Acoustic foam is composed of open-cell polyurethane foam cut to size and shape for various applications ranging from echo reduction and sound deadening to decoration. These materials give acoustic foam unique properties, such as:. A post shared by Soundproof Cow soundproofcow. We make acoustic treatment possible on any budget. The downfall is not that many people see a ton of success with foam unless they install a lot of it. There are different types of foam out there that all serve to do basically the same thing.
It comes down to where the foam was going to be placed, and what a person wants their room to look like in the end. The common myth has been that egg crates actually work as a way to control sound in the room Article that Disproves this , but that has been proven false. However, that shape with the right type of foam actually works pretty well. The convulsions in the profile of the egg crate foam allow for a lot of sound absorption area to help make sound a lot more controlled.
It is an affordable option that can be placed just about anywhere. Another great thing about using egg crate foam is that it can be part of a more important process as well. It might not provide the same type of sound control that people are counting on by itself, but it certainly acts as a solid contributor.
A quiet ceiling can dictate a lot about a room. There are foam ceiling tiles Amazon available for people to invest in if they really want to.
They are available in many different sizes, and the foam actually works pretty well blending in with the rest of a room. Again, the foam is not going to provide the same level of noise control that people are expecting from other materials, but it is a pretty quick solution to make things better. As long as a person get something that blends into the ceiling well, most visitors will not notice that there is anything up there.
A lot of people will start with acoustic foam corners that can be placed around the room. It is very good at helping with low-frequency sound waves, especially when dealing with musical instruments.
If a person needs to start with any type of treatment, targeting the corners is the right place to start. It will help to change how things work in the rest of the room, and it does not really stand out too much aesthetically. The window area of any room needs some type of treatment to help with sound. This is always a very vulnerable spot, and foam trips are very lightweight to put in whenever it is needed. Try by putting foam around the corners of any window at first. If it seems like one particular area is troublesome, it might make sense to go in that direction as well.
There are so many people out there that might have older windows that do not control sound as much as modern ones. When that is the case, foam helps a lot, and it is so lightweight that the window is fully functional as well. There are not really too many leaks with most windows, but the doors are very different. Even outdoor doors will sometimes have small leaks that could cause a lot of issues with sound as well as temperature issues. Interior doors are even worse, as there is almost always a gap at the bottom and sides for sound to leak.
A door sweep is one option to help with sound control a little, but foam is another option that can sometimes be removed when not needed. A self-adhesive foam strip is going to fit nicely around the inside of a door frame.
It might change how easy it is to open and close the door, but it will seal things off, leaving noise out. Foam is more of a fix for people who might not have that many issues with sound in general. Maybe they need a little bit of help controlling things, but nothing too crazy. Foam is a solid enough material that it will block a lot of sounds and absorb everything well, but it is not going to stack up exactly the same as panels.
There are places where acoustic foam panels blend in. Recording studios. The background of Youtube videos. Maybe in a co-workspace calling booth. Although panels can be assembled from a few simple parts, acoustic foam has to be produced en masse with a machine that can manage the materials, pump it full of air, and cut it into the characteristic shapes required for the acoustic foam to work.
And for everything in between, just be sure to pause and consider your needs, and the goals you have for your space. Which is Better In General? Acoustic Panels. Click here to cancel reply. I would like to find out how to keep sound out of a room. I have several family members staying with me right now and the kitchen is adjacent to my master bedroom.
There is one wall 33 long that is adjacent to the kitchen. Is there anyway I can just do something with that one wall to make any kind of difference? So, before we start talking about how to treat this room, I would suggest putting a fairly constant noise source like a radio in the kitchen and going into the bedroom.
Then critically listen to exactly where the sound is leaking through — and get back to me with that information. This is best done when the house is empty and relatively quiet. I would suggest focusing on the duct work supply and return vents , the gaps and cracks around and under the door, and any outlet boxes on the common wall. If it is the wall, itself, we do have quite a few products that will help reduce the sound coming directly through the wall — each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Almost all of these things are construction-grade products that work with sheetrock. This means that you will need to do a bit of construction to that wall to get some reduction. We do have a few panels that would help, but they are generally fairly expensive and you will need to cover the wall completely.
