Sound insulating Dry Walls...

[Dimmy]

Two of the walls in my bedroom are exterior brick walls. Unfortunately, the other two are dry walls, which are absolutely terrible for letting sound through. These are the two I want to insulate.

I've checked the other thread 'Sound Proofing My Semi', and there were some interesting links in there. But I wasn't sure if what was advertised would be suitable for my room.

Basically, my room isn't THAT big, and I'd rather not have something that consumed too much space into my listening room.

My budget is around £1500, but obviously if I can spend less I will.

All suggestions welcome.

TIA

Dimmy

[edit]

I forgot to mention, I don't particularly care if sound gets out of the room, I just don't want sound to get in from outside the room.

[pemberto]

Try doing a search in this forum for sound proofing and rockwool. You should get a few more threads to look at that should give you more ideas.

Have a look Rockwool, http://www.rockwool.co.uk they provide a whole range of different insulation products that will help in your quest for a quite room.

Another place to look is Custom Audio Designs, who are specialists in domestic soundproofing, http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk

With your budget you should be able to remove your existing plasterboard, install a rockwool type product and then install new plasterbaord and still have plenty left over.

[Dimmy]

Sorry, forgot to mention , I can't remove the existing walls, any treatements will need to be placed over the existing walls.

Thanks for the links btw, .

[themadhippy]

£1500 should buy enough cans of expandable foam filler,just make a hole small enough to take the nozzel

[Gary Lightfoot]

The expandable foam sounds like a good idea for filling the existing wall cavity - it'll make it more rigid and act as insulation for sound and in - wall resonance.

Glue and screw another layer of plasterboard onto the existing wall - as you don't know where the existing boards join, you could add the second layer sideways from the bottom up - that's how I fitted my first layer when I soundproofed my loft walls. Have a look at my pics on my website for ideas, as well as those links above of course. Sandwiching some soundproof matt between the wall and second layer of plasterboard might be another idea (see link from domestic above).

If you can afford to lose a bit more space, then a studd wall in front of the existing wall is better, but you will lose over three inces minimum doing that. That would provide a better level of proofing though.

Whichever method you decide to use, don't forget to seal all edges (walls floor and ceiling) with silicon rubber.

Gary.

What Gary says is pretty sound...
Use two layers of acoustic grade plasterboard in opposite directions with grommeted metal stud work in between. Decoupling the two surfaces and filling the void with extremely dense foam would do the job with you only losing 4-5" inches to the new walls.

A sandwich of two layers of very high density foam with rockwool in the middle worked best for me.

I did this to every surface of my cinema and with the door closed, you can hardly hear a thing outside.

ps, you can get foam cut to order from a number of internet retailers for small money.

HTH

[Dimmy]

Okay, I've had a look into this. It appears the best option is to attatch a timber vertical frame to the existing wall spaced at 600mm, and place mineral wool inbetween these spaces with resilient bars across horizontally centred at 400mm screwed into the timber frame. Placing a layer of plasterboard onto the resilient bars, then placing acoustically absorbant fabric over this, then another layer of plasterboard. This will take up 10mm of room space, which is quite reasonable.

It's looking to cost much less than I thought, at around £900 in total, which is very reasonable. I hope it's worth it.

Am I likely to encounter any acoustic problems with this idea? i.e. - I'm not suddenly going to find that my bass has disappeared or anything?

Oh and, what do I do about the skirting board that's already there?

You should be able to do that for much less..

Not sure about the "acoustically absorbent fabric " between the two layers of plasterboard...
You really need something of substantial mass to dampen the Plasterboard resonance.

Think... 'mass load and decouple'

Just like

[Gary Lightfoot]

As you're stopping the sound coming in from the adjacent room, the resiliant bar should help a lot. Otherwise I'd say not to use them, just in case they turn the wall into a bass trap and suck all the bass out. What is your 'listening room' going to be for exactly?

I used Wickes 30mm high density slabs for one of my stud walls, and that may be a better option than standard Rockwool, especialy as you're using a 2x1 stud. You could cut some slabs in half to make them 15mm thick and fill in the wall further.

Gary.

[Dimmy]

Listening room - Music/Home Cinema, servo 15, reference level listening etc.

[avanzato]

BBC Research have a couple of papers on lightweight partitions and sound insulation that are worth reading.