How can you soundproof a room

[Rich Conroy]

I live in a semi detached house and annoy my neighbours with my volume levels. Whats the best way to acousticly insulate the partition wall?

I don't want to spend the money on just getting in a specialist but general advice on what to tell the average builder would be good.

RC

[chelsea]

Unless you can fill it with rockwool (r10 i think) if it is hollow maybe overboard the wall in soundboard and fill in the gaps with special sealant then skim it.

Even better do both.

[Oldpinkman]

The biggest problem to deal with is bass frequencies - and you probably have to accept you are never going to completely block those. In addition to its ability to pass through walls, bass being less directional will also leak out of walls and ceilings. (We sound proofed an old stable as a recording / rehearsal studio recently - and even with all the layers we have, the bass can still be heard - mind, some of these bands play at ear splitting rehearsal levels)

The biggest weakness is joints - so windows and doors. However, if you are mainly attempting to insulate the party wall from the neighbours, don't have Marco's speakers, and play at moderate volumes, you should be in with a chance. Rockwool is fine, but uses up a lot of room space. I would try getting special thick acoustic grade plaster board. You want 2 sheets stuck together with "green glue" - a specialist acoustic bonding agent. The plasterboard then needs to be attached to isolation clips or battens fixed to the party wall. This then needs sealing round all the edges with a good acoustic sealant. If necessary you can insulate the ceiling (use standard thickness plasterboard because of weight) and floor (there are specialist rubber mats) - but if it is just to drop the noise by 10db or so for the neighbours, the green glue plasterboard sandwich on battens should do it. If you want to go further, put 50mm battens down the wall first, to fit the isolation fixings to the battens, and fill the gaps with rockwool or similar acoustic insulation.

Have fun! :cool:

[Gordon Steadman]

When I was doing flat conversions, I always put in floating floors. You can get the materials from Wickes, basically a plastic sheet, damping pads and then chipboard on top. The plastic wrap comes around the floor and the skirting sits on that rather than direct on the flooring. Whilst it won't cut down airborne vibrations, it does a lot to cut the direct structural vibrations. Anything helps.

One of my tutors at college was an organ fan - musical that is:eyebrows: - and he had giant Tannoys although he lived in a terraced house. He had a false wall built against the party wall, with an air gap filled with sand. The neighbours couldn't hear a thing apparently.

[The Black Adder]

Here is a place that specialise in sound proofing. Some good ideas too.

http://www.acoustic-supplies.com/wall-soundproofing

[Yomanze]

Nice, 4x great comments straight away... will be watching this with interest my neighbours do knock on when the bass is getting going...

[Macca]

I once rented an end of terrace from a friend - he had students in previously and the elderly neighbour had complained about the noise so he had panelled the party wall with plasterboard - no air gap as there was not enough room between the wall and the front door. He reckoned this had solved the problem but I was sceptical. I didn't want to live somewhere the neighbour would be hammering on the door the moment I put some music on. Anyways I never had a complaint, even though I was running a sub/sat combo at the time so no shortage of bass. After about six months I met the neighbour at the front door - I took the opportunity to ask her if the music was ever too loud and she said that she had never heard any music. She wasn't hard of hearing, either. So if one layer of board can have that effect I would imagine a double skin with insulation-filled gap would sort your problem out, unless your neighbours are determined to make it an issue.

[Rothchild]

Also bear in mind that making sound proof room sound nice is even harder (because you've gone and trapped all that energy in there!)

Soundproofing comes down to mass, air-tightness and isolation. All of these are expensive and complicated compared to 'normal' building practices.

There's a great forum full of info here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

If you're going to put rockwool in then go for RW6 (now called ProRox SL 980 apparently) I got the stuff for my studio build here: http://www.just-insulation.com/001-eshop/buy-rockwool-mineral-flexi-slabs-semi-rigid-batts-glass-wool.html it's the most massive that they do at 140kg per m3. (It's also really good for making decent wideband absorbers / bass traps, so once you've made a nasty sounding, but soundproof, room you can build some traps to start taming nasty nodes!)

Richard's already called on the Green Glue idea and you can get extra heavy plasterboard, I used 15mm Knauf 'Soundboard' (apparently they 'jiggle' it while it's setting so it doesn't have any bubbles in it, it weighs a ton and my plasterer swore at me when he realised what I'd got him in to do!)

One final suggestion (as well as double layered, mass - spring - mass walls) is to use 'resilient bars' to mount the plasterboard to, these act as a spring and decouple the board (and the vibrations hitting it) from the studwork thus improving isolation.

[Macca]

The point of my post was that it is probably best not to overthink it. It's not an attempt to build a recording studio, just to stop as much sound penetrating into the next house as possible. So no need to treat the floors or ceiling or other walls. Even though I know you studio types love this sort of thing ;)

[Rothchild]

Yeah it's fair enough (and yes, bang to rights I do love this sort of thing, I had great fun speccing and building my studio.)

In terms of alternate approaches it might be worth looking at how your speakers are mounted and looking to decouple them from the floor so there's less vibration escaping that way (slabs on rubber or carpet is an easy win here)

[Audio Al]

I would batten the adjoining wall and buy noise reduction plasterboard ( Blue )

http://www.wickes.co.uk/sound-panel-taper-edge-2400x1200x125mm/invt/224657/

also fill the void with celotex insulation boards


Celotex also do a combined insulation / plasterboard panel system

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL_iQcO9trk


Sound insulation and thermal insulation all in one job :)

[Rothchild]

Phenolic insulation (Celotex or Kingspan) has incredible thermal properties but to my knowledge it's pretty rubbish (especially compared to mineral wool, like Rockwool) for acoustic insulation.

[Stresss42]

Hi Rich, Rothchild gave a superb solution below..absolutely spot on. But what I would do 1st is put acoustic self - adhesive foam onto the resilient bars, and then fix them onto the wall. This would isolate any
noise / vibration from passing from the boards - to the metal res bars - then into the wall and cavity. ( Then to your neighbours ). Also - without doubt the best possible acoustic board out there is a board called
" maxi-boards " - http://www.soundreduction.co.uk. If I remember correctly they're 25mm thick and comprise of varying density materials. They are much dearer than Lafarge db-Check boards / Knauf / BG Soundbloc
but we've found them to be the best acoustic boards available. PM me your email address and i'll send you drawings / specification and how to install them. I work for a dry-lining distributor and I've had some very good experience with acoustics, and I had the same problem as you so I feel your pain trust me. ! ( Ps..I don't intend to sell you anything..would simply be happy to help out a fellow AoS member with some simple installation guides so you could do the work yourself ! ).... All the best mate, Steve.