So, please let me know your findings about where the sound is leaking through and let me know if you have more questions. We are manufacturer of acoustic sound proof enclosure for the diesel generator sets. You are requested to please advice which kind of foam you recommend for this use. Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately I can not make any recommendations until I have some more information from you.
Enclosures are always very problem, situation, and location specific. I will need to know where you are located. What are the conditions that the products needed will face? I will also need to know more about the enclosures you are proposing to build. Where are these machines being used and what type of dB levels and frequencies will be predominant?
Hi, Ted! I love your blog, thanks for the very informative articles! So I need some help, can you please work this out with me? Should I just move? My situation now is:. We tried really hard not to let the drywall touch the walls and sealed the perimeter with acoustical caulk. Ok, so what is my problem now? Is decoupling these walls mandatory in order to stop this annoying sound of his TV from getting into my bedroom??
I actually do have the room to decouple the wall behind my bed, but not the one beside it — so how do I treat that one? Also, do you think that treating these two walls only will significantly help me or do I need to treat the whole room? Thank you very much for your time and attention!
Best regards, Renata. It sounds like you have gone to some fairly extensive lengths to soundproof your condo. I am so sorry to hear you are still having problems. Where are you located? It might be worth having a local acoustical consultant in your area make some recommendation on what to do next. If you can clearly make out voices and determine what TV show your neighbor is watching, there may be some fairly complex structural issues. I would hate to see you throw more time and money into this problem and not make enough of a difference.
I would be happy to help you find someone local that may be able to visit your place and make some recommendations, if you would like. I share a common wall in a condo with a family with three children who are constantly jumping and running down the stairs and across the floor.
It is driving us crazy. Our couch is on the common wall and we can feel the vibration. I realize impact noise is the hardest to alleviate. I was thinking of green glue and another piece of drywall and rearranging our living room to put the tv on that wall and the couch all the way across the room.
I am sorry to hear about your situation! You are exactly correct in your mention of the fact that impact noise is the most difficult to alleviate.
This is because of the massive amount of energy that is travelling through the structure. In order to reduce the boom that you are hearing, you really need to try to stop the energy at the point of impact. Once that energy is into the structure, everything touching that structure is subject to that energy via hard-surface vibration energy transmission.
Depending on the severity of the problem and the engineering of the structure, you might get some reduction by installing Green Glue and an additional layer of sheetrock over your existing wall. Or a layer of SoundBreak XP. You could also reduce the amount of vibration that you are feeling in the floor by getting some of the Acoustik underlayment down under your finish floor. The amount of reduction is going to be very much based on those two things, the severity of the problem and the structure itself.
Thanks for the analogies. They are very helpful. We often run into similar problems when dealing with outdoor noise in the landscape. People think that plants absorb noise but they do not. There are some interesting psychological examples where plants and other structures can make noises seem less loud by hiding the noise source eg air conditioner or busy street from view. I have a vacuum pump motor inside a machine shop. Its measurements are This motor is very load and run hot.
I will make a few assumption here. If I am completely off base, let me know so that I can alter my recommendation. If you would like to send pictures of the pump, I would be happy to have a look. The real variable that I have found throughout the years is the frequency pitch of the noise being generated and that is going to have a significant impact on what type of treatment you will need to build or use to get this where it needs to be. I would then suggest putting some absorptive panels on the back side of the walls.
For the free-standing wall construction, I would suggest the heaviest board-type material you can find. The heavier the better. This is usually the preferred way to start, because it allows for all of the heat being generated by the machine to escape upward.
Full enclosures, sometimes power-vented, are also a possibility and will always outperform a wall-type enclosure.
They do have their own challenges, though. I have also seen instances where people have used plywood, four eye bolts and aircraft cable to hang a ceiling-type panel over the machine so that the sound, as it travels from the machine toward the ceiling, would hit the ceiling panel.
The noise-source side of the ceiling should be treated with the cotton panels as well. This can often be left a few inches or a few feet above the top of the walls, which will allow the heat to escape on all sides. Hey Ted, read through a lot of your comments and analogies and found them very helpful.
The deal is that I have a practice room for my rock band on the second level of a semi detached house. The practice room is at the opposite end of my house in relation to theirs and has two concrete walls leading two the outside and two hollow walls leading to the hallway and then onto the separating wall between our houses.
