If you have the talent to play one or even several instruments, you can consider yourself really lucky. If the instrument, such as the saxophone, the guitar or the drums, can then also be played at home, then that is of course the ultimate. However, not every musical instrument can be turned up or down with a controller. On the contrary, acoustic musical instruments have a basic volume that can hardly be influenced. This is also the reason why most neighbors ring the doorbell after a certain time and ask to turn down the music. This is not only annoying for the neighbor, but of course for you as well.

But that’s not the only problem. If you are really passionate about music, you will quickly hear it at home: the music resounds throughout the room, the tones are too shrill and the piece of music itself just sounds off. It is not your way of playing that is to blame. It’s the room in which you play the musical instrument. Bare walls, parquet or laminate flooring, and maybe even a high ceiling – it’s all poison for the music. If you value good sound and stress-free interaction with neighbors, you should therefore soundproof your music room. Our tips tell you how to do it.

Protection against interference from inside and outside

The first consideration is, of course, the protection of one’s own studio space, especially the recording rooms, from outside immissions. Particularly important is the inclusion of structure-borne sound transmission emanating from sources that may be further away in the building or even outside the building, such as air-conditioning compressors or nearby railroad lines. The maximum permissible sound pressure levels for studio rooms are usually not specified in the form of cumulative sound pressure levels, but are specified in spectral form by limit curves that are not to be exceeded.

How to make your music room soundproof

Attach foam to the walls and ceiling:

First of all, you should know that sound travels through the air and through bodies such as the ceiling, walls, and even heating pipes – so it can be heard directly by your neighbors. To prevent this, it is advisable to install foam mats (also called acoustic mats) on the walls and ceiling. These usually have pyramid-shaped knobs that prevent sound from “bouncing” off the wall and being reflected back. In addition, the foam mats ensure that the sounds are not as shrill, hollow or tinny.

It is advisable to order the preferred foam online, because acoustic or nap foam is often only available in hardware stores – and usually in a drab shade of gray. Online retailers, on the other hand, offer the foam not only in different thicknesses and shapes, but also in many different colors. This way, you can perfectly match the mats to your music room in terms of color.

Lay carpet on the floor

Parquet, lamiat and linoleum are slippery and, like bare walls, cause sound to hit hard and bounce back. You can prevent this by installing thick carpet in your music room. This is even important if you are making good use of an unused basement room and turning it into a music room. If someone else lives under you, then impact sound mats (as with laminate) or anti-vibration mats (as with washing machines) still belong under the carpet.

Put drums on a pedestal or drum carpet

If you own an acoustic or electronic drum set and practice a lot at home, then purchasing a pedestal can also make sense. This is because a pedestal ensures that knocking or beating noises are no longer transmitted across the floor. However, you can also build this pedestal yourself at a reasonable price.

Alternatively, you are also well advised with a so-called drum carpet. This is thick, resistant and also soundproof. The neighbors who live below you will be grateful.

What thickness should the acoustic foam in the recording studio have and how much do I need?

To ensure that you also attenuate the right frequencies, the thickness of the panels and the quantity is quite crucial. It is true that the thicker you choose the foam, the lower frequencies will be damped.

For higher frequencies acoustic foams with thicknesses from 3cm to 5cm are suitable. For lower frequencies, it should be 7cm to 10cm or more. Also note that pyramid foams or dimpled foams, at the same thickness, always absorb less than planar foams.

With flat foams you absorb more broadband – with pyramids or nubs mainly in the higher frequency range – even if you use especially thick pyramids or nubs. If you have problems in the recording studio mainly in the mid/higher frequency range, pyramids and nubs are equally suitable – here you have to decide which shape you like better. Pyramids are often preferred, however, because they blend into each other virtually without a seam – with nubs you can always see an offset at the edges.

The more you clad, the quieter the room will be, as more sound waves will also be swallowed in the respective frequency range. You can use either the ceiling or the walls as well as both mixed. If you line 100% of the surfaces, the room will be anechoic and you will no longer have reverberation in the studio. This is intentional for some recording studios if you want to add natural effects afterwards to the then “dry” recording – with professional software this is possible. Many recording studios, however, opt for a middle ground. In the hi-fi studio, on the other hand, you don’t completely disguise everything. Here, of course, the invidiual taste plays a big role.

First of all, it is sometimes said that vibrations are a bad effect for hi-fi enjoyment. This applies at most to rattling furnishings and glasses that start to move at higher volumes. Basically, vibrations are not a bad thing, and they cannot be suppressed: Where music plays, everything will resonate: Floor, wall, window, furniture … But doesn’t the wonderful sound of individual instruments result precisely from certain vibrations of the (wood) material used?

