cheap soundproofing ideas?

neenerbean

Hey guys,

My band will be recording our first full-length album in the coming months and will be doing so in my basement. It is finished and half underground (we have windows).

Would cheap blankets/comforters work? Where can we purchase cheap foam insulation that will work well for amps, vocals and drums? What have you rigged that works really well? We're a four-piece w/guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Amy

The Dollars - http://www.thedollars.net

Pacomc79

You can do vocals in a bathroom or 4 mattresses stacked toegther.

maybe you can rent some kind of modelling preamp/speaker emulator and track guitar from that to the board. (Think Pod, Pod Pro)

Drums are probably the loudest thing.

kigcat

egg crates are a common urban myth they really dont work at all. blankets are much better and cheaper option and also you wont end up stinking yourselves out with human methane after having to comsume a good couple of thousand eggs :P

Boom The Cat

you could try newspaper insulation, that works well I hear, but I'll ask around for you.

Pacomc79

http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/Music_room.htm

Boom The Cat

Also, good luck with the band

Bob Weir

In my experience carpeting works good,if you have a carpet retailer in your town just ask for old scraps or do what I did wait until the middle of the night and raid there dumpster. Put them all over the floor and walls and that should do the trick.

mccreadyisgod

kigcat wrote:

egg crates are a common urban myth they really dont work at all. blankets are much better and cheaper option and also you wont end up stinking yourselves out with human methane after having to comsume a good couple of thousand eggs :P

Egg crate foam (mattress pad material) is good for high-frequency absorption and dispersion, but it tends to make a room boomy and boxy since the bass and even mids are still fairly loud. It can be used, but it's not perfect.

Carpet is a good one, the thicker the better. Carpet *padding*, however, can be great. In fact, what I'd recommend is a layer of carpet padding on the wall, and then a layer of egg crate foam over that. The padding will help with low and mid frequencies, while the egg crate will get the highs.

Like Paco said, an enclosure of old mattresses will make a great vocal booth, or guitar/bass amp iso.

There are certainly much better products, purpose-built for this application, but they can be pricey. A carpet store should be able to get you some carpet pad scraps pretty cheap, and then all you need is a good staple gun or staple hammer.

El Riot Actor

neenerbean wrote:

Hey guys,

My band will be recording our first full-length album in the coming months and will be doing so in my basement. It is finished and half underground (we have windows).

Would cheap blankets/comforters work? Where can we purchase cheap foam insulation that will work well for amps, vocals and drums? What have you rigged that works really well? We're a four-piece w/guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Amy

The Dollars - http://www.thedollars.net

That blue insolation thing is cheap you can get it for cheat at home depot or places like that!

Pearl Jam and toast

blankets and things will work.. but not nearly as well as the real stuff.

its worth a shot definetly.

mic well and take your time!

good luck!

Lost_Clay

my roomate had brought home a bunch of weird styrofoam from his shipping/receiving job, like styrofoam wrapped in some type of grey plastic, that worked really well for the windows & ceiling (stappled to grooves inbetween floor boards) all we used was blankets for the walls and a few large carpets for the floor sounded great

Boom The Cat

Carpet is a good option, like someone else said on this thread, you can get it cheaply from old carpet places.. (did that make sense??) but you can also go pretty creative with carpet,

like my dad is a big Led Zepplin fan and he got 4 squares of carpet and stuck them to a wall, and four plain wood coasters, and stuck the coasters on the carpet and painted the signs for each member of Zepplin, but you could do a checkerboard effect on the walls, or mabye think of a logo for you band and do it like that.

Lukin_oz

If you want Egg Cartons go to your nearest fast food joint, on a saturday breakfast theyll go through a heap of eggs and theyre bigger cartons, theyre flat and hold like 4 dozen eggs or something so you dont need as many and its easier

Pearl Jam and toast

Lukin_oz wrote:

If you want Egg Cartons go to your nearest fast food joint, on a saturday breakfast theyll go through a heap of eggs and theyre bigger cartons, theyre flat and hold like 4 dozen eggs or something so you dont need as many and its easier

on a related note,...

if you want doughnuts go to a gas station convenient store after 10:30 or 11-ish...

just ask them and they'll let you take as many as you want for free usually.

that's 10:30 - 11 PM.

neenerbean

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Jon found that acoustic ceiling tiles worked well for vocal & amp isolation. We're not worried so much about sound being heard from outside, just that it's optimized for recording and such. Plus we'll be recording a lot of stuff "live" so we need to isolate a lot of instruments.

Thanks again and keep the suggestions coming!!

Amy

brain of c

cover everything with marshmellos.