The thing is I want to find some way of reducing but not eliminating the sound coming out of that room into their house they are actually quite understanding about the noise, but still, its very loud and I really want to get the decibel level down a bit!
Unfortunately I will need some more information to start to help you. These are some questions to help me understand the space better:. Regarding being on a budget, the lowest cost way to start soundproofing the walls which may only be part of the issue would be to pull the trim and add two or three layers of sheetrock to your existing wall.
I would also suggest sealing the gap between the door jamb and the rough opening and sealing the door to be as air tight as possible. We have quite a few different types of products to increase the STC rating of not only the walls and ceilings for this space, but also for the floor and door itself. It is important to note that if you are rocking out at dB in this room, you are more likely to introduce a physical vibration into the structure and that you may have sound going up and over the wall as well as down, through the floor, and under the wall.
Thanks Ted, after doing a bit more reading from other sources, Sheetrock was going to be my first plan of action!. Yes were playing an acoustic kit, with electric guitars a bass and vocals, all turned up loud enough to be heard over the drums.
Also, it is on ground floor with nothing beneath it. It is a heavy wooden door with no panels, that leads into a small alcove before you get into the main body of the practice room.
The only venting system we have is a little vent on on the side of the wall that leads directly to the outside. As for lighting, all we have is one light on a cord coming down from the center of the ceiling. Hey Reuben, sorry for the delay in my response. Situations like yours can be quite difficult because of the amount of variables and options that you are going to have. I usually use the race car analogy. There is not one way to build a race car.
The studio or room would be like the car, with the same number of variables and possible conditions. You would then replace it when you were done. Hello Ted, I have a boiler that is making a lot of noise. It is placed inside a wooden cabinet with a wooden door for maintenance.
There is an air slot inside the cabinet. I understand that if i use sound barrier material the noise will reflect and stay in the cabine, if there are no air slot anymore. If a big part of the the sound energy will be changed in to heat energy in the absorption material, would this not lower the the sound outside the cabinet?
Or am i mistaken? Good afternoon and thanks for the question. First, I would be careful covering up the air slot in the cabinet around the boiler. By putting a loud machine in a box, the sound pressure made by that machine will, in fact, build up and continue to build up and often times the resulting noise can be louder than the machine itself. Introducing the absorptive surface, in this case, would likely help to reduce the amount of sound making its way out of the vent.
Thank you for the article. Apartment situations are difficult because, as I mentioned in the article, blocking sound is done in the construction and assembly of the wall.
Unless you can add a layer or two of drywall, you are not going to be able to block much more sound. Small nails would do a fine job holding up some of our foam panels, but those panels are only going to absorb the echo within the room — they will not block sound.
Great article! I need to reduce the amount of sound that reaches my bedroom from the main part of my house. The entertaining space open floorplan is to one side of the entry and the sleeping space is to the other side. All of the bedrooms flow off of one very long and straight hallway that starts at the entry and ends at my room. The hallway is about 40 feet long, is 4 feet wide, and has 9 foot ceilings. There is no art or carpet in the hallway. From my bedroom at the far end of the hallway, I can clearly hear everything being discussed in and around the front entry and the nearby living room.
I feel like all of the sound from that part of the house is funnelled into my bedroom. This is true even when my bedroom door is closed. We have lots of people frequenting the house during the day and lots of conversations happening in the front entry. This would not generally be an issue, but my wife sleeps during the day she works nights and all of the noise causes her to not be able to sleep withouth interruptions.
Reducing the amount of conversations at the front of the house is not really an option. Please help. Thanks for the question. There are a few ways you can address this problem. You can try a low-cost, relatively easy approach first and see what that does, or you can take the necessary steps to eliminate and fix the problem.
Begin by thinking about the problem like this — imagine that wherever people are that this area is filled with water, from floor to ceiling. That water is going to flow and fill up the hallway. Once the hallway is filled with water, how is that water going to get into the bedroom? That is where the sound leaks in. The low-cost, relatively easy approach would be to install a door seal kit onto the existing door that you have.
