help reduce sound between basement and main level

[kickdrummer58]

I have converted my basement into my studio. The kitchen and living room are directly over my control room and live room. we plan on replacing all the floors in the main and upper level of the house early next year with a high quality laminate. Im wondering if when we do this I can do anything to lessen the transfer of sound between the basement and main level. right now its not bad but if im tracking guitar or drums it can be a bit to audible in the main part of the house. the room within a room idea isnt a very useable one in the basement do to the width of the room. but if I could do something to decouple the ceiling I would but im not sure that would make a big difference. Thoughts and ideas are much appreciated.

Thanks

[kickdrummer58]

Any ideas?

[666666]

Originally Posted by kickdrummer58

Any ideas?

I'd imagine that nobody has answered your question yet because what you're asking has pretty much been covered in the forum here many times, at least in terms of general techniques and principals.

If isolating your basement is important to you, you could either hire a professional (there are several excellent ones that hang around here) to either design a plan and/or actually build it for you, or you could spend several hours doing some heavy searching on this forum as well as pick up a few good books on studio construction etc... then give it your best shot.

I am not a pro so I'm not qualified to give you accurate advise, but a few notes:

...we plan on replacing all the floors in the main and upper level of the house early next year with a high quality laminate. Im wondering if when we do this I can do anything to lessen the transfer of sound between the basement and main level...

If you wish to take advantage of the fact that you will be redoing the flooring on the first floor of the house, the only thing I can think of that might help a little in terms of reducing transmission from the basement to the first floor is to add some mass under your laminate flooring. Like, for instance, you could lay down one layer of 3/4" MDF sheeting (Green Glue underneath) then add the laminate finished floor on top. But, this likely would only help reduce mid to upper frequency transmission and probably would not do too much for lows... at least not by itself. It's better than nothing, would help some, but would not make a night and day difference by itself.

And of course, a problem with this idea is that you'd be raising the entire floor by 3/4" which might then interfere with doors and other things... could be dealt with, but... all depends on how much work you wanna do. I actually did this in my own house, added 3/4" plywood everywhere (using deck screws into the joists), not JUST to aid in soundproofing but also because my existing subflooring was crap and I wanted to beef it up to tighten up the floor... worked great, everything is way more solid now, less movement, less creaking, etc... and definitely helps in terms of mid to upper sound transmission.

In my opinion, a room within a room, sitting on a slab, not touching any other part of the house, is best. Are you sure you cannot make this happen?

Another thought, and I really do not know too much about this, is to "hang" a ceiling from the joists using special isolation hangers, thus the basement ceiling is still connected to the house framing but is decoupled to some extent by the special hangers. You can search this on the forum.

I am in the same boat as you to some extent with a new basement build I am going to be doing soon, I want to do a true room within room but there are some obstacles that will make doing so very difficult and laborious. I need to research the whole hanger thing myself, either that or I may just go through the trouble of making a room within room exist, regardless of the difficultly.

In my not so fully educated opinion, you cannot beat a room within room approach because it yields 100% decoupling... there is no mechanical coupling whatsoever (aside from the room sitting on the slab which IS a part of the house foundation). And, based on my limited first-hand experience building fully decoupled room within room set-ups in basements, the performance yielded is extremely impressive. In my opinion, it's totally worth doing if isolation is important to you.

You mentioned that you can't do room within room due to the width of the room... not enough width? In one room within room I built, I also had very limited space, I built the frame using 2"X3"s (instead of 2"X4"s), this saved me a total of 2 inches all the way around (verses using 2"X4"s).

Then figure two layers of 5/8" sheetrock on the frame... so, if you use 2"x3"s for framing, then figure in all the sheetrock, you lose a total of 7.5 inches TOTAL in both dimensions, not including an air gap between framing and whatever is at the outside of the framing, but this gap can be very small. So let's say you run an inch gap all the way around, so then you lose 9 inches total in both dimensions.

