CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[drice1234]

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I have my HT on the second floor and will be replacing the carpeting soon. I am considering some options to provide some soundproofing between floors. The 2 ideas that I have come up with is a soundproof underlay that will go beneath the carpet pad and the other is to drill some holes in the media room floor and blow insulation in the joist area between floors. When I was a kid in Michigan I used to help my brother in his part time business blowing in insulation. We would drill 1" holes in the sides of these old houses and blow insulation in the exterior walls and then put a plastic plug in the hole. It would be the same concept for filling up the joist area. My 6 year old plays alot of PS3 in this room and jumps around quite a bit. I would like to try to deaden some of the sound of his falling body as well. I was planning on renting a machine to add insulation to my attic already so the cost would be just for the additional insulation. I have taken a quick look at the pad option it is seems relatively expensive. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks

Dan

[Nashou66]

Id do the insulation and add soundproofing vinyl sheets(1/4") under the pad and carpet. The vinyl is not cheap though but it does work really well. And go with a thinck pad for under your carpet.

http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/products/blocking/sound_barrier.asp


Athanasios

[Curt Palme]

Option 3: Shoot the person(s) above/below/beside you that are complaining. Job D-U-N!

[Curt Palme]

Option 3: Shoot the person(s) above/below/beside you that are complaining. Job D-U-N!

[ecrabb]

For mechanical transmission (shoes, toys, kids jumping), you really need mechanical decoupling. The blow-insulation will do nothing in that regard; the low-frequency mechanical vibration of jumping and falling will go right through the floor assembly. The blow-in insulation will deaden the resonance of the floor assembly itself, however and will reduce transmission of higher-frequency airborne sound, i.e. everything but the bass/LFE from the HT.

Ideally, you need both isolation AND mass. A thin sheet of mass-loaded vinyl (MLV) provides some mass, but doesn't really provide any isolation. Since you can't mechanically decouple (it's the floor after all), what you need is a really good damping layer. A thick carpet pad provides some of that, but not enough to absorb much of the energy from a jumping kid.

If budget isn't too constrained and you want to solve the problem as well as you can without major construction, do the blow-in insulation. Then, go with a floating floor... OSB or plywood sheathing floating on top of a good acoustic damping mat, like this:

http://www.soundisolationcompany.com/sound-solutions/floors/hardwood-floors/

Then, put your carpet and pad back over the top. That's about as mechanically decoupled as you can get without some demolition and reconstruction of the ceiling below.

Post over at AVS in the builder forum - they'll be able to tell you exactly which product(s) to use and where to get it for the best price.

SC

[drice1234]

[dturco]

I have the same thing 2nd flor theater bedroom below. During construction I started with r-30 insulation - 3/4 plywood -rubber roofing-3/4 plywood siliconed the edges and joints then 10lb rebond padding -40 oz carpet. Sound is a funny thing 85 db in room still translates to 50 db down stairs, bass still shakes the heat registers down stairs. I thougt i had it beat. But it still does help to do these thing just not as much as we would all like it to.

[WanMan]

Its only the wife and myself (DINC household). Since the theater room is light controlled, use can be anytime--and not necessarily when someone above is sleeping. Curt's solution is an example of my $0.39 solution. Power to the bullets!