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I just line the walls with money.
Saves the trip to the store.
Seriously, soundproofing is not as difficult as it is expensive. I’d like to see inexpensive alternative approaches, but everything I’ve read on the subject indicates that it’s something that can’t really be done on the cheap.
Luckily this is in wiki form so anyone making expensive soundproofing equipment can inform us.
If only this subject was covered online already.
…a wiki in a real online magazine. Write your own magazine, dicks.
my basement was recently soundproofed and it wad quite expensive
Did it work? That’s the other thing I’ve heard is that sound proofing is a fairly futile effort for certain things (drums, loud tools, etc.)
The only way to really do it is build a smaller room inside the bigger one. It’s a lot of work, but probably cheaper in the end than all that foam and shit. Plus you don’t really want to deaden the room that much if it’s a whole band playing live.
You’re right. Drywall is $10 for an 8’X4’ sheet, so it would even be cheaper to double up on drywall than to use the soundproofing foam which is ridiculously expensive.
It’s been a while since I took acoustics, but the rule of thumb is something like every time you double mass, you reduce sound transmission by half. Cheapest way to do that is to double up the drywall on one half of the wall. Doubling on both sides sees diminishing returns, and isn’t worth it.
Craftsmanship is important, cracks bleed sound. This comes into play at drywall joints and on the baseboard and at the ceiling. You can buy expandable foam at Home Depot to fill these joints.
Filling the wall with pink insulation helps, too, if you’re building it from scratch. Air is the best insulator (assuming it is contained), that’s what the foam is doing (air bubbles contained in the goo).
PS – In theory, Jim, the other Jim is correct. That’s how to think about it. Throwing random foam up on the walls is pointless. It needs to be thought of as sealing every surface thoroughly.
Bass (long wave sound) is the hardest to isolate (Kevin V’s point), at that point your talking about building an acoustically isolated floor to keep it out of the structure…
I read that on an site a long time ago, I haven’t done it. Doubling up the wall would help a lot, but if you build a whole new wall with a few inches between it kills the sound even more. I’d probably research that more before I did it, but I don’t have room to spare and I hate my neighbors anyway.