling & then load up on the insulation above, 
you'd probably be OK.

If you're just looking for *attenuation* as opposed to major 
soundproofing, then you can start eliminating items from that list.

You still have to adhere to the basic rules of thumb, though: sound is 
going to exit the structure either through holes (even tiny ones) or by 
vibrating the walls of the structure itself. So you have to seal all the 
holes, and you have to make the walls of the structure massive enough 
that your drums/amps can't effectively make them vibrate. Or decouple 
the interior & exterior walls enough that if the interior ones vibrate, 
the exterior ones don't.

Ross

James Hepler wrote:
> OK, so you're building a structure from scratch, and you have all necessary
> permits and everything?  I just want to be clear that what I'm picturing in
> my head is what you have in mind.
>
> * Windows:  The single best way to limit the amount of sound that permeates
> will be number and sizes of windows.  If you can limit that, you're off to a
> great start.  but then you have climate control to think about.  So planning
> is obviously key.
>
> I really hope I'm not sounding condescending.  I'm thinking in print.
>
> * If you're building from scratch, you have the luxury of putting most of
> your sound dampening material inside the walls.  I would think that some
> good, dense insulation would be pretty much all you need in order to keep
> sound in.  I mean, I practice in my guest room, and while neighbors two
> doors down can hear THAT we're practicing when they're in their back yards,
> nothing makes it through both sets of walls, and I have crappy insulation if
> I have any at all.
>
> It seems like it would be pretty easy to get your outside walls put up and
> insulation installed and then test it out.
>
> I don't think it would take much to get everything within the parameters of
> local ordinances. This is all I can think of, and others are way smart and
> more experienced when it comes to this stuff than me.  Listen to them. Good
> luck!
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Michel Inserny <minserny AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Good morning fellas,
> >
> > I'm sure this has been discussed in the past, but I'm trying to get some
> > help building a band practice space in my back yard. Has anybody done
> > something similar that can give me some contacts, web links, telephone
> > numbers, etc to get some advice as of what's the best way to sound
> > attenuate/proof new construction so my neighbors dont complain when I play
> > music in that room?
> >
> > This will be a new, independent building that will be a little more than
> > 100
> > ft away from any neighbor, and I need to make 100% sure it works for the
> > purpose.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Michel
> > -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene