Soundproofing

hi,
working on a room in my basement, the room size is 22 x 19, process of pre-wiring and getting ready to hang drywall, can anyone give me the 411 on soundproofing walls and ceiling.....found a gentleman that had some soundproofing left over, He has 20 sheets, 1/2'' x 4' x 8', he is asking 200 bucks for the items, is this a good deal, what to look for when i go check it out, etc.

thanks

action01 said:

hi,
working on a room in my basement, the room size is 22 x 19, process of pre-wiring and getting ready to hang drywall, can anyone give me the 411 on soundproofing walls and ceiling.....found a gentleman that had some soundproofing left over, He has 20 sheets, 1/2'' x 4' x 8', he is asking 200 bucks for the items, is this a good deal, what to look for when i go check it out, etc.

thanks

Click to expand...

Half an inch of thickness isn't going to give you much, if any, sound proofing. You can buy acoustic fibre from hardware stores for cheaper than that.

What you want is several inches of mineral fibre insulation that's specifically designed fpr acoustic isolation. Auralex.com has some great info on acoustics, as does acoustics101.com.

Though the above are a great source of info, I think for in-room acoustic treatment (but not sound proofing) RealTraps have a better product.

Sound proofing a room and acousticly treating are two different things. Here's a great place to find out more info. on sound isolation. I just got my theater room double 5/8 drywalled with green glue. Check out the link below for a great read.



http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/index.php?/library/articles/elements_of_room_construction

action01 said:

hi,
working on a room in my basement, the room size is 22 x 19, process of pre-wiring and getting ready to hang drywall, can anyone give me the 411 on soundproofing walls and ceiling.....found a gentleman that had some soundproofing left over, He has 20 sheets, 1/2'' x 4' x 8', he is asking 200 bucks for the items, is this a good deal, what to look for when i go check it out, etc.

thanks

Click to expand...

First of all what we are talking about here is how much sound can be attenuated. In home theater the approach is completely different that in trying to acoustically isolate a room for speech and privacy purposes as one would accomplish by filling the wall with fibrous material. We are dealing with massive amounts of low frequency energy in HT, so what really needs to be done is add "mass" to the wall to absorb that energy. The product you need is called Quietrock. They have various sizes and thicknesses with STCs (sound transmission coefficients, an established building design measure of how much mixed frequency sound is attenuated) of 45 through about 90. The STC of the overall wall assembly is determined by the product and how it is installed. For example in my dedicated theater I was dealing with an existing room so I applied a layer of Qietrock 510 inside of the existing drywall. (QR 510 has heavy vinyl fill in between the layers of paper instead of gypsum). Installation is easy but labor intensive purely because of the weight. It cuts and snaps like gipboard drywall and you screw it in place just like regular drywall. I staggered the joints from the original installation to avoid sound seepage through the cracks. I also mounted all my electrical boxes using "floating retrofit boxes" rather than attached to studs and lined the backs and sides with Dynamat, a material auto sound installers use to deaden sound. It's available through Amazon. I also calked around the electrical boxes and at the floor/wall interface before installing baseboard trim with heavy vinyl caulk.

My theater isn't completely "soundproof" you can still hear the loudest LFE passages through the walls, but it is very muffeled and reduced and won't disturb conversation. The best part is that my sound attenuation efforts have made my theater room dead quite, isolating it from ALL house noise.