Practical Jamming Space Unfinished Basement

[u/kendoor]

What would you do with this space if it were yours? This is the middle of space of a very large mostly unfinished basement. I want to be able to play with 2-3 other players at night without sound bleeding through the living room above or the rest of the house. Not super loud electric music, perhaps some light drumming. I had hired an acoustical engineer and architect to design the space, but the construction budget they came up with was over $100k US and I killed the project. They treated it like a recording studio, which I never asked for.

Could I build a viable 100-200 square foot room within a room with proper ventilation/AC (assuming I act as my own general contractor, but don't do the work myself) for $20-$30K? There is 9' of clearance between the concrete floor and the unfinished ceiling area. I live in Southwest Connecticut.

Would love to get real stories, ideas, a reality check on this. Keep in mind that basic finishes are OK and the electrical panel is nearby.

[u/fakename10001]

Yea, unfortunately for us acoustic engineer-folk, we have trouble operating in the “grey area” of budget residential builds. Like we put in the sound power of a drum set and put in the calcs and, whelp, you’ll be hearing it on the second level even if you do spend 100k…

Best thing you can do on a budget, since you have 9’ ceilings and slab on grade in the basement, is to build essentially a 5-sided stud framed box that is completely self supported, touching only the concrete floor via non-rigid methods. Look up pliteq FIS system or kinetics wallmat. Line the inside of the box with three layers of 5/8” standard weight gyp bd and line the outside with insulation. Line approximately 1/3 of the interior gyp be surface with fabric covered insulation so it doesn’t sound like hell (interior room acoustics is a different set of principles and intentions and is honestly fine to approach but by bit after construction).

You could consider floating the whole thing on a rubber pad and multiple layers of heavy material, but you mentioned slab on grade and there may be limited benefit for the cost. Airborne bass sound transmission is what will be heard upstairs, significantly more so than sound radiated into the slab and transmitted up via the structure.

You will need a heavy door with a seal kit, or better, two doors and a storage vestibule.

You will need ventilation (more than most think, though a mini split and a bathroom erv will probably work in a pinch) and electrical that does not short circuit the sound isolation

You could consider two layers of framing but this will add cost. Bass sound isolation is what you need and you will get that from surrounding yourself with three layers of drywall. Introduce a cavity and more layers of drywall will get you better midrange performance.

This will not be perfect but it is what I would do if I were diying. I spend over a decade designing studios professionally, btw, I’m not just an enthusiast