Soundproofing a Cubicle?

Anon! A Mouse Cowered! asks: "I work in a 10 x 10 ft. cubicle that's about as low-end as it can be (my back wall is made of my filing cabinets). I have a cheap set of speakers on my desktop for internet radio, but if I play anything other than light jazz or classical at anything above a squeak, it's annoying to my coworkers. Are there any other Dilberts (or Wallys, even), who can offer ideas on making a workspace more livable so that I can enjoy my Primus albums at an audible volume while working?"

Re:We should all discourage Primus listening

[Smidge204]

Or you could just do what I do: don't put them directly on your ears. This will let you hear stuff out in the room (like phone ringing, boss walking in, etc). You can always take them off in a hurry if you need to answer the phone.

Or for a more geeky solution: hook up a mic and enable it as an input source. That way anything the mic picks up will be mixed in with the music. Adjust the volumes to suit and you're good to go.
=Smidge=

Re:Ceiling Hanging Heavy Canvas

[geirt]

Like the tent of doom [jwz.org]?

Re:Alternative headphone use

[ivan256]

When I wear my Bose noise canceling headphones, I find it makes it easier to hear conversations and music from neighbor's cubicles, since they signifigantly lower the ambient noise but only mildly reduce more dynamic sounds like talking or music. Seems like the opposite of what he should do.

Re:We should all discourage Primus listening

[Jahf]

Back when I was in a cubichell I regularly put on headphones without playing any sound so that I could work. I immediately had an excuse to not answer the "Hey, dude, how do I tell someone to do X?" (I was an admin but the support reps were in the same cube farm). To get an answer they had to walk to my Cube (which was strategically placed as far away from the door and farthest away from the other cubes except the guy next to me who was a friend and a web designer who didn't need to bug me with dumb questions), which was usually more effort than just looking it up themselves.

I would frequently hear them ask an inane question and simply ignore it, listening to the others try to figure out the answer. I think I upped my productivity (and in the end theirs since they had to figure it out themselves) by at least 50%.

Then I started bringing in incense candles to kill the smell from whoever kept eating chili for lunch.

After that I clad the entrance to my cube with a curtain and put boards across the top of it to dim the lights from the amazingly bright overhead flourescents.

By the time I left I pretty much had an office and almost didn't care about the work from home program :)

Point? None except that headphones have significant benefits. If you need to be answering the phone regularly, look into one of the headphone mixing systems ... I didn't get one but a friend got one that allowed him to put his headset into it and mute the music when answering the phone. There are also motorcycling products that might be useful here. It will help if your phone has a headphone+microphone style jack instead of only the RJ-11 type.