room acoustics jam room

Egg cartons ... lots of them .. those plaster walls are killer. Have all your friends and family save all their empty egg cartons and line the walls with them. It will take time but it is a really cheap way to dampen the sound.

The fastest mod: Hang heavy blankets on the walls. That will help kill mid to high freq reflections. Unfortunately, it will do little for low frequencies, to which all but the right materials (and lots of them) are fairly transparent. Corner baffling (usually large foam cylinders or cylindrical wedges or piles of blanketing can help low end reflection a bit, but don't hold your breath, as the effect can be subtle.

I hope you don't smoke in your practice area. If so, remember to consider fire safety in whatever you do.

Good ideas!!

I didn't get any info as to what is on the floor. For sure heavy rugs would work.

Also large pieces of sponge rubber can be had at fabric stores. You can buy large sheets or cut to fit (but that will cost more). You can turn your speaker cabinets to the walls and cover the grills with the sponge rubber and that will remove and direct sound and reflections. Also for acoustic drums you can stuff pieces of that sponge rubber inside the shells (hopefully big enough to make contact with both heads and that will help deaden the acoustic drums. Also a set of head dampeners (about $65 including cymbal dampers) would be an inexpensive way to deaden the drum kit.

For the best in practice conditions, using electric drums and a head phone amp for every one is how we do it. And we can practice day or night without disturbing anyone. The loudest noises will be vocals. :wink:

I saw something once done to a cinder block warehouse space being used as a practice studio that was interesting, effective and most importantly -- CHEAP! The owner used cheap carpet, the kind you can buy at the big Home Depot or Lowes stores by the foot, 6 feet wide. He hung it, loosely, from the walls and ceiling. In the space between the carpet and the walls (or ceiling) he stuffed wall insulation - the pink stuff that comes in rolls. When it was done, the room was dead quiet.

I know it involves a cost, but many websites offer proper high density sound proofing mats for slightly less than they used to be. If you bought one or two then doubled them over and put them underneath the bass amp you could cut quite a lot of the bass frequencies. So much so that I've sometimes thought even putting blankets underneath can make it sound *hollow* or *thin*.

I've heard that another thing you could do to even up the freqs is to put the guitar amps ontop of chairs to raise them from the ground.

Hey everyone. So my band theodore scratch http://www.myspace.com/theodorescratch has this incredible jam room with some really sweet equipment. Its really sweet because of its size and its equipment but the actual room itself poses a bit of a problem. For example, i believe the room is a bit to "live" for a jam room

This should give you the grounding to figure out a DIY solution. The site include plans for building bass traps and diffusors, along with enough easily digestible theory to understand what the problems really are.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html