So the point is to equip the listening room with materials that have natural and music-like vibrational properties. A wooden parquet floor vibrates naturally, a tile or concrete floor does not. Also use as much wood as possible for the furnishings: shelves, sideboard, table and HiFi rack are best made of solid natural wood, oiled and not coated. And you automatically have more musicality in your four walls.

Dampening over a wide area

There are listening rooms that have been literally plastered with Basotect or other acoustic foams. Even this “exaggeration” will usually not deliver a good sound experience. The room is then simply “overdamped” and sounds unnaturally dull. Especially since the common thicknesses of these absorber materials can do little or nothing against waves below 150 Hz.

Therefore, you should reduce the reverberation over a wide area with absorbers that combine wood and absorber material. After that, you can actively deal with the bass … Depending on the size of the living room, one or two deep pile carpets (not less than 5 square meters in area) are good, preferably one of them is placed between the listening position and the speakers.

Acoustic elements for walls and ceiling

Either you combine “classic” acoustic elements and hang them next to or on each other. Or – from our point of view the much better solution – you hang the whole ceiling and/or provide whole walls with absorber panels. Acoustic elements are usually 60 x 60 cm in size. Now you can’t expect to buy two of them and everything is fine. The only thing that helps here is a decent number, we are talking about 10 to 15 elements for room sizes of 20 to 25 square meters, which can be quite expensive if one of them costs about $200. Take a look at recordings of studios that are literally plastered with acoustic elements. There is a reason for that.

Large-area absorbers – beautiful to look at and effective

The installation of large-area absorber panels is a real “building measure”, but in total sometimes the much nicer and more consistent alternative. Advantage: such a suspended wooden ceiling or clad wall can look beautiful and has a high efficiency due to the large surface. In order to act as balanced as possible, you can combine different spacing of wood millings. To do this, it is best to look at the measurement diagrams of certain combinations of materials / cutouts.

Asymmetries in the room for better room acoustics?

Very often you can’t place your speakers symmetrically in the room, which always leads to an unbalanced stereo panorama and bass problems. Sometimes one speaker is placed directly in the corner of the room, and the other speaker is 2 meters away from the other side wall. Sometimes an L-shaped room opens additionally to the back or to the front. All these are conditions that are not ideal from a HiFi point of view, euphemistically speaking. And even worse: here you can’t get anywhere with passive measures.

Calculating room acoustics?

If you want to make a real effort with your listening room and are a perfectionist, only exact measurements and preferably professional support by an acoustician or a specialized architectural office will help. You can get a rough indication of the necessary damping requirements with a room acoustics calculator, for example. Here you can enter your room dimensions and furnishings and specify a certain number of square meters for absorber panels to assess their effect.

The highest to the end: Listening to music in the attic floor

An attic is basically well suited for a listening room: a roof truss made of natural wood, usually laid out over a large area, and roof slopes that have a positive effect against room modes. But be careful: even such a room can have many pitfalls.

Let’s start with the side knee walls: Often no more than 1 m high, they are usually drywall with sheetrock and act as a “perfect” panel absorber. Unfortunately with the result that the bass is completely deprived of energy in a certain frequency range, which has a negative effect in terms of room acoustics. Even digital room correction can do little about this. The only thing that helps here is to get rid of it and let the slopes run all the way to the floor.

The living room of yesteryear: sounds strange, sounds good

In the 70s and 80s you didn’t have to start a big discussion about it at all, because the average living room of that time looked something like this:

• 20 to 40 square meters with a rectangular basic cut
• Parquet floor with a large rug or a continuous carpeting
• Curtains and heavy drapes
• Pictures with wooden frames on the wall
• A couch set made of fabric including an armchair for the man
• The obligatory living room cabinet with representative Brockhaus volumes and lots of knickknacks
• A few plants
• Chandelier
• If necessary, a piano or secretary in the corner.

Natural absorbers and diffusers included

In addition, there was usually a symmetrical layout, because the large-scale unification of living area, dining room and kitchen was not yet en vogue. This combination didn’t sound bad from a hi-fi point of view: carpet, couch and curtains acted as natural absorbers and reduced reverberation. Plants, cabinet and other furniture and their contents acted as diffusers, and overall the sound benefited from the natural wood materials.

The living world of today: sounds chic, sounds bad

In today’s world, the motto is “reduce to the max.” In all designer catalogs, people try to convey to us the cozy warmth of tiled floors, concrete looks, huge bare window areas and purist furnishings. Acoustically questionable, and sensitive too: there are studies that prove that in such a living ambience the set heating temperature is on average two degrees higher.

Reverberation time – the measure of precision and euphony

The reverberation between 150 Hertz and 20 kHz should be less than 0.6 seconds for a true hi-fi experience. This cannot be achieved with the described living philosophy without specific additional measures. (In the bass regions below this, longer reverberation times are possible, because here we are dealing with wavelengths of about 2.5 to 10 meters).