Soundproofing costs?

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magnetichf
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Soundproofing costs?

Post by magnetichf » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:16 am

This is my virgin post, so my apologies if this topic has been covered before. My girlfriend and I are currently looking to buy a home in Portland. One of our top priorities is a basement that would serve as a music room (both for full-band practices and recording; we're talking reasonably loud rock music). Ideally, I'd like to have a situation where I could go down there at any hour of the day or night, make any amount of noise, and not have to worry about disturbing anyone inside (our outside) the house. In reality, I probably won't be playing drums at 3am very often, so this requirement has some flexibility.

My question is, as someone who is not particularly "handy" when it comes to home projects of any significant complexity, would I be better off having this work done by professionals? I get the sense that anything simple enough that I could do it myself would probably not be terribly effective. Of course, the flip side is that I'm also assuming that having a basement professionally soundproofed would not be cheap (though I have no idea what the costs would be). If I were to have the work done professionally, would it be better to start with an unfinished basement?
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I'm Painting Again
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Post by I'm Painting Again » Sun Apr 09, 2006 8:04 pm

It would probably be better to start with an unfinished basement I would think..since essentially what you have to do is build another room inside your basement that is lined with dense material and mechanically isolated from the existing structure..It cost us about $ 5000 to have our driveway redone with fancy bricks..so I'm guessing it would be considerably more to do a soundprooofing job which is much harder and involves a lot of different materials..I'm just guessing and really have no idea though..

stuntbutt
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Post by stuntbutt » Sun Apr 09, 2006 8:59 pm

I had an opportunity to rent a large warehouse space for recording. It would require that I build an isolated control room within the space.

I estimated that a 16' x 21' room with double leaf contructio would cost $10,000. That is with me doing all the labor; framing, electrical, HVAC, etc.

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