How to Navigate Audio File Recovery on Digital Voice Recorders
Use this step-by-step instruction here to learn how to navigate audio file recovery on digital voice recorders.
How to Soundproof A Room For Drums Cheaply
Completely soundproofing a drum room would be virtually impossible without hiring professional help and spending several thousand dollars. However, if you are working on a tight budget, you can try sound treatment on your existing drum room. This will drastically reduce the sound that gets out of the drum room.
Below, I list and explain the steps you can follow to help reduce the noise from your drum room. All these steps are easy to do yourself, and you do not have to spend much.
5 Steps to Soundproof a Room for Drums
- Step 1: Find and Seal Openings and Leaks
- Step 2: Work on the Door
- Step 3: Blocking the Windows
- Step 4: Get a Drum Rug or a Sound Isolation Board
- Step 5: Soundproofing the Walls and Ceiling
Openings and leaks present in a drum room are one of the areas where the noise comes out from. Sealing these holes whether big or small would be a step forward in containing the drum sound in the room. Finding these opening and leaks, especially the small ones would be a challenge.
But, in the end it would be worthwhile.
To locate or identify these leaks will not be a fun process. To speed things up try using a flashlight or feel the airflow in the cracks with your fingers. You can also quickly locate the openings if you turn off the lights in the room and leave the lights outside on. Bigger openings will be easily identifiable from the inside and quicker to fix.
For spaces or openings between the frame and the door or windows, you can try something like a Soundproof Weather Stripping Door Kit or fix a Door sweep to stop the noise. For small leaks and openings around the room, you can use caulk or a foam seal tape.
However, you should be careful not to interrupt the airflow into and out of the room. Interruption of the airflow may lead to the room getting hotter and sometimes stuffy. The better option would be to seal as many of the holes and openings as possible but leave some areas to enable efficient airflow.
Apart from the openings between the door and the frame, the door itself can be a medium that allows the transmission of sound to other rooms in your home. This is common, especially with hollow doors. Investing in a solid core door could be pricey; however, you can always insulate your door by adding mass to prevent sound bleeding to other rooms.
To do this you can try you can try the singer safety double-faced quilted fiberglass.
However, do not expect the sound to completely be reduced, though the material will absorb a fair amount of it. Other ways you can add mass to your door for effective soundproofing include; installing soundproof acoustic panels or attaching some mass loaded vinyl to the door. To seal the gap at the bottom of the door, a door sweep is a good option.
Other than these options, you can manually add insulating materials inside your door. This method will, however, require some carpentry skills to be done and will consume more time.
Just like doors, windows also leak noise from the room. I have written a detailed guide on how you can soundproof windows, but I will point out some of the methods you can try.
First, you can try soundproofing curtains. These curtains are thick and woven to block out noise from getting out. NICETOWN Blackout Curtains are a good choice you can try.
If you can do with covering your windows completely, you can build and install a window plug. Window plugs are far much efficient in blocking sound, and if you are up for a DIY project, you can consider making them.
NICETOWN Blackout Curtains Panels
Drums produce vibrations, and a way of minimizing the vibrations from traveling through the floor is getting a drum rag. A drum rug placed underneath your drum kit will work to absorb the sounds from interacting directly with the floor. You can get the Meinl Cymbals MDR-BK Drum Rug. It is advisable the rug is laid on top of a floor that is already carpeted to enhance its efficiency.
Apart from getting a drum rag, you can decouple your drum kit from the floor by building a small drum riser. Add as much dense materials as possible. To decouple it from the floor, you can use U-boats, hockey pocks, neoprene, tennis balls, or thick foam.
Building a tennis ball riser would also efficiently work to absorb sound. Below is a short and fast video illustrating the construction of a tennis ball riser for drums.
Bare walls and ceiling can also work to amplify the sound of drums if left untouched. To block sound from passing through the walls and ceiling, you can cover them with acoustic foam. Acoustic foams are relatively cheap like the Pyramid Studio Treatment Wall Panels that also come in different colors to match your room colors.
Apart from using acoustic foam, you can try putting mass loaded vinyl on the wall. To enhance its advantages, if you are building the walls, you can insert the mass loaded vinyl inside the walls.
Bass absorber or Bass traps can also be placed around the corners of your room to absorb the low-frequency waves. Usually, bass traps are placed in corners, but you should also consider the distance of the walls. For a better guide on bass trap placement refer to this guide by arqen.
Therefore, there you have it, five easy and cheap ways to soundproof a drum room. Other than the steps mentioned above, you can try other methods such as getting an acrylic drum shields like the DS6L Drum Shield or for a cheaper option try the DS4 5-panel drum shield.
You can also try better furniture placement in a room or get sound absorbing furniture to minimize sound from reflecting or bouncing off surfaces.
If you have funds, you can try a better approach like constructing a room-in-a-room. This approach will require you to raise the floor and decouple it from the existing one and ensuring the room is airtight so no sound leakages will occur.
We also have articles here about how to soundproof a recording studio and how to soundproof your car that you might be interested in.