Celing Joist insulation

S

savageblues

New member
Hi Folks, I have a basement studio room which is roughly 18'L x 14'W x 7.5'H.

This summer I finally hope to get around building some panel traps, and absorbers using the semi-rigid insulation. I also intend to treat the ceiling somehow. My goal is to improve the sound of the room for jamming, recording and mixing - not to sound proof it. There are no treatments currently so its likely to have some bad acoustical resonances etc. We suffer from vocal mic feedback issues when trying jam. I also want the room to eventually look nice, and be more comfortable to work in.

With 7.5' height to the joists, I dont have a lot of room for drop ceilings or deep ceiling panels. The ceiling is unfinished with joists exposed.

I read at Ethan Winers site that filling the joist space with insulation should improve the room sound. My joist spaces have a width of 10.5" (since I guess they are on 12" centres).

Q. Is the semi-rigid stuff easy to cut to width -or should I go with a 'pink' style material that I can stuff in? What thickness of material should I go with?

Once I have the joists filled (somehow) I plan to cover the ceiling with a fabric of somekind since it says to use an acoustically transparent material to cover.

Does this sound like a good start? Any other suggestions?

Thanks.
 
Blues,

> Is the semi-rigid stuff easy to cut to width -or should I go with a 'pink' style material that I can stuff in? <

Fluffy insulation is fine assuming you have enough depth. If you can fit 12-inch thick insulation up there, that will do a good job and cost less than rigid fiberglass. (And be a lot easier to find.)

> Once I have the joists filled (somehow) I plan to cover the ceiling with a fabric of somekind since it says to use an acoustically transparent material to cover. <

Yes, exactly.

--Ethan
 
Thanks Ethan!

I measured the space at 9.25" deep (I assume these are standard 2"x10"' joists) but I could cram them pretty full of insulation. Is an airspace important?

Maybe you've described this already, but could one cap and seal some of these joist spaces to create low frequency traps?
 
SB,

> I could cram them pretty full of insulation. <

There you go. Use 12-inch fiberglass (R-38). No air space is needed.

> could one cap and seal some of these joist spaces to create low frequency traps? <

Yes, but it's tricky to do right and probably won't be as good as packing with insulation.

--Ethan
 
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