Basic sound reduction.

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Disco_Dave

New member
I am currently buying a new house. The place I am moving to is an old terraced house (150 yrs old) with nice thick walls. The room at the front on the basement level is going to be my music room, it has a window which is below street level and a wooden pannelled floor and underneath that is terra firma.

My plan is to put a second pane of thick glass on the inside of the current single pane window (which doesn't open anyway). I would seal this properly and could even add shutters to reduce sound transmission even further while allowing natural light in when playing at low volume.

I don't intend to touch the ceiling at all as it is a house and the room above will be mine. I also figure the floor can stay unadjusted too (particulalry as I think the wood will be good acoustically.

As for the walls that join the neighbours...I intend to create a half stud wall with 2 by 4 seperated from the existing wall with strips of rubber or neoprene, filled in with mineral wool and with two layers of gyproc on top...with all the gaps sealed and the edges offset.

What i would like to know is will this make a noticeable difference. I'm well aware that this is a low cost simple solution but is it worth doing for the benefits I will get? Furthermore does anyone have any further suggestions? I'm only intersted in noise reduction at the moment...I know quite a lot about acoustic treatment and am still planning that.
 
Umm.. if you're not going to treat the floor and ceiling, my guess is you're going to get flanking sounds to your neighbour... I think it's an all or nothing at all question.. (maybe the more experienced people in here can back me up or throw me out ? :p )


Herwig
 
Hello Disco Dave. I agree with deadpoet. If you have neighbors in the same building, from what I understand about structural transmission, its either all or nothing. Just building another seperate wall will do very little. Lets put it this way.
I read recently about a test that was done in two buildings, specially built for the purpose. Each building was completely concrete. Walls, floor, ceiling. They were seperated by a small gap(1" plus or minus). They were also FLOATED on 3HZ springs. Blanks from a 9mm pistol were fired in one room, and no sound was detected in the other. However, as soon as a small piece of wood was wedged in the gap whereby it was touching both rooms, a small PORTABLE RADIO could be heard in the adjacent seperated building. What this means is, as long as your in a room that has structural elements that connect to other rooms, and room and element RESONANCE can transfer, just building one wall of soundproof elements between them is doomed to failure. But just to make something clear, I am NO expert, just an somewhat enlightened observer. And this is what I have observed.
In order to completely SOUNDPROOF, there is only one way. You have to DECOUPLE the room structure you are trying to isolate, and to what degree you DECOUPLE determines the final STC rating of the room. And to make matters worse, even the decoupling elements must me calculated for the WEIGHT of the WHOLE ROOM.
What this boils down to is this. To WHAT degree you aim to raise the sound transmission loss, is directly proportional to your construction methodology. AND to the WEAKEST link. Suppose you build a set of 4 floating walls and ceiling with a calculated STC rating of say 35. And you float it on the existing floor. Then you build a SEPERATE floating floor, with a actual rating of 45. The total rating will be somewhere in between.. And this still doesn't address HVAC, doors, windows etc.
What I am trying to tell you is this. There is a LARGE gap between what is ASSUMED here about SOUNDPROOFING and ACTUALLY lowering the sound transmission
in a given room. TOTAL soundproofing is a game best left to professional consultants. And anyone here who suggests that you can TOTALLY SOUNDPROOF by simply building a wall or two, or using resiliant channel, or using eggcrates is only going to disappoint you.
The understanding here should be HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO RAISE THE SOUND TRANSMISSION LOSS? That is the question. For every db of transmission loss desired, there is a construction meathod to reach it. And for every db, there is an associated dollar amount related to it also. And, for some construction paths, the end result will only reach a percentage of the target STC at best, as the weakest link syndrome rules. Furthermore, existing construction dictates the construction meathods also. And without knowing that first, NO ONE can truly offer a difinitive solution to target STL, as they are actually guessing.
So without raining on your parade further, let me say this. This is homerecording, and to some extent, your determination of what you can put up with is the final criteria of your soundproofing efforts. There are many ways to improve the STL in a room. But ignoring physics is not one of them. The best way anyone can offer help or advice here in this regard, is to point you to MANY previous threads and links to INFORMATION, as YOU are the designer, engineer, construction supervisor, and qualifier of the space. I just hate to see people ASSUME certain solutions are the path to success, only to find their money and time have been wasted, and could have been spent on a solution that reached the desired goal had CORRECT information been utilized. Therefore, I suggest you read as much as possible first. Otherwise your spittin upwind. Of course, I'm no expert so take what I say with a grain of salt.
OK, get out your flamethrowers everybody, but I hope you have a REAL solution also.
fitz:)
 
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What I asked is "will this make a noticeable difference". I am not naive enough to think that a a bit of mineral wool and some gyproc is going to totally soundproof the room. I'm not a studio construction epert but I do know a lot about making noise! I have read a great deal about this...Paul White's book twice, and most of the relevant stuff on the studiocovers site.

All I am looking to do is to reduce the noise transmission a bit, just to make life a bit more pleasant for the neighbours. The problem is that what i described in my first post is pretty much all I would be able to do with the space....save a few blankets and putting in thick carpet. I could put half stud walls round the whole room I suppose....The room is fairly small and the ceiling is pretty low....if I was to put in a false floor and ceiling i would scraping my head on the ceiling all day.

To put it simply...Will what I mentioned make a noticeable difference? or should I just leave it as it is and spend my time and money in the pub?!
 
I should say that my last post was not meant to sound as sulky as it does. I am genuinely trying to get all your opinions and appreciate your input.
 
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