So, your width... are you saying that you cannot afford to lose a "mere" 9 inches? Pull out a ruler right now and see what 9 inches looks like. It's not that much really. Unless your total room area is like a tiny closet, you can probably afford 9 inches total on the width. Sure, it sucks to lose any square footage at all, but.... how important is the isolation to you?

I built a basement room a while back, went through this same "dilemma", I sacrificed some square footage to have a fully decoupled room, and I'm glad I did. The room, while small, is working out just fine and I am loving the isolation. Sure, bigger is better, but isolation is of high importance to me.

But maybe a pro will chime in here and guide us in terms of a hanger system strategy that might yield outstanding results considering.

What I don't like about hangers personally, at least as far as reducing transmission INTO a basement from the first floor: in many houses, the first floor joists will flex when people are walking around on the first floor. Like, when I am in unfinished parts of the basement of my house and the kids are jumping around on the first floor, I can literately see the joists moving from below (I have long spans). So, unless you want to rebuild and/or beef that all up to a large extent to somehow eliminate movement altogether (which is very hard to do and likely not cost effective), you need to consider that the joists are simply going to move... and thus anything attached to those joists is going to move too. So, while a spring or rubber dampened hanger may absorb some degree of shock and movement, things are still going to move... even if just a little. Somehow that likely will lead to some degree of additional sound transmission, even if it's just the sheetrock ceiling itself creaking as it flexes or whatever. Building a room with room however where NOTHING touches the house framing, you could have an elephant dancing on the first floor and the ceiling of the basement room will not be disturbed AT ALL, zero movement. I like that.

[kickdrummer58]

thanks for your time and response. I have read many posts on here speaking of solutions for this but the room in only 7.5' wide. 9" would put the feet of the cymbal stands touching the walls. I know the room probably isnt the best width for tracking drums and there are other options to doing so but I would like to have the option here. thats why I am looking to the 2nd floor and ceiling possibilities. Although I would love to do this if I could find more space somehow lol. there is about 1.5' to 2' of space between the foundation wall and stud wall but the foundation is not poured in that gap. It is just gravel. Probably for moisture reasons.

Decoupling the ceiling I feel would not be a good investment because of the transmission through the walls to the floor above and i dont know a lot about the flooring but i figured mass and maybe insulation between the joists would be better? I like the idea of MDF or rubber sheets below the laminate floor.

If you experienced improvement in the mid to high transmission with your flooring change thats probably my best bet. Rght now if im recording a guitar (loud, probably to loud) and I go upstairs I can hear them pretty clearly. muffled but you can hear it over the TV at a moderate volume.

[Basslik]

Originally Posted by kickdrummer58

thanks for your time and response. I have read many posts on here speaking of solutions for this but the room in only 7.5' wide. 9" would put the feet of the cymbal stands touching the walls. I know the room probably isnt the best width for tracking drums and there are other options to doing so but I would like to have the option here. thats why I am looking to the 2nd floor and ceiling possibilities. Although I would love to do this if I could find more space somehow lol. there is about 1.5' to 2' of space between the foundation wall and stud wall but the foundation is not poured in that gap. It is just gravel. Probably for moisture reasons.

Decoupling the ceiling I feel would not be a good investment because of the transmission through the walls to the floor above and i dont know a lot about the flooring but i figured mass and maybe insulation between the joists would be better? I like the idea of MDF or rubber sheets below the laminate floor.

If you experienced improvement in the mid to high transmission with your flooring change thats probably my best bet. Rght now if im recording a guitar (loud, probably to loud) and I go upstairs I can hear them pretty clearly. muffled but you can hear it over the TV at a moderate volume.

I would make it simple, insulation sound batts, RC channel, 1/2 dead sound board, then quit rock on top of that.

[666666]

Originally Posted by kickdrummer58

...the room in only 7.5' wide. 9" would put the feet of the cymbal stands touching the walls.

Hmmm... well, since the width of the room is really tight, how about the length? You can simply re-orientate the drums, place them in whatever position / angle that makes them fit best. Though, now thinking about it, 7.5 feet minus 9" leaves you with 81" which is 6', 9"... this is barely enough room to allow a kit to fit, regardless of orientation. My general drumkit footprint rule is that you need at least a 7'X7' square of free space for a typical 5 or 6 piece drumkit.

