Soundproofing your space

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
My office is in a subdivided warehouses with multiple units. Some of the units are rented out to musicians who quite frankly like to play their music loud. The room is a cube 12x12x12 and what i hear the most is the base of their instruments. Would covering top part of my office - everything above 8ft mark, as below there is furniture and shelves - with some of those soundproofing squares have any significant effect to get rid of some of those base sounds or am i fighting a losing battle?
 
Loosing battle, I'm afraid. Nothing will block that kind of LF sound except MASS.
Either the mass of air from being a long distance away, or the mass of walls, ceiling floors, etc.

If they are violating the terms and conditions of their occupancy, you can complain to the landlord.
Else get a good pair of headphones. Actually the "noise-cancelling" ones are rather effective for LF.

I have a pair of Sony wireless (Bluetooth) with noise-cancelling and they are quite nice.
Before I got them, I thought noise-cancelling in inexpensive consumer gear was a scam.
 
Hi Patrick,

As others have mentioned, there is nothing you can do in your situation to get rid of the bass. It travels through the floor and ceilings and putting insulation or sound dampening material will not do much.

Just to to give you an idea, when building sound proof spaces many people do things like resilient channeling between stude and drywall, with sound insulation between studs, even putting vibration absorbing membrane between floor and wall frame...or ceiling and wall frame. Heck, some people will even make two separate floor structures so that the floor on the insulated room is in a different footing than the rest of the building. Sound insulation is extremely difficult, specially against amplified bass sounds.

I suppose you can put down a layer of closed cell foam and carpet tiles on the floor, as well as hang layers of sound dampening curtains a few inches in front of your walls. Those foam tiles you put on the wall will minimize reverberation within your space, but they don't do much in terms of keeping other sounds from coming in. But all this can get expensive and the benefits rarely justify the costs.

In any case, best of luck!
 
Ugh, I feel bad for you, man. I live in the city and I've had the same problem except with sound above me from my upstairs neighbor (footsteps, banging, etc.) Unfortunately, I think what Richard said is true, it's about getting mass in between you and the sound -- in my case I would probably need a drop ceiling...
 
Sorry Patryk, as my friends have stated, there's not much you can do to alter the STL w/o significant structural modifications. As Richard suggested, noise canceling HPs would help some for playback, though I don't know how efficient they are attenuating low frequencies... even if they do, HP are not recommended for mixing.
 
Agreed with all the above. You cannot soundproof against that, in a rented space. You'd have to build a floating detached room to make it truly "soundproof". And bass is the worst to combat.

If it's simply a case of an apartment neighbor or something like that, you can actually combat bass with bass of your own; the most blissful product I've ever found was SimplyNoise combined with a subwoofer; it masks the incoming bass signal (at the expense of, well, full-time your room sounds like you're on an airplane). Great for sleeping, but not really what you want when you're trying to mix a soundtrack.

Best thing you can do is move to a building that respects and enforces "quiet possession" of your space.
 
Thank you guys for your help! It saves me a few hundred dollars - though i would rather spend the money and fix the problem.
The office is in warehouse for artists, musicians, small businesses so expectation of noise is there - i just wish my night schedule didn't collateral with some of the musicians...
 
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