Soundproofing

Home soundproofing goes two ways: how much noise you want to keep in and how much noise you want to keep out. Filtering unwanted outside noise is important to locations where noise pollution is inherent. Locations near airport, highways, and railroads are areas with natural problematic noise control, and homes in such areas desiring to install a home theater should also spend resources on keeping inherent noises out.

Similarly, you’d want to keep the noise in and personal. After all, whatever virtuoso artiste you are currently listening in your home theater system might be a complete annoyance to your neighbors. Would you offer them that? Of course, as good neighbor, you wouldn’t.

Another thing is that, your home theater is also your home. As far as I would dare guess, the home theater might be also your living room. And so while we need to consider applying soundproofing, we also need to maintain a proper level of aesthetics. You wouldn’t want egg crates covering your walls either. You would want everything as it is.

I would like to begin by saying that some construction materials makes a better soundproofing agent than others. For instance, vinyl filled with foam makes a very excellent sound dampener than solid 6 inch concrete. Bricks also make excellent soundproofing material. Lead is also another excellent metal for sound proofing. My point is, if you have the knack of planning early, during construction you can add sound dampening materials to areas where a potential home theater could rise. Although I guess if you are led to this page, you aren’t really into building new walls but ideas on how to do soundproofing walls and an existing room.

There are several ways. One is noise reduction, where the aim is to spend the sound waves or diffuse it before the waves reaches a certain distance. One example is the noise barriers on roadways with heavy traffic. A very thick, 5 feet wall is also an effective sound reduction agent, since sound waves are forced to travel to its entire thickness to get out. And due to its thickness and weight, it won’t allow sound multiplication by transmission. For that reason, lead is also an efficient sound reducing medium.

Next we tackle about home theater furniture. As you might have encountered on commercial theaters, furniture used is always upholstered, carpets and heavy velvet curtains are omnipresent. The characteristics of these materials offer dead end to sound, that is, sound waves hitting them don’t bounce back. The importance of these is two fold: it eliminates standing waves and it dampens sound. In your home theater, you can install heavy curtains over the concrete walls (especially) and windows where sound can bleed into the outside world.

Concrete floors disperse much noise back, making unwanted echoes and reverbs. That’s one reason why speakers should be placed on stands than on the floor. But if you have an efficient soundproofing medium on you floor, you won’t have this problem. And you won’t have problems with neighbors living on the lower floors either. Some floors, most especially wood floors, have spaces in between that can instead amplify sound. Just like my early vinyl example, you can fill it with foam. Cork mats are really good sound dampeners. And what’s more, cork flooring is getting popular due to its rustic appeal. So if you don’t want overusing carpets, then cover uncarpeted areas with cork mats or tiles. Personally there are several more boons in using cork tiles but this is home theater, and that topic deserves an article of its own.

Lastly, you can configure your SPL levels to a certain degree where long and slow waves are kept on minimum. The waves that are generated by your subwoofers are usually the sound your neighbors would be hearing –and won’t if you configure it well with noise control in your mind.