This will help reduce the amount of air space that you have connecting the bedroom with the hallway. The parts would be attached to the door stop and the automatic door bottom to the bottom of the door. If you want to properly fix the problem, I would suggest replacing your hollow core door with the heaviest, solid core door that you can find.
Install it as you would install one of our soundproof doors would be installed. A PDF of the soundproof door installation instructions will help, specifically page We also have a video on how to install a soundproof door that may be helpful After that is in, then install the heavy duty door seal kit onto the new, solid core door.
I am building a motorized lift for the lecturn of a pulpit for our church. I can easily connect the end of the actuator to the pulpit and the lecturn. However, a solid connection transmits the sound to the lecturn which acts like a loudspeaker. I was thinking of some sort of sound absorbing block that I could machine to size.
It should be able to support 20 or 30 pounds. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. In addition, I would like to wrap some sound absorbing material around the outside of the acutuator.
Or perhaps, it could be covered with some material which hardens in place. This is a very unique situation.
The difficulty here is that the motor and the arm NEED to be screwed into the wood simply to hold it in place. Those fasteners are going to transmit vibration due to the hard surface contact. The only way to FIX the problem and eliminate the transfer of vibration is to decouple the moving parts from the wood. I have a few ideas, but it could get a bit tricky. These would both allow you to attach everything together while eliminating the hard connection by adding in something to isolate the vibration.
Hi Ted, I hava a 6 month old puppy with separation anxiety who barks a lot. One wall is brick and I share it with my neighbor. I got this puppy while already living here. As a cute young puppy — I saw no signs of this anxiety. My neighbor is writing a book and home all the time. Since I rent, I do not have control over constructing the wall that is between us.
Any ideas to block his high pitched barking? I need some kind of solution. This is a really difficult situation to try to fix because of the fact that blocking sound typically means construction. Whether it is done when the walls are initially put up, or altering the assembly of the wall later on — such as your case.
The only way to increase the amount of sound blocked by the wall is to modify it. Since you are not allowed to do any sort of construction, this is where the problem lies. The first would be an acoustical quilted curtain — basically a really, really heavy curtain. The second is Coat of Silence paint , which you would need to be able to paint your apartment to apply it.
Wall-mounted panels like foam or cotton will only absorb the echo within the room — those types of products will not block sound. I think that these practices may work in my situation. My next door neighbor moved from the country to the city. I think he is used to dogs barking loudly at all hours of the night. I however am not. My bedroom window is only 5 ft from were the dog s like to run to and bark.
My bedroom is a 10ftx10ft room with 2 windows. What would you suggest to block out as much of the noise as possible? Is there anything that I could hang on the walls?
Would sealing the windows shut with a some type of material like wood help at all? Hello and thanks for your question. I assume that you have spoken to your neighbor and asked him to bring the dogs into the house at night?
Also, there are city ordinances that you may want to explore and bring to his attention. Regarding treating your space, there are a few options that you may want to explore. If this were my situation, having seen quite a few instances of significant reduction, I would have our climate seal windows fabricated and install them on my two bedroom windows. These are acrylic plastic windows that snap into place with magnets — very similar to the seal on a refrigerator or freezer door.
They are virtually invisible when installed. The pricing depends significantly on the size s of the window s that you have and I would be happy to provide you with a quote if you would like.
I would also strongly suggest turning on a small fan to create a bit of background noise aka white noise to make your sleeping area a bit louder, but in a comfortable way. If the climate seal window inserts do not offer the reduction that you need, you may want to relocate your bedroom to the other side of the house, if possible. Further steps to reduce the sound transmission could start to get relatively involved.
However, next door neighbour has been logging on our door saying that she can hear the bass sound through the wall. Please advise us what we can do? Boss is a We are thinking about to put a sizable sound proof panels on the wall behind TV unit which is at 2m x 1. Would this solution work? This is a very difficult type of problem to try to fix because of the proximity of the subwoofer and because of the type of pressure these speakers produce.
It is not surprising at all that you are getting complaints from a neighbor due to the bothersome low frequency noises and vibration energy that can physically shake the structure.
Making the necessary changes to the structure would be very involved and quite likely, very expensive. Do we need to worry about more echoing in the auditorium taking down the paneling?