As for the extra 2' of so from the stud wall to foundation wall... the gravel you see there may be part of a french drain system which may have been put there for important drainage reasons... so unless you know exactly what the story is on that, I would not recommend altering it. Then again, there is also a possibility (unlikely) that it is NOT a drain and may not actually serve a function, if this WAS the case, you could fill the gravel area with concrete and expand your space. One way or another you might be able to use this floor space but, unless you really know what's going on, you'd have to hire a professional to scope it out.

Overall it does seem that you're limited in terms of what you can build in the basement.

Adding a layer of 3/4" MDF on the first floor, under your new laminate flooring, I'd say is better than nothing, but certainly don't expect miracles. It'll help a bit with things like guitars. Drums not so much.

It depends on how much extra work will be involved to allow the 3/4" MDF layer. To get any benefit at all you have to cover the entire area that you wish to protect, this means ALL flooring, including closets, under your cabinets and refrigerator, etc, etc, etc, and get it all tight to all wall plates. You may also have to cut your doors a bit, raise your radiators, etc. If you have too many of these types of issues to deal with, the question then becomes, is it worth it to even bother with the MDF at all? Again, the MDF alone is not going to work wonders. It'll give you a little extra attenuation but the difference may not be enough to make it worthwhile. In my situation, adding the extra layer of 3/4" plywood to all my flooring was no big deal because I had to redo / replace all my doors, radiators, moldings and just about everything else anyway.

To really start making a real difference, I'd say you DO need to look at things from underneath... the basement "ceiling" side.

And if a self-standing, fully decoupled room frame cannot be built on the slab, next step is to indeed research the best and/or most cost-effective ways of adding the "best" ceiling system possible, best type of "hangers" (whether RC channel or something else), and so on. This I do not know too much about.

If you have existing stud walls in the basement that attach to the house frame, walls that will ultimately be a part of your new basement room, you'll want to "decouple" the sheetrock layers on those walls as well.

The sad fact is, unless you can really dial up a truly good plan and follow it to the letter, while you may cut down on some transmission, you will likely still wind up with an unacceptable amount of transmission. This being the case, some folks opt to just do nothing and simply resort to "scheduling". "Scheduling" means, make noise when nobody is home and thus you need not worry about sound leakage to the upstairs. When people are home, use that time to do "quiet" things, like writing, editing, mixing, instrument and gear maintenance, reading the Gearslutz forum etc.

[olmanbenny]

I built a room-within-a-room in my basement (6" air gap between walls for max bass attenuation), with the exception of the ceiling due to low existing ceiling height. I used 2 layers of 5/8" sheet rock with green glue in between on all walls/ceiling. I used acoustical caulk around all joints of both layers. I used two doors (one for each wall) to access the room. This achieved a 60dB attenuation when standing in front of the double doors closed....and my wife and kids can watch TV on low volume right in front of my studio doors and just barely hear my drums. Above my room the STC rating is far less due to lack of decoupling...I'm sure it's 10db louder up there than it is standing in front of the double doors downstairs. But for my needs/house layout this has still worked out well (I can play my drums at 3am---if I need to!---and my wife and kids won't wake up).

I almost added the following step (if it weren't for the added expense and labor) as an alternative to decoupling the ceiling:

Pad the entire ceiling joist cavities with sheetrock/caulk/greenglue/2nd layer of sheetrock and then insulate the cavity prior to sheetrocking the ceiling. This increases the mass of the ceiling and provides more air tight seal of the ceiling. It won't be as good as decoupling the ceiling, but it'll help. This was a tip I got from the John Sayers web site...an amazing resource for studio building with a ton of pros weighing in.

Here's a link to that forum if you haven't visited it yet:
John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum • Index page

BTW-you'll want a good # of bass traps and other acoustical treatment in your room after hermetically sealing it...remember, most of that sound that was escaping is now bouncing around inside your room!

Best of luck,
Benny
PS: I'm not a pro builder, nor acoustician...just interested!