[Dynagroove] Re: Sound Proofing/Reinforcement Question?

[Will Yardley]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 02:50:23AM -0800, PJ wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Housemusicjunky at aol.com wrote:
 
> > Does anyone have any info on where I can contact a Sound/Noise
> > Reduction company that can sound proof some walls to satisfy
> > "bitchy" neighbors? Thanks :)
 
> If you get any info, pls post a summary to the list, I am sure myself
> and others would appriciate any info on this as well.

I'm not an expert on this, but I will post a few things. Also, I think
there has been some discussion of this in the past, but I can't seem to
find the article in the archives.

Ok... this post ended up longer than I intended it to be. Sorry if I'm
rambling. Also, note that it's been a LONG time since I read up on this
stuff, so I may not be able to explain it as well as I'd like. There are
some excellent books on sound proofing (especially as it relates to
studios), and you may want to read up on the subject more, even before
hiring someone to soundproof it for you.

One common misconception about noise reduction is that that bumpy "egg
crate" looking acoustic foam is useful for soundproofing. Acoustic foam
does absorb sound, but generally it absorbs high frequency sounds, and
it's mostly used to absorb reflections when "treating" a room. You don't
necessarily want to put foam everywhere either - you just want to use it
to dampen reflections from certain frequencies (generally mid and high
frequencies). There are also various products ("bass tubes" and such)
which absorb bass frequencies... Again, though, this will not really
reduce the amount of sound making it to the outside.

Another thing to remember is that just because something *looks* like
acoustic foam doesn't mean it has the same sound absorbing properties.
For instance, putting up those bumpy mattress pads on your walls will
have virtually no sound-deadening affect, and will also probably not be
flame retardant.

When you're trying to prevent sound from getting out, you're literally
trying to keep the sound waves from getting out. To do this, you want to
isolate the inside space as much as possible from the outside space...
so you want to prevent air and vibrations from getting out. In the case
of a studio, this is usually accomplished by building a room within a
room, and isolating the floors, walls, and doors completely from the
outside of the building. I'm going to assume that this would be
impractical in your situation, both in terms of cost, and in terms of
space / damage to your residence.

But, my point is that simply "soundproofing" some walls isn't going to
prevent a lot of sound from getting out if you share floors with your
"bitchy" neighbors, have windows facing them, etc. And, depending on
where you're trying to prevent leakage, making the doors and windows
airtight may actually help more.

As far as actual companies that will do this, I don't really know, but I
can almost guarantee that doing this (doing it right, at least) will be
expensive. You may be better off doing some reading, and doing it
yourself.

Doing a quick google search, I came up with some stuff; you may want to
do the same, as I just poked through the first few pages of responses.
There are commercial products that may help:

http://www.asc-soundproof.com/
http://howtosoundproofaroom.com/

Lead is also really good for blocking sound. There are some places that
carry sheet lead for use in soundproofing; markertek (markertek.com, I
believe) used to carry this.

This link looks helpful:
http://www.soundproofing101.com/

I like this one; it talks about a lot of the stuff I was trying to
explain here:
http://www.uhfmag.com/Issue63/soundproofing.html

They link to a guy up north who does this sort of thing:
http://www.soundproofing.org/about_bay_area.htm

-- 
"Since when is skepticism un-American?
Dissent's not treason but they talk like it's the same..."
(Sleater-Kinney - "Combat Rock")