Hey all,

Man, I don't know where else to look and my brain feels like it's about to burn up and leak out my ears.
I'm in the process of "sound proofing" a room and the last thing I'm screwing with now is the ceiling because, well, there's people above me.

I'm trying to weigh building a drop down ceiling versus installing Sheetblok.  And thus I'm trying to figure out what would work better:

a) Installing a layer of Sheetblok to the pre-existing ceiling.
b) Building a "drop down" ceiling comprised of 1-2 layers of soundboard and a single layer of paneling.

But I'll be damned if I can find anything that compares the DBs of the two.  I know Auralex's site says that Sheetblok is 6db better then lead... but I don't have any reference to go from.  Total cost in addition to man-hours spent (namely mine) is a bit of a factor; but I'm really interested in having some reference to go from.

I really appreciate it!
Thanx!

toasty,

I believe beloved veteran DC member, felix, has a day job selling sound proofing and may be able to interject. I'm not sure of what product it is but it could possibly be somewhat high end if I am discerning some of his posts correctly - but don't quote me on that.

I do know you should plan on doing some floor acoustic treatment as that can be problematic if you are sharing walls. I think a successful attempt will also depend on what kind of structure you live in (townhome, condo, apartment, duplex. etc.). I think most apartments may just be a futile effort.

Do some homework by picking up a copy of Mix magazine and call some companies advertising products for studios to deal with sound problems and see what they say.

My .02 - and sympathy FWIW

Jim

Yup-good advice during the interim.  Try talking to your neighbor to find a happy medium.  Before I converted a detatched garage (18x24), I had to go thru this sort of thing.  But looking back, if I would have been able to work something out PRIOR to t-ing the offending neighbor, I possibly could have saved a TON of money-and averted getting to know my towns finest very well.  So maybe you should just talk to this neighbor before you completely p-them off-

You just need one of these:
http://toddsucherman.com/drumroom_main.htm
 

Thats just not fair. No one should own this many sets and snares
He even has TWO DW Timeless Timber sets!!

QUOTE:

"I know Auralex's site says that Sheetblok is 6db better then lead.."

-Not in the low frequencies, it aint.  Notice that they give no specs below 100 HZ.. There's a reason.


Toasty,

If you have a problem that is serious enough that you MUST solve it, then based on your original post I suggest that you aren't ready to make any decisions yet.  You may get some good advice from this and other threads, (a few good points, above) but you will not be able to put it all together in a way that will maximize your dollar and time expenditure. There are many, MANY little mistakes that you might make which would render the whole project almost useless.

I suggest you do some reading first,  and by that I mean the library kind, not websites.  The amount of mis-information that exists online, both in private sites and companies selling product, is astounding.
Try the several books by F. Alton Everest as a start, though there are many other excellent choices.  

Once you're ready, the bottom line answer will be a "dropped ceiling."  -but only if it's built on seperate walls.  If you do it right, you probably WON'T need a complete "room within a room"  i.e. you probably don't have to float the floor.  

If your floor is wooden, not concrete, then you can also make some improvement by building an isolated drum-riser.  -Isolating the source is a whole lot easier than soundproofing the whole room.

Also, bear in mind that if you do the room properly, you will need a new source of heating AND ventilation.  (Breathing is generally a good thing.)

Last thing:  It's  not enough to soundproof the room, you must also give it some life.  If you make the inner surface completely dead, or leave it with pronounced standing-waves, you will not enjoy practicing.

(BTW, I used to build rooms for a living.)

Good luck on your journey

Just another thought...
If you are going through this exercise to appease your neighbors so you can practice, it may be most cost effective for you to buy a used set of electronic drums and play through headphones.  I can play all night on my little Roland set and not wake up a mouse.

If your having band practice at your house...back to the soundproofing.

There are a few of us left who despise playing electronic drums.  I bought an electric kit when I was exiled to a duplex for a while.  I got to the point where I practiced piano instead of drums entirely.  Just me though.

I'll try to answer your questions the best I can.  

I'm going to post some links to some testing data on  some 1lb./sq ft. prototype barrier I did a few years ago.  This data extends down to 25Hz.
Notice how the #'s don't make alot of sense from 25-63Hz:

www.woolyinc.com/1lbdata1.jpg

Then check out the graph if you want:

www.woolyinc.com/1lbgraph.jpg

Notice how the readings spike in the low frequencies by 3 and 4 db.  You record alot so you really know how "loud" a db. is.  It's a relatively large increment.

Anyways- I'm way more of a plastic person as opposed to a sound engineer, but the engineers I deal with in the testing facilities tell me that readings in these frequencies are hard to accurately measure because the waves are so large at those frequencies.  I guess a 20 Hz wave is something like 80 ft. from crest to crest.  Typically we are asked to build a 9'x15' wall sample.

So anyways most of my customers, well all of them except for you LOL, don't ask about these very low frequencies.  And the ASTM tests have more variations than I care to keep up with.  A customer basically tells me what ASTM or Absorbtion test they want to carry out (usually an E-90 in some form or another) and I get the sample tested, pass along the data, make a few recommendations on densities and price etc.  All in a days work.

*I can see everyone's eyes glazing over*

Maybe we all can learn something from this little exercise- I'm not trying to hawk our product either- I make my money from automotive and trucking companies- the studio stuff is basically a loser; I keep doing it for basically "fun" and "moral/ethical" reasons.  So I hope the moderators don't mind if I continue.  I could honestly care less if you guys buy it- drummers are definitely not my target market.

So anyhow I'm going to answer Allan's last question "how they compare weight wise".  This next test was done with 1.56 lb per square foot material- the wwall I have now is heavier but not tested; check it out:

www.woolyinc.com/wwallstc.jpg

Lets look at the performance now at 80Hz since we seem to have the most accurate data between the two samples test data.

1lb./ square ft prototype *comparable if not better than loaded vinyl at the same density* gets a transmission loss of 13 db.

1.56lb./ square ft wwall ticks in at 17- That's 4 db. better- not a bad improvement.

I don't have data on lead sheet in wall systems.  It comes in a lot of different thickness' but yes, the stuff is very heavy.  No argument here.  It also is probably tricky to work with.  I don't think it has the dynamic dampening properties of a flexible system either.  But I hire out my engineering work, so I can't answer you any better for free at this time.

And finally the real #'s that are important in our wall system comparison is the performance vs. density factor. You really have to read into it and that's my mistake- I need to go into my webpage and explain what's going on a bit better.  But the 9.61 lbs./sq. ft. vs. the 7.9 lbs./sq. ft. is kicker.  Remember there is a layer of RSC channel in the vinyl's wall construction also.  

One could add RSC channel to a woolywall system and get better low end performance.  I have data on that also, but actually didn't post it because I should have mixed the layers differently for optimum attenuation.

What I have found out about this business is there are a bazillion wall constructions people want to use for different budgets and performance requirements.  I can't test for everyone- it's veryexpensive and time consuming.  You really just have to build a few walls and ceilings with the different materials.  Thanks for understanding.

Also I have found that the snare drum is probably just as bad if not more of a sonic offender than the kick.  Drywall by itself seems to really be more "conductive" to those frequencies than kick drum.  My engineer calls that the wall's "resonate frequency".  If you tap on a snare then tap on a piece of wallboard, it's kind of uncanny how similar the fundamentals are.
Hope this helped.