This is, of course, dependent on the wood, if there are any gaps, cracks and especially if there is an air space behind it. I have built a gym in one of the rooms in my flat, and my problem is that when i punch the boxing speedball, my neighbourg at the flat underneath me can actually hear it. Now when installing a speedball bracket to the wall, the screws hang within the brick wall.
So my question is, what would be the best way to stop them from hearing the noise coming from the speedball hitting the platform, and after that, what would be the best way of stopping the vibrations traveling down the wall?
Using which materials for what? If the vibration and impact energy is being transmitted into the wall and being carried down through the structure as a vibration, you are likely going to need to move the equipment. There are not any kind of isolators that I know of that would allow direct wall mounting that would reduce enough energy from the impact to make a difference downstairs. This could very well be a very site-specific problem that will need to take into account quite a few things.
Because I am not there to have a look, there is only so much I can do to help. The first thing that comes to mind would be to build some kind of wooden, free-standing structure and put the entire contraption onto a rubber isolator or series of spring isolators. This would allow the structure to move independent of the structure and the vibration and impact energy would have a more difficult time getting to the structure. I am doing a science project on blocking not absorbing sounds.
I have a guitar amplifier that will be plugged into a computer to produce a sound. Do you have any suggestions of how i can cover the amplifier from all sides in the different materials i want to use and maybe some suggestions of cheap materials that are easy to apply.
And im not sure if the sound comes out all sides of the amp. The first thing is that your barrier has to be air tight. I would first build a box out of plywood, put it straight over the amp, and turn it on. Take three measurements with this setup and average those. Then I would add some weather stripping to the bottom of the box and repeat the test three times.
Make sure you keep your cuts straight and seal all of the seams. Build this second box so that is leaves inches of air in between the plywood and sheetrock box. Unfortunately the sound from it reverberates across the courtyard and is quite noticeable in my apartment. Alas, out of this pipe, along with a powerful stream of air came a very powerful high frequency whine.
I considered this good news, because the source of this noise is isolated and relatively small in size — a inch diameter, downward pointing outlet pipe made of pvc. Because the source is isolated in this way, it seems to me it should be fairly straightforward to build an aparatus to dampen the sound.
So much so that I doubt I would be able to hear it from my apartment. In lieu of hiring someone to stand there with their hands cupped a few inches under a pvc pipe, this leads me to my main question — Do you have any suggestions on what would be an effective apparatus for dampening this sound?
It should be resistant to the elements. It should be fairly simple and fairly inexpensive. This is just an idea, though… I was hoping I could get some advice from someone that has experience in the area of sound reduction.
Is there any chance you could take and share a photograph of this, please? A picture of the situation would be a great help to me. I do, however, have two ideas. Even building a box out of plywood and filling it with sand would likely reduce the amount of sound reflecting off of the ground and filling the court yard.
The other idea would be to use an exterior grade plywood and build a three-sided, free-standing structure around the pipe. I would probably start by building it using three walls with the potential to add a roof section later, if needed.
This structure could be built around the exhaust so that the sound and air that escape are contained by the structure. Here are a few images I quickly threw together to illustrate the idea: It was a lot faster for me to make this pipe using flat-surfaces rather than a rounded pipe.
I recently had a sprinkler system installed with a water pump. The water pump is so loud that it is waking us up when it starts up at 3 am. What sound proofing or sound absorbing material should I use. The pump is located outside. This enclosure can be built with commonly and regionally sourced building materials, like plywood. I have even seen enclosures where the cement-board like that used for bathtub surrounds is used to line the inside of the walls simply to make them heavier.
If you build something like this and you still have a problem, I would be happy to help you find something that we could supply that would reduce the sound further. What very interesting and informative information.
I would like advice on further sound insulation in my ground floor flat. I have had a suspended and isolated ceiling installed with material laid in the space between old ceiling and new one. This has sorted noise from tv, talking, music and has had a significant effect on heat retention.
However impact noise, footfall is still a problem. The flat is rented out and as I have a good relationship with the owners I am wondering what could be done from upstairs, whether it would be necessary to lift existing floor and insulate between joists or if just putting some sort of underlay down would work.
I have access to the stairs in an outside cupboard, would it be worth removing the plasterboard and filling the spaces between the treads, if so with what?
Many thanks, Hermione.
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