Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Wall insulation

What is the best way in insulate the walls in a dedicated hometheater room. Also would it be wise to put carpet on the walls.

Glenn

Carpet will certainly work but you may want to consider this as an alternative. Find a decorative fabric that will work with your decor. Then purchase 1"x3"x8' lumber, assemble the lumber into 4'x6' frames or whatever size you like and stretch the material over it then staple from behind. Hang the finished product on your walls. This will do several things, it will help control the sound, add a decorative touch to your room, save some money, and you won't have to vacuum the carpet.

CAV104

I believe the best way is to do offset studs with some form of interior insulation. I believe Roxul now sells a batt that is solely for soundproofing, and is pretty economical.

As for the wall hanging idea... it is a good idea but you need to actually fill them with something to have a dramatic effect. Fiberglass insulation works well...

My own approach over frames was to buy some jute-like blinds from IKEA... insulate underneath.. and blue-tak the edges down. Minimal fuss... looks nice... and inexpensive.

acg.

There are several good products that can be purchased locally to insulate your HT room. One of the most effective items is to make sure that you use resilient channelt to mount the wall board. Resiliant channel isolates the wall boards from the studs eliminating the transmission of sound to the frame work. You can use this to mount all the wall board, ceilings & walls, the better the isolation the better the sound damping will be. I also stuffed all the walls and the ceiling with Rouxal safe and sound, this is a very dense mineral fibre product. The combination of the channel and the rouxal has made a huge difference in my HT room. Even at very loud volumes you cannot hear anything but the lowest frequencies even in the rooms directly above my system.

I always thought about making a small hole in the top of the wall between studs and filling the inner cavity with sand, but just for fun.

Hi chesseroo,

Actually, you're partly correct--sort of. The acoustical maxim for isolating sound in a room is: the more dissimilar materials you present, the more absorption will take place. But you have to use offset studs so no vibration is conducted through the framing of the room. And you have to seal cracks and doors. Anyplace air can get through, sound waves will follow.

Regards,

Alan, I was kidding about the sand but thanks for the extra info.
Sometime in the future a HT specific room will be designed in our house, theatre seats and all.

You can certainly spend a lot of time and money building a quality listening room. I had such a beast in my 1st house. But in my current house, I spent less on the room, and more on the equipment.

The basic premise is to make the room as "dead" acoustically as possible. As Alan mentioned, all materials will transmit acoustic energy, albiet at different frequencies. That is where the idea of differing stud sizes, variable thickness insulation, and alternating wall treatments will offset "tuning" the room to emphasis, or de-emphasis certain frequencies.

As also mentioned, you can use ordinary materials to tune the room.

I would recommend you look seriously at the electrical subsystems while determining the construction aspects.

Here is what I have so far. Equipment: Denon 5803 receiver, M&K 150 speakers-Total 9 speakers with 2 M&K 350 subs, Projection unit on order is the new Sanyp PLV70, screen will be 16x9 format-size 116x65. The house is under construction. The walls are 6 inches thick, the studs are staggered. Exterior walls are plywood, foam will be sprayed as insulation and sheetrock will be the interior. I am trying to get suggestions on what to put on the sheet rock. The floor will be a dark gray carpet, the ceiling. will be black.