Basement treatment/isolation quandries

[hudempka]

Greetings all, been following this forum heavily for the last while soaking up info after moving house, and realizing my new space has big problems


Sound Treatment

this basement sounds really awful compared to my last room, but I think I have a pretty good handle on taming this,

I am planning to put;

1) a superchunk in the corner directly behind the right speaker, and one in right corner at back of room as well, everythign on left side is either a doorway or stairwell so can't do anything on that side chunkwise.
2) 6" traps;
-behind the desk
-on the wall to the left of the desk,
-on the wall of stairs
-against the furnace door.
3) mounting a 2 or 4" panel spanning back wall and ceiling above the desk/monitors
and maybe a couple on the white brick wall

Does this sound reasonable? any other suggestions? Desk placement? Should i baffle ext of ducts in anyway?

The room has an odd shape, long and thin but lots of weird angles.

My biggest issue is the ceiling height is at most 6'4", and the drywall covered ducting comes down 6" to 9" past that as you can see in the photos.

Unfortunately I am 6'4" too



which brings me to the area of

Sound Isolation

The basement was finished off just prior to the house going up for sale, they did a great looking job, but not much to recommend past aesthetics. The ceiling is totally uninsulated, including all drywalled ductwork (i popped out one of the pot lights to check, just 1/2' drywall screwed to joists, nothing else inside) and the 80+ yr old hardwood floors in both our house and neighbours transfer sound like mad. I can hear what they are watching on tv, locate where they are walking to and from...I'm amazed (not in a good way) how much the floor/ceiling lets through, the brick wall on the left is great at least....


Alot of the iso tricks (decoupling/resilient channel/2x drywall) are problematic as I won't be able to stand up straight if i use them

Can anyone recommend what is going to be the best way to isolate as much as possible without losing headroom? Just shove it full of Roxul safe n sound? The floor above is really really bad, i'm really not concerned about ourselves as much as the neighbours, and I don't really know how much even a great job is going to iso our floors from one another

And is there any possible way to not tear down/ replace this brand new drywall job? like remove some small part and work from there (this sounds very unlikely)

any and all tip for dealing with these two separate issues of iso/dampening appreciated



FYI-This will not be a recording space, only tracking, however i do electronic very bass heavy music and work best at night, so I'm really up against it in regards to mixing at the moment

[Rossome]

You should check into quiet rock if ya don't want the ceiling any lower. I bought a bunch for my low ceiling which is about the same height as yours. I haven't put it in yet. Has some really good STC ratings and supposed to be the equivalent to having 8 sheets of drywall stacked on top of eachother. Pretty pricey stuff though. I paid $64 Canadian a sheet for it.

[Glenn Kuras]

1) a superchunk in the corner directly behind the right speaker, and one in right corner at back of room as well, everythign on left side is either a doorway or stairwell so can't do anything on that side chunkwise.

Symmetry is important in the front of the room so I would put a panel on stands for each front corner. You can then move the one when need be.

Everything else seems ok to me.

Glenn

[Weasel9992]

Originally Posted by hudempka

Can anyone recommend what is going to be the best way to isolate as much as possible without losing headroom? Just shove it full of Roxul safe n sound? The floor above is really really bad, i'm really not concerned about ourselves as much as the neighbours, and I don't really know how much even a great job is going to iso our floors from one another.

Stuffing it full of SnS would have some effect, but certainly not anything like isolation with respect to sub 125Hz frequencies. It might be good enough to work though, if it's worth it...(see below)

Originally Posted by hudempka

...And is there any possible way to not tear down/ replace this brand new drywall job? like remove some small part and work from there (this sounds very unlikely)

The only thing I can think of is to cut a 3'x3' aperture that would allow you to get in and out of the space above the ceiling...work from the edges of the space back toward the center, then patch the hole when you're done. Though, come to think of it it might be easier to just remove a whole sheet of sheet rock, then replace it with a new one when you're done.

Frank

[hudempka]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

Though, come to think of it it might be easier to just remove a whole sheet of sheet rock, then replace it with a new one when you're done.

Frank

thanks all for the replies, i think what you've stated above makes the most sense really, and also allow it to be done piecemeal, which is much less daunting.

So, remove sheet, fill cavity with roxul, maybe other deadening techniques (layer sheet of drywall on bottom of floor? Have seen some interesting ways of appraoching this in other threads, will have to investigate further), replace drywall with sheet of quietrock and slowly redo the space....it's so simple to write down, have a feeling doing it might be less straightforward

Also, If I was to go this route, can i pull the drywall off back to the ductwork, then rather than ripping it all down (beyond my skill level to replace that work properly) simply cram the ductwork with insulation? Or should I apply proper duct insulation around this?..will have to get up there first to really know what i'm up against/how much of a gap between drywall and ducts there is....maybe there's room to do both

[hudempka]

Originally Posted by Glenn Kuras

Symmetry is important in the front of the room so I would put a panel on stands for each front corner. You can then move the one when need be.

Everything else seems ok to me.

Glenn

Thanks Glenn, Your statement about symmetry is interesting for this space, as to the left of the desk is a doorway, which is recessed about 9" from the rest of the wall, and there is a large area of ductwork coming down another 9" from the ceiling here running 30-36" the length of the left side of the room save for a 3x5' area(ish, very bizarre angles every which way) in front of the doorway entrance.



At the moment, the desk is forced into the corner as the ductwork is too tall, I could dissasemble the desk and put one of vertical columns of the desk on other side of the ductwork, which would balance the desk in the middle of the room, and then mount/hang a basstrap in front of the doorway so it sits flush with the rest of the wall....does this make more sense or am i overengineering the problem? (it's only about a 12-15" shift of the desk placement, width of room is only 112" here though so i suppose that's significant...

edit: moving the desk over will end up putting the left speaker sitting directly underneath the ductwork 8" above, which i imagine will present a whole new set of sound issues....guess i will play around and